PARENTING TALENTED CHILDREN

David Henry Feldman, Ph.D.

Tufts University

Jane Piirto, Ph.D.

Ashland University

PARENTING TALENTED CHILDREN

INTRODUCTION 

Although few would sympathize with parents who find themselves trying to raise a child with exceptional talent, it is in fact one of the most daunting and often discouraging challenges that family life has to offer.  It is not simply the fact that parenting at the extremes of ability requires substantially greater resources of all sorts, although that is certainly the case.  Contrary to conventional wisdom, which would have it that the more talented the child, the easier it should be to care for her or him,  based on recent findings it appears that the reverse is actually the case (Albert, 1990a, 1990b; Bloom, 1981, 1985; Feldman, with Goldsmith, 1991;  Radford, 1990, Sears, 1979).  In addition, rearing children who have extraordinary  abilities sometimes engenders negative responses from others in the community, ranging from mild ambivalence to downright hostility.

This chapter discusses some of the issues that confront parents who must try to meet the unique challenges associated with developing the full potential of their talented children. 

Of course all parents want to do the best to bring forth and nurture the abilities and interests of their children, but not all parents feel the burden of responsibility that comes from a realization that a child may have exceptional potential.  This awareness alone makes the parenting situation quite unlike that which faces most typical parents.  Of course, the old saying, “all children are gifted” may be true, but those  children with outstanding talent demand special efforts from all the systems with which they come into contact the family, the school, the society. 

Parents must identify  the specific nature of the child’s talent and decide how to respond.  In some instances, the talents may be multiple, compounding both the identification and the response problems.  It may seem obvious that there is not one form of giftedness but several, and that these several kinds of giftedness may have different sorts of implications for parenting (Feldman, 2000; Goldsmith, 2000; Morelock, 2000; Morelock and Feldman, 1991, 1993; Piirto, 1998b, 1999).  And yet, the field that investigates and tries to serve those with exceptional abilities has tended to focus its efforts on one kind of talent, namely the kind that equips a child to do well in a traditional school curriculum.   Academic talent is most often identified by using standardized IQ tests or achievement tests.  

In fact, the very term gifted has come, in the minds of some researchers, and to the consternation of others, to be synonymous with having a high IQ  (Gagné, 1985; Gardner, 1982, 1983; Piirto, 1994, 1999;  Smutny and Eby, 1990; Sternberg, 1985; Tannenbaum, 1983, 1986). 

In recent years there has been increasing pressure to move toward a more diverse and inclusive notion of talent; it is fair to say that the field is currently in a state of transition (Feldman, 1992; Piirto, 1994). 

The shift from a focus on more general academic talent to an emphasis on multiple specific gifts is a major one and will affect theory, research and practice with talented children (Feldhusen, 1995; Feldman, 1992; Gardner, 1983; Treffinger, 1991). The field is beginning to see  shifts in definitions, policies, and practices aimed at meeting the needs of talented children.  For parents, a shift in the underlying conceptualization of the field may well mean a rapidly changing environment within which decisions must be made.

It is beyond the scope of the present chapter to try to provide a review of all of the known forms of talent and giftedness and their consequences for issues of parenting.  At best we can provide an overview of the range and variety of the many forms that talents and gifts might take, and then try to suggest what these forms of talent and giftedness might mean for parents and for those who work with parents of talented children.

The chapter is divided into seven main sections. 

• (1)The first deals with general family systems theory and its relationship to talent development. 
• The second deals with  with parenting children with extreme talent such as that manifested in prodigies and students of very high IQ, more than three standard deviations above the mean (a frequency of fewer than 5 students per 1,000) or students in the top 1 percent of achievers on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and the American College Test (ACT). 
• (3) The third deals with developing talents in young children. 
• (4) The fourth section deals with the kinds of kinds of gifts and talents that have received the greatest amount of attention from the scholarly and applied fields during the past half century.  These have been of two sorts: general academic talent beyond that of most peers, but not at the far extreme, and some specific kinds of talents.  
• (5) The fifth deals with underachievement as a phenomenon recognized by therapists and educators of academically talented students.
• (6)  The sixth deals with parenting students of different ethnic and economic groups. 
• (7) The seventh section deals with the influence of pressure toward achievement on talent development, with a focus on different parenting styles.

General academic talent means that the child has the ability to do unusually well in standard academic settings embracing traditional curricula and teaching methods. 

Academic talent of this sort is usually discovered through testing, although other means of identification such as teacher or parent observations, or peer or self nomination, are occasionally used, particularly at younger ages.  More specific talents such as artistic or scientific or leadership talent tend to be discovered through children’s activities, observations by parents and/or teachers, and performance in organized activities.  Occasionally, special testing programs are aimed at the discovery of specific kinds of talent (e.g. the talent searches of Johns Hopkins University, Northwestern University, Duke University and others, or such programs as the Westinghouse Talent Search in science).

There have been more efforts to respond to the needs of academically talented children than to any other form of talent, and so the available options from which parents may choose are both more numerous and better established within most public school systems than are options for the development of extreme academic talent (or very high IQ), or in the more specific talent areas.  This is not to suggest that resources available are likely to be sufficient, because even in the most active communities with the longest traditions of support for “gifted education” programs are rarely available for children at all age levels; this is especially true for younger children (Alvino, 1985, 1989; Lewis, 1979;  Smutney, 1998; Tannenbaum, 1983).  Most formal programs begin during the later elementary school years at the earliest.  By then, patterns of underachievement may have set in (Piirto, 1999; Roedell, 1989). 

When we turn to the more specific kinds of gifts and talents, we will see that these talents are on the one hand more numerous and on the other hand less systematically served than general academic talent. 

This means that the challenges facing parents of children with powerful talents that are directed toward more specific domains such as music or dance or sports or computers, are at once more difficult to meet and less likely to be met through well-established channels of support, information, or guidance.

1. THE FAMILY SYSTEM AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF TALENT

There is a saying that talent seems to run in families.  Actors breed actors (the Fondas, the Redgraves, the Sheens); professors breed professors (Margaret Mead); race car drivers breed race car drivers (the Unsers, the Pettys); athletes breed athletes (the Ripkens, the Roses); artists breed artists (the Wyeths, the Renoirs); writers breed writers (the Cheevers, the Updikes); musicians breed musicians (the Graffmans, the Bachs) (Albert, 1990a, 1990b; Brophy and Goode, 1988; V. Goertzel and M.G. Goertzel, 1962; V. Goertzel, M.G. Goertzel, and T. Goertzel, 1978; Simonton, 1984, 1988, 1991, 1994, 1999).  Family systems theory has been developed to explain this phenomenon of like father, like son  (Fine and Carlson, 1992). 

In family systems theory, a child’s talent is viewed as an adaptation of the child to the entire family’s interactions.  This includes parents, grandparents, siblings, and takes into account birth order, labeling, and gender (Jenkins-Friedman, 1992).  The notion that there is something in the family’s interactions that produces talented behaviors takes into account the environment within which a child is reared and that child’s responses to the environment (Sulloway, 1996). 

Simonton (1984) found that the age of the parents matters, and younger parents who are able to interest their children in their own passions seem to be better able to excite their children to follow in their footsteps.  An example from novelist and essayist Susan Cheever’s memoir, Home Before Dark (1984, p. 107) illustrates how interest was developed in the children of a writer:

“Every Sunday after dinner, we each recited a poem for the rest of the family.  It began with sonnets and short narrative verse, Shakespeare and Tennyson, but soon we were spending whole weekends in competitive feats of memory.  My father memorized Dylan Thomas’s “Fern Hill,” my mother countered with Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale,” I did “Barbara Fritchie,” my father did “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” and so forth.  Ben, who was eight, stayed with shorter poems.”

Age of parents also takes into account the high level of energy it takes to keep up with a talented child.

There are a number of factors that will determine how parents will react to the presence of great talents in their children.   The birth position of the child is one factor (Sulloway, 1996).  The last-born tends to be more rebellious and perhaps more creative; the first-born tends to be more  conservative and seeks approval more.   

Simonton (1984, 1988) noted that firstborns tend to reach eminence or to be considered geniuses more often than their younger siblings, but there is some evidence that laterborns whose births have been spaced several years apart have similar opportunities.   Much seems to depend on parental will and energy to nurture that talent (Kulieke and Olszewski-Kubilius, 1989).

Family values may place particular importance on certain talents such as music or mathematics, and traditions that provide a context within which the response to talent takes place.  For these reasons,  children with the same set of talents, manifesting themselves in the same ways, but reared in different families may provoke a strikingly different response depending upon one or more of the factors just listed (Benbow, 1992; Feldman, 1992; Feldman, with Goldsmith, 1991; Morelock and Feldman, 1991).

A number of studies converge on the idea that a responsive set of parents and a family that values achievement (particularly in the target domain) are critical catalysts in cases of extreme potential (Bloom, 1981, 1985; Feldman, with Goldsmith, 1991; V. Goertzel and M. G. Goertzel, 1962; V. Goertzel, et al., 1978; Goldsmith, 1987, 1990), Kulieke and Olszewski-Kubilius, 1989; Radford, 1990; VanTassel-Baska, 1989).  This is not to say that children whose homes have been turbulent, fractionated, or even pathological have not sometimes attained eminence or remarkably high achievement, especially achievement in artistic domains (Albert, 1980; Piirto, 1998b).

Many family systems operate on what has been called a dysfunctional level, and these interactions, too, have enhanced talent development.    In fact, VanTassel-Baska and Olszewski-Kubilius (1989, p. 8) noted that some form of adversity or a seemingly inhibiting or detrimental factor which exists within the family structure or happens to the individual can and does somehow work in a beneficial, generative manner.  Among such factors are cultural and economic disadvantage, physical deformity, rejection by parents or peers, tension in the family, and parental loss. 

Simonton (1988) called the latter “the orphanhood effect.”  For many children, a parents death is a provocation for achievement.  The mother of Jane and Peter Fonda committed suicide, as did the father of one of Janes husbands, Ted Turner.  So did the mother of the surrealistic painter Magritte.  Edgar Allen Poe’s mother died and he and his sister were in the room with her body for several days.  Terr (1990) speculated that this precipitated Poe’s fascination with death and horror.  The poet Robert Frosts father died when he was 11 years old.  The writer William Styrons mother died when he was 13, and in his memoir, Darkness Visible, he attributed a depression at 60 to “incomplete mourning” (1990, p. 81).   This “orphanhood effect” may also have affected Abraham Lincoln, who was an only child whose mother died young. 

High achievement after childhood trauma is an area that is not fully explored.  The psychoanalyst Miller (1981) postulated that adult achievement in creative domains takes place when there has been childhood trauma with warmth present, whereas childhood trauma without warmth present can produce adult destructive behavior.   Albert (1980) called it wobble, the presence in the families of creative people of tension and dissent.  The implications for parents with talented children seem to be that troubles should be faced, dealt with, and the children should be encouraged to express themselves not only in therapy, but through metaphoric media such as the arts (Piirto, 1998b; 1999b). 

The preponderance of the evidence, however, suggests that the more valued a particular form of talent tends to be within a family, and the greater the amount of support the talent is given, the greater the degree to which those talents will be expressed in significant achievement.

            The family’s life-style is a great influence on a child’s and a teenager’s talent development and school achievement.  Nontraditional life-styles do not seem to affect achievement as much as one would think.  Rather, it is the closeness of the family and the degree to which the family considers itself a family that is important.  A 12-year longitudinal study of nontraditional families by Weisner and Garnier (1992, p. 621) showed that academic achievement is not negatively affected when a child is in a one-parent family, a low-income family, a family with “frequent changes in mates or in household composition” if one particular factor was present:  if the family chose the life-style because it had an intelligible and clear meaning for them–for instance, a religious choice leading to home-schooling–but if the nonconventional family emphasized achievement as important, the children did not experience a lowered achievement pattern. 

Even though the parents may have been “highly experimental” in such arenas as diet or health care, they saw that their children had inoculations and medical and dental checkups.  They thought it was important for their children to do well in school.  Indeed, they found that “some nonconventional life-styles can protect children against possible difficulties in school,” while others can put children at risk.  The variable that was important was that the parents were committed to the life-style and to the importance of school achievement. 

One thinks of the “aging hippies,” the “bohemian actors,” and the “poor struggling artists in garrets”  as being in this category.

Although  poor, or in unconventional living arrangements, their children are often high achievers who follow in their parents’ footsteps, just as children do from families with more conventional life-styles. 

As evidence that family systems have differential effects on genetically similar members, there is some confirmation that siblings reared within the same family often turn out to be remarkably different (e.g.,  the eminent beat poet Allen Ginsberg and his older brother, Eugene, who was a lawyer;  both were sons of a mother who was a schizophrenic and a father who was a high school teacher and poet).  Louis Ginsberg, their father, said of Allen’s choice of career:  “Is he a poet by nature or nurture?  I think both” (Miles, 1989, p. 29). 

The writer Graham Greene was a middle child in a large and nurturing family and his father was a headmaster.  Greene viewed his world with such great sensitivity that he attempted suicide in boarding school during his teenaged years; he had to go into psychoanalysis while his older brothers thrived and were school leaders (Sherry, 1989). 

Piechowski’s interpretation of Dabrowski’s “overexcitability” theory may be in operation here; that is, the intensity with which each child perceives events may differ, and what may send one child into extreme reactions, may just wash off another child’s back (Piechowski, 1979; 1989, 1991). In fact, the children’s temperament and personality may be most important in the development of their talents, and even in the case of multi-talented children, in the familys choice of which talent to develop.  A passive, dreamy personality and temperament may lend itself to the quiet, endless reading that seems to have been evident in the childhoods of most adult writers; an aggressive personality and temperament may lend itself to the cutthroat world of childhood chess or athletics (Piirto, 1994, 1998, 1999a, 2000).   

It is relatively easy for a child to do something his parents approve of and value, and for which they provide teachers, tutors, and materials.  The biographical literature is rife with stories of people whose parents pointed them in the right direction and then who stood back and watched them develop.  “My son the doctor” is often pointed to medicine by parental desire and will.  Sosniak (1985, in Bloom, 1985) in her study of world-class research neurologists found that even in college, when some of them thought they would change majors, their parents expressed disapproval and they stayed on the pre-med track.   One said he thought his parents weren’t that involved in his choice of career until he threatened not to pursue medicine, and then he found out how adamant they were.  This illustrates the strong influence of the family system on a child’s interaction with the world. 

Other traumas that tear apart the traditionally intact family system are divorce, illness, frequent moving, physical, verbal, and sexual abuse, and the like. 

Talented youth who become scientists, mathematicians, and classical musicians seem to have come from families that were more stable than the families of actors, writers, popular musicians, visual artists, and dancers–people in the arts (Kulieke and Olszewski-Kubilius, 1989; Piirto, 1992, 1994, 1998b, 1999a). 

Perhaps the long schooling necessary for functioning as an adult scientist, mathematician, or musician is a result of a family striving together to develop the potential of a talented child.

The fact that many talented adults came from family situations that were less than ideal illustrates that even the most laissez-faire parenting (or absence thereof) has an impact on talent development.   Two interesting phenomena are operant. 

One is the “stage mother” or “Little League father” situation, where the parent is obsessed, even to the point of destructive narcissism with the development of a child’s talent, whether or not the child wants to have her or his talent developed, and the other is the “I don’t care what you do just so long as you’re happy” situation, where busy parents do what is necessary for safety and health, but little beyond that.  Both situations can produce talented adults. 

Judy Garland is an example of the former; her mother was so obsessed with Judy’s career as a child actress that she even permitted the use of amphetamines and tranquilizers so that Judy could work longer hours in the studio (Edwards, 1975).  An example of the latter is the mother of the actor and comedian Steve Allen, who permitted him to move, alone, from Chicago to the southwest at the age of 16 in order to take a job as a radio announcer.

Other parents move with their children to pursue the talent.  The mother of the dancer Suzanne Farrell moved Suzanne and her two sisters from Cincinnati to New York City at the offer of an audition with Balanchine; they lived in one room while their mother was a private nurse (Farrell, with Bentley, 1990).  However, Farrell said her mother was not a “stage mother” because she always worked to support them, and never hovered in the practice room antechambers with the other mothers to gossip.  The parents of Albert Einstein moved to Italy when he was a teenager, leaving him to board with a local family and attend the gymnasium by himself.  He soon quit and went to join his family, never to graduate (Clark, 1971).  Einstein’s father, like Edward Teller’s (Blumberg and Panos, 1990), saw his mathematical talent, though, and provided him with a college student tutor. 

The concert pianist Gary Graffman’s father was a violinist, and he frequently sat with Gary while he practiced his lessons (Graffman, 1981).  Graffman gave a concert at Carnegie Hall during his early teenage years.  The strong influence of family interests is especially operant in the pursuit of musical talent.   According to Graffman (1981 p. 47):

Gary Graffman: “Even though my father was dead set against turning me into a child performer, daily practicing came first:  I practiced every morning from 7:20 to 8:20 before school (in addition to two or three hours afterward).  Whether or not I wanted to do this was never a consideration.  My parents brought me up in a loving, but strict, European manner.  I was not consulted in such matters.  One went to school, one ate what was set before one; one practiced.  It was as simple as that.”

            Thus, the families of talented children cope with the talent in remarkably different ways; some focus on it and some ignore it.  On balance, though, those that focus on their children’s talent development are more likely to see the child’s talent fulfilled.

 Baumrind (1971) indicated that there are three parenting styles:  authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive.  

All three environments have produced talented adults, although the authoritarian style seems to produce resentment and stifling that forces talented students to sneak, hide, and sublimate the expression of their talent so that it takes place outside the home or surfaces later in life. 

For example, the social reformer Margaret Sanger was forced to leave home in order to gain the freedom to finish school; her mother had had eighteen pregnancies and died of cervical cancer at age 49.  Margaret’s alcoholic father wanted her to be his housekeeper. Gray (1979, p. 25) reported that:  “she let their run-down house deteriorate even more.  Realizing she could never get enough money to return to Claverack to graduate, she decided to leave Corning for good.”

Another example is the actor Marlon Brando, who was sent to military school by parents who didn’t know what to do with his rebelliousness.  He was asked to leave the school and came to New York City to live with his sisters who were studying the arts.  He wanted to study acting but his father disapproved.  As Thomas (1973, p. 20) said, “Marlon would not be dissuaded by his father’s scorn.”   Although he had considered many careers, including the ministry, acting appealed to him.  He began to study with Stella Adler at the New School for Social Research.

There is also some evidence that gender of the child and parent influence the development of various kinds of talent. 

Male writers, for example, seem to have had what Miller (1987, p. 114) called ineffectual fathers: It would strike me years later how many male writers had fathers who had actually failed or whom the sons had perceived as failures.  He noted that this was the case for Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Wolfe, Poe, Steinbeck, Melville, Whitman, Chekhov, Hawthorne, Strindberg, and Dostoevsky.  The same is true for women writers (Piirto, 1998a, 2000).   Mothers’ attitudes toward mathematics have greatly influenced both their sons’ and their daughters’ achievement.  If mothers say, Well, I was not any good at math, either, daughters especially might view mathematics as not being a gender-appropriate field to pursue (Eccles and Harold, 1992).  

Highly academically talented students who participated in the talent searches conducted among seventh graders also had differential influence by fathers and mothers (Benbow, 1992; Kulieke and Olszewski-Kubilius, 1989; VanTassel-Baska, 1989). 

Academically talented youth who participated in the talent searches tend to have strong, highly-educated fathers as well as mothers who are also highly educated but who do not work full time outside the home. 

These are tendencies, however.  Helson (1983) noted that creative female mathematicians were often only children whose fathers treated them like sons.

2. PARENTING CHILDREN WITH EXTREME TALENTS

The following types of extreme talents are discussed here:  cases of extremely high IQ; and (2) cases of extreme talents in specific areas, with or without notable high IQs to go along with them, and genius or eminence, an outcome which has been extensively studied in relation to parenting.

Extremely high IQ has been a topic of study for nearly a century.  It began with Terman’s massive Genetic Studies of Genius in the 1920s (Sears, 1979) and continues to the present day (Tomlinson-Keasey and Little, 1990).  Studies of extreme talents in specific areas have been more recent and still more sporadic phenomena, falling into two categories:  extreme talent in (usually) mathematical or verbal abilities such as shown by a very high score on the Scholastic Aptitude Tests (e.g., Benbow, 1992; Benbow and Minor, 1990; Hunt, Lunneborg, and Lewis, 1975) or on the American College Tests (Colangelo and Kerr, 1990). 

One difference found in these extremely high scorers was that high mathematics scorers had superior short-term memory and high verbal scorers had superior long-term memory.  High verbal scorers often use their verbal ability in fields that are less specific to their ability than do high mathematics scorers.  For example, high verbal talent is necessary in academe, in business, in leadership and politics, in law, and in most high-level professions.   On the other hand, the lack of high mathematical ability does not mean a person cannot reach eminence. High mathematical ability is much more specific to achievement in science and in mathematics (and possibly in invention).   

A second area in which extreme talent has been studied is in  child prodigies in various specific fields (e.g. Deakin, 1972; Feldman, with Goldsmith, 1991; Radford, 1990).  Studies of genius and eminence go back at least to Sir Francis Galton (1869), and have been carried on in recent years by Albert (1983, 1990a, b; Albert and Runco, 1986) and Simonton (1984a, b, 1988, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1999), among others. 

Here too, family variables have often been found to play a significant role in determining the degree of expression of talent.  Biographical studies have produced a substantial amount of information about family influence on the achievement of eminence (V. Goertzel and M. G. Goertzel, 1962; V. Goertzel et al., 1978).

It should also be noted that, with the exception of Simonton’s work (1984, 1988, 1991, 1994, 1999) on historical movements and to some extent, Bloom’s (1985) on world class performers, virtually all of the information available from observations of parenting, family structure, and the like is based on the study of individuals or relatively small groups of cases.  This means that the data base is quite small on the one hand, but on the other hand such studies often produce  rich and extensive information about each situation. 

There have been few studies of extreme talent that have examined relations among parenting variables and outcomes in children.  There have been still fewer studies that attempt to control or manipulate variables, thus limiting the generalizability of findings. 

Because the topic of study is so specific to individuals, that is, how their talent was nurtured and developed, this limitation of the research does not look to be easily remedied.  Longitudinal studies such as Terman (1925; 1930; Terman and Oden, 1947;1959), Subotnik and Steiner’s (1993) study of Westinghouse winners, Arnold’s (Arnold, 1995; Subotnik and Arnold, 1993) study of Illinois valedictorians, the work by the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) (Benbow, 1993, 2000; Benbow and Lubinski, 1995; 1997) or snapshot studies such as Harris (1990) of the students at the Hollingworth experimental schools in New York City, and the follow-up studies of high-IQ students who attended the Hunter College Campus Schools in New York City (Subotnik, Karp, and Morgan, 1989; Subotnik, Kasson, Summers,  and Wasser, 1993) are imperfect but valuable ways of looking at high IQ and high achieving students.  Most of the students in the Hunter and Hollingworth studies had high IQs, in about three standard deviations above the mean. 

Case studies are often the method of choice when an area of investigation is just beginning.  This technique is better suited to exploring unknown psychological terrain; Freud’s work on the unconscious, Piaget’s studies of babies, or Darwin’s observations of his son Doddy (Kessen, 1965), were all based on case study research.  This should alert the reader to the fact that work in giftedness is still in its early phases, and that whatever patterns of parent behavior have been observed should be taken as provisional.

Those who have studied parenting in cases of extreme giftedness have found that there are many similarities between these situations and the situation of parenting children with handicaps

(Albert and Runco, 1986; Bloom, 1982, 1985; Borland, 1989; Clark, 1992;  Feldman, 1991; Goldsmith, 2000; Hall and Skinner, 1980; Morelock, 1995, 2000; Tannenbaum, 1983; Treffert, 1989; Vail, 1987).  One difference between the two kinds of extreme situations is that impediments to functioning are quite naturally seen as a higher priority for support and consequently the allocation of resources tends to be much more substantial, whereas in all but a few countries talents are typically seen as the responsibility of the individual child and her or his family. 

This makes the likelihood of successfully rearing talented children often as dependent on parents’ abilities to generate adequate material resources as on their parenting skills.  We consider three issues about parenting extremely talented children:  recognizing extreme talents and gifts; responding to identified talents and gifts; and sustaining optimal conditions for the development of talents and gifts.

Recognizing Extreme Gifts and Talents

The first task that faces parents who may think that they have a child of unusual potential is to try to identify what the nature and strength of that talent might be.  For some talents this is a relatively straightforward matter, even during the first few year of life.  For other talents and gifts, the signs may be more subtle, or not evident until after the child is much older.

For the 120 participants in Bloom’s (1985) study of world class performers  mathematicians, research neurologists, concert pianists, sculptors, Olympic swimmers, and tennis champions — the talents that were to lead to such high levels of achievement before age 35 were evident before the age of 5 for some fields, not others. 

For the research neurologists, mathematicians, and to some extent the sculptors, there were few early signs of the children’s extreme potential.  However, the swimmers and tennis players as well as the pianists  were identified as having a special inclination toward the particular field before the age of 5.

(Bloom, 198l, 1985; Gustin, 1985; Sloan and Sosniak, 1985; Sosniak, 1985a, 1985b).  The identified talent was not always exactly a match for the future field of excellence; for example, a child might have been intensely interested in all ball games before the age of 5, but focused on tennis during the succeeding 5 years.

The research of Bloom, Sosniak, Gustin, and Sloan also revealed that few of the children, across fields, were thought to be child prodigies, that is, to have prodigious talents that leaped full blown into existence.  The growth trajectory was more gradual, and tended to follow a pattern of expression that depended on the presence of attentive and active parental support, direction, and encouragement. This pattern was also found by Feldman (1991); Goldsmith (2000) in chld prodigy cases. 

It was also true that in all fields there was an early need to involve other people who could offer specialized instruction in the target field. 

In explicit contradiction to the oft-believed view that extreme talent will somehow express itself, Bloom and his coworkers (1985) found that sustained efforts to identify and nurture talents in their children was a distinguishing feature of the families in the study.

Parenting Children with Extreme Talent: General and Specific

Although the data are less plentiful, it has been found that the more extreme the talents of children, the more extreme will be the qualities and characteristics of their parents (Deakin, 1972; Feldman, 2000; Feldman, with Goldsmith, 1991; V. Goertzel and M.G. Goertzel, 1962; V. Goertzel, et al.,  1978; Treffert, 1989). 

For example, Feldman and Goldsmith in their  study of child prodigies found that  in each of the six families one or both of the parents essentially devoted their life to providing optimal support for a child’s emerging talent.  The families also tended to see themselves as different from other families, to isolate themselves from the rest of the community, and to create a kind of cocoon-like structure to nurture their child’s early development (Feldman, 1993). 

These prospective findings tend to be confirmed by the retrospective data on those who have achieved eminence in their lives and careers ( V. Goertzel and M.G. Goertzel, 1962; V. Goertzel et al., 1978). 

Parents who were highly opinionated, actively involved in causes or movements, and sometimes unstable were common in the families of those who were to become eminent.  On the other hand, it appears that the families in Bloom’s (1985) sample of “world class” performers provided a more stable and tranquil context, albeit one highly focused on the particular domain to be mastered.  The cocoon-like quality that Feldman found in the prodigy families seemed to be present as well in the Bloom sample, but with a somewhat different emotional tone.  The families of the prodigies seemed more fortresslike, while the world class performers seemed open but protective and focused on the task at hand.

In a longitudinal study of six male child prodigies in fields ranging from chess to music to science to writing, Feldman (Feldman with Goldsmith, 1991; Goldsmith, 2000; Radford, 2000) found that even among these very extreme cases it was not obvious before age 5 for three of the children in what field they would become a prodigy.  For one of the musicians and the two chess players in the sample, their talents were strikingly obvious, whereas for the writer, the scientist, and one child whose gifts were so diverse that it was impossible to guess in what direction he would go, the specific focus of talent was not apparent that early.

 In a follow up to the six boy prodigies described by Feldman (1991), Goldsmith (2000) found that their early adulthood experiences varied from case to case.  In two cases, relatively steady progress from early prodigiousness to adult successful careers seemed well underway.  A boy who chose violin performance at 10 was establishing himself as an internationally active solo performer, whereas another boy, whose writing interests began at 3, found himself able to integrate music interests that emerged at about 8 into a highly successful music journalism career.  Another child has become a successful adult, but not in the field of his prodigious activity.  By age 10 this child had given up the game of chess and turned his attention to other pursuits.  He is currently a lawyer at a large New York firm and seems on his way to a successful career there.  A child who was multitalented as well, but who gravitated toward music, has been involved in becoming a more rounded person during his early   20s, and it is not clear at this point what direction he will take.  Finally, two of the six boys have not been located, one who was strongly focused in natural science, the other a chess player who left chess, but whose academic and professional record was spotty and erratic. 

Major differences between and among the family situations of the boys in this study may have accounted for at least some of the variations in how the boys managed the transition from prodigies to young adults.  The families that seemed stable and connected to the wider world seemed to have fared better in preparing their talented boys for productive activities as young adults.  The more isolated families were at greater risk for disintegration when their boys began to assert their independence, perhaps because so much of their closeness revolved around responding to the childs great talents.  The greater the continuity, both in terms of the fields chosen to pursue, and in terms of the familys ability to adapt to changing circumstances, the greater the likelihood that the outcome would be positive for the child, even if the outcome was different from what marked the child as talented earlier (Goldsmith, 2000).

Bloom’s, Feldman’s, and Goldsmith’s research shows that early identification and valuing of talents tend to occur in homes where there is already a tradition of involvement in a relevant field. 

In other words, if a child with musical talent is born into a family that values and enjoys music and where music is an important part of family life, the chances are better that this talent will be recognized and developed than in a family with different values.

There are few, if any, performers at the top of their fields in classical music or chess who began playing later than age 10, and beginning the process by age 3 or 4 confers a distinct advantage.  Whether or not there is a  critical period  in the strict sense of the term (i.e., a period of time during which it is essential to be exposed to a particular kind of stimulation) is not known, but it is true that the later a talent for chess or music is discovered, the less likely it is to be fully expressed.  If not discovered and responded to before age 10, the likelihood of full expression of potential is greatly reduced (Feldman, with Goldsmith, 1991).

In other fields (such as writing, art, mathematics, dance, and most sports), identifying a strong talent and responding to it can occur several years later. 

Most writers, artists, and mathematicians, for example, do not begin serious preparation until after age 12, although the interests, predispositions, and predictive behaviors are evident earlier.

(Piirto, 1999a).  For example, the mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell and the theoretical physicists Albert Einstein and Edward Teller all demonstrated their passion for mathematics and logical thought before then were 10.  Russell (1967, p. 38) wrote:

Bertrand Russell: At the age of eleven, I began Euclid, with my brother as my tutor.  This was one of the great events of my life, as dazzling as first love.  I had not imagined that there was anything so delicious in the world.  After I had learned the fifth proposition, my brother told me that it was generally considered difficult, but I had found no difficulty whatever.  This was the first time it had dawned upon me that I might have some intelligence.  From that moment until Whitehead and I finished Principia Mathematica, when I was thirty-eight, mathematics was my chief interest, and my chief source of happiness.

For the most part, however, students who pursue natural science and philosophical studies tend to begin later, often well into the teens (Feldman, with Goldsmith, 1991; Lehman, 1953).

If a child is a girl, and girls are not encouraged to pursue particular fields, or if a child is laterborn and only firstborn children tend to be seen as especially talented, the chances of noticing a talent are certainly reduced.  Or, if a familys history is focused on one domain, such as theater or medicine or music, but the child’s talent happens to be in a different domain, again the chances are diminished that an extraordinary talent will be recognized (Feldman, with Goldsmith, 1991). 

As more is known about the relation between a child’s natural areas of talent and a family’s match or mismatch with those talents, it may be possible to equip parents to better recognize talent in areas other than those to which they are naturally predisposed.  Once recognized and responded to, it then falls to parents to decide how to sustain the development of a talent that has emerged in their child.

When we shift our focus to the more general academic abilities, there are many studies of early identification of high IQ in children.  The literature shows that it is difficult to determine the degree of general intellectual giftedness earlier than 3 years (Roedell, Jackson, and Robinson, 1980; Louis, Lewis, Subotnik, and Breland, 2000).  Some studies have used experimental procedures during early infancy to predict IQs at later ages, but these procedures are not available to parents, and are in any case still in the early phases of development (Bornstein, 1989; Rose, 1989).    A study of the families of Head Start students who were high achievers showed that the parents had greater education, more income, fewer children, and were probably European American.  Contrary to those who did not achieve, these parents rarely suffered from depression and their parents were more attentive, tractable, and promoted the children’s autonomy (Robinson, Weinberg, Redden, Ramey, and Ramey, 1998).  

3. SUSTAINING THE DEVELOPMENT OF EXCEPTIONAL TALENTS IN YOUNG CHILDREN

It is now well-established that a talent,  however extreme it may be, requires sustained, coordinated, and effective support from parents and others for a period of at least ten years to have a chance of fulfilling its promise (Bloom, 1985; Feldman, with Goldsmith, 1991; Hayes, 1981; Morelock, 1000; Piirto, 1994; Treffert, 1989).  Having great talent does not guarantee great achievement, nor is talent capable of expressing itself without substantial resources external to the child.

Therefore, the decision to try to develop even an extreme talent has profound implications for every member of the target child’s family.  It is unlikely that a family will have the resources to sustain more than one process at the same time (Bloom, 1985; Feldman, with Goldsmith, 1991; VanTassel-Baska and Olszewski-Kubilius, 1989). 

This means that siblings of the target child are likely to receive a great deal less, proportionally, of the family’s resources, a reality often difficult to accept and life with (Rolfe, 1978). 

The need to  focus or refocus resources makes it in some ways not surprising that there is rarely more than one prodigy in a family and that families historically have tended to concentrate on the first born (usually male) child when it comes to talent development (Feldman and Goldsmith, 1986; Goldsmith, 1990; Radford, 1990). 

There is also a folk wisdom (however objectionable within contemporary contexts) to withhold support and assistance from talented girls.  

Because   in most cultures the likelihood of a daughter being able to fulfill her talent was less than a son because of lack of opportunity, prejudice, and established networks and institutions, it follows that an investment in her talent would be not as likely to bear full fruit (Goldsmith, 1987, 1990; Greer, 1979; Piirto, 1991b).

How is a parent to know if the sacrifices necessary to develop a child’s talent are worth making?  This is a question that may seem to have an obvious answer, but in truth does not.  Of course, most parents would say that they want to develop a child’s talents to their fullest, whatever the cost.  But few families have the resources to develop every child’s talents to their fullest expression, and that often makes it necessary to choose one child’s talents rather than another’s, to focus on, or to insist that all the children develop talents in the same domain, the domain valued by the parents;  this was the case, for example, with the three Polgar sisters, chess players all.   Thus, we have the establishment of salons, dynasties, or teams. 

“Going into the family business” is a common practice in the development of all talents, not just extreme talent.  If a family with a child who has great musical talent, for example, lives in a rural area far from the next level  teacher, and the lessons must be taken weekly or semiweekly, the family is faced with a decision:  shall we move to be nearer the teacher? 

  Moves  such as this were documented by Feldman and Goldsmith (1991) in the case of one of the prodigies studied, who moved from another city to the Boston area to find a suitable school, but moves to develop the talent are more common in the cases of athletes (especially tennis, ice skating, and gymnastics) talent or in musical talent. 

The decision to develop a talent is one that requires reflection as to parents’ values, goals, and priorities as well as a realistic assessment of the strength of the child’s talent and the effect developing that talent will have on the family system, especially the siblings.

To help with the decision whether or not to pursue full talent development, it is often wise to consult with individuals who are knowledgeable about the domain in question and who have had experience in what it means to go through a rigorous, protracted training process. 

This is especially true for parents who find themselves trying to reckon the strength of a child’s talent in a field with which they themselves are unfamiliar.  Even when parents are experienced in the domain in question, there are reasons to seek advice from outside experts or consultants. 

First, it is difficult for parents to accurately assess the potential in their own children because of their close attachment to them.  And second, coaches, master teachers, trainers, and high level practitioners generally have much more experience than parents in assessing and developing talent.  Parents have themselves and their children to use as a primary basis for judgment.  An active coach or teacher may have worked with hundreds of students (Bloom, 1985; Feldman, with Goldsmith, 1991; Hemery, 1986).

In most instances, the advice given by experienced people within a domain will not be definitive with respect to the course of the talent’s development.  This is true for several reasons, the most important of which is that it is not possible to predict with confidence what will happen to a talent over time. 

There are too many uncertainties in the process to assert with confidence what the course of a child’s progress will be.  Indeed, parents would be wise to question too positive a prediction, particularly if the person giving that prediction is trying to recruit the child into a program, school, or relationship.

The earlier the prediction about the strength and distinctiveness of a given talent, the less confidence can be placed in its accuracy.  This is not so much because it is impossible to detect and assay talent early; in some fields such as chess, music, and certain athletic domains talent can be assessed at very early ages, often younger than 5. 

The uncertainty in making predictions is that there are many factors, both genetic and environmental,   involved in bringing even a very extreme talent to full expression, and these simply cannot be guaranteed to occur.  Even if they do occur, they must be sustained over several years as well as be transformed when necessary.  The children’s chess coach Sunil Weeramantry has indicated that high-IQ children in kindergarten all demonstrate a rudimentary ability to play chess, but that prodigious talent begins to differentiate children as early as age 7, at the end of their primary tournament playing years (personal communication, Sunil Weeramantry, May 1988).

The kinds  of supports that must be put into place and kept there include the right teachers teaching the right kinds of things for child performers, the right integration of the target activity with other priorities for the child and the family, the right level of challenge in terms of competition and public performance, and a context that encourages continued involvement in the activity in question. 

To  summarize, a number of other factors that may be beyond the control of the child and the child’s family are also involved in talent development; these are sufficient financial resources, proximity to appropriate facilities, and the availability of appropriate teachers.

Another   less documented but certainly essential component in talent development is  freedom from cultural proscriptions against certain activities. 

Gender proscriptions are the most common.  For example, in the United States, young males experience disapproval if they want to use their psychomotor talent in dance, especially classical ballet. 

Jacques  D’Amboise, the former Balanchine dancer who now conducts school-based classes in New York City, is especially eloquent on the topic of attracting psychomotor talented males to dance, and has even set up special classes for them during the school day; but the battle against cultural proscription is an uphill one.  Even world-class dancers such as Rudolf Nureyev had to go against a disapproving father in order to seriously pursue dance as a career.  Percival (1975, p. 21) wrote that Nureyev’s father  “was none too pleased to find that his only son had grown up to be interested only in something as ‘unmanly’ as dancing and told the boy to forget the whole thing.” 

Young females experience disapproval if they want to use their logical-mathematical talent in chess.  Few female chess talents continue playing tournament chess beyond the elementary tournament years, even though they have the ability to do so.  Reasons  given for this are a diversity of other interests and special lessons, a lack of female role models at the higher stratospheres of the chess world, and a lack of understanding of the home schools of the necessity for constant practice and competition all over the country and the world (Sunil Weeramantry, personal communication, March 1987).

In some fields where talent development begins early, a phenomenon (perhaps unfortunately) labeled the “midlife crisis” in music performers has been observed to occur with some frequency (Bamberger, 1982). 

Usually occurring some time between 12 and 18, this so-called midlife crisis refers to a breakdown in the child’s ability to perform and an accompanying emotional crisis in the child’s confidence in being able to perform at a high level. 

Many promising careers have come to an early end because of the debilitating effects of this crisis.  The description of an adolescent crisis for performers has been documented in only one field  — music — though informal observations have been made in the field of chess (Feldman, with Goldsmith, 1991) and in writing (Piirto, 1998b).  It should also be stressed that this phenomenon has been observed only in U.S. culture; it may or may not occur in other cultural contexts. 

It could also be that the so-called  midlife crisis is in part precipitated by the highly professionalized and competition-oriented schools of music where most of the students with extreme talent pursue their chosen field.  How such schools are organized, how they respond to and develop talent, and what they see as in their interest in terms of public visibility all play a significant part in how they impact the process of talent development (Subotnik, 2000 (in van Leeshout and Heymans, 2000).

4. PARENTING ACADEMICALLY TALENTED CHILDREN AND CHILDREN WITH SPECIFIC HIGH PRIORITY TALENTS

Alvino (1985) listed common issues faced by parents of gifted and talented students.  Some were home related and some were school related.  Among the home-related issues were awe and fear of the children and their  talents, denial of the children’s talents, the burden of supporting the talent (e.g., books, trips, teachers, lessons, equipment),   equating verbal maturity with social maturity, sibling issues, stress (both for the child and for the family), friendships and peer relationships, the nature of the interests, and self-esteem. 

School-related issues  included finding programs and schools that supported the child’s talent, defining reasonable and unreasonable expectations by the school and the home, apathy of schools to talent development, the potential for social mobility of the child because of the presence of the talent, and being perceived by the school as “pushy.”

Shore, Cornell, Robinson, and Ward (1991, p. vii) surveyed recommended practices in gifted education and noted ten commonly cited parenting practices for parents of gifted youth:

(1)   Be sensitive to potential sibling adjustment problems.

(2)   Avoid excessive emphasis on developing the child’s giftedness.

(3)    Avoid stereotypes and misconceptions about the gifted label.

(4)   Be aware of how personal needs and feelings influence the relationship with the child.

(5)    Encourage social as well as academic development.

(6)   Foster potential for giftedness through preschool intervention.

(7)  Participate in and lobby for programs.

(8)  Facilitate social development through ability-peer contact.

(9)  Discourage children’s perfectionism and excessive self-criticism.

(10)  Emotional support from parent groups and counselors should be available.   

They found some research support for the first three recommended practices.  Numbers 4, 5, and 6 had limited support.  Numbers 7, 8, 9, and 10 had been studied little, if at all, in populations of gifted students with suitable comparison groups. 

Even though   it is apparent that eminent individuals often come from parenting situations which are not ideal, nevertheless, there are many ways that parents can provide optimal environments for the nurture of creative talent.  Piirto (1998b) listed twelve:

(1)  Provide a private place for creative work to be done.

(2)  Provide materials (e.g. musical instruments, sketchbooks).

(3)  Encourage and display the child’s creative work.  Avoid evaluating it overly.

(4) Do your own creative work and let the child see you doing it.

(5)  Value the creative work of others.  Attend museums, theater, movies.  Talk about books and events.

(6)  Pay attention to what your family background, your family mythology, your family system is teaching the child.

(7) Avoid emphasizing sex-role stereotypes.

(8) Provide private lessons and special classes.

(9) If hardship comes into your life, use the hardship positively, to encourage the child to express her or himself through the arts.

(10) Emphasize that talent is only a small part of creative production and that discipline and practice are important.

(11) Allow the child to be “odd”:   avoid emphasizing socialization at the expense of creative expression.

(12)   Enjoy your child.

Cornell (1983, 1989) and Cornell and Grossberg (1986, 1987) supplied some evidence in their studies of gifted students and their siblings that how the parents treat the gifted child in relation to siblings is important.  Comparisons of siblings should be carefully made, if at all. 

Parents’ reactions to having their children labeled as “gifted” are often problematic within the family system.  Some parents develop an especially intense relationship with the labeled child, and are sometimes overinvolved in the child’s education and development. 

Such overinvolvement can lead to underachievement and disabling perfectionism, both widely cited problems of talented students. 

Underachievement deserves special attention here because it is one of the most common problems for which parents of academically talented youth seek professional help.

5. PARENTING WHEN ACADEMICALLY TALENTED YOUTH UNDERACHIEVE

Several writers and researchers have made important contributions to our knowledge of underachievement (Delisle 1992; Richert, 1991; Rimm, 1986; Supplee, 1990; and Whitmore, 1980).  Underachievement continues to plague parents and educators of the talented as one of the most recalcitrant problems that high-IQ youth continue to have.  By now we know that each underachiever is different, and that each case of underachievement must be looked at individually to determine the reason for the underachievement and thus to be better able to reverse the underachievement.

What is underachievement? 

The quick answer most people would give is that underachievement is not receiving the grades that the IQ would indicate are possible.  Another quick definition is that underachievement is receiving high scores on standardized achievement tests but low grades in school.  Another definition of underachievement blames the causes for the underachievement.   For example, underachievement is caused by learning disabilities, or by the social climate of the school, or by affective characteristics in the child, or by passive-aggressive parenting patterns.  In a comprehensive survey of research on the underachievement of gifted students, Reis and McCoach (2000, p. 157) defined underachievement thus:  

Underachievers are students who exhibit a severe discrepancy between expected achievement (as measured by standardized achievement test scores or cognitive or intellectual ability assessments) and actual achievement (as measured by class grades and teacher evaluations).  Gifted underachievers are underachievers who exhibit superior scores on measures of expected achievement (i.e., standardized achievement test scores or cognitive or intellectual ability assessments).  To be classified as an underachiever, the discrepancy between expected and actual achievement must not be the direct result of a diagnosed learning disability and must persist over an extended period of time.

  The emerging paradigm in the field of talent development,  as described  earlier,  features achievement as being predictive for certain manifestations of talent.  If a child underachieves, the talent will not be developed:   Here is a child with a high IQ who refuses to do the work in the classroom.  Here is a child with high achievement test scores who refuses to turn in projects.  The educators and parents beg, cajole, compliment, and harangue the child.   “You have such potential!  You should be doing better!  You won’t get into a good college with grades like these!  You could do so well; why won’t you produce?” 

The child is the powerful force in these dynamics, both with the parents and with the school, and that is why  Rimm (1986) insisted that there must be a tri-focal approach to reversing underachievement, and that is that the school, the parents, and the child must all take responsibility for the reversal or the underachievement will continue.  The child is the key figure in this triangle.  Gallagher (1991, p. 225) said that “until the child essentially agrees” with the parent’s and the school’s noticing that the child is an underachiever, “it will be very difficult to persuade him/her to change.”

It is often assumed that children want to do well in school, and schools and parents are often quick to blame themselves for underachievement.  It is often assumed that the evils of the society — racism, classism, prejudice against the handicapped —  are to blame for underachievement.  It is often assumed that children are feckless victims of “the system.” 

Then why do some children from lower social classes, of various races, with learning disabilities and physical handicaps achieve despite the “system,” and others do not?  The quality of resiliency that is just beginning to be explored seems operational here.

What are the personality traits of people who underachieve?  For underachieving males at least, Terman and Oden (1947) found that those who didn’t meet the potential their IQ scores indicated, were (1) unable to persevere, (2) unable to formulate goals, (3) preferred to drift rather than to take action, and (4) had low self-confidence.  These problems were chronic:   that is, they continued from childhood to adolescence to adulthood.  Underachievement, Delisle (1982, 1992) reminded us, is often in the eyes of the beholder. 

Whitmore’s (1980) book, Giftedness, Conflict, and Underachievement specifically studied children who were put into a special program in 1970 that sought to remedy underachieving behavior.  This program was called the Cupertino Project, and it focused on second and third graders who were had very high IQs but who were underachieving.  Individualized instruction was offered and results showed that students’ achievement generally improved over the long-term.        

Rimm (1986) used a behavioral approach to reversing underachievement.  She described four different categories of underachievers:  (1) the dependent conformers,  (2) the dependent nonconformers,  (3) the dominant conformers, and  (4) the dominant nonconformers.  These are children who are outside what she called the “circle of achievers.”

Underachievers were grouped into dependent children and dominant children, conformers and nonconformers.  Dependent children manipulate adults and others in their environment by such plaintive pleas as “Help me.” “Nag me,” “Protect me,” “Feel sorry for me,” “love me,” and “shelter me”.  The difficulty is in determining when these pleas are manipulative and when they are genuine.  Rimm (1986, p. 148) said parents and teachers “must assure yourselves that these children can build self-confidence and competence only through effort and perseverance, and that it is indeed a true kindness to permit these children to experience some stress.”

For each of these groups, there are suggested steps in remediation.  Rimm was quick to point out that family patterns often foster or encourage underachievement.  Passive aggressive children often have one passive aggressive parent and one who is made the bad guy; likewise, with aggressive children, there is often aggression in the family.   Patterns in the family can be both positive and negative for achievement.   Piirto (1998b) called it the “family mythology.”  

Rimm (1986) said that potentially harmful family models were these:  “I didn’t like school either”; having a home that is disorganized; having passive aggressive parenting; having parents who are overworked who come home exhausted, complaining, and failing to provide models that work is satisfying, challenging, and life-enhancing.   Rimm’s work was criticized for being too negative to parents (Baum, 1990). 

However, proponents of clinical interventions utilizing behavioral approaches such as Rimm’s would say that drastic measures are often needed in reversing underachievement, which is often entrenched, insidious, and a hallmark of dysfunction in the family or school.

 Richert (1991) presented a different definition of underachievement.  Pointing out the obvious but often overlooked question:  What if the IQ is not a good measure of potential after all?  What if the IQ test that puts the child in people’s minds into “underachieving status” was inaccurate?  Richert noted that “underachievement is most often defined in terms of academic achievement” measured by school-related methods such as grades, standardized test scores, and teacher-made test results.  What if these are not good ways of assessing underachievement?  What if the tests themselves are the problem?

The children’s lives as a whole should be assessed.  Do the children who get low grades and who have high test scores have an intense life of achievement at home?  Do they read over 7  books a week?  Do they program computers and participate in a wide network of computer friends throughout the area?  Do they have sketchbooks and do intensive drawing and artwork?  Do they practice their music for seven hours a day?  How are these children underachieving?  Richert (1991, p. 139)  pointed out that “Repeated studies have revealed no correlation, or sometimes even a small negative correlation, between academic achievement (good grades) and adult giftedness in a wide range of fields.”

 The childhoods of creative people often show that many of them had intense involvements at home, away from school, and that their adult achievements were foreshadowed by their childhood activities, many of which were not school-related (Piirto, 1991a, 1998b, 1999).  

Many people with arts-related achievements were underachievers in school:  Suzanne Farrell (1990), the world-class dancer from Cincinnati, Ohio,  never finished high school, and when she did go to school was too restless to concentrate;  the architect Frank Lloyd Wright in his autobiography could not remember a single thing he learned in school in Madison, Wisconsin, but could remember every invention he and his friends made out of school (Wright, 1932/1977); the visual artist Georgia O’Keeffe (Robinson, 1989)  called every teacher she had a fool, except for the ones in a convent school in Wisconsin she attended for one year; she consciously got bad grades and disobeyed what she regarded as dumb rules during her last year in high school in Virginia.

Richert (1991) in questioning the definition of underachievement, posed an interesting conundrum:  If many high achievers in later life found the schools stifling, boring, and the teachers and rules worse, the role of the schools in talent development in the various domains is diminished and the role of parents and family are probably enhanced. 

People in the arts do not have the necessity, as do people in mathematics and the sciences, of taking one course following another course in order to make their mark.  The attainment of the PhD is de rigueur for mathematicians and scientists, and this means reading many textbooks, conforming, and taking more advanced courses.   Such educational attainment is not necessary for visual artists or performers–actors, dancers, or musicians–or for writers, although the schools do encourage writers more than they do other types of creatively talented people.

Supplee (1990) used Abraham Tannenbaum’s conception of giftedness to define underachievement.  Tannenbaum (1983), in Gifted Children, said that giftedness emerges if all five arms in a “starfish” are present. These are the necessary conditions for giftedness to materialize:   general intellectual ability (the “g” factor);  specific academic abilities (such as math ability or reading ability);  nonintellective factors (such as persistence, self-esteem, or creativity); environmental factors (family, school); and chance (proximity, knowing the right people). 

Supplee (1990) noted that the underachievers  she studied were missing one or more of the “starfish” arms; some had high IQs but didn’t have other factors; some had fantastic special abilities but didn’t have persistence; some were very poor, a negative environmental factor, although they had all four other factors; some had physical or learning disabilities, which fall into the chance arm.

Supplee found success in reversing underachievement by beginning with improving the students’ self-esteem and proceeding to the improvement of their attitudes, school behaviors, and academic growth.  There was also a parent component that helped parents to understand the causes of the student’s underachievement, as well as to examine their expectations for their child, to be positive communicators with their child, and to examine familial patterns and familial dynamics. 

A support group of parents was formed where they could discuss common concerns.  Small positive gains in achievement were reported. Nevertheless, underachievement has been and remains a thorny problem for the parents and educators of gifted and talented students.

 There are also children of divorce, and talented and gifted children are not immune from this social phenomenon. The family is in many respects in chaos.  Karnes and Marquardt (1991a, p. 98), in their consideration of legal issues having to do with gifted children, said, “We were surprised by the number of child custody and child support cases where the giftedness of the child became an issue.”  Rimm concluded   that achievement can continue throughout the divorce, but Wallerstein and Blakeslee, in their longitudinal study of children of divorce, Second Chances (1989), and in their 25 year follow-up (Wallerstein, Lewis, and Blakeslee, 2000), noted that underachievement is almost always a by-product of divorce, even years later. 

Boys who are between the ages of 6 and 8 when their parents get divorced “have a particularly difficult time adjusting to the changes in their lives.”  They often are unable to concentrate, and may withdraw or”clobber everyone in sight” (Wallerstein and Blakeslee, 1989, p. 77).  Wallerstein and Blakeslee attributed this reaction to fears of being overwhelmed by female authority just at the age when the development of strong identification with their fathers and other male figures was crucial.  The authors concluded sadly that about a third of the children they studied still lacked ambition 10 years after the divorce, and said that they were “drifting through life with no set goals, limited educations, and a sense of helplessness.”

Many feel discouraged and rejected and . . . cannot close the door to the past, cannot give up the fantasy that history can be changed.

Although only a few dropped out of high school, most have not seriously pursued higher education.  They tend to drop out after one or two years of college to take up unskilled jobs–as messenger, delivery truck driver, waitress, physical fitness instructor, video store clerk.  They don’t make long term plans and are aiming below the intellectual and educational achievements of their fathers and mothers.  This discrepancy between life goals and talents is defined as underachievement (p. 148-149).

That gifted and talented youth are exempt from the tragic consequences for children of their parents’ divorces is certainly a false notion. 

The group was from suburban San Francisco, and many attended colleges such as Cornell and Stanford.  In contrast with a comparison group, the children whose parents divorced  indulged in earlier sexual experiences and consumed alcohol and drugs at higher rates.   When they reached adulthood, they were reluctant to marry.  Forty percent had not married in the 25 year followup (Wallerstein, Lewis, and Blakeslee, 2000) compared to 29 percent of the people who had grown up in intact families.  Most of the single women “had firmly decided against marriage and motherhood” (Wallerstein, Lewis, and Blakesleee, 2000, p. 289).  They often firmly identified themselves as “children of divorce,” and they viewed their parents’ divorce as “the formative event” in their lives (p. 291).   However, at the 25 year follow up point, many also  prided themselves as trusting in their own judgment and in refraining from self-pity. 

 Falk (1987) in a study that compared the reactions of designated gifted students with students who were not so designated, said that the gifted students experienced the thought of their parents getting divorced even more intensely than the others. 

Self-blame was a key theme for the gifted students.  Some have theorized that gifted and talented youth may be more vulnerable, because their sensitivities are often higher tuned and deeper felt, as their advanced intellects and intensities cope with the splits in their nuclear families (Morelock, 1992; Piechowski, 1991; Tolan, 1992).  In fact, one immutable fact that was found by the Johns Hopkins SMPY researchers was that high academic achievers most often came from families that were intact (Benbow, 1992).

Underachievement has been and remains, a thorny problem for the parents and educators of gifted and talented students.  Reis and McCoach, (2000)  in their synthesis of research on underachievement noted that family dynamics are crucial in the situation where underachievement happens.  Families whose children underachieve show less positive affection; the parents may display a disinterest in education;   parenting styles where there was a lot of fighting and arguing seem prevalent; parents are not consistent; the parents may be too indulgent or too exacting; they may treat the children as adults at too young an age; the parents themselves may be underachievers who are frustrated by what life has provided them; there may be more family conflict in the homes. 

Families who produce high achieving students are often high achieving families which encourage “self-motivation, environmental engagement, and autonomy” (Reis and McCoach, 2000, p. 160).

6. PARENTING CHILDREN OF DIFFERENT ETHNIC AND ECONOMIC GROUPS

Recently, some researchers have discussed Baumrind’s (1971) widely used labels of parenting styles with regard to parenting in various ethnic groups.  Although the authoritative parenting style seems to be related to academic achievement in European American  middle- and upper-class students, Chao (2000, p. 234) pointed out that “studies including African American, Hispanic America, and Asian American high school students suggest very weak or inconsistent relations between Baumrind’s parenting styles and academic achievement.” 

Chao compared parenting styles of the  parents of immigrant Chinese and European Americans.  European American parents were more demonstrative in hugs, kisses, and encouragement, whereas the immigrant Chinese mothers seemed to have as a high priority the caretaking and education as their children in the training of their children.  Family pride and successful parenting are tied up with a child’s achievement in school:  The expectations for school success are conveyed to the child as a necessity for a respect from elders and filial piety, in contrast to the typical European American parent’s opinion that the child should develop a sense of self.   The Chinese immigrant mothers advocated and demonstrated more directive, authoritarian, styles of parenting, especially in the early years. 

  (One must not overgeneralize these findings to all Asian American groups, however, as there are disparities in academic achievement and possibly parenting styles and possibly parenting strifes among subgroups, with Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans achieving higher academically than Southeast Asians and Filipinos.)

The numbers of children of various ethnic groups who are admitted to school programs for the gifted and talented indicate that there may be cultural bias built into selection processes.  A National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS) by Resnick and Goodman (1997) showed that 17.6 percent of students were in programs were Asians, nine percent of all European American  students, 7.9 percent of all African American students, 7.7 percent of all Latin American students, and 2.1 percent of all Native American students were in programs. 

Economically disadvantaged students are among the most underserved. 

In this NELS study, students from the bottom quartile in family income made up only 10 percent of students in gifted and talented school programs, and 50 percent of the students in programs were from the top quartile economically.

A federal document from Texas presented, in English and in Spanish, ten “tips” for parenting gifted and talented children from minority and economically disadvantaged groups.  These tips were probably quite obvious to European American, middle and upper class parents, who are perhaps more comfortable in school settings than parents who do not speak English as a first language (Bauer, 1998). 

The tips were these:

• (1)  Support your child;
• (2) Identify your child’s interests;
• (3) Request an appropriately challenging curriculum;
• (4) Help your child set goals;
• (5) Emphasize responsibility;
• (6) Provide opportunities (for example, ask the teachers and the school office about extracurricular clubs and contests;
• (7) Look for resources (for example, go to the public library and ask the librarian for resources);
• (8) Encourage your child;
• (9) Be an advocate of your child and others; and
• (10) Do not give up.

The “chance” factors of ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and geographical location can also affect the development of talent. 

Parents have primary influence on all of these factors.  In studying highly academically talented students from disadvantaged backgrounds, Van Tassel-Baska (1989) found that the parents’ attitudes toward their situations were primary in the development of talent. 

If parents viewed their socioeconomic status as temporary, and if they provided enrichment through public libraries, special programs, and involvement in the schools, the students talents were likely to be developed. 

Likewise, Harris (1992) and Ford (1993) and noted that academically talented African American youth took their achievement motivation from their parents, but that especially for males in junior high school and high school, the peer group was often a strong deterrent to the development of that talent. 

7. PARENTING CHILDREN OF AFFLUENCE AND PARENTAL SUCCESS

Another situation that merits attention for the parents of talented youth is the influence of affluence and parental success on such children.  It is a fact that most students in formal school programs for the gifted and talented have average or above-average socioeconomic status.  This discrepancy has led to concerted efforts by the federal government, through the Jacob C. Javits Gifted and Talented Education Act of 1988, to identify and serve students from disadvantaged backgrounds.  As Coles (1977) and Elkind (1987), Vail (1987), Brooks (1989),  and others have pointed out,

children of high achieving parents often face particular problems such as living up to perhaps unreasonable expectations, living out the dreams of the parents for them instead of finding their own dreams, and fearing that they will disappoint their parents. 

Noting that the qualities needed to be a high achiever in the world are sometimes directly opposite to the qualities needed to be a nurturing parents, Brooks (1989, p. 29) pointed out that the difficulties of children with high achieving parents may stem from parents who have succeeded in the workplace, which demands perfection, efficiency, a concern about image, firmness, selfishness, long work hours, and a top priority that success should come first. 

Children often need to have their errors tolerated, patience and gentleness, special times for family activities, an “an understanding that failure promotes growth.”

 Fast-track, high-achieving parents often made it the hard way, attending public schools and state universities, and they want their children not to have to do it that way, attitudes that may put undue pressure on children to conform to newly acquired lifestyles in affluent surroundings. 

Brooks (1989)  also pointed out that such parents often seek to maintain control to the extent that even their children’s achievements should be attributable to the parents’ efforts:  she cited Henry Ford’s behavior with his son Edsel as an example.  Whenever Edsel began to achieve on his own, Ford would cut him down and humiliate him, often publicly. 

The parent who uses connections to get an interview at a prestigious school or an audition with a coveted teacher may thwart a fragile young person’s self-esteem, her or his ability to feel proud of accomplishing things by dint of hard work or talent.  Such parenting behaviors point out that talented children may be viewed as their parents’ products, much as their degrees, prestigious jobs, promotions, and possessions.  

Miller (1991) has written extensively about the destructive need for accomplished parents to project themselves within their childrens accomplishments. 

For example, the senior John D. Rockefeller developed the familys fortune through ruthless and cutthroat business methods but insisted that his son, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and his grandchildren redeem him by creating themselves as good, Baptist Christian  philanthropists, devoted to giving most of the money away through the Rockefeller Foundation.  His guilt projected upon his progeny led to his disapproval of his sons art collecting, his daughters dabbling with Jungian psychology and exile in Switzerland, and his grandson Nelsons political ambitions (Chernow, 1998). 

Amy Tan, in the novel, The Joy-Luck Club (1989), dramatized this situation among Asian mothers who had immigrated and who had reared American daughters.  The mothers competed among themselves for evidence of whose daughter had the most achievements.  One forced her daughter to become a chess player;  another forced piano lessons on a decidely uninterested child.   Payant (1993, p. 73) stated that in contemporary fiction, as in contemporary life, females especially have difficulty in separating themselves from their mothers and the mothers have difficulty in seeing their children as whole human beings:  “It does not take Freudian-Lacanian theory to tell us of a mother’s difficulty in seeing her children as separate people.”

Parents influence their childrens placement in classes in school.  A study by Wells and Serna (1996) showed that de facto segregation occurs in integrated schools where European American  students are clustered in programs for the gifted and talented and African American and Latin American students are clustered in regular and remedial programs. 

Attempts by school officials to change this de facto segregation has often incited parents of the European American  students, who threaten to pull their students out of the public schools and start private schools if their children are to be educated with students of color.  The classes where European American  students are clustered are often fast-paced honors classes, and academically talented African American students are relegated to slower-paced regular classes.

Thus it can be seen that the optimal development of talent is inextricably related to family variables that may or may not be under the control of the parents.  Those variables as death, divorce, or other trauma, may hit a family unawares, and such events can have minimal or maximal effect on talent development.  Other variables such as passive-aggressive parenting, underachievement or perceived underachievement, and providing of opportunities and situations where children’s talent can be encouraged, are under the control of the parents and awareness of options can enhance such development.

CONCLUSIONS

To summarize this review of parenting talented children, several points can be made. 

1. First, parents often have difficulty in identifying a childs talent and in formulating responses to the presence of talent.  The problem is magnified when a child or children have multiple talents, or multiple potentialities. 
2. Second, general academic talent is identified by having high test scores on IQ tests or standardized achievement tests, is often developed in the school and in special programs for the gifted and talented; however, outstanding special talent (such as that in athletics, chess, or the arts) needs responses that may not be developed in the school, and that may affect the whole family system. 
3. Third, talent development is often the product of the whole familys interests, occupations, and heritage.  Talent often seems to run in families.   In 1997 Plomin summarized the genetic studies about the relationship between general cognitive ability, heredity, and environment. Genetic contributions to individual differences in IQ test scores are significant and substantial, he said.  Correlations between twins reared apart is greater than for nonrelated siblings reared together.  About half of the IQ differences among individuals in the population can be accounted for by genetic differences among them (p. 70).  Verbal abilities and spatial abilities are more heritable than memory and speed of information processing.  As people get older, they show more similarity to their genetic relatives.  An interesting finding was that ability (or IQ) test scores and achievement test scores, though they are often similar, reveal differences.  The overlap between intelligence and scholastic achievement is due entirely to genetic factors, whreas the differences between them are environmental in origin (Plomin, 1997, p. 73).  In other words, underachievement (a disparity between achievement test scores and ability test scores) seems to be environmental. Whether intelligence and the existence of talent and giftedness is mostly heredity or mostly environmental is not the point; the point is that there are families of actors, artists, athletes, business persons, academics, and the like, where the talent is nurtured by the efforts of the whole family system.
4. Fourth, research on children with extremely high IQs or children who are prodigies or savants reveals that there is a cocoon-like quality that the parents engender in the families.  The families see themselves as different from the norm, and they often expend extreme amounts of energy in talent development for the prodigy.  The talents of siblings are often undernnoticed in such extreme family preoccupations  toward a childs talent development. 
5. Fifth, underachievement is a phenomenon that affects families with academically talented students.  Responses to underachievement ranting from school-based special programs to individual behavioral and family therapy are common. 
6. Sixth, a difficult parenting situation for talented children can arise in families of achievement, especially where there is recent affluence, where parents have moved up in social status; these parents often unduly ignore the emotional needs of their children in order to satisfy their own need for status.

It should be clear from what has been said that early identification of talent, creating an appropriate response and sustaining an optimal process of talent development, are highly complex and subtle matters.  Although much more is known about these issues than was true even a decade or so ago, the knowledge base remains spotty, thin, and fragmented.

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DAVID HENRY FELDMAN is an honored professor at Tufts University. He is a prolific author, speaker, and a major influencer in the field of the education of the gifted and talented. He is an expert on child prodigies.

JANE PIIRTO is Trustees’ Professor and  Director of Talent Development Education at Ashland University in Ashland, Ohio.  She has degrees from Northern Michigan University (BA in English), Kent State University (MA in English), South Dakota State University (M.Ed. in Counseling), and Bowling Green State University (Ph.D. in Educational Leadership).   She has been a college instructor of English  and Humanities at Northern Michigan University, a high school teacher, a regional educational consultant in South Dakota, Ohio, and Michigan.  She was the Principal of the Hunter College Elementary School, a school for gifted children, in New York City.  She has won Individual Artist Fellowships in both poetry and fiction from the Ohio Arts Council and is one of the 1,100 U.S. writers eligible for listing in both poetry and fiction in the Directory of American Poets and Writers.  Her research interests are creativity in adults and children, the education and psychology of the gifted and talented, and arts-based qualitative research methodologies.  Her nonfiction books are Talented Children and Adults:  Their Development and Education, 2 editions (Prentice Hall/Pearson); Understanding Those Who Create, 2 editions (Gifted Psychology Press);   “My Teeming Brain”: Understanding Creative Writers (Hampton Press); and Luovuus (in Finnish with first author  Kari Uusikyla, WSOY Publishers).  Her literary books are A Location in the Upper Peninsula:  Collected Poems, Stories, and Essays (Sampo Publishing);  and The Three-Week Trance Diet (novel, winner of Carpenter Press Tenth Anniversary award).

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