Underachievement becomes a factor for these students when their self-identity becomes too intricately wound up in their academic performance. Students tend to underachieve when they do not believe that they are capable of living up to expectations set by themselves and others.
helping gifted students develop regular patterns of work and practice seems to be very beneficial. Music, dance and art lessons, and regular time for homework and reading can be very helpful for developing positive self-regulation strategies. caring adult in school can help reverse the process of underachievement.
A Word From Verywell. Even though some gifted children may be highly motivated to work and excel outside of the school environment, underachieving in the school is still considered a problem. School grades, particularly those in high school, can either open or close doors to possibilities in the future.
In addition to pressures from academic and family expectations, students who are gifted may struggle in school because of social issues. Some of the issues these students can face in school include: Embarrassment for being different or standing out. Bullying from peers due to their intelligence or differences.
According to Reis & McCoach (2000), the following are common characteristics of gifted underachievers: PERSONALITY: Low self-esteem, low self-concept, low self-efficacy. Alienated or withdrawn; distrustful, or pessimistic.
This disparity can result from various factors, such as loss of interest in classes that are too easy or negative social consequences of being perceived as smart. Underachievement can also result from emotional or psychological factors, including depression, anxiety, perfectionism, low self esteem, or self-sabotage.
In contrast, a more specific definition of the underachieving gifted student is one who has a Stanford-Binet (IQ test) score of 132 or above and a percentile ranking of 75 or below on the California Test of Basic Skill. This definition limits the underachieving gifted student to only a handful of students.
The problems gifted children sometimes face with socializing often stem from their asynchrony and educational setting. Asynchronous development, or uneven development, is often considered a core trait of giftedness. These students may be college age intellectually but still 12 in terms of their social skills.
Negative Characteristics of a Gifted Child
Pretentious, shows off, or evokes their classmates: They may humiliate the people around them and show off because they can grasp things very quickly.
Gifted children are challenging to parent in many ways. The more gifted the child, the more often it seems the more the parent is frustrated with the discrepancy of someone able to do school several levels above age level but unable to remember to take their finished work to school.
A gifted child, once actively engaged in school, might lose all interest and motivation. Examples of underachievement include risk-aversion, cutting corners on assignments, a refusal to study, or angry rejection of the school culture.
If you were a gifted child, chances are you've had some serious mental health struggles now that you're a gifted adult. Many of them may have stemmed from gift-specific traumas in your childhood, or even some that you're experiencing in your adult life.
They may also have behavior problems because of frustration or boredom. Very bright children can be unusually strong willed, negotiate like lawyers, or use sarcasm to make a point. Sometimes, gifted children are disruptive in classrooms because they don't want to do what they consider busywork.
Encourage and promote your students' interests and passions. Help students to see beyond the immediate activity to the long-term outcomes. A school assignment may seem unimportant, but pursuing a dream career may be an outcome that your student is willing to strive toward.
Underachievers do not believe they are accomplishing what they have set out to do and consequently feel frustrated that they are not achieving at their “ideal” level. Some of these people may actually take a little more time to do things. Others may mistakenly feel that they take more time.
A gifted child's IQ will fall within these ranges: Mildly gifted: 115 to 130. Moderately gifted: 130 to 145. Highly gifted: 145 to 160.
These children usually have the innate ability to comprehend lessons and apply themselves in studies, along with being able to get to get away with spending a minimum amount of their time studying. That is where the biggest curse of being gifted comes in – the inability to develop proper study habits.
Since gifted people learn quickly in at least one area, those other areas that take a little longer can feel like failure, and be painfully wounding to their self esteem. Many gifted people have a fierce inner critic that may prevent them from trying new things for this reason.
Another reason that friendships may be frustratingly difficult to form, however, is an amorphous but often pervasive characteristic of the gifted: intensity. As we know, gifted children often pursue intellectual interests with zeal, devouring information about even very obscure topics.
Emotionally intense gifted people often feel abnormal. “There must be something wrong with me… maybe I'm crazy… nobody else seems to feel like this.” Emotionally intense gifted people often experience intense inner conflict, self-criticism, anxiety and feelings of inferiority.
Just as having a high IQ doesn't ensure success, having an average or low IQ doesn't ensure failure or mediocrity. Even if you have what is considered a low IQ, you may be smart in many other ways and have many other talents and abilities that aren't reflected on a single test.
People with low and high IQ scores can work almost any job at almost any level. But it becomes increasingly difficult to perform well in very complex or fluid jobs (such as management in an ambiguous, changing, unpredictable fields) with a lower IQ. An IQ over 115 places no restrictions on what you can do.