Personality & Gifted Family Summary
Personalities and Viewpoints Can Be Problematic for Gifted Children's Outcomes
I’ve laid out information about Parenting Styles and Myers-Briggs Personality Type Preferences for both the parents and the now-grown gifted children in my longitudinal study from The 5 Levels of Gifted Children Grown Up: What They Tell Us (2023).
The study includes the topic of viewpoints, that is, how the parent and the child see an issue. For example, the different viewpoints and personalities of the parents have an impact on the way the parents seek out or provide supportive environments for their children. At the same time, sometimes the children see things differently. Even when the children agree with their parents, a mismatch between their personalities can lead to anxiety, stress, and disappointment on one side or the other. And, finally, the effects of socio- economics are considered as an additional factor in outcomes.
The Interaction of Teacher and Parent Viewpoints with Personality Type Preferences
As we see in Tables 13 and 14 (presented elsewhere numerous times), differences in personality type preference between teachers, parents, and students affect the students’ educational experience.
I think this is an overlooked issue far too often.
For teachers, type preference is part of what influences the approach to their design of school lesson plans and their expectations for student behaviors. For parents, too, personality type preference is connected to what they expect for their children’s school behaviors and the teachers’ accommodations for their children. This is significant because support and agreement is more likely between teachers and parents who share similar personality types. When parents and teachers see things the same way, and the child’s type preference aligns with theirs, it is easier for the student, no matter how gifted, to experience school positively and cooperate with the process even when the actual “fit” is not ideal. When parents and teachers agree but the child sees things differently, conflict is likely. When parents do not recognize or understand this, it can lead to great confusion about whether something may be “wrong” with the gifted child rather than the “wrong” is simply with the classroom environmental “fit” for the child. And some parental personality preferences have difficulty seeing the latter as an option.
Another look at Table 13 in 2 parts:
Table 14:
There is Also An Impact of Socioeconomics and Social Capital on What Gets Done for Gifted Children During their school Years
As work continued on putting this book together, it became clear that socioeconomic status (1) and social capital (2) play an outsized role in how highly gifted children “turn out.” To begin with, there is a generational effect that characterizes what is normal or expected within a family. For example, if the family line has the expectation that the boy’s higher education is more important than the girl’s, and if money is in short supply, it will go to the boy’s educational expenses. (This did not happen in this specific study sample; it is just an example.) Or, if the family has “done fine” without a degree or expensive schooling beyond high school, they might assume their children can figure it out on their own, get a job, etc.
On the other hand, if the family believes that success in life depends heavily on good grades, good preparation, and aiming for the most prestigious institutions and careers available, they will do whatever they can to make that possible for their children. Some families with lower socioeconomic circumstances simply don’t have the same kinds of options as families with more secure financial support available. My professional estimate of socioeconomic and social capital categories, listed in the tables and referred to in the narrative, combines the two qualities into one, and they can help readers consider more possible issues for different outcomes. These will be in new posts shortly. Of course, columns in a table cannot tell the whole story; the tables are designed to support the narrative and comments made by the subjects.
In the near future, I will share with readers some examples from the study participants’ responses to interview questions that illustrate the correlations between students, parents, teachers, etc., and how they might react to one another when there is disharmony among the personality types. The subjects describe their experiences with how school was for them, and readers see examples for which personality types among the subjects might see school assignments as “busy work” and pointless and others admit to learning how to please parents and teachers despite not learning much new. Interesting stuff, right?
_____________________________________________________________
1) Socioeconomic status is generally segmented into three standard categories here: High, Middle, and Low. No one in this study group or book has consistently been in the Low range, but such events as a family illness or job loss have impacted the financial abilities and outlook of the families enough that I wanted to differentiate them from the more steadily Middle range. The Middle range, too, is rather wide. Some members graduated with significant debt while others had families who saved and helped significantly because it was that important to them. It affected the financial lives of the parents as well as the children to do so. Ultimately, I entered a family into the High range when the family’s lifestyle was not apparently impacted by the cost of any level of schooling and the children graduated without debt.
2) Social capital is about a parental background that includes an awareness of how the “system” works, i.e., they know how to get their gifted child into a program that they cannot fully afford without financial support and are willing to take those steps. A simple example is about the “money sense” that people with social capital have. They rarely have an outstanding balance on their credit cards because they understand that the money they would pay in high interest rates could be put to better use in the stock market. Few people with good social capital would have children graduating from college with debt because their choices ahead of time would take possible debt off the table and other options (like the first example) would be considered instead.
My Books About Giftedness
The Five Levels of Gifted Children Grown Up: What They Tell Us (2023). https://www.amazon.com/Levels-Gifted-Children-Grown-Up/dp/B0C9SHFRLH or https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-5-levels-of-gifted-children-grown-up-phd-deborah-l-ruf/1143719859?ean=9798988323709. This is an 18 year longitudinal study follow-up about the original gifted child subjects in 5 Levels of Gifted: School Issues and Educational Options (2005, 2009).
Keys to Successfully Parenting the Gifted Child (2023). Keys to Successfully Parenting Gifted Children (2022, 2023)
5 Levels of Gifted: School Issues and Educational Options in 2009. Here are links to the 5 Levels of Gifted book on Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/5-levels-of-gifted-deborah-ruf/1126358834 and Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Levels-Gifted-School-Educational-Options/dp/0910707987 or directly from the publisher: https://www.giftedunlimitedllc.com/store/p12/5_Levels_of_Gifted.html