Social-emotional problems observed in gifted children

Abstract

ABSTRACT. The goal of this paper is to increase awareness related to social-emotional problems experienced by gifted children lacking support systems suited to their needs and to describe solutions to minimize associated risks. The concept of "gifted" is defined and reasons for differences in social-emotional needs of gifted children together with how asynchronous development can be an important factor effecting their social-emotional states are explained. Different problems in this context are then considered, including loneliness, perfectionism, stress, depression and suicide. Finally, discussion and suggestions on social-emotional situations that need further research to ensure that gifted children can become emotionally healthy adults are presented. Keywords 140 SUMMARY Purpose and significance:The main purpose of this paper is raising consciousness about social-emotional problems of gifted children by identifying and clarifying common misconceptions related to these problems. Existing studies emphasize a number of different aspects of social-emotional problems experienced by gifted children, with results seemingly affected by their degree of giftedness. This naturally leads to the conclusion that when the gap between the gifted child and his/her typically developing peers, is very large and common interests are sparse, additional measures must be taken in order to protect the psychological well-being of the gifted child.

The Predictors of Gifted Students’ Resilience: Self Esteem, Peer Relationship and Parental Attidutes

“…Accordingly, it is seen that the number of studies on disadvantaged individuals (Bumpus, 2014;Eminağaoğlu, 2006;Er, 2009;Kidd & Shahar, 2008) is higher than studies conducted with gifted individuals (Chen vd., 2017;King, 2009;Kline & Short, 1991). In our country, the variables of self-esteem (Albayrak-Dengiz, 2014;Altun & Yazıcı, 2012;Büyüktaşkapu-Soydan & Kabar, 2020;Olgun-Kaval, 2014), parental attitudes (Afat, 2013), peer relations (Erol, 2015;Oğurlu, 2010;Özbey et al, 2020), emotional intelligence (Koçak & İçmenoğlu, 2012), communication skills (Koç, 2015), and social emotional problems (Saranlı & Metin, 2012) of gifted students were examined in researchs. However, in Turkey, there is one research (Uçak-Azboy, 2020) on the resilience of gifted children.…”

“…Chen vd., 2017;King, 2009;Kline & Short, 1991) oranla daha fazla olduğu görülmektedir. Ülkemizde ise, özel yetenekli öğrencilerde benlik saygısı (Albayrak-Dengiz, 2014;Altun & Yazıcı, 2012;Büyüktaşkapu-Soydan & Kabar, 2020;Olgun-Kaval, 2014), ebeveyn tutumları (Afat, 2013), akran ilişkileri (Erol, 2015;Oğurlu, 2010;Özbey vd., 2021), duygusal zeka (Koçak & İçmenoğlu, 2012), iletişim becerileri (Koç, 2015), sosyal duygusal sorunlar (Saranlı & Metin, 2012) değişkenleri araştırmalarda ele alınmış olsa da, özel yetenekli öğrencilerin psikolojik sağlamlığına yönelik yapılmış bir araştırmaya rastlanmış (Uçak-Azboy, 2020), bir araştırmada da özel yetenekli bireylerin ailelerinde psikolojik sağlamlığın incelendiği görülmüştür (Kahvecioğlu, 2016).…”

“…There are two opposing views on the psychological well-being of gifted children, that talent enhances children's resilience and increases vulnerability (Neihart, 1999;Neihart & Yeo, 2018). It is thought that psychological resilience is the feature that will help gifted children to cope with social-emotional problems such as perfectionism, stress, loneliness, and depression, as stated in the compilation study by Saranlı and Metin (2012). In this study, a gap was tried to be filled by examining the effect of internal and external protective factors in resilience.…”

An Investigation of the Relationship between Social Behavior Characteristics and Self-Perceptions of Gifted Children in Primary School

“…However, it is seen that only a limited number of studies to determine the psychological needs of gifted children has been conducted in our country. In these studies, it was noted that social skills (Elcik & Bayındır, 2015), perfectionism (Toplu, 2013), self-perceptions (Altun &Yazıcı, 2012;Tokmak, 2016), psychological counseling needs (Doğan & Kesici, 2015;Sürücü, 2013) and behavioral problems (Gür, 2011;Saranlı &Metin, 2012) of gifted children were among the issues investigated. When literature was reviewed, although there were some studies on the selfperceptions and social behaviors of children with normal development, no research was found that addressed the self-perceptions and social behaviors of gifted children in Turkey (Cerrahoğlu & Balcı-Çiçek, 2017;Tazeoğlu, 2011).…”

Gifted Students' Purpose in Life

“…They feel a need for a more challenging education, an introduction to different subjects, problem solving and creative thinking skills, and unique approaches to solutions for problems. Gifted students need to ruminate on their ideas, discuss them, think using possibilities, abstractions, and metaphorical strategies; to generalize and test them [8]. Gifted students who do not receive an education based around their characteristics and needs tend to achieve below their potentials, and once their sense of competence has weakened, which is to say when they are unable to realize their purpose in life, considering how a large portion of contribution to society comes from these people, it's apparent that overlooking this group can lead to a negative outcome [9].…”