Paper Example on Gifted and Talented Parenting: A Personal Journey

Introduction

Generally, parenting is difficult when it comes to parents knowing what their role is. Children's behaviors and discipline issues impose frustrations to parents, especially when it turns to sleepless nights and tiring days, which imply a parent as a failure and a disappointment. As a result, parents with children considered gifted and talented take the journey of parenting as personal. One factor that makes these parents take their parenting journey personal is because these children have unique personalities and preferences, skills, challenges, strengths, weaknesses, learning styles, and their own experiences. Despite a parent having several children, the parenting way to each child is so different. Secondly, the evolution of families and the social institution has introduced various challenges in parenting. The family structure and the size of the family have gradually changed, bringing in many problems in parenting. Such challenges include cohabitation rather than marriage, blended families such as gay families.

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Definition of a Gifted Child

According to the NAGC, a gifted child is one "whose levels of aptitude are outstanding or they are more competence in one or more domains. Domains include any structural area of activity with its symbol system such as mathematics, music, language painting, dance and or sports". Various scholars have argued that using IQ alone is not enough to rank a child as gifted and talented, thus not enough to classify one as intelligent and successful. Due to this, the definition of giftedness has been upgraded reading "giftedness is the portrayal of performance that is precisely higher in the distribution of a talent domain even relative to that of individuals in that domain.

Diagnosing a Gifted Child

A three-phase process is used to identify a gifted and talented child. However, the resources, tools, and operation used vary from one place to another. The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) indicates the identification process includes nomination, screening, and placement (Vozniuk, 2017) anyone such as a parent, teacher, or friends can be used in the nomination phase. However, there are challenges associated with the process of recommending a child to the stage of screening. These challenges include not creating awareness to the society and the public, thus leaving the task to the classroom teacher who, in most cases, is not taken seriously. Screening being the second phase of creates an obstacle because the parents do not know the appropriate age to adopt a child for testing. Some parents recommend screening for their children at a period of three years, others at an age when they are in kindergarten and others at the age of fewer than six years. According to Silverman, the early a child is taken for screening, the better because the detection of IQ is applicable. The third phase is the placement phase, which requires collaborative discussions between parents, educators, and other professionals to discuss services that can be used to identify gifted and talented children. Some instances or locations discriminate gifted and talented children; therefore, some parents end up hiding their children.

Characteristics of Gifted Children

Asynchronous Development

For any parent to able to do excellent parenting to a gifted and talented child, they must understand that any gifted and talented child has different abilities and interests; thus, they must be handled with care. Parents also need to know about the prejudices about the talented children and know how to deal with them. Such biases are made based on their education journey, lifestyle, and life experiences. Parents with gifted and talented children do not realize the extraordinary ability in their children until it is pointed out by someone outside the family. Some of the characteristics associated with gifted and talented children include and not limited to asynchronous development (Hidalgo, 2016). This trait distinguishes gifted children from others because it contains "advanced cognitive abilities and heightened intensity combined to create inner experiences and awareness that are qualitatively different from the norm." a profound child will express higher levels of asynchrony than an exceptionally gifted child. The asynchronous affects the interpersonal image of an individual as well as preventing them from developing good interpersonal relationships. Children with high levels of Asynchronous are termed as others as crazy and complicated. For instance, the life experience of a gifted child with high levels of of.... It can make him feel frustrations, especially when communicating with his or her peers. This can make the gifted child change their speech and behavior so that they can be accommodated in a group of friends with different abilities and skills. Any parent with such a child should provide a more accommodating parenting way to help the child develop fully. The parent must handle the situation to help solve any anxiety and stressful behavior.

Heightened Sensitivity

The second characteristic that is observable in the gifted and talented children is the heightened sensitivity. Heightened sensitivity is highly associated with asynchronous development, where they have many emotions. The feeling of high sensitivity makes them vulnerable to problematic life, such as unhealthy self-images. In most of these situations, the gifted and talented children do not understand themselves and the potential they carry; therefore, the parents should be able to encourage them to unveil their potential. However, the gifted and talented want to have praise and encouragement from the external environment to enhance self-understanding and self-acceptance. Parents should create time with gifted and talented children and have open communication and a platform to enhance self-expression. The parents should also encourage their gifted and talented children by not minimizing the distressing factors because they affect the emotional growth of the child. Such a problem can be solved by participating in community service activities that are proposed as better ways of doing it. However, financial constraints facing the families stand in as a big challenge, which does not allow the families to have such an environment with their gifted and talented children.

Anxiety, Fears, and Depression

Most gifted and talented children go through stress, concerns, and depression because they highly react to personal, societal, and environmental problems. Despite these problems, these children do not access the needed help and assistance. Whenever there is an opposition from the society on the gifted and talented children, or the family shift all their focus on them, tend to hide their abilities. Gifted and talented children have shared interests, and they want to understand themselves and others as well as the whole universe; they want to share common feelings and thought as well as their need to express their emotions orally or through some other ways. The parents should provide a platform to enable the achievement of these desires because failure to do so raises the anxiety and depression levels. To avoid any disorders that come along with high levels of anxiety and depression, parents to these talented and children should encourage them to become open and discuss any problematic issues. Parents of talented and gifted children should become aware of the social and environmental practices affecting their children physically, emotionally, and psychologically. Being challenging to know what the child is feeling and is thinking of, the parents need always to have an open conversation that will allow the children to discuss their fears.

Perfectionism

Gifted and talented children are characterized by the aspect of perfectionism. Although it may sound as a motivation towards working hard, skilled, and gifted children face a challenge because they want nothing but to be perfect. In a situation where a gifted and talented child is recommended in front of others, but regard the praise below their standards, they will end up feeling discouraged. Again, these children punish themselves in terms of straining for what they term perfect. A perfectionist believes they should not fail, must consistently do the best, and should always get praise and approval. Parents to gifted and talented children should praise their children for their gifts and talents without blaming them that they are underperforming. Because these gifted and talented children do not know their limits, they have ended up being frustrated, thus increasing the emotional reaction. To solve this problem, the parents should ensure they do not impose external factors which will lead to psychological torture.

Underachievement

Gifted and talented children will also be characterized by underachievement. Underachievement has been defined as the mismatch between performance and ability. Researchers have found that social-emotional factors are contributing significantly to the underachievement of gifted and talented children. To deal with the issue of underachievement among the gifted and talented, various things must be put in place, and the parent must know, understand, regulate, empathize and sympathize with being able to help the child to deal with stress and maintain a positive relationship with these children. Depending on how a child views their ability, the expectation and support of others affect their achievement. As a parent, it is, therefore, necessary for one to motivate the child so that they can realize their high potential, see the support, and be willing to unveil more. In doing so, the gifted and talented children will not be ranked as underachievers. The self-esteem of gifted and talented children is affected because of a lack of engagement.

This leads to disinterest in academics and other social activities. Gifted and talented children always want to achieve more and still explore something new. Parents to these children, therefore, should provide an opportunity and space for their children to explore new and "difficult" tasks. They are repeating the same tasks, whether playing or in other activities leads to boredom and detachment, eventually leading to underachievement. Dealing with this challenge, the gifted and talented children should be provided with high but achievable expectations both socially and academically. Basing from Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, the parents need to recognize that for any child to reach their self-actualization stage, all other lower needs such as love, acceptance, and belonging must be met. Enhancing positive opportunities for supporting gifted and talented children will not only improve their achievement but also reduce the negative critics that have emerged on them over time.

Parents of Gifted and Talented Children

Emotional Concerns

Parenting a gifted child brings in emotional challenges to the parent because the needs of a gifted and talented child are hard to be recognized. If such children are not supported, they end up being depressed and withdrawing from others in society, thus losing the potential in the individual and indirectly, the possibility of the community. Some parents to these gifted and talented children may feel intimidated, overwhelmed, and inadequate to deal with their children's potentials and abilities. These uncertainties are brought by the fact that there is no research showing what challenges are faced by parents of gifted and talented children; neither are their strategic support systems to support parents to these children. Parents to the gifted and talented children are not decided on what to do with these children because their gifts have been seen affecting the relationship with other siblings and even some parents...