Resilience, Parenting, Siblings, and Gifted Adult Outcomes

Gifted children can turn into insecure, anxious and depressed gifted adults when sibling and other family interactions in childhood make them doubt their value and lovability. It doesn’t take much emotional abuse (bullying by a family member) for a gifted child to believe something is wrong with them, not the bully.

I recently completed a longitudinal follow-up study for The 5 Levels of Gifted Children Grown Up. The book is available now on Amazon, B&N, and Kobo. Because I would have tweaked and added to the book endlessly, I finally had to stop myself and get it published. So, now I am still trying to interpret for myself some of what I discovered in the interviewing and writing about the subjects and can continue to share with readers here and elsewhere.

In the book, which is based on case studies over a twenty year period, I included a chapter on siblings. Having already described parenting styles, personalities, intellectual levels, etc. earlier in the book, I saw patterns emerge. When I had access to more than one child in the family being interviewed for the book, I could learn their different views and experiences.

I personally come from a family with more than one child and I also had and parented more than one child. Because I want to see myself as not a bad person when I was a child…