The present study challenges the popular notion that overly controlling or restrictive parenting is the primary pathway to academic achievement for Chinese Americans. Although traditional Chinese values require parents to make good choices for their children by supervising and asserting strict limits using guǎn (safeguarding) and jiào xun (demandingness of excellence), such parental duties do not preclude the use of autonomy support or noncoercive discipline to promote children’s academic success. In this study, we examined the processes or mechanisms underlying the linkages between parental autonomy support, emotion-related self-regulation, adaptive skills, and academic achievement in 92 Chinese American adolescents (mean age = 16 years, SD = 1.4) and their first-generation immigrant parents. Study results indicate that parental autonomy support and emotion-related self-regulation are both promotive factors in adaptive and academic competencies. We propose that guǎn (管), or safeguarding, and jiào xun (教訓), or demandingness of excellence, represent parental strictness-supervision, which when counterbalanced by autonomy support, could be considered the yin and yang in parenting that promotes adolescents’ academic success without harming their social–emotional or psychological well-being.

This article presents a self-report inventory, the “Emotion Scale”, conducted on the basis of Dabrowski’s theory (1964) to understand the emotional development of the gifted. Two subscales, “Emotional Functions” and “Emotional Cognition” were included with 26 items. The coefficients of internal consistency (Cronbach α =.769), stability(.657~.769) and the expert validity(.714~1.000) were well reported. The formal study included 123 mathematically gifted students and 132 regular students from senior high schools in Northern Taiwan. The participants were administered with three instruments: “The Emotion Scale”, “The Me Scale” (OEs Scale), and “The Basic Personality Inventory”. The research findings indicated that the gifted students had better emotional adjustment than the regular students on three scales. There was positive correlation (t=.33, p<.01) between the score of emotion development and the intellectual OE but negative correlation (-.14, p<.05) between the score of emotion development and Emotional OE. The significant negative correlation (-.49, p<.01) between the score of emotion development and the score of Basic Personality Inventory was also found. Through the Stepwise Regression analysis, the researchers found the intensive emotional Over-excitability(EOE) significantly predicted personal maladjustment. Teachers and parents of the gifted are suggested using “The Emotion Scale” and “The Me Scale” to understand the emotional needs of their students/children and provide at-risk students/children with differential guidance and counseling.

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