Resilience, Parenting, Siblings, and Gifted Adult Outcomes
Resilience, Parenting, Siblings, and Gifted Adult Outcomes
Gifted children can turn into insecure, anxious and depressed gifted adults when sibling and other family interactions in childhood make them doubt their value and lovability.
Gifted children can turn into insecure, anxious and depressed gifted adults when sibling and other family interactions in childhood make them doubt their value and lovability. It doesn’t take much emotional abuse (bullying by a family member) for a gifted child to believe something is wrong with them, not the bully.
In the book, which is based on case studies over a twenty year period, I included a chapter on siblings. Having already described parenting styles, personalities, intellectual levels, etc. earlier in the book, I saw patterns emerge. When I had access to more than one child in the family being interviewed for the book, I could learn their different views and experiences.
More than a year after the release of the The Five Levels of Gifted Children Grown Up: What They Tell Us (2023), I created a trilogy - a series of smaller, stand-alone books - where readers can choose the topics that most interest them and that isn’t hard to carry around. This post is from the 3rd book in the newer series. In this post, I refer to the chapters from The Five Levels of Gifted Children Grown Up: What They Tell Us (2023).
I personally come from a family with more than one child and I also had and parented more than one child. Because I want to see myself as not a bad person when I was a child or a parent, this topic was hard to write about because my own life fit the possibly harmful behaviors I was seeing!
In many cases, the child who seemed to be the center of attention at some point in his or her life eventually saw their “pedestal” position diminish as a younger or higher achieving or otherwise “flashy” or “taking up all the space in the room” problematic child started to receive favorable attention. In many cases, parents simply love all their children and want to be sure they are giving equal attention to each one. And of course there are parents who favor one child or are nasty or expect too much of one child or another. It’s complicated. It is true, too, that the oldest child is the only one who truly has the full attention of their parents at some point, except perhaps the “tag along” child born much later.
In families with a star student or super gifted youngster, things can get out of whack fast. Competition can be between parents and children as well as between siblings or cousins.
The siblings chapter was absolutely the hardest chapter for me to write and acknowledge. I hope it helps parents and people in general to see how to recognize and change the paths they are on.
Writing a book, especially later in life after living through many decades myself, led me to look at a variety of possible explanatory pieces to the picture of how similarly intelligent and talented gifted children turn out quite differently from one another. At the time of the interviews, the 60+ gifted individuals from the original 78 in the earlier book, 5 Levels of Gifted: School Issues and Educational Options (2005, 2009) were in their twenties to forties for the 2023 follow up book.
As my book study subjects answered the questions I posed to them about their backgrounds and current lives and views, I saw that personality types (as with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®) seemed to be connected to how they saw and behaved in the world. Their own personalities affected them, of course, but so did the different personalities of their parents, siblings, and teachers. I also got clear evidence that personality types can change over time and may be in reaction to making things in their lives work better for their situation and life at the time.
I wondered about “resilience,” too, and started to read some primary research as well as speculative commentary about resilience. My question was,
“Why is it that some people seem to do fine in life even though they suffered through similar problems (war, poverty, bullying, less-than-ideal parenting, etc.) as their friends or siblings?”
So, this is part of what I found while doing my book writing (quoted from Chapter 9, Stages of Personal Development: Theories About How People Develop Their Viewpoints and Beliefs):
In the mid-1990s, psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun developed a theory similar to that of Dąbrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration (TPD). Called Post-traumatic growth (PTG), it holds that people who endure psychological struggle following adversity can often see positive growth afterward. A peer-reviewed study led by An, Ding, and Fu (2017) focuses on the Personality and Post-traumatic Growth of Adolescents 42 Months after the Wenchuan Earthquake and, much like Dąbrowski’s initial focus on growth differences during wartime, it discusses what makes some people grow after experiencing trauma.
This is all related to the concept of resilience and the variety of ideas surrounding the learned acquisition of resiliency skills while recognizing individuals will vary in their responses.[i]
The American Psychological Association (APA) website describes resilience this way:
Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands. A number of factors contribute to how well people adapt to adversities, predominant among them:
· the ways in which individuals view and engage with the world
· the availability and quality of social resources
· specific coping strategies
Psychological research demonstrates that the resources and skills associated with more positive adaptation (i.e., greater resilience) can be cultivated and practiced.[ii] And this is good news!
And lest anyone think they already have all the answers about what resilience is, there was a 2022 Call for Papers from the American Psychological Association (APA) entitled “Rethinking resilience and post-traumatic growth: The promise of multidisciplinary perspectives in understanding adaptive responses to adversity.” This particular “call for papers” is an indication that experts still don’t have all the answers for many things related to human beings because each person is unique in their own way. What is best for one person may not work out as well for another person. Further, what might cause harm in one person may not turn into an issue for another.
How does all of this apply to families?
I’m still thinking out loud. In Chapter 10, I write about differences in the outcomes from members of the same family by interviewing and asking about the subjects’ siblings. Experience, maturity, stages of development, and the circumstances surrounding each person during their different passages and stages of life to where they are now has a certain predictability to it throughout the gifted range. At the same time, some subjects stand out as more or less resilient, and the sample of people in the study corresponds with current research: some people are more resilient than others and we don’t completely know why.
For some more background on resilience, see Fleming & Ledogar (2008) for a scientific literature review of why some people are more resilient than others from the effects of trauma. Additionally, Karestan C. Koenen, PhD, a professor at Harvard’s School of Public Health, studies why some people develop PTSD and related mental and physical health problems and why some people are resilient when exposed to similar traumatic events. She investigates how violence, trauma, and PTSD alter long-term physical health and accelerate aging. Here is what she said about whether or not resilience is genetic:
We all know people that are just very even-tempered,” she said. “Some of that is simply how we’re built physiologically.” Yet it isn’t true that some people are born more resilient than others, said Professor Koenen, “That’s because almost any trait can be a positive or negative, depending on the situation.
I agree with Professor Koenen and report it in the Siblings chapter.
Eileen Zimmerman, an investigative health journalist, interviewed numerous researchers for a June 2020 New York Times article on what causes PTSD and what is more likely to make a person resilient. She wrote this in the summary of the article:
An individual’s resilience is dictated by a combination of genetics, personal history, environment, and situational context. So far, research has found the genetic part to be relatively small.
While thinking about how to describe the people in the book and their journeys so far, I had to look for patterns related to some factors. What showed up finally for me was that in families with two or more children, if anyone experienced depression, anxiety, and lower self-esteem, there was a sibling who did not experience those same mental health issues to the same degree, if much at all. In fact, the child who didn’t appear to have anxiety or depression was often the one who was hard on the child who did experience those negative effects. So what’s going on?
This uneven result, the mental health outcome, seems to relate to one child competing with or being hard on, bullying or teasing the sibling who ended up thinking they simply weren't as worthy and capable as the other. A recent resource on the topic is this article: https://thriveworks.com/help-with/children-teens-adolescents/golden-child-syndrome/
In the above article, the dynamics between siblings aren’t discussed at all. Yes, parents play a role but sometimes it isn’t any more significant as the role the siblings play. So, what’s a parent or other caring adult to do?
One-on-One Time with Each Child and Each Parent
Some years ago, George Betts of the University of Northern Colorado talked about an annual tradition he had in his family. I now recommend it to families as a matter of course. I call it the “once-a-year, one child-one parent trip.” When each child reaches age 5, each parent plans a one-day overnight driving trip for just him- or herself and one child. This means Mom takes each child on such a trip once a year and Dad takes each child once a year. Here is what it looks like in action:
Ideas for “The Annual Trip”
During the years when your children are young, share in the planning with them. Select a city or town or region within about a three to five hour driving range. It should not be fancy or expensive. Ask your child to investigate where you are going by finding out who settled the area, how old is it, what kind of industry do they have, what form of local government, has anyone famous come from there, and so on. Then, plan the route and bring in math calculations such as figuring gas mileage, speed limits, when and where to stop for snacks (Eat at local ma-and-pa places, not chains so you get a real sense of the area). Parents talking “directions” to young children can really help them learn about orienteering skills, map reading, and clues for figuring out which way to turn.
During your time in the car, don’t use any media except the folder (seriously, use a folder, not a device) of your trip plans. Conversation will flow or not, but nothing will come between you and your child. No headsets or earphones or entertainment or distractions besides the two of you and your trip. Do this every year. By the time your children are teenagers, even if they seem to hate you at that point, they will expect and look forward to their trip alone with you. The best part? You even get to have this 24-hour experience after they’re grown up and off on their own.[iii]
References
[i] See https://www.apa.org/topics/resilience
[ii] See https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/amp/rethinking-resilience-posttraumatic-growth
[iii] From Ruf, D. (2022, 2023). Keys to Successfully Parenting the Gifted Child. 5LoG Press. Available through www.fivelevelsofgifted.com.
My current published and coming books about the gifted:
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
Environmental, Familial, and Personal Factors That Affect the Self-Actualization of Highly Gifted Adults: Case Studies (D. Ruf, 1998) doctoral dissertation. Free PDF https://dabrowskicenter.org/ruf
Losing Our Minds: Too Many Gifted Children Left Behind (Oct. 2024). Available now on both Amazon and B&N.
Follow this link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DL3BSC9X or this link: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/losing-our-minds-deborah-ruf/1146410968?ean=2940185888872
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