Two Lessons On How To Support Gifted Kids

Steven Pfeiffer
BRIGHT Magazine

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Editor’s Note: This past Monday we ran a story about a “gifted” 14-year-old who became the youngest person in history to produce nuclear fusion. This week we have been hearing from educators, researchers, psychologists, reporters, school leaders, and former students; we’ve invited them to share their thoughts on how to better support — or reform — gifted education, or to reflect on why it even matters to them.

Our final Response is from Steven Pfeiffer, a professor and director of clinical training at Florida State University. Previously he served as executive director of Duke University’s gifted program.

II love the story about Taylor Wilson. I particularly like how his parents figured out how to best support their extremely gifted son’s early passion for science and nuclear physics. These are the kind of feel-good human interest stories that keep those of us in the gifted field enthusiastic and pumped up about our own work supporting intellectually precocious young people.

I have worked with high-ability kids for more than 35 years in a variety of capacities. In my clinical practice as a psychologist, I have counseled many very bright kids and their parents. In my academic work at Florida State University, I teach a gifted course and direct a research lab that looks at the social and emotional needs of gifted and creative kids. I also served as executive director of Duke University’s Talent Identification Program, which provides fast-paced and highly challenging summer academic programs for the brightest-of-the-bright adolescents — this is the sister Talent Search program to the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth that Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, and Lady Gaga all famously attended.

Two lessons about how to support gifted students really stand out. The first is that developing the talent of highly gifted kids requires more than simply nurturing their intellectual ability (or what I refer to as “head strengths”). The second is that success in adult life requires both head strengths and heart strengths. Let me explain.

It is not always easy to predict who will reach their full potential in life; this is true also of very gifted child prodigies. Many non-aptitude factors go into the algorithm in determining who, exactly, will end up traveling the greatest distance along ones’ imaginable success trajectory.

With young gifted students — even with child prodigies — we can only offer up a guess at the likelihood of future accomplishment. And, the reality is that a great many students who are identified as “gifted” when they are very young grow up and demonstrate no special nor extraordinary talent as adults. Also, not everyone with super intelligence turns out to be a Stephen Hawking, or a Steven Spielberg, or a William Campbell (the 2015 winner of the Nobel prize in medicine).

Equally intriguing, many kids who were not recognized as having any special gifts when they were young turn out to be “late bloomers,” and astound us with extraordinary inventions and accomplishments in later life. Giuseppe Verdi sketched his ideas for composing Othello at age 73. Raymond Chandler only wrote his first story at 44 when he lost his job during the Great Depression.

The full actualization of talent at its highest levels requires, in most professions and fields, more than simply a high IQ. Cultivating gifted children’s talents requires time and hard work — what the Chinese aptly term “chi ku,” meaning “eating bitterness.”

The development of our very best and most creative writers, scientists, engineers, surgeons, detectives, teachers, artists, performers, and political leaders requires a tremendous amount of practice, considerable patience and stick-with-it-ness, and a healthy dose of tolerance for frustration. To reach the highest levels in any field also requires a passion to excel in that chosen profession. It also helps if you have adults who are available to serve as mentors and role models. And, you need a good deal of luck.

OOOver the years, I have kept in touch with a great many former highly gifted students. I have followed with great interest their career paths and their personal life trajectories. Not all of these gifted kids grew up and became happy and successful adults. Some dropped out of college, and others were admitted but did not finish one graduate school or another. Some struggled with feelings of loneliness, depression, alcoholism, drug abuse, and a lack of meaning in their lives. Some acknowledged thoughts of suicide. The message that I have taken away from this is that not all gifted kids successfully navigate the turbulent waters of adolescence and find a safe and supportive harbor in adult life. Not all young gifted kids turn out to be successful and well-adjusted adults.

This leads me to the second lesson I’ve learned: by the time they have become adults, gifted individuals’ happiness and sense of well-being requires nurturing of both head strengths and heart strengths. Gifted kids, by definition, all possess impressive intellectual abilities. And many also possess a good amount of raw creativity — “head strengths.”

What some gifted kids lack in equal measure, however, are what we call “strengths of the heart.” Heart strengths are not stressed in today’s classrooms, with our emphasis on academics, learning, and STEM education initiatives. We in the U.S. and our educational colleagues globally are all very focused on head strengths. And we’ve all but forgotten about heart strengths.

At our research lab at Florida State and in my clinical work, I found that heart strengths are particularly valuable in the lives of gifted kids as they grow up. These heart strengths include humility, compassion, gratitude, enthusiasm, concern for others, civic duty, kindness, and even playfulness. Research in our lab and compelling anecdotal evidence suggests that these heart strengths often can make a real difference in whether a gifted kid grows up to be a happy, well-adjusted, and successful adult.

WWWe should add into our curriculum empirically-supported intervention programs that teach and reinforce heart strengths such as gratitude, empathy, compassion, and respect for others. Some of these programs exist already and have ample research supporting their effectiveness. Other programs are still in the pilot phase, and there are many programs still needing to be designed and pilot-tested in the schools. If we strive to nurture both the heart and the heads strengths, we’ll be on our way.

Bright is made possible by funding from the New Venture Fund, and is supported by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

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