Search Database

Social/Emotional Development: Underachievement

• Assessment of Gifted Children: Identification

  Intelligence denied: When gifted children's abilities are ignored

  This article describes the circumstances when giftedness is denied, dismissed or ignored, and the negative outcomes that can occur as a result.

• Developmental: Twice Exceptional

  Boredom: A Surprisingly Interesting Topic

  This article provides advice on intervention parents can take when their twice exceptional child complains of boredom in school.

  Using Cognitive Behavioral Counseling Strategies to
  Reverse Underachievement

  In this article, the author provides numerous tips on preventing underachievement among gifted students.

• Educational Options: Tips for Teachers

  Intrinsic motivation

  This detailed article outlines 21 strategies for enhancing motivation in students. Theroux has extensive experience dealing with underachieving students and has been greatly influenced by the insight of Joanne Rand Whitmore and Sylvia Rimm.

• Parenting: Tips for Parents

  Tips for Parents: Doing Poorly on Purpose: Underachievement and the Quest for Dignity
  

  This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Jim Delisle, who offers considerations to remember and suggestions for addressing underachievement.

  Tips for Parents: Learning the Inner Game of High Achievement

  This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Maureen Neihart, who provides advice on a number of mental skills students can learn to achieve.

  Tips for Parents: Parenting for High Achievement and Avoiding Underachievement

  This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Dr. Sylvia Rimm, who lists seven specific tips for parents, and offers an explanation of each. Rimm touches on topics such as Foresight, Praise, Power, United Parenting, and Twice Exceptional Children.

  Tips for Parents: The Underachievement Dilemma

  This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Jim Delisle, who offers considerations to remember and suggestions for addressing underachievement.

  Tips for Parents: The Zen Valedictorian: A Parent's Guide to Helping Your Child Stand Out Without Burning Out

  This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Cal Newport. He discusses philosophical issues and issues related to reducing student stress.

  Tips for Parents: What You Can do to Reverse Underachievement in The Classroom

  This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Del Siegle and D. Betsy McCoach. It includes a summary of tips and strategies on helping underachieving students to become achievement-oriented individuals. The authors include a discussion of the psychology and rationale for each tip.

  Tips for Parents: Where's the Spark? Managing Boredom In/Out of School

  This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Robert A. Schultz, P.h.D. who maintains that parents and teachers should zero in on the contruct of boredom and continue to question the meaning behind it until a statement is made that is addressable.

  Tips for Parents: Why SMART Goals Don't Work...and what to do about it

  This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Stephen Balzac, in which he provides advice on goal setting and setting obtainable objectives.

• Social/Emotional: Underachievement

  Academic underachievement among the gifted: Students' perceptions of factors that reverse the pattern

  This article by Linda Emerick studies young gifted people who have pulled themselves through periods of underachievement. It details the main areas that these students felt were crucial in being able to reverse the pattern of underachievement in their lives. The results suggest that educational interventions focused on areas of student interest may be particularly effective.

  Coping 101: Building Persistence and Resilience in Gifted Children

  This article provides advice on how to increase a gifted child’s persistence and resilience, as well as how to teach a child the coping skills he or she needs to manage life’s inevitable challenges and adversity.

  Dealing with the Stereotype of Underachievement

  James Delisle, Ph.D explores the sterotyping that is involved with underacievement and how it is overused.

  Difficult passage: Gifted girls in middle school

  This article describes reasons why young gifted girls can lose their passion for school throughout their educational development. It also provides parents strategies on what they can do to help.

  Do’s and Don’ts for Motivating Your High-Ability Child

  At Parent Day during NAGC’s 2016 Convention in Orlando, FL, scholars and parents Del Siegle and Betsy McCoach shared successful strategies and practices for motivating gifted children.

  Flirting with underachievement

  This article by Robert Shultz shares the teacher's perspective of seeing highly gifted students "stuck on an academic merry-go-round whirling by the same content over and over." Although they are naturally driven to learn, they became frustrated, angry and unchallenged. Schultz argues that this pattern of underachievement can be broken with "caring teachers guided with passion and understanding."

  Gifted achievers and underachievers: A comparison of patterns found in school files

  This article by Jean Peterson and Nicholas Colangelo describes a study of gifted students who achieve and underachieve. School files were examined to try to find links and reasons for underachievment. The author sidentify a number of correlations, and suggestions are made for school counselors on how they might help with this problem.

  Meeting the needs of gifted underachievers – individually!

  This article by Joan Smutney, lists the common characteristics of gifted underachievers, addresses some of the "most promising" solutions to underachievement as helpful tips for parents, and empahsizes the importance of advocacy.

  Models of underachievement among gifted preadolescents: The role of personal, family, and school factors

  This article explores the problem of underachievement among gifted students. It discusses the factors involved and explains that most often these issues surface in late elementary school and middle school. The article discusses a detailed study of three models: individual, family and school. It explains how this population can be helped through intervention that combines these three models. Authored by Jean Baker, Robert Bridger, and Karen Evans.

  Promoting a positive achievement attitude with gifted and talented students

  This book chapter by Del Siegle and D. Betsy McCoach discusses techniques that can be used to promote achievement in highly intelligent students. Underachievement issues and causes are listed and traits of achievers are explained. Teachers and parents can help children achieve by using the interventions listed in this chapter.

  The underachievement of gifted students: What do we know and where do we go?

  This article by Sally Reis and D. Betsy McCoach reviews years of studies on underachievement among the gifted. It explores some of the problems of identifying these students. The authors also include suggestions for those interested in pursuing potentially promising new lines of research and inquiry in this area.

  Underachievement in Exceptionally Gifted Adolescents and Young Adults: A Psychiatrist's View

  Jerald Grobman writes this report on a group of exceptionally gifted adolescents between the ages of 14 and 25 who were each treated in individual psychotherapy over the course of a number of years. They were referred for symptoms of anxiety, depression, self-destructive behavior, and underachievement. Each phase of their gifted development was accompanied by particular anxieties and conflicts. In adolescence they developed a powerful personal vision, a sense of destiny, and a charismatic personality. Their inability to resolve conflicts about these particular gifted traits led to their most dramatic forms of underachievement and self-destructive behavior.

  When your gifted child disappoints

  This article provides parents advice on how to prepare for the roller coaster ride of parenting.

• Support Materials: Interviews

  Interview with Janette Boazman on character development and the differences in cognitive development between boys and girls

  The following Q&A on character development was written by Janette Boazman, Ph.D., an assistant professor of education and the chair of education at the University of Dallas. Her research focuses on the academic and psychological factors that lead to academic and career success, and to the personal well-being of the gifted and talented in K-12 schools, college, and across the lifespan.

• Talent Development: Creativity

  Exploring and Encouraging Creativity

  This article provides advice on encouraging creativity in gifted students.

• Talent Development: General Talent Development

  Floor Statement of U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley - April 14, 2011

  The TALENT (To Aid Gifted and High-Ability Learners by Empowering the Nation's Teachers) Act is a bill introduced in the House of Representatives by Elton Gallegly (CA) and Donald Payne (NJ), and in the U.S. Senate by Chuck Grassley (IA) and Bob Casey (PA). It is a bill to amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to aid gifted and talented learners, including high-ability learners not formally identified as gifted. Sen. Grassley provided the following floor statement about the TALENT Act.