Set reasonably high expectations for your children but avoid setting them too high. When parents expect too much of them, they are likely to feel anxious and depressed. If parents help their children set moderately high expectations, as they accomplish, they can gradually set slightly higher expectations. They will gradually build confidence with each small success. We don’t want you to steal your children's dreams but you will need to help them temper their dreams with reality. They can set paths toward their dreams, but should recognize they may need to redirect their efforts and can nevertheless have good careers and happy achieving lives.
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Set Reasonable Expectation To Prevent Underachievement
“If children’s expectations are unrealistically high, they will feel like failures even when they achieve success. Furthermore, they are more likely to underachieve."
Sylvia Rimm, Ph.D.
Educational Asssessment Service, Inc.
8120 Sheridan Blvd. Suite C-111
Westminster, CO 80003-6146
www.sylviarimm.com
Email: srimm@sylviarimm.com
Phone: 1.800.795.7466
Dr. Sylvia Rimm is a contributing correspondent to NBC’s Today Show and a favorite public radio personality.
She is also a psychologist, director of Family Achievement Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, and clinical professor at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine. She counsels gifted children and families at Menlo Park Academy.
Dr. Rimm has written the following books:
How to Parent So Children Will Learn and Why Bright Kids Get Poor Grades;
Growing Up Too Fast: The Rimm Report on the Secret Lives of America’s Middle Schoolers;
Rescuing the Emotional Lives of Overweight Children;
Keys to Parenting the Gifted Child;
Raising Preschoolers;
See Jane Win;
How Jane Won;
See Jane Win for Girls.
Co-authored the textbook Education of the Gifted and Talented.
See Jane Win, a New York Times Bestseller, was featured on Oprah Winfrey, the Today show and in People Magazine.
Her newest book is Jane Wins Again: Can Women Have It All? A Fifteen Year Follow Up.
Dr. Rimm has served on the Board of Directors of NAGC and received the Anne F. Isaacs, Robert Rossmiller and Palmarium awards for her lifetime contributions to gifted children.
When gifted children underachieve, it is mainly caused by too high expectations and pressures they internalize. When they fear not being as “smart” as people say they are, they use defense mechanisms to avoid making effort to protect their fragile self- concepts. They may decide that it is better not to study because they are afraid that studying will not bring the hoped for “A” anyway. They are willing to take an honorable “C” without effort rather than risk only a “B” after actually studying.
Parents rarely deliberately set too high expectations for their children. Most parents only want their children to be happy. Because their children are gifted, parents, grandparents and teachers easily praise excessively. Those praise words are internalized and feel to the children like high expectations.
“You’re brilliant! You’re extraordinary! You’ve got the highest test scores that have gone through this school!” Those “est” words like best and brightest can set kids up for the impossible. They may not tolerate competition well. Just knowing “no matter how smart you are, there are others smarter than you” may reassure them that they’re not required to be best at everything. It can become a nice surprise when they do better than they thought. Winning is motivating and exhilarating, but the rules of good sportsmanship apply to academics as well as sports. No one wins all the time.
When adults go to legislatures to request funding for gifted programming, they do and should deliberately set high expectations. They say things like, “These are our future Nobel Prize winners, inventors and heads of state." Those high expectations are set so legislatures will fund gifted programming and are real for total populations.
Parents and teachers have to be careful about how they interpret these expectations to children. They should explain that great progress is made in small steps. People build upon what others have discovered and others will build upon what they have learned and added. Those who win Nobel Prizes are highly intelligent, creative and hard- working people but their discoveries are based on building blocks laid down by earlier scientists. Serendipity or “being at the right place at the right time” is crucial to all major breakthroughs.
Parents and teachers can help students set reasonable expectations. They can say, "We expect you to work hard and do the best you can. When you do the best you can, we will be satisfied and happy with you. There will likely be others who do better than you and those who don’t do as well. You should appreciate and value the strengths and contributions of others. They can energize you toward being a good team member and making your contribution. Of course, it’s normal to feel competitive and disappointed in yourself sometimes, but if you’re persistent, you can make a small contribution to helping our world become a better place and that’s what being a gifted child is mostly about.”