1. Encourage your child to take academic risks. Achievements are more satisfying when they initially seemed out of reach. Don't let your child settle for shortcuts, or lavish praise over accomplishments that come too easily. Urge schools to provide appropriate gifted education that truly challenges your child.
2. Distinguish between process and outcome – Offer an appreciation of how learning is a process involving uncertainty, excitement, confusion, and a range of unsolved mysteries. Your child’s job is to take on challenges he or she has not already mastered. Let your child know that you care as much about how he or she approaches learning as what is produced.
3. Teach coping strategies – Help your child learn how to accept disappointment and loss without either blaming others or engaging in harsh self-criticism. Teach how to put adversity into perspective. Help your child learn to comfort, soothe, distract, seek support, and appropriately discharge feelings. (Note: Sometimes these skills may warrant support from a therapist.)
4. Emphasize values – Promote the importance of ethics and integrity, cooperation and collaborative work, and taking responsibility for one’s role in the classroom. Let your child know that actions and behaviors speak more about character than accomplishments, and that how one behaves is more important than always being the best.
While most children find school to be reasonably demanding, gifted children frequently view academics as easy and even boring. Without a challenge, they may develop a distorted sense of their own abilities, a skewed perception of others' strengths, and a fear of taking risks when eventually faced with real challenges. Encouraging academic risk-taking at an early age, before fears and avoidance behaviors become entrenched, should help build confidence in their ability to master adversity and future challenges. (Additude)
2. Distinguish between process and outcome – Offer an appreciation of how learning is a process involving uncertainty, excitement, confusion, and a range of unsolved mysteries. Your child’s job is to take on challenges he or she has not already mastered. Let your child know that you care as much about how he or she approaches learning as what is produced.
3. Teach coping strategies – Help your child learn how to accept disappointment and loss without either blaming others or engaging in harsh self-criticism. Teach how to put adversity into perspective. Help your child learn to comfort, soothe, distract, seek support, and appropriately discharge feelings. (Note: Sometimes these skills may warrant support from a therapist.)
4. Emphasize values – Promote the importance of ethics and integrity, cooperation and collaborative work, and taking responsibility for one’s role in the classroom. Let your child know that actions and behaviors speak more about character than accomplishments, and that how one behaves is more important than always being the best.
While most children find school to be reasonably demanding, gifted children frequently view academics as easy and even boring. Without a challenge, they may develop a distorted sense of their own abilities, a skewed perception of others' strengths, and a fear of taking risks when eventually faced with real challenges. Encouraging academic risk-taking at an early age, before fears and avoidance behaviors become entrenched, should help build confidence in their ability to master adversity and future challenges. (Additude)