Motivating Gifted Underachievers

Parents Help Reverse Gifted and Talented Student Underachievement

Aug 2, 2008
Carla Marie Boulianne

Use Gifted Interests to Motivate Underachievers - Anita Patterson/morgueFile.com

Parent attitudes toward underperforming gifted children impact motivation. Restricting interesting activities to punish lack of effort or poor study skills backfires.

Gifted underachievers frustrate parent and teacher efforts by working far below their academic potential. School interventions frequently fail to motivate gifted students and parents’ efforts to punish poor performance often cause more harm than good.

What factors influence reversal of underachievement in gifted and talented students? Numerous studies fail to identify interventions with any significant effect on gifted child motivation and achievement. A retroactive study by Linda Emerick identified factors influencing gifted students who reversed their academic underachievement without apparent intervention.

Ten gifted students from eastern regions of the United States participated in the study. Researchers identified gifted and talented youth using educator nomination, based on three criteria:

Giftedness based on standardized achievement test and IQ scores.
Sustained academic underperformance of two years or more, followed by a reversal.
High academic achievement lasting more than one year, evidenced by grades, honors, and awards.

Gifted students ranged in age from 14 to 20 years old. Twenty percent were gifted females; twenty percent were gifted African-Americans. Gifted youth came from a diversity of socioeconomic backgrounds and a full range of urban, rural, and suburban environments.

Six Important Factors for Reversing Gifted Underachievement

Researchers gathered data on gifted underachievers using parent, teacher, and student questionnaires, and academic records. Gifted students participated in individual interviews to discern their self-perception of factors influencing their shift to high academic performance. Six common themes motivating gifted underachiever performance emerged:

Out-of-School Interests and Activities
Parents
Classes
Personal goals
Teachers
Self-concept

Emerick identified outside interests/activities and parent attitudes as the strongest factors motivating gifted and talented children’s reversals from underachievement to high performance.

Motivating Gifted Underachievers Using Out-of-school Interests and Activities

All ten gifted students remained active in outside interests during their period of underachievement. Students articulated four ways out-of-school activities fostered academic success by:

Providing escape from school frustrations.
Developing a sense of self-worth, control, and success despite academic failure.
Maintaining a life-long love of learning through challenge and enrichment.
Identifying meaningful in-school learning opportunities related to personal interests.

Outside interests and activities are the strongest factor in reversing gifted underachievement. Parents often limit out-of-school activities hoping to focus a gifted underachiever’s efforts on academics. Emerick’s research supports allowing gifted kids full exploration of their interest areas despite academic failings.

Parent Roles in Changing Academic Underperformance in Gifted Children

Gifted students expressed three ways that parents positively influenced their switch from gifted underachiever to academic high-performer by:

Supporting of out-of-school interests and activities.
Maintaining a positive attitude towards the gifted child despite academic failings.
Remaining calm, consistent, and objective during periods of underachievement while placing responsibility for change squarely on the student.

Parents should note that restricting participation in outside interests as punishment to motivate academic performance backfires. If a gifted underachiever loves computers and fails a math test due to insufficient effort, parents should not withhold computer time to encourage homework completion. Instead, parents should find a challenging computer course where the gifted child can develop self-worth and study skills. These assets will translate into improved school performance over time. Patience and encouragement are essential during periods of underachievement.

References:

Emerick, Linda J. “Academic Underachievement Among the Gifted: Students’ Perceptions of Factors that Reverse the Pattern.” National Association for Gifted Children Gifted Child Quarterly Summer 1992; Vol. 36:3 p.140-146.

Carla Marie Boulianne - Background and Interests I am a former feature writer for Parenting a Gifted Child. I relish combining personal parenting and childhood ...

Comments

Apr 19, 2010 6:32 AM

Guest :

Interesting. However, in the real world it is not always an option to "find a challenging computer class". The family might reside in a rural area, have limited funds, and their other children's priorities to consider. You do not address children who do not perform in those private classes either because of laziness--which makes a parent think twice before offering yet another private class to that child as opposed to a sibling who might be less gifted but studious. Try not to write with the rather limited focus on single gifted child in an upper middle (sub)urban class environment only. Those children will probably get the attention at home and in school. It is the other ones (and their parents) that need help.

May 19, 2010 6:20 AM

Guest :

This article is interesting, but off base to a certain extent. What do you do with a 17 yr old boy who has no motivation for learning and sees no reason to continue. He is not a disciplinary problem at all either in school or out, but he has no outside interests that we can discern. You ask him directly and he says, "I don't know." He has told us and school counselors that he just doesn't want to do the work, he's bored. It is only core classes he has problems with, English, Biology, and Health. Social Studies, Fitness, Driver's Ed and Math he has no problems. He has study hall, but doesn't utilize it for homework or study. What do you do as a parent?

Jul 25, 2010 8:36 AM

Guest :

In regard to the two previous comments, there should be an understanding that one article cannot address all issues involving raising an underachieving gifted student. The computer example was just one example. If computers are not your child's interest or you cannot afford one, perhaps a low-cost community sports team would be more appropriate. Our son loves sports and loves statistics. However, he barely passes math. At least his participation in sports and his habit of creating elaborate charts for statistics is keeping him active, interested in math, and teaching him skills such as cooperation, individual and group achievement, and cause and effect. If your child is interested in something you cannot afford, look for assistance through community services (libraries have computers), churches, or youth programs such as the Boys & Girls Clubs.
I found this article to be very informative. We have told our 16-year-old that he will not be allowed to get his driver's license until he brings up his grades. Our thought was that he needs to show responsibility before handling something as big and potentially dangerous as a vehicle. However, our state has a graduated license anyway and he would not immediately be alone behind the wheel. After reading this article, I'm reconsidering my stance on the issue. Perhaps the classes, studying, and practicing required to pass the licensing test would be a good process for him and would help him apply those principles in school. Thank you for this article. It has given me much cause to think.

Aug 24, 2010 9:49 AM

Guest :

In school, I was lucky that I became very interested in computers at age 13, back in 1975, and started to play games. By age 14, I wanted to WRITE games and I had a peer group of fellow middle school kids who felt similarly. School was not a challenge, even being accelerated 1 year in math classes, because my IQ probably put me 3-4 years above average.

The greatest key is to find something new and challenging and make it fun so the STUDENT directs their own learning. If you can get the STUDENT to direct their own learning, they will learn at their maximum rate, unhindered by parental goals or expectations. Sometime between age 10 and 20, most world-class scientists, etc., bootstrap in self-learning mode. It is not guaranteed to happen without outside mentoring and help (in my case, an Explorer scout group and the scout master were key elements of this bootstrapping process.) My sister, who is similarly talented, never bootstrapped in a self-learning mode, preferring simply to read fiction instead.

Dec 7, 2010 2:08 AM

Guest :

I too found the article informative, and as one of the guest posters pointed out, I am reconsidering signing my daughter up for ballet classes. I would tell her how can I sign her up for ballet classes when she's taking up so much time to do homework and she's getting 1's and INC's in her work? But as the article suggests, maybe that place of escape could help re-energize her and give her that place of solace.

Dec 12, 2010 10:48 PM

Guest :

As a 19 year old undergraduate who has been one of these "gifted underachievers" - I had an I.Q. of 151 when I was 12, qualifying for a special state education programme - I will frankly say that the meaning of "school" became misaligned with the pleasures of learning. The pressures to perform, combined with banal work that did not enrich or engage me, accelerated the decline.

The responses of the school and my parents to my results sent a clear message that my entire worth as a person hinged upon which subjects I was good at and the scores I had. My perception of myself became defined by my failures. At the same time my response was to escape from these sources of pressure and I became entirely guarded and distrustful of authority.

My school and my parents treated me not like a person but like a problem to solve or a nut to crack. They attempted to deconstruct me with various explanations: lazy, under-motivated, under-challenged, lacking in self-worth, et cetera. This made me uninterested in cooperating. I had no ambition, having defined myself by my failures. Having teachers and parents who defined 'ability' by my results, and success in life by this purported 'ability', even when I was asked about my hopes and ambitions I could not articulate one, as I could not see what I could amount to.

The last factor contributing to my underachievement was my perfectionism. I knew I was capable of much more than the assessment required, yet knowing that I couldn't demonstrate my full ability - or fearing mistakes I could potentially make - caused me to do absolutely nothing when I could have been utilising good time to work. I was a confirmed self-defeatist.

I had problems handing in assignments but did significantly better than average, topping the class on a few occasions between the ages 11-15. Repeated counseling sessions from the school over the years only made me feel singled out and harassed. At that age, I was unable to fully deconstruct the causes for my behaviour and when pressed for an answer I would say there was no reason for it, it was just that way.

The change to my behaviour was when I encountered teachers who inspired me and affirmed my worth. I felt that I had a duty to live up to my potential because they had so much faith in me. These teachers were more concerned about what I had learnt rather than how I demonstrated it in assignments. By telling me my options for university - even suggesting Ivy League universities - they set me a goal and demonstrated their faith in me. In contrast, had my parents been suggesting Ivy League to me, I would have regarded their suggestion with cynicism, believing them to be just attempting to thrust unreasonable expectations to pressurise me.

Having teachers that made school a worthy and engaging learning environment changed my behaviour. They were more flexible about my assignments and allowed me to negotiate for different deadlines, even taking the time and effort to help me overcome my fear of failure and get me started, proving to me that schoolwork was a rewarding challenge. My results took an incredible turn - I had grades changing from F to B when I was 16. I was a straight-A student when I was 17 and 18.

My reason for writing this extremely long personal experience is to better illustrate what the article describes. The article can seem entirely conceptual and cursory with pedagogical terms, despite its actual nature of being apt and concise. I hope that my response as a young adult - being privileged as observer and previous participant of such behaviour - can benefit the discussion.

Lastly... when I was 13 I read my parents' books about gifted children, their multitude of behavioural problems and the proposed solutions to aforementioned. That experience disturbed me greatly because I felt dehumanised, degraded even to be stereotyped, with my problems or even personality easily 'solved' with instructions and case studies. Helpful as such guidance can be it is extremely damaging to anybody to know that they are inherently problematic and no more but an anomaly to be corrected.

I am not claiming to be a success story nor do I agree that underperformance is merely a phase. Coupled with low self-worth I have been diagnosed with depression and am being reviewed for autism. There is a multitude of factors that bear upon the behaviours of individuals and no solution should be monolithic, just as education in schools should not only come in one uncompromising fit.

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