Independence and Relationship Issues in Intellectually Gifted Adolescents — Part 2

How Parents Can Cope and Support Healthy Outcomes

First of all, your super smart children are still children. They still need your guidance and open conversations between you and them. They simply don’t know what’s right or good for them at this point. So no finger pointing or name calling when they inevitably make some poor choices or mistakes.

Specific — and normal — control issues come up between adults and budding adolescents.

In this post, we touch upon some ways parents, school personnel, and counselors can appropriately guide adolescents toward emotionally healthy friendships, romance, and independence.

Control Issues

Specific control issues contribute to adolescent depression, hostility, or rebellion among the exceptionally gifted. Control is often in the hands of others, not the growing child. This can lead to depression and anger.

One form, inappropriate school expectations during middle and high school, when such expectations are also accepted as necessary by the child’s parents, lead to depression or rebellion on the part of the child; and two, parents who wait too long to begin their child’s path toward independent decision-making and activity can lead the…