Emotional Intelligence and Creativity of their Gifted Children: A Summary of CTD's Spring 1998 conference

by Rhoda Rosen

Understanding the Tension between the Cognitive and the Emotional Development of Gifted Children
Dr. Casandra Ma, Staff Therapist and Clinic Coordinator at the Family Institute at Northwestern University, presented a talk that dealt with the kinds of problems that gifted children may encounter or experience when the cognitive portion of their development proceeds at a faster pace than the emotional component of their development. Ma observed that emotional factors are very important in early childhood and stated that studies confirm that cognitive precociousness and intellectual giftedness do not correlate very highly with later life success. Longitudinal studies that have followed academically successful students, like high school valedictorians, indicate that cognitive giftedness does not correspond to later life happiness or productivity. For Ma, it is therefore vital to nurture emotional intelligence alongside cognitive intelligence to produce a confident, self-assured adult who enjoys and is capable of being productive. Ma warned against stressing the cognitive at the expense of the emotional development of the gifted child. She provided ways for parents to identify early warning signs that their gifted child may be struggling to establish emotional security. She also recommended that parents reflect on their potential role in either assisting or inhibiting this vital balance from developing.

Ma identified six emotional factors that researchers know can influence success at school. Parents can assist children to develop these characteristics which can increase or solidify academic achievement:

1. Confidence is defined as the sense of feeling in control of oneself and also as having a sense of optimism. Children who are confident feel as if they can conquer anything; in other words, they feel confident about their ability to succeed.
2. Curiosity is present when a child finds exploring new things exciting and when a child enjoys learning and trying out new things. The curious child does not fear taking risks.
3. Intentionality refers to children who exhibit a desire to have an impact on their environment. Children are intentional when they persist and succeed even when a goal seems out of reach. Indeed, in infants this can manifest literally when parents place something they want out of their reach, and they are able to retrieve it by using a tool to help them. The problem-solving skills children employ to attain their desires indicates a certain intentionality.
4. Relatedness refers to the ability to socially engage with other children. This is found to impact on the success of the child in the school environment.
5. Capacity to communicate is the ability to take in emotional information and to process it and articulate it.
6. Cooperativeness is the ability to balance one's needs with the needs of others.
   
   Ma indicated that in addition to learning academic information and trying to synthesize it with these seven emotional factors, children are also struggling with their physical development. She reminded parents that children have an enormous and challenging task as they receive cognitive, physical and emotional information simultaneously. Children may struggle with the sheer amount of information and may not be able to process each type at the same speed. They may, in fact, be able to process cognitive information more rapidly than information about their or others' emotions or emotional states. Ma suggested to parents that this is particularly important to remember in the case of gifted children because research has shown that a greater percentage of children who are highly gifted exhibit emotional problems. In the normal population, 6 to 16% of children exhibit emotional problems whereas a striking 20 to 25% of gifted children evidence emotional problems. Because of this parents of gifted children may need more support than other parents in dealing with the tensions between cognitive, emotional and physical development.

Ma identified factors that may contribute to the struggle gifted children experience in juggling cognitive, physical and emotional factors. Studies have shown that gifted children have unique information processing skills. When gifted children are taking in information from their environment, their ability to process that information and make some sense of it is different from other children. Gifted children tend to spend a lot more time in problem solving and in analyzing a situation before they draw a conclusion. Their cognitions tend to be much more global in processing as opposed to being concerned with the details of the solution. The students seem to be able to step back and objectively think about the problem at hand and spend a good deal of time trying to understand what the task demands rather than actually doing the task. They tend to make more of novel situations and are often more adaptable and flexible. Also they are more efficient and quicker in processing information.

While these are all wonderful qualities, they can cause dissonance for the child, particularly when the child is placed in a classes with students achieving at a wide range of levels. Often these qualities will be viewed as different by other children. Feeling different can be difficult for many children. In fact, it is not usually until later in development, in late adolescence, that young adults feel sufficiently comfortable with themselves to announce that differences are acceptable to them. For the most part, children feel isolated when they are considered different from their peers.

Gifted children may exhibit stress associated with being different in various ways. Some of the more prominent ways in which they act out their anxiety are:

1. Underachievement: sometimes gifted children will refuse to work well, will manifest low self esteem, will try to hide their talent.
2. Arrogance: sometimes gifted children will recognize their ability early on and will become arrogant and impatient with peers. In the long run, this serves to separate them from their peers and, without proper support, they can have problems in emotional development later on.
3. Alienation: sometimes children who become alienated from other children unconsciously continue to separate themselves from their peers.
   

In addition to the problems that can arise in the classroom context, there are also problems that can emerge from within the child. Gifted children can experience tremendous frustration when they have knowledge but do not yet have the language to describe it or the physical capacities to act on the knowledge. In other words, these children feel infantilized because they either can't get their bodies to do some task or they aren't emotionally ready for something they can understand intellectually.

Finally, gifted children may also experience problems in their relationships with adults. Typically, these children appear older than they are and, because of this, adults often treat them in ways with which they are not able to cope or which do not meet their needs. Often, because adults behave toward them as if they were older, they have a sense of expectations that are way above what they're able to meet. As a result, they may carry an incredible anxiety about pleasing the adults around them. Ma cautioned parents not to treat a gifted five year old throwing a tantrum as if he or she were a ten year old throwing a tantrum because in many cases this leads to inappropriately severe punishment on the part of the parent.

Children, who are treated as older than they really are, often develop a perfectionist complex. With adult expectations placed on them, they do not learn to believe that mistakes are acceptable. This can weigh heavily on the gifted child. The consequence of being treated as if they are older, is that gifted children sometimes develop pseudo-maturity. On the outside they will look very mature and poised. However, it is a false sense of self. Often this returns to haunt children in adolescents when they don't feel centered and haven't learned the skills to be flexible and to deal with frustration.

Ma concluded her talk with some practical suggestions for parents and adults who are helping gifted children resolve some type of inner turmoil. For Ma, the first and the biggest service adults can do for such children is to articulate and label emotions and experiences for them since children may not have the language to understand their feelings. The second thing is to involve children in non-competitive activities so that they participate in enriching, fun and learning experiences outside of school. Extra-curricular activities allow children to explore their abilities when they are not anxious about grades or when they do not feel they have to compete for the teacher's attention It is especially important to find activities with other children who share some of the same interests of the gifted child.

Stimlating Creativity at Home

Like Ma, Carol Morreale, Director of Gifted and Talented, District 67 and President of the Illinois Association of the Gifted, stressed that there was no correlation between cognitive ability and later life success. Whereas Ma stressed that parents should nurture emotional intelligence, Morreale focused on creativity, as a characteristic that also must be supported early on in child development. For Morreale, creativity is among the most fragile of gifts, and also the most difficult to define and to identify. Creativity, particularly in children, may not be seen in their products, but rather in original viewpoints that they express and ways that they perceive the world. Morreale noted that in our society, which is very product oriented, creativity is often dismissed as unimportant. She urged parents not to judge their children's creativity by their products but rather to allow creativity to surface in less obvious ways.

Morreale recommends that parents distinguish between creativity and disorder. She commented that often parents feel that creativity is innate and spontaneous andso they don't actively nurture it at home or provide a structure or discipline for their creativity. They accept any product as "creative". According to Morreale, this will leave a child stranded and creativity undeveloped. She advises parents to help their children find a space at home that is sufficiently permissive for their creativity to be expressed whether in art, music or other areas. They must provide a safe place stocked with materials related to the child's creative interests.

Morreale has found that children who are creative learn to blend in or, as she calls it, to hide out so as to protect their creativity. She is not opposed to this strategy and counsels parents to teach their children how to "hide out" when there is a chance that their creativity won't be appreciated. They must also provide safe spaces for them to explore their creativity.

Morreale warned parents that the number one killer of creativity is external judgment, whether it is positive or negative judgment. According to her, creative people are very internally motivated. They have an inner strength that propels them and is a characteristic that also makes them difficult to parent. They have their own agenda; they know what to do and their internal strength allows them to carry out their plans. External judgment confuses these children and leads to doubt even when it comes in the form of praise. She admonishes parents who monitor their children's creativity too closely. Rather, she recommends leaving them on their own and giving them the space to resolve aesthetic questions for themselves. She points out that when a parent tells a child that they are doing well, often the child will start to produce work in an attempt to please the parent rather than exploring creative avenues for themselves. Instead, she suggests that parents encourage the working process rather than the work. In this way, parents teach students good work habits without influencing the content of their creativity. Morreale suggests parents make judgments such as "I like the way you tried three or four times on this task before you finally found a way to resolve it" or " I appreciate the fact that you worked hard on this project for five hours". For her, statements such as these are far more effective than statements that are enthusiastic about the product itself. In her words, when confronted with originality, "don't watch it, don't judge it, don't reward it".

Morreale's main suggestion for parents was to work deliberately to develop their children's creativity. She suggests limiting TV time in favor of spending time in imaginative discussion with them. She suggests that parents should maintain their own intellectual interests and creative pursuits because role modelling is vital for their children's development. Also, when parents have their own interests, children appreciate the time this affords them to develop their own self-reliance.

Morreale cautions parents against centering their lives around their children. Children who are sheltered find it difficult to solve problems for themselves because their parents are always around to answer questions for them. When children see their parents confront problems, they learn problem-solving strategies. Since problem solving is vital to creativity, she stresses that it is important for parents to nurture this ability in their children. Morreale feels parents must teach their children flexibility, alternative approaches to problems and consideration of many solutions.

For Morreale, the work of childhood is to take risks and to experiment. She wants parents to allow children to explore their creativity and to develop it. She concluded by pointing out that creative children often know early on what they want to do, but adults force them into other activities because they want their children to be well-rounded. She cautions against this and promotes allowing a child to nurture a specific talent as far as the child can take it.

Suggested Readings:
Gardner, H. Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books, 1993.
Goleman, D. Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam Books, 1995.