Dynamics Between Parent & Gifted Child Personalities
Personality differences can cause schooling behavior problems
As mentioned in another post, N-Intuitives often see rules and norms as good for most people but not necessarily all people. S-Sensing type parents are more likely than N-Intuiting types to value grades and see them as credible proof their child is intelligent and successful.
Many highly intelligent individuals grow up not recognizing how highly intelligent they are because they were led to believe getting good grades is the primary evidence of being smart (Ruf, 1998). In many cases, the people who fall into the “didn’t get good grades” category were gifted children who preferred N-Intuition and P-Perceiver behaviors. Such type preferences tend toward intrinsic motivation (not extrinsic awards like grades), and their reluctance to spend time on uninteresting assignments frequently led them not to do what the teacher asked. For example, they might want to be more creative than is called for. They might not quite believe what the teacher is asking for and they decide that it’s too stupid to do. Needless to say, this behavior often leads to lower grades in most school settings.
The gifted children who would not focus and finish uninteresting and seemingly pointless schoolwork were often diagnosed or assumed to have ADD or ADHD (Attention Deficit Disorder or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and a need for medication and special accommodations to deal with their distractibility or lack of focus (Mullet & Rinn, 2015). Many of the subjects of this book grew to accept and believe they had something wrong with them and failed to consider, even after they had grown up, they might have been misdiagnosed. (1) Gifted students who are extrinsically motivated, those whose personality types often include S-Sensing and J-Judging, will usually complete the same uninteresting assignments anyway.
Parents who know their child is highly intelligent and who believe smart people should always get good grades are likely to push their children to develop habits of academic cooperation and grade-getting behaviors. When the personalities of parent and child are different, especially a Sensing-Judging parent with an Intuitive-Perceiving child, many gifted children in this sample rebelled, argued, dawdled, allowed themselves to fall behind, became depressed, or came to believe either something was wrong with them, or their parents simply did not and would not ever understand them.
Karen Arnold (1993), lead author of Academic Achievement: A View from the Top. The Illinois Valedictorian Project, (2) notes in her introduction, “Academic performance explains very little of the variation in adult career outcomes, however, and grades appear to influence career attainment only indirectly,” (p. 2). And yet the issue of good grades is the crux of the educational matter for many families of gifted children.
Many parents, especially J-Judging parents with children in the first three Levels of Gifted, worry about their child’s seeming lack of motivation and seek professional help to motivate their child. Such parents have difficulty seeing that some children, especially those with some personality type preferences (e.g., Intuiting-Perceiving), are more intrinsically than extrinsically motivated. These children need to see a valid reason for doing an assignment or studying a topic, e.g., how does it apply to them and a preparedness for life? This issue rarely arises when the parents and children share the same or similar personality type preferences.
Table 13 (in two parts) summarizes gifted child behaviors by MMTIC®/MBTI® factors and is specifically related to in-school and parent-child behaviors and motivations.
The next table, Table 14, The 16 MBTI Personality Types, Labels, and Frequencies, introduces the four-letter personality type preferences and descriptive labels for each. Many different sources utilize descriptive labels, and I prefer the ones by Brenda Ellis of www.personalitypage.com. Twenty-nine male subjects and 11 female subjects completed the MBTI® as adults. Going forward in upcoming posts, the narrative includes this information for each subject, with frequencies only mentioned when the rarity is less than or equal to 3.0%. The last two columns in the table show the frequency percentage for each type by sex in the general population and then in the study. Readers will find this a useful tool for understanding the experiences of the now-adult gifted children and their interactions with schools and family.
Another issue related to in-school and parent/child viewpoints and personalities is one that develops during the school years when the gifted child is in an inappropriate educational setting. This common problem area is lack of organizational, time management, and study skills. When the parents believe something is wrong with their children — which most commonly happens when personality types are different between the parents and the child — the children often carry this belief into their adult careers and family lives. In too many cases, parents did not understand, or did not accept, the idea a gifted child could not easily develop attention, motivation, time management, or study skills in a school environment where nothing interesting or challenging was present. Many of the now-grown gifted children still see themselves as failures. They did not receive an adequate explanation about what their lack of focus and motivation in school likely meant because the adults in their lives did not understand it was mostly a lack of good “fit.” The adults either did not recognize the work expected was below their child’s ability level and held no inherent interest for them, or they did not see that as a relevant issue due to their own strongly-held beliefs about school behaviors. And, either way, it matters for the gifted child’s self-concept and emotional health when the parent and child see things so differently.
Fortunately, many of the young adults have now figured out they never had the opportunity to need to study to do well — and therefore gain practice — until they were much older. When interviewed, many of them talked about how they wished they had known earlier how to study and handle “steep learning curves” that occur when an activity, lesson, or school subject is utterly new to them. Many were accused as youngsters publicly, privately, and repeatedly of being lazy, and they continued to see themselves that way. Some lucky ones, those who figured out what happened, spoke about eventually understanding that participating in accelerated, challenging courses as soon as early elementary school, with true peers and good quality teachers, likely would have made a difference in their lives and self-esteem.
I founded my Educational Options consultancy in the late 1990s. At that time, there were more mothers than fathers “in charge” of the educational supervision of their children. All of the now-adult children in this book were born during the mid-1970s to mid-1990s. By the time I ended my consultancy in late 2017, it was almost as likely for fathers to be the initiating parent as the mothers. In later groups, more parents shared the educational support role, but I continued to see that the parent-initiator for assessment and professional help are usually the J-Judging parents.
A final note today on the topic of personality differences is from a 2008 paper (Ruf, 2008, 2011):
By 2004, the overwhelming majority of children brought to me for evaluation were P-Perceiving: 92%. P-Perceiving children are less likely to finish their work or stay on task when they find the work to be tedious or uninteresting than are J- Judging students. To me, this suggested that within the student population, there were many gifted children whose personalities allowed them to cooperate in school even when it contributed to their own underachievement. This meant that parents and teachers were pleased with their behavior and cooperation and such children were seldom brought to specialists for help or guidance or further evaluation because they were “doing fine” in school. After I started speaking and writing about how P-Perceiving behavior in gifted children was worrisome to many parents and teachers, and that there are probably many cooperative but under-identified gifted students out there not having their needs met, more smart children who are cooperative in school started finding their ways to my doorstep for evaluation, the J-Judging children. Now I see a slightly higher percentage of J-Judger children than I used to see.
Notes
1) See https://www.sengifted.org/post/misdiagnosis-and-dual-diagnosis-of-gifted-children
2) For a PDF copy of the study synopsis, go to this link: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED368304.pdf
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
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Great article, Deborah. As an NP myself, I related to everything you described; traditional school starndards were not built for these kids.