I am May Nellen. Since 2003 I try to make the world more gifted-friendly. Since 2010 I am an ECHA specialist in gifted education. I train teachers and coach gifted children and young adults, sometimes in small groups but mostly one-on-one. In the last two decades, I met a lot of different coachees. Some of them stay with me forever. There was a small boy who stopped growing. After a year of coaching, he grew 5 centimeters. It’s impossible to prove that the coaching was what made him grow again, but it certainly contributed to his well-being. I wondered what happend to him before I met him, what cost him so much energy that he stopped growing?

I met a lot of other young children who were very insecure and unhappy. It made me wonder what made them so insecure and unhappy? In the literature, I found a lot of models and theories about giftedness. Most of thim are descriptive. But I didn’t find a model that explaines what makes gifted children underachieve. So, I did some research to find out which factors cause underachievement and why gifted underachievers behave the way they do. I think it is necessary to understand the gifted and to understand what makes them underachieve, unhappy and insecure so that we can offer them the appropriated help. I then created a model of my own. This model helps to explain to teachers and parents why gifted children sometimes don’t flourish. I will present this model in the monthy lecture of april.

This is my model and I guide you step by step through it.

What causes gifted children to underachieve: a model

There are many models and theories that describe possible characteristics of giftedness, together with circumstances that can lead to the gifted potential actually developing into gifted performance with the right support from the environment.

But many gifted children underachieve and don’t develop their talents or giftedness. So if the educational needs of gifted students are not met at school there is a chance that they will experience social-emotional problems (Mathijssen, Feltzer & Hoogeveen, 2018), that they will underachieve or bore-out (White, Graham, & Blaas, 2018) or even drop out of regular education altogether (Van Weerdenburg, Emans, Kabki, & Poelman, 2019).

This model discribes riskfactors that inhibite talent development, how they interact with each other and their consequences. It helps parents and theachers to understand why gifted children don’t flourish.

If the school environment does not match the needs of a gifted pupil, the (school) motivation and usually also the well-being decrease (Philips & Lindsay, 2007). In addition, low motivation or lack of motivation affects not only well-being but also performance.

Self-determination theory offers a useful lens to look at the educational needs of students (Ryan & Deci, 2006). Self-determination theory assumes that there are three basic needs: autonomy, relationship and competence.

Being able to work, learn and play together with other gifted students (developmental peers) is therefore very important for these students; then they experience that there are more children like them and they can get along right away.

What happens if a curriculum at school isn’t challenging enough?

The pupil will never have to strech their abilities to the max. The don’t need to develop strategies to get the job done. So they don’t acquire metacognitive or executive skills. An other problem is that they don’t expierence flow. Childern who are labeled gifted or smart expierence often pressure to proform theachers or parents: “You’re so smart you can do this!” They are than at risc of developing a fixed mindset. Many gifted childern feel they are being different from others and others feel they are different. (Kieboom, pg14 smith mackie pg 309). Dabrowski introduced ‘overexcitabilities’ (1967). Children with an intellectual oe and at least two others, may be gifted. The sensitifity and intensity of gifted pupils makes things worse. They are too much in everything.

What is flow or optimal experience? And why is it important for us?

The best moments in life usually occur when you strech your body or mind to it’s limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwile. This is something you make happen. Csikszentmihalyi calls this experience flow. Flow is the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it. (Csikszentmihalyi, Flow, the psychology of optimal experience 2008, pg 3,4). Flow is important because it makes the present instant more enjoyable and it buids the selfconfidence that allows us to develop skills and make contributions to humankind. (pg 42) The opposite of flow is psychic disorder. This is when information disrupts conciousness it leads to disorganization of the self and impairs its effectiveness. If this state persist over a long periode of time it can weaken the self to a point that it no longer is able to invest attention and pursue its goals. It is very difficult to keep order in the mind from within. We need external goals, external stimulation, external feedbeck to keep our attention directed. And when external imput is lacking, attention begins to wander, and thoughts become chaotic. (pg 169)

Gifted childern often complain that it is hard to keep their attention directed. They experience psychic disorder caused by a lack of external stimulation.

Metacognition

As we saw before flow helps pupils to develop several skills. An important set of skills are the metacognitive skills. A simplified definition of metacognition is “thinking about thinking”, but metacognition also encompasses the regulation of these thoughts and the ability to change them in order to reach a specific goal.

Gifted childern enter the primairy school with a head start in metacognitive skills. But many of them loose their head start. (Tielen, Alexander, Cart, and Schwanenflugel). 45% of the gifdted students, have moderate or weakly developed metacogniteve skills due to a lack of a challeging curriculum at school. Their IQ was sufficient to do the job. The consequences are study delay or droping out of school. (Veenman,de psycholoog / 2015 metacognitie: metacognitie: ‘ken uzelve’)

So less succesfull gifted students lack metacogniteve skills.(Shore & Dover, 1987) and teaching them metacognitive strategies can improve learning considerably.(Risemberg & Zimmerman, 1992) Some of them lack the skills others do have the skills but don’t know when or how to use thim or they simply refuse to use them.

It is important that metacognitive strategies are taught explicitly and in relation to specific tasks.”

High expectations and praise

I think you’re all familiar with the concept of the mindset from Carol Dweck. But because I see it as an important part of my model I give you a short lecture about it. The intelligence of gifted students is also often emphasized, as a result of which many gifted children can experience the pressure that they have to appear smart (Dweck, 2013). The result can be a fixed mindset. This means that they believe that they have a certain amount intelligence, a centain personality and a certain moral character and this is what it is. They like to do thing that are easy to do so that they can confirm smart image. They think they are beter than others. They feel an urge to succeed and if they don’t than they think:’Ifailed so I am a failure”. They lose their fun in learning new things. Their self confidence is very fragile and so they need constant validation of others. They suffer of learned helplessness. They ruminate a lot about their problems and setbacks and feel that they are imcompetent. They have a higher level of depression. And if they are depressed than they let things go and stop working because there is a risk of failure.

Children with a growth mindset think your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through effort. They value what they are doing regardless the outcome of it. They derive just as much happiness from the proces as from the results. Failure is still painful with a growth mindset but these kids see this as a problem that they need to face. They deal with it and learn from it. They take action to confront their problems. And if they get depressed they don’t stop working but start to put in more effort to keep up with their schoolwork.

Most of the childern and younster I coach feel pressure to preform due to a fixed mindset. Many of thim think that they have to do well in school because they are gifted. Still many teachers tell thim: “You are gifted so you can solve this problem on your own.”

Being differtent

Constructing the selfconcept

The self-concept is the set of all an induvidual’s beliefs about ones own personal qualities. We build our selfconcept by observing our own behavior. We also build our selfconcept of drawing inferences from our thoughts and feelings. But also from other people’s reactions to us. And from comparison between ourselfs and others.

Belonging with others, being valued,

We often assume that most other people share our own opinions and preferences. Agreement with others increases our confidence that our views are correct, that we understand the world and life as others do. We like to agree with others and if we don’t agree than we feel suprised and confussed. It makes us uncertain and we doubt ourselfs. When we conform to the group-norm we get a sense of mastery. (Social psychology ER Smith , DM Mackie, 2007, 316) We believe the group has more knowlegde than we do so accepting their input increase our chance of making an accurate decision. It also gives us a feeling of being valued. Wheras disagreement undermines that certainty. Agreeing with others not only assures people that they are in contact with a common reality but also gives them the feeling of belonging with others and being valued by others. People often prefer others who are typical in-group members even if these people are not especially likable. Because peolpe place high value on group consensus, they sometimes succumb to group pressure, with disastrous results. Because people who disagree with other group members often anticipate negative reactions and finally even get excluded from the group. So gifted childern have two options: adapt to groups norm or being in danger of being excluded from the group. Both have their own disadvantages.

The process of identity development in intellectually gifted children and adolescents is even more complicated by their innate and acquired differences from age‐peers. To be valued within a peer culture, gifted young people may mask their giftedness and develop alternative identities which are perceived as more socially acceptable. They may mask their love of learning, their interests which differ from those of age‐peers, and their advanced moral development. If this assumed identity does indeed brings social acceptance they may become afraid to take off the mask.

So gifted children and adolescents need the opportunity to work and socialize with others of similar abilities and interests if they are to grow towards self‐acceptance.

Dabrowski

Dabrowski introduced ‘ in 1967 the overexcitabilities’ (1967). Overexcitabilities what are they? They are an innate tendency to respond in an intensified manner to various forms of stimuli, both external and internal. So people with oe tend to react to lower stimuli than others, the treshold for reaction may be lower and they may react strongly to what others perceive as a non-event. They influence all aspects of their development.The oe are the underlying, dimensions of thinking outside the box, the urge to create beauty, to push for stark realism, the unrilenting striving for truth and justice. (Piechowski 1979, pg 13)

Oe are Intensity, sensitivity and tendensy toward emotional extreme. And the stronger these oe are the less parents, teachers and peers like them and the more difficulties the child will experience by a lack of acceptance by others. The oe are viewed by others as overreacting or inapropriate behavior needed to be adressed to for the sake of the child. Childern exhibiting strong oe are often made to feel embarressed and guilty for being different. Dabrowski states that these traits are not abnormal but part of their talented and creative selves. The intensities and sensitivities cannot be brought down to the normal range and gifted children should not be pressed to fit in with all the other children. There are five forms of overexcitabilties: psychomotor, sensual, intellectual, imaginational and emotional.

Bore-out

Boredom often occurs in the life of the gifted and can have many negative consequences. This model aims to increase insight in to the antecedents and processes underlying the development of underachievement and bore-out in gifted children. I couldn’t find many articles about boredom in gifted children but I could find some research about the consequences of boredom at the workplace. I assume there will be some differences but to overcome this I compared the behaviours of bored employees with the behaviours that were very well discribes by Betts and Neihart. I found many similarities.

Bore-out is a recently defined phenomenon, and few studies have been conducted to evaluate it. The majority of studies about strains and mental health hazards in the workplace focus on high workload resulting in stress The effects of having to work beneath one’s own capabilities and experiencing underutilization and underchallenge have been examined less thoroughly but nonetheless they can cause stress and affect health. The term ‘bore-out’ has been used to represent the concept of perceived stress caused by feeling underchallenged and underutilized. Being chronically underchallenged goes along with a lack of sense of achievement. Working beneath one’s capabilities frequently goes along with doubts about one’s self-efficacy and is accompanied by a higher rate of depressiveness. Poirier (2021) found negative relations between bore-out and self-esteem as well as positive relations between bore-out and depression, perceived helplessness and perceived self-efficacy

Bruursema et al states that bored employees misbehave, they show counterproductive work behaviour. Counterproductive work behaviour (CWB) have been described by Bruursma, Kessler and Spector as abuse against others, production deviance, sabotage, withdrawal, theft and horseplay. Abuse against others consists of either physically or psychologically harmful behaviours directed towards others. I saw this behavior in many of my groups. In one of my groups there were two boys who fought a lot with each other on the playground. An other boy was bullying other kids all the time. Production deviance means working slowly when there are deadlines. Sabotage refers to the defacing or destroying of organizational property. Withdrawal encompasses behaviour that restricts time spent working to less than what is required by the organization. Finally, theft is taking property belonging to the organization or another individual. They also added a sixth category of CWB, termed horseplay, this is playing games or using the internet for non-work-related activities, gossiping, or playing practical jokes.

Stock (2015) defined bore-out as “a negative psychological state of low work-related arousal manifested in three forms: a crisis of meaning at work, job boredom, and crisis of growth” (p. 574). According to the conservation of resources theory, these three dimensions of job bore-out are a lack of resources and draw energy.Bored employees feel “guilty for not working enough” or are “ashamed by their workflow.”These actions are incompatibility with their personal work values: “Having little work is not the way I would like to work” .

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