Underachievement of Verbally Gifted Children

The termverbally giftedis used to refer to children who have strong language skills. Verballygifted kidsbecome competent in language before other kids their age do. They also perform better on verbal and general information tests and tests of English expression than mathematically gifted children do.

Why Do Gifted Kids Underachieve?

The lack of challenging work, combined with the learning style and temperament of verbally gifted children, can lead to a loss of motivation and the loss of motivation leads to underachievement.

It's often difficult for teachers to understand this about young, gifted children because of what they have learned about child development, primarily Jean Piaget's stages of development. Basically, Piaget did not consider children capable of true abstract thinking until they are around11or12 years old.

Some gifted children, particularly those who are extrinsically motivated, are able to complete whatever work is required for excelling in school. However, the anxiety verbally gifted children feel when they are given one tedious task after another is often more than they can bear.

通常,他们知道的唯一方法应对anxiety is to not do the work at all. They will spend more time trying to get out of doing the work than they would spend if they just sat down and did it.

But sitting down to do the work can produce anxiety as well. Avoiding it and finding novel ways to avoid it not only helps them escape the anxiety but gives them a challenge.

Understanding the characteristics of verbally gifted kids may help adults support them so that they can be successful.

Skills

Verbal skills include the ability to understand language easily. This includes grammar, as well as creative uses of language such as poetry. Learning languages tends to come easily to the verbally gifted and they generally have a good ear for the sounds of a language. The verbally gifted also have the ability to understand and manipulate language symbols like alphabets.

Most people would no doubt say that verbal skills—reading, writing, and speaking—are among the most important skills needed for success inschool. So it seems logical to believe that verbally gifted children are at an advantage since they tend to be good readers and are good with language.

Learning Style

There isn't a ton of recent research on verbally gifted children, but one reason verbally gifted children may be more at risk of underachievement is because of their learning style. These children tend to be holistic or global learners.This means that they want to understand the big picture first and get the details later.

They look for meaning and want to understand concepts and what those concepts imply. They aren't motivated to memorize detail, which is usually what is found on tests, and they're likely to see rote memorization as meaningless.

For example, holistic learners aren't motivated to memorize the multiplication tables. They would prefer to learn multiplication facts in a meaningful context.

However, most schools expect children to memorize the details first. These are the facts that are seen as the essential building blocks of learning. After all, one needs to know multiplication facts before using them to work out problems.

Holistic learners, though, need to understand why the facts are necessary before they will bother learning them. It may seem odd to use math as an example of the problems verbally gifted children have, but remember that this is about learning style rather than subject matter.

It's easy to think that verbally gifted children resist memorizing the multiplication tables because they aren't interested in math or because they have less ability in math than in language, and while that can be true, their resistance can also be caused by their dislike for meaningless learning.

Intrinsic Motivation

Many gifted children are intrinsically motivated. Smiley faces, star stickers, and even good grades aren't likely to motivate them. These children may sacrifice such external rewards in order to work on more appealing tasks, those they find interesting, challenging, and relevant to their lives. It's the challenge they find rewarding, not external rewards. Rote memorization of facts and concrete details is neither challenging nor rewarding.

If these children are not given sufficiently challenging work, they will make it more challenging. For example, they might give themselves time limits when no time limits exist. They may do this even though it means they may risk performing well on an assignment or on a test. Although they could get an A with little effort, they find this type of challenge more inherently rewarding.

Verbally gifted children also tend to be impulsive. When they're impulsive, they don't pay attention to detail; they don't have the patience for it. As early asinfancy, gifted children prefer novelty, which basically means that they need mental stimulation. This preference for novelty makes it very difficult for gifted children to continue working on tedious tasks, and the tasks that are too easy are often tedious for them.

Emotional Temperament

Verbally gifted underachievers can also tend to be high-strung and anxious.Most people might find it hard to understand why a child would resist completing easy work, but when the work is not challenging and a child is not motivated to do it, they can become anxious about it.

In fact, a gifted child can become so anxious when trying to complete what they feel is tedious work that they will just avoid doing it altogether.Unfortunately, many teachers will determine avoidance as a sign that the child doesn't understand the material or is too lazy or disorganized to do it.

It doesn't help that young children might not be able to correctly express the reason for their anxiety. For example, a young child might tell their parents or teacher that the work is just too hard. But the child and the adults aren't using the word "hard" in the same way.

For the adults, "hard" means that the work is beyond the child's abilities or that the child hasn't yet mastered the concepts needed to do the work. What the child actually means, though, is that having to continue working on a too-easy task is causing them a great deal of anxiety.