True or false?

• Some people are born gifted, and others are not.
• You can tell who will be gifted from early on.
• Gifted children should be labeled and praised for their brains and talent.

All of these statements are accepted by many as true. However, as evidence has accumulated over the past decade, another view has been gaining credence that portrays giftedness as a more dynamic quality that can grow or stagnate. With this outlook comes a shift in emphasis from how to identify gifted children to how to cultivate giftedness and talent—a change in focus from measurement psychology to cognitive and motivational psychology.

Genius and great, creative contributions are the product of passion, learning, and persistence.

Gifted People Are Made, Not Just Born

More researchers are regarding motivation as the key ingredient for exceptional achievement. Their work suggests that creative genius itself grows out of the ability to sustain intense commitment for extended lengths of time in the face of obstacles. They tell us that many well-known geniuses—Edison, Darwin, even Einstein—were ordinary bright children who became obsessed with something and because of that obsession ended up making enormous contributions.

Mozart, whom we think of as composing in early childhood, did not produce original and noteworthy works until after more than ten years of non-stop composing; Beethoven talked about long periods of time when he carried his musical ideas within him and revised them over and over in his head before he started writing them down. Studies of other musical performers reveal a similar pattern. Brilliant pianists and violinists are different from their promising peers in their devotion and practice—not in their natural talent.

Researchers who study creative genius have debunked the idea that full-blown creative contributions emerge effortlessly or naturally from talented and gifted individuals. Instead, they suggest that genius and great, creative contributions are the product of passion, learning, and persistence.

Mindsets

So, what makes some people more passionate, learning-oriented, and persistent than others? Through 30 years of research and collaboration, I have found students’ mindsets—their beliefs about the nature of their intelligence—play a key role.

Some students believe that their intelligence is a fixed trait. They have a certain amount and that’s that. When students have this fixed mindset, they worry about how much intelligence they possess, and they are often afraid to make mistakes and reveal inadequacies. Gifted children with fixed mindsets may worry that they do not have enough intelligence to meet future challenges or that future events might prove the gifted label to be undeserved. Thus the fixed mindset creates a framework in which students feel they must prove over and over that they are smart and avoid situations in which they might look otherwise.

Other students have a growth mindset. They believe that their intelligence can be developed over time through their effort and learning. They do not believe necessarily that everyone has the same intelligence or that anyone can be Einstein, but they do believe that everyone can learn and become smarter. Thus the growth mindset creates a framework in which students focus their efforts, not on looking smart but on becoming smarter.

How do we measure the mindsets? Mindsets are assessed by asking students to rate their agreement or disagreement with statements like: “You have a certain amount of intelligence, and you really can’t do much to change it” (fixed mindset) or “No matter who you are, you can change your intelligence a lot” (growth mindset). In general, we find that about 40 percent of students tend to agree with the fixed mindset items and 40 percent tend to agree with the growth mindset items, with the remaining 20 percent having no clear choice.

Which mindset is correct? Although some argue the stability of intelligence, increasing evidence from cognitive psychology shows that basic components of intelligence can be enhanced, while neuroscience is demonstrating the tremendous plasticity of the brain over the lifespan.

Alfred Binet, the inventor of the IQ test, had a very strong growth mindset. He believed that intelligence could be fundamentally altered by education, and he devoted most of his career to designing curricula that would do that. He devised the IQ test simply to identify students in the Paris public schools who were not profiting from the schools’ current curriculum, so he could find ways to get them back on track. He never intended his test to be used to measure anything fixed.

What the Mindsets Do?

The two mindsets create entire motivational frameworks. In these, students have different goals, attitudes about effort, and reactions to difficulty or setbacks.

Goals. In the fixed mindset, the major goal students have is to look and feel smart. They agree with statements like: “The main reason I do my schoolwork is to show I’m good at it.” Our research has shown that when students with a fixed mindset confront a challenging task, one on which they might make mistakes or reveal deficiencies, they often opt out. This happens even with important learning experiences and skills that are critical to their future success.

For students in a growth mindset, the major goal is to learn new things. They say “I like school work that I’ll learn from even if I make a lot of mistakes” and “It’s much more important for me to learn things in my classes than it is to get the best grades.” They care about grades, but learning is foremost.

Attitudes toward effort. Students with a fixed mindset often believe that effort is a bad thing. They believe that if you need effort, it means you have low ability. They agree with statements like: “To tell the truth, when I work hard at my schoolwork it makes me feel like I’m not very smart.” If they have ability, they believe, all things will come easily. This is extremely harmful, since all important things—especially the development of talent—require sustained effort. For students with a fixed mindset, effort is aversive. Their number one goal is to look and feel smart, and effort makes them feel dumb.

This is undoubtedly a reason that many very bright students stop working when school becomes difficult for them. Earlier in school, they coasted to high grades with little exertion. Indeed, the fact that they needed little effort, when others had to work hard, often becomes the definition of their giftedness. Then, things change. They need effort to do well, just like the other students did. Many such gifted students decide that they would rather retire while they are ahead than step down from the pedestal and step up the effort.

However, students with a growth mindset see effort as a good thing and as a tool for learning and becoming smarter. They say, “The harder you work at something, the better you’ll be at it.”

Reactions to setbacks. Students in a fixed mindset believe that setbacks measure them and reveal their (permanent) deficiencies. As a result they become discouraged and defensive, withdrawing their effort further. They are also more likely to consider cheating. Students in a growth mindset understand that setbacks mean that they must engage in the learning process more vigorously, ramping up their effort and looking for new study strategies.

Performance over time. Tracking students’ performance over difficult school transitions, in difficult courses, and on difficult tasks shows that the fixed mindset impedes learning and achievement, whereas the growth mindset fosters them.

How Are Mindsets Learned?

One way that children learn a fixed or growth mindset is through the praise they are given. Most parents believe that praising children’s intelligence or talent will build their self-esteem and their resilience. Our research shows that this belief is wrong. Instead, praising intelligence creates a fixed mindset with all of its vulnerabilities.

In a series of studies we gave students an IQ test and after the first set of problems, we praised half of them for their intelligence and half of them for their effort. We then gave students a choice of what to work on next. Intelligence-praised children wanted tasks that would insure their success; effort-praised children wanted hard tasks that they could learn from.

After a setback, intelligence-praised children lost their confidence, interest, and ability to perform well. Their scores plummeted. Effort-praised children remained confident and engaged, showing better and better performance on the IQ test.

After the task, the intelligence praised children lied about their scores, because difficulty and setbacks were too threatening to admit. Effort-praised children told the truth. The moral is that telling children how smart they are backfires. Instead, we need to praise the process that children engage in—their effort, strategy, concentration, perseverance, and improvement.

Can Mindsets Be Changed?

Yes. In our own studies and those by other researchers, students in workshops were taught that the mind is like a muscle that gets stronger with learning, and that the brain forms new connections every time they apply themselves and learn something new. After growth-mindset workshops, students showed a greater value for and enjoyment in learning, more motivation in the classroom, and higher grades or achievement test scores. Many students who had been turned off to school or who were defensive about effort now opened themselves up to learning. Their peers in the control groups, who also had excellent workshops—but did not learn the growth mindset—showed no such gains.

We have developed and are now testing an interactive computer-based workshop called “Brainology,” in which students learn about the brain, its great potential for growth, and how to maximize its function and development. Students report that they visualize their neurons growing new connections as they learn, and this spurs them to work hard and learn new things.

Conclusion

The word gifted can have a fixed-mindset feel. It suggests that intelligence or talent is simply bestowed upon children through no effort of their own and, by extension that it should flourish through no effort of their own. I am seeing a record number of students who fear that if they work hard, make mistakes, or have deficiencies they will no longer be seen as gifted.

Parents and educators need to work to send a different message: that intelligence and talent are developed through passion, learning, and persistence—and that they value those traits, not “natural,” effortless perfection. They must convey that challenges are fun, effort is satisfying, mistakes are welcome clues, and even failures can put people on the path to success. When they do, they will shift the meaning of gifted from something children just have to something they have the opportunity and the privilege to develop.
—Carol S. Dweck, PhD

Carol Dweck is regarded as one of the world’s leading researchers in the fields of personality, social psychology, and developmental psychology. She is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Heraclitus wrote, “Our own nature hides from us, but wants to be found.” Do you remember moments in your life when you asked “Who am I?” Perhaps you were interacting in a social situation in which you realized you didn’t fit, reflecting near a river or in your place of faith, or talking to someone you love. The self was somewhere that you needed to discover, and you sensed a primal drive to find it.

Parents, teachers, caregivers, and mentors are the most important guides in the child’s journey.

The Nurture the Nature parenting philosophy uses the rich outcomes of contemporary brain, genetic, and personality sciences to help parents guide their children to feeling connected to who they are and their core nature. This parenting philosophy helps adults help children develop gifts, skills, talents, successes (and survive failures) and is based on a constantly developing clarity regarding a child’s core personality, who the child is. This philosophy is gift-centered rather than lack-oriented, and it runs counter to the social trends and pressures that seem to rule parenting today (i.e. “Your child should be or do ______________ or he or she won’t succeed.”)

The Nature of a Child’s Gifts

Contemporary science, especially genetics and brain research, shows us that at least these seven aspects of our children (and ourselves) are more hard-wired, or inborn, than we may have realized:

• personality traits,
• gender traits,
• talent areas,
• learning styles,
• mood and behavior patterns,
• stress responses, and
• emotional and relational styles.

One child’s map for these aspects of self is different than another’s, and begins to unfold from within. None of our children are blank slates at birth. Ten, twenty, and thirty years ago science and social science researchers assumed that nurture and socialization were 90 percent of what makes children into the adults they become. Now we know at least 50 percent of the child’s future is inborn.

How does this change parenting? Exploring this new (and perhaps quite ancient) truth about children is not “biology as determinism.” Nature does not at birth decide what journey the child will make. Parents, teachers, caregivers, and mentors are the most important guides in the child’s journey. But in the wake of new scientific information, our big question now as parents and friends to children need no longer be: “What should I do to mold the child into what I and the society think he or she should be?” It can now be more liberating and lead to even more success for children: “How can I best nurture the actual nature of my child for success in the world?”

To start on this journey, check out Table 1 "Discovering and Nurturing Your Child's Nature" adapted from Nurture the Nature below.

Table One

Social Trends and Externalized Parenting

Do you worry about any of the following questions?

• Is my child’s life overscheduled?
• Am I spending all day taking children from one class, rehearsal, workout, team practice, and social event to another?
• Is my child obsessed with the computer, video games, television, cell phones, text messaging, blogging, or other electronic addictions?
• Does my child have a materialistic sense of entitlement that cripples his or her ability to fully mature and find purpose and meaning?
• Do I live in a constant anxiety that as a parent I am failing one or more of my children?

These questions often grow from a social-trends parenting system that has evolved over the last decades—it is media and society driven, externalizing the locus of control for child-raising away from parents’ instincts about their own children’s nature. Social-trends parenting pressures parents and other caregivers into paying so much attention to social fads and experts that the nature of the individual child gets lost. Parents and kids become convinced they need to do many activities (and perhaps nearly all of the following) to be “complete” and “well-rounded”: play the piano, develop dance skills, play one or more sports, learn at least two languages, be strong readers, and become adept at computer skills! New brain research shows that this kind of pressure is causing both parents and children to experience ongoing symptoms of chronic stress, including anxiety and other similar disorders, which are increasing exponentially in children and parents. Along with the increase in anxiety, we are seeing increased violence and aggression. Among the many reasons for these increases are the anxiety and stress both parents and children feel as they face a constant sense that children are failing to live up to external expectations and must fiercely compete.

Have you noticed any of these stress-causing social trends or myths in your family or community?

1. Children are born as a tabula rasa, or blank slate, without a core nature to guide their own development.
2. A parents’ job is to engrave on the slate, to input the necessary training and information, and to create a child with the necessary characteristics that contribute to success in life.
3. In order to fulfill the parents’ expectations, children’s daily experiences must be constantly packed with lessons and activities that will prepare them to excel in a scarcity-based view of a highly competitive world.
4. Children will not reach their success potential as adults unless they become alpha high achievers in all or most groups they get involved with.
5. The most successful adults are people who were, as children, extroverted and assertive.
6. Criticizing a child will most often damage his or her self-esteem.
7. Talking about feelings with children (and getting children to talk about theirs) is the most important thing parents can do.

Understanding Your Child’s Core Nature

What would happen in every family if we “turned off” the myths, the external pressure, and the craziness and let our children develop within our stable homes? What if we turned off the electronics for a week and let each child be bored—what activities would our children gravitate toward? What great self-discovery might occur if we went on a long trip with each eleven- to fourteen-year old child, tuned out “the world,” and asked, “Who do you feel you are becoming?” “Who are your heroes?” “What do you think you are good at?” “What gifts do you want to pursue in your life?”

Many parents have enjoyed this sort of activity, or rite of passage, for their early adolescents. They have asked their pubescent children to encounter themselves away from the world, and ask, “Who am I?” Many of these same parents have kept a journal for six months prior to the rite of passage. As they share alone-time with their early adolescent, they share their journal about what they think the child’s inherent gifts and strengths are.

Nurturing the Nature of Your Eleven-to Fourteen-Year-Old

The Rite of Passage is just one thing you can do to nurture the nature of your eleven- to fourteen-year old. Other tips include:

• Discover with your child three or so key activities—one academic or intellectual (this could be good school performance, homework, etc.), one social activity (this could be Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, Faith-Community activities, or student government), one physical activity (this could be athletics, just getting good exercise, or spending time in Nature).
• Carry on debates and meaningful discussions at family meals, on topics such as current events—ask your child’s opinion and ask him or her to back up the opinions.
• Permit self-esteem to rise and fall. Self-esteem rises and falls constantly during puberty. It’s okay for your child to become down; it’s okay for him or her to get criticized by peers; it’s okay for self-esteem to fall. As long as the child learns new skills, new adaptations, his or her self-esteem will rise again in the way and time that fits your particular pubescent child’s identity.
• Retain the role of the mother, but strengthen the role of the father. The father’s role often needs to be increased in the pubescent age group. The mother’s role is not diminished, but pubescent children with active fathers do better, in general, than those without them. Fathers and healthy male mentors have a certain way of caring for, disciplining, and challenging the natural, hormonal fire inside a pubescent child.

Moving Forward with Purpose

Ultimately, every girl and boy seeks to live a life of purpose and meaning. Some meanings are drilled into our children, some they learn by rote, some they gain from tradition, and some they must discover within themselves. The Nurture the Nature philosophy respects each of these, and makes both the science-based and intuitive assumption that in each child is a path to purpose, a map for meaning, waiting to become the self-motivating driver of each child’s life. Each child desperately needs attentive parents, educators, and mentors to push, prod, organize, discipline, and guide the self to fruition, but each child also needs down time, self-reflection, internal maps, and a way for inward nature to be found that grows from the child’s own gifts, and nothing external, nothing else but the child’s own nature shining through.

Getting to know the “nature” of your child can be like a treasure hunt. We look into our children’s eyes and wonder, “Who is he?” “Who is she?” and we begin searching for clues. Some clues are obvious. The physical child can show up in observations such as: “Wow, my kid is so athletic,” or, on the other hand, “My kid hates team sports and needs to be pushed into even exercising.” Personality traits of your child can be obvious: “My kid is always the leader of the pack, totally extraverted.” Or: “My kid is really shy. I worry that he or she will never have friends.” The treasure hunt of learning your child’s genetics and neural way of being also includes hundreds of not very obvious traits, at least not at first. We all need help in noticing these hidden clues and finding these riches.
—Michael Gurian and Dakota Hoyt

Michael Gurian, a family therapist, is the New York Times bestselling author of twenty books published in twenty one languages. He is co-founder of the Gurian Institute, which researches internationally and provides pilot programs for schools, parents, and communities.

Dakota Hoyt, an educator and Gurian Institute Certified Trainer, is a coordinator of the institute’s parent development programs, including its school and parent newsletter programs. Dakota has been a professional educator for thirty years, advocating throughout the country for strong parent, child, and school relationships.

For many teenagers, fitting all their activities into a 24-hour day and getting enough sleep is an impossible dream. For their parents, rousing their teens every morning so they get to school on time is a big challenge.

In fact, a recent survey by the National Sleep Foundation showed that only 20 percent of teenagers report getting the optimal 9 hours of sleep on school nights. While sleep experts recommend that teenagers get 8.5 to 9.25 hours of sleep each night, almost half of teens surveyed report getting less than 8 hours per night—with the amount of sleep teens get declining each year; seniors in high school report getting 6.9 hours of sleep on average. Often they make up for this sleep deprivation on weekends by sleeping in; however, this type of irregular sleep pattern can contribute to a shift in sleep phase and make waking up on school days that much more difficult.

Only 20 percent of teenagers report getting the optimal 9 hours of sleep on school nights.

Causes of Sleeplessness

Why does sleep become such a problem in adolescence? For many reasons, including a reduction in parental oversight and increased academic workload. Extracurricular activities such as clubs, sports, or after-school jobs and social distractions that often invade the bedroom (Internet, instant messaging, cell phones, televisions, and video games) cause teens to delay study time until later in the evening.

On top of that, the teenage body is changing. The onset of puberty produces a sleep phase delay so that teenagers find it difficult to fall asleep until 11 p.m. or later, and then find it very difficult to get out of bed in the early morning. The fact that most high schools in this country start before 7:30 a.m. only increases the likelihood that as the school week progresses, students are accumulating massive amounts of sleep debt.

Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Academic Performance

Chronic sleep deprivation causes daytime sleepiness, which is most problematic during periods of low stimulation like sitting at a desk. It also leads to fatigue, making it difficult for teens to initiate or persist at certain behaviors. The National Sleep Foundation research shows sleep deprivation can impair the following brain functions that directly affect learning and school performance:

• the ability to pay attention
• verbal creativity and communication skills
• creative problem solving
• mental sharpness
• adaptive learning and problem solving that involves the combination of new learning with previous knowledge in order to solve problems
• overall mood and motivation, including increased irritability, low tolerance for frustration, and increased aggressive behavior.

Studies also show that new learning is consolidated through sleep. Thus, students who cram for tests by staying up late the night to study actually do worse than those who get a good night’s sleep the night before an exam.

What Can Parents Do?

Parents of teenagers are up against a number of obstacles if they decide that improving the sleep habits of their children is a priority. The most important developmental task of adolescence is to become an independent adult, and this is done, in part, by resisting parental authority. At a time when youngsters are seeking less supervision from their parents, few will accept having bedtimes dictated to them. Nonetheless, parents can help their children develop good sleep hygiene, by:

• Educating them about the impact of insufficient sleep, not only on academic performance but in other realms that are important to teenagers, such as athletic performance and motor vehicle safety.
• Looking for signs of sleep deprivation, such as increased irritability, difficulty concentrating, falling asleep within five minutes of going to bed, and sleeping through the alarm clock. Under no circumstances should parents allow anyone in the family to drive when sleep deprived or drowsy (drowsiness or fatigue causes over 50,000 traffic accidents each year when drivers under the age of 25 are at the wheel).
• Keeping electronic equipment out of the bedroom or enforcing a shut-down time during mid-evening. Establishing a schedule that includes quiet, relaxing activities in the half hour before bed.
• Making sure the sleep environment is suitable for sleeping—keep light and sound to a minimum. Caffeinated drinks, large snacks, or heavy exercise in the hours before bed also result in sleeplessness.
• Trying to keep bedtime and wake-time schedules constant on both school days and weekends.
• Monitoring the use of naps to combat sleepiness. Short naps (20-30 minutes) are the best way to improve alertness. Long naps can result in grogginess and interfere with nighttime sleep.
• Being a good role model by practicing good sleep habits themselves.

What Can Schools Do?

• First of all, advocate changing the start time for high schools. Bus schedules and after school activities, including sports and employment, often make school administrators reluctant to look at this option. Since schools in the Minneapolis area pushed back their school start time several years ago, other districts around the country have started exploring this option. The National Science Foundation reports that individual schools or districts in 19 states have delayed start times, and more than 100 school districts in 17 other states are considering similar changes.
• Build units on sleep hygiene and the dangers of sleep deprivation into the curriculum of high school health classes. Driving drowsy is dangerous, and driver education classes should inform students about the dangers and prevention of driving while sleepy.
• Communicate with parents about the importance of good sleep habits. An ideal time to raise the importance of good sleep habits for children is during school open houses, which generally take place early in the school year. Articles in school newspapers, notices in parent bulletins and on the school Web site can educate the entire school community about the importance of sleep and its central role in strong academic performance.

—Peg Dawson, EdD

Peg Dawson is a psychologist at the Center for Learning and Attention Disorders in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

A summary of From Aspirations to Action: The Role of Middle School Parents in Making the Dream of College a Reality, by Alisa F. Cunningham, Wendy Erisman, PhD, and Shannon M. Looney. A report by the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP), December 2007, with support from The Sallie Mae Fund

Many families of middle-school students...are not sufficiently aware of postsecondary education options.

Despite good intentions, few parents of middle-school children are taking the actions needed to ensure their children can attend college, says a national survey of 1,800 parents of sixth through eighth graders. From Aspirations to Action: The Role of Middle School Parents in Making the Dream of College a Reality notes that while nine out of ten of the parents surveyed expect their child to go to college, almost half of those parents did not report taking any of the college planning actions asked about in the survey.

Preparing for, applying to, and paying for college is not easy, states the report, so parents are key to helping their children navigate this complicated process. However, many families of middle-school students, especially families in which neither parent attended college, are not sufficiently aware of postsecondary education options. This lack of “college knowledge,” especially among parents with lower educational levels or from historically disadvantaged backgrounds, leaves students at risk of not preparing properly for college.

From Aspirations to Action grouped survey results into four areas: aspirations, college knowledge and planning, academic preparation, and financial preparation.

Aspirations

Nearly nine out of ten parents (87 percent) expected their child to go to college; less than one percent did not. Most parents (75 percent) said that a college degree is necessary to get ahead in today’s world. Not surprisingly, parents with higher levels of educational attainment were more likely to expect their child to attend college, while those who did not graduate from high school were less likely to have this expectation and more likely to say that college enrollment would be the child’s decision.

College knowledge and planning

Even though middle-school and high school students consistently cite their parents as a major source of support in high school course selection and college planning, more than 45 percent of parents did not report taking any of the planning actions mentioned in the survey. This percentage was even higher for parents who had never attended college. If they had begun to plan at all, parents were most likely to say they had started saving money, but only 34 percent had done so. Less than 20 percent of parents said they had taken steps such as researching colleges, meeting with teachers or counselors, and looking into the college admissions process—all critical parts of the college enrollment process.

More than a third of parents (37 percent) reported having no sources of information on college preparation or admission. The IHEP survey did show that when asked about their actual sources of college information, parents most commonly responded that they used family and friends, followed closely by the Internet. Counselors, teachers, books, and media lagged behind these resources but were mentioned by around a quarter of respondents.

As expected, parents with higher levels of education were more likely than those with lower levels of education to have access to a wide variety of college planning information sources. The gap was particularly large in the case of the Internet. More than twice as many parents with graduate degrees reported using the Internet to find college information than those with less than a high school diploma. Hispanic parents were also less likely to use the Internet for college information. Given that the Internet is rapidly becoming a critical source of information on college admissions and financial aid, this digital divide is a matter of concern.

Academic preparation

Parents were fairly realistic about when their child should start taking classes to prepare for college, with 66 percent saying in the ninth grade and only about 2 percent saying that classes should start later. More than 80 percent of all parents felt that they knew what classes their child needed to take, but the survey did not test whether parents’ knowledge was accurate. In addition, parents with lower levels of education were less confident about what classes their children should take.

Financial preparation
Two-thirds of parents had not started saving for college, and about a quarter had not taken any financial steps to prepare for college. Of all parents, 37 percent reported saving money and 30 percent reported cutting back on spending. Parents with higher levels of educational attainment were more likely that those with lower levels of education to save for their child’s college education—55 percent of parents with a graduate degree had started saving, compared to only 22 percent of those without a high school diploma.

Overall, 38 percent of parents believed that they have the primary responsibility for paying for college, while 43 percent believed that responsibility was shared with their child. Most parents were aware of financial aid in a general sense, but 11 percent could not name any type of aid. Only 11 percent of parents in the survey said they had started to research financial aid. Parents who are disadvantaged were least likely to know about aid.

Comprehensive approach needed to early college planning

From Aspirations to Action concluded that motivating parents to become actively involved in early college planning will require a comprehensive approach that combines outreach efforts, curricular changes, and increased program support at all levels, including students and families, high schools, colleges, state and local governments, the federal government, and the private sector.

The report recommends several actions to help parents and middle schoolers attain their dream of a college education. First, parents must begin to plan financially for college at an early stage. They need to understand their financial choices and the potential future benefits. Parents of elementary and middle school students should become aware of what it costs to attend area colleges. Financial institutions, schools, and other organizations should educate parents about financial aid programs.

Secondly, schools and counselors must reach out to parents and students to explain which courses are necessary for college and why it is important to plan for college. Information about college options should be a standard part of any life skills curriculum taught in middle and high school, and schools should offer college-planning workshops to parents well before students begin the application process. Current early intervention programs should continue and be expanded and new programs established, with increased funding from government, school districts, colleges, financial institutions, and the private sector.

Finally, the report’s authors propose that Congress should support the Success in the Middle Act of 2007 (H.R. 3406), introduced to offer federal support to improve the education of middle school students in low-performing schools. The act would authorize $1 billion a year for formula grants to states to provide grants to local school districts. One of the act’s mandates for recipients would be to inform students about high school graduation and college admissions requirements.

Intervention program case study included

From Aspirations to Action also compared the survey results with a case study gathered from an early intervention program called Kids to College (K2C), which brings together low-income middle-school students with staff and students from local colleges and universities. Data from surveys given to students before and after their participation in the K2C program affirm the IHEP report conclusions that early intervention can motivate and inspire middle-school students and parents to prepare and plan for college. Acquiring that “college knowledge” earlier, rather than later, in their children’s educational careers will allow parents to more easily achieve their ultimate goal—a college education for their children.
—Debra Bell Geiser, BS

Freelance writer and editor Debra Bell Geiser holds a bachelor of science degree in agricultural journalism from Iowa State University. She is the mother of a seventh grader enrolled in a talented and gifted program and lives in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

The study of gifted children's imagination was part of a larger investigation into their inner world as I described in "Mellow Out," They Say. If I Only Could: Intensities and Sensitivities of the Young and Bright. Gifted children were asked: What are your special kinds of daydreams and fantasies? How precisely can you visualize events, real or imaginary? With what sense or senses do you feel the most pleasure?

Didn't everything the human race created first exist in someone's mind?

Responses to these and related questions suggest that imagination operates either as a free play of the mind or as focused, purposeful activity. The degree of absorption in the imagined experience is important, because it can be so complete that all the senses are fully engaged. For this reason it is called imaginal, because it can be experienced as quite real.

Imagination

Free play: fantasy, daydreams, inventions

"I like to think about things not many people do. Like what will hydrants look like in the future." [Girl, 13]

Purposeful: visualization, imaginary companions, imaginary worlds,
problem-solving through analogies and metaphors

[I can visualize] "very precisely. I do visualize it, too, with a sort of narrative along with the visuals. Real events are like a photograph, I can dissect and examine at length what happened in seconds. [Boy, 17]

The same boy also said:
“I enjoy visualizing imaginary events because I have control over the small details. If I imagine a person, for instance—I can see the eyes, their color, size, etc., everything."

Absorption

Absorption in thought, image, or experience

Imaginal: engagement of all five senses—"as real as real"

Absorption in an imagined experience:

[I can visualize] "pretty well, sometimes it seems like I can touch what I'm thinking about." [Girl, 13]

When all five senses participate, the experience becomes "as real as real." All the sensations are created internally while the outside input is partially or completely shut off.

[I imagine myself] “riding a strong, huge, white horse on a beach cantering full speed, riding so close to the ocean that the water splashes my face as the horse runs.” [Girl, 13]

One may have the experience of merging with an object or a sensation:

"I like tasting cold water (irrigation water) after working hard bailing hay in the hot sun....I am 'merged' with the experience in a total way, like I become nothing but the taste of cold water." [Adult male]

Images are generated in the sensory cortex. In excellent imaginers sensory areas become as active as in actual experience in outer reality. To the brain they appear the same but we don't know by what power the minds of the imaginers can produce the "as real as real" experience.

Adults tend to tolerate children's imagination as playful fantasies with no foot in reality. They tend to think of "imaginary" as “not real.” Entering school ushers a child into a world of overwhelming insistence upon external "reality." And yet, why can’t what is imagined be real as well? Didn't everything the human race created first exist in someone's mind?

We take imagination for granted when we look for a solution to a problem or need an idea for a creative project. We just let our imagination produce them. But some solutions to problems and some creative ideas are so unexpected that they stand out as truly original. What are the signs of rich and original imagination? Children and adults with excitable imagination tend to produce interesting images and metaphors, they tend to ask "what if" questions that are more about possibilities than about how things work; they like fantasy play and like to invent stories. Because of their rich imagination some children are happy to play for hours by themselves.

Many children have invisible friends (imaginary companions) but gifted children tend to have more of them. A child's invisible friends are best accepted with tolerance. This is a child's territory and is carefully guarded.

Some children assume the character of an animal or an object (for example, Peter Ustinov as a boy used to become a car). In character children often refuse to answer to human speech and resist being called out of their alternate existence. All frustrated parents can do is call upon their reserves of patience.

Children need their own private space, both physical and imagined. Some invent elaborate worlds of their own. These worlds can be quite realistic or quite unusual. Often they are developed in collaboration with siblings or friends.

Gifted children who become absorbed in their inner reality face the criticism of "spacing out." They prefer their own way to organize their memory, make designs, test their inventions, etc. They prefer to learn by discovery, and this fits poorly into the regimented school day.

Respecting children's imagination and deep absorption in their own self-constructed reality allows them to unfold their potential in a natural way.
—Michael M. Piechowski, PhD

Michael Piechowski is a Senior Fellow of the Institute for Educational Advancement and Professor Emeritus at Northland College and a contributor to the Handbook of Gifted Education and the Encyclopedia of Creativity.

Foundations for Success
The Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel

The Mathematics Advisory Panel, created by President Bush in 2006, was charged with making suggestions to improve America’s math education and student achievement using the best scientific evidence available. In their report, Foundations for Success, the panel calls on the U.S. secretary of education to “take the lead” in implementing the report’s recommendations and working with the diverse groups that play a role in student success, such as local and state school personnel, parents, textbook writers and publishers, test development organizations, teacher preparation programs, etc.

The report focuses on Algebra proficiency and states that it relates to success for citizens in college, graduate or professional school, and their careers. Furthermore, the nation’s safety, economic health, and international competitiveness rely on a workforce that is well-educated in Algebra and further mathematics. In order to achieve improved student performance in Algebra, the report contains the following six “Principal Messages.”

• The mathematics curriculum in grades pre-K–8 should be streamlined and should emphasize a well-defined set of the most critical topics in the early grades.
• Use should be made of what is clearly known from rigorous research about how children learn, especially by recognizing a) the advantages for children in having a strong start; b) the mutually reinforcing benefits of conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, and automatic (i.e., quick and effortless) recall of facts; and c) that effort, not just inherent talent, counts in mathematical achievement.
• Our citizens and their educational leadership should recognize mathematically knowledgeable classroom teachers as having a central role in mathematics education and should encourage rigorously evaluated initiatives for attracting and appropriately preparing prospective teachers, and for evaluating and retaining effective teachers.
• Instructional practice should be informed by high-quality research, when available, and by the best professional judgment and experience of accomplished classroom teachers. High-quality research does not support the contention that instruction should be either entirely “student-centered” or “teacher-directed.” Research indicates that some forms of particular instructional practices can have a positive impact under specified conditions.
• NAEP and state assessments should be improved in quality and should carry increased emphasis on the most critical knowledge and skills leading to Algebra.
• The nation must continue to build capacity for more rigorous research in education so that it can inform policy and practice more effectively.

Thanks to vice chair Camilla Persson Benbow, Dean of Education at Vanderbilt University and a leading researcher in gifted education, the report contains specific recommendations for mathematically gifted children, which follows:

Teaching Mathematically Gifted Students

The Panel’s review of the literature about what kind of mathematics instruction would be most effective for gifted students focused on the impact of programs involving acceleration, enrichment, and the use of homogeneous grouping. Although many syntheses and summaries of research in these areas have been conducted, our searches yielded surprisingly few studies that met the Panel’s methodologically rigorous criteria for inclusion; thus for this section we relaxed these criteria to fulfill the charge of evaluating the “best available scientific evidence.” The Panel could formulate its recommendations only on the basis of one randomized control trial study and seven quasi-experimental studies.

These studies have limitations. For instance, motivation is a confounding variable, just as it is a selection criterion for being considered a candidate for acceleration. The Panel’s key findings are the following:

• The studies reviewed provided some support for the value of differentiating the mathematics curriculum for students with sufficient motivation, especially when acceleration is a component (i.e., pace and level of instruction are adjusted).
• A small number of studies indicated that individualized instruction, in which pace of learning is increased and often managed via computer instruction, produces gains in learning. Gifted students who are accelerated by other means not only gained time and reached educational milestones earlier (e.g., college entrance) but also appear to achieve at levels at least comparable to those of their equally able same-age peers on a variety of indicators even though they were younger when demonstrating their performance on the various achievement benchmarks.
• Gifted students appeared to become more strongly engaged in science, technology, engineering, or mathematical areas of study. There is no evidence in the research literature that gaps and holes in knowledge have occurred as a result of student acceleration.

In the case of gifted (or academically advanced) students who are advanced in their skill and concept attainment and can learn new material at a much more rapid rate than their same-age peers, it is the professional judgment of those in gifted education that they need a curriculum that is differentiated (by level, complexity, breadth, and depth), developmentally appropriate, and conducted at a more rapid rate.

Support also was found for supplemental enrichment programs. Of the two programs analyzed, one explicitly utilized acceleration as a program component and the other did not. Self-paced instruction supplemented with enrichment yielded the greater benefits. This supports the widely held view in the field of gifted education that combined acceleration and enrichment should be the intervention of choice.

Recommendation: Mathematically gifted students with sufficient motivation appear to be able to learn mathematics much faster than students proceeding through the curriculum at a normal pace, with no harm to their learning, and should be allowed to do so.

There is a need for more high-quality experimental and quasi-experimental research to study the effectiveness of interventions designed to meet the learning needs of gifted students. Especially vital are evaluations of academically rigorous enrichment programs.

It is important for school policies to support appropriately challenging work in mathematics for gifted and talented students. Acceleration, combined with enrichment, is a promising practice that is moderately well supported by the research literature, especially when the full range of available literature is considered.

The full report is available at: www.ed.gov/MathPanel.
—Bobbie Collins-Perry

“Principle Messages” and “Teaching Mathematically Gifted Students” reprinted from: National Mathematics Advisory Panel. Foundations for Success: The Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, U.S. Department of Education: Washington, DC, 2008.

A developmental molecular biologist with an avid interest for how the brain takes in, organizes, and retains information, Medina’s products introduce non-scientists to the brain science behind his brain rules in an easy to understand format.  And he enthusiastically provides suggestions for putting his principles to work to create an inquisitive, thriving brain. His goal is to help adults and children alike enhance their brain’s natural curiosity and capacity for learning in order to excel in work, school, and life.

Dr. Medina’s 12 brain rules and some of the implications for student learning follow.

1. Exercise: Exercise boosts brain power—he states that sitting at a desk in a classroom (or cubicle) is a sure way to dull the brain’s powers. He suggests integrating movement into the learning environment.
2. Survival: The human brain evolved, too—students may not perform well if they feel misunderstood, disconnected from the teacher, or fearful.
3. Wiring: Every brain is wired differently—just as students vary by body type, so do their brains vary in the way they encode and use information.
4. Attention: We don’t pay attention to boring things—emotional states that accompany learning enhance the brain’s recall. In addition, the brain can not attend to two higher-level tasks at the same time, so it cannot pay attention in class and work on the computer simultaneously.
5. Short-term Memory: Repeat to remember—repetition is important for recall, but the timing and particular strategies used to repeat information to be learned are crucial for short-term retention.
6. Long-term Memory: Remember to Repeat—Similar to the principles of repeating material for short-term memory; Medina postulates that by repeating information in class home work might be eliminated, if teachers and scientists got together to implement effective practices to convert short-term to long-term memory.
7. Sleep: Sleep well, think well—Sleeping actually consolidates the days learning and naps improve cognition as well.
8. Stress: Stressed brains don’t learn the same way—Long-term stress reduces the brain’s memory, concentration, mathematical abilities, and language processing.
9. Sensory Integration: Stimulate more of the senses—Learning, problem solving, and memory improve when education is participatory and other stimuli are present.
10. Vision: Vision trumps all other senses—memory and learning improve when images are combined with language.
11.  Gender: male and female brains are different—Although research has not shown how learning behavior is affected, male and female brains do function differently.
12.  Exploration: We are powerful and natural explorers—humans have an inborn desire to learn and explore from babies throughout adulthood.

On its own, www.brainrules.net uses audio, text, graphics, and video to provide a concise and friendly summary of Medina’s key theories and suggestions on how to strengthen the brain’s capacity. In combination with the book and DVD, it reinforces Brain Rule #5—Repeat to Remember. Check out Brain Rules to start flexing you and your child’s brain muscles now!
—Bobbie Collins-Perry

Parenting gifted children socially and emotionally presents a challenge and causes sane and balanced adults to squirm, wonder, pace, and otherwise exhibit anxiety. No one tells unsuspecting parents of gifted children that in order to raise their children there is an unwritten requirement that they function at a totally honest and authentic level of self-awareness. Our gifted offspring stretch us, the adults in the family, to look at aspects of ourselves that we’d prefer to keep hidden. This is an uncomfortable fringe benefit of being their parents. Parents of gifted children must continually reflect on their actions and be sure that they are parenting with regard to the child’s needs not their own.

Parents of gifted children tend to have a propensity for overprotection.

One particular pattern of parenting—overprotective parenting—leaps out when observing parents with their gifted children. Parents of gifted children tend to have a propensity for overprotection. After all, a parent’s primary role and responsibility is to protect the child from physical, social, emotional, or any other harm. So, how do well-meaning parents mess up the equation and skew the social emotional development of their child?

The Nature of the Gifted Child

The intense and sensitive nature of gifted children is well documented and these characteristic traits are at the root of the posturing of parents in overprotection mode. Barbara Clark lists the following affective traits of children with advanced abilities:

• “unusual sensitivity to the expectations and feelings of others,
• a heightened self-awareness is accompanied by feelings of being different,
• idealism and a sense of justice is developed at an early age along with
• an earlier development of inner locus of control and satisfaction,
• advanced levels of moral judgment, and
• high expectations of self and others. (These high expectation can often leads to high levels of frustration with self, others, and situations.)
• an unusual emotional depth and intensity and sensitivity to inconsistency between ideals and behaviors.”

Parents can find it difficult to watch these bright, sensitive, and aware individuals striving so hard at a very young age to realize their potential and struggling with these traits.

Quite understandably parents of children with the traits listed above, who are so quickly and deeply wounded, would need to automatically and unconsciously step in to relieve the pressures, discomfort, and hurt of their children, especially because these children readily turn their highly developed critical thinking abilities (resulting from high levels of intelligence) inward upon themselves without much prompting.

Intensity Plus Sensitivity

The intense nature of gifted children is explained by Linda Silverman in terms of overexciteabilities, and she claims that these children “come equipped with supersensitive nervous systems which enable them to assimilate extraordinary amounts of sensory stimuli.” Creatively gifted children perceive more details in situations, others, and themselves. These traits predispose them to interact with passion and compassion which may lead to forming deep attachments and intense commitments to people or ideas; these feelings bring with them a level of persistence that can result in gifted children being hurt repeatedly.

Parents of gifted children witness their deeply committed, highly empathic children repeatedly taking risks and being raked over the coals often with extreme emotional reaction and upset. Parents might jump in and fix the situation based upon their own needs not their child’s. This most harmful unconscious reaction of overprotection is the exact opposite of what needs to happen.

Highly empathic gifted children seem to know what others feel and to actually experience the feelings within themselves; unfortunately, this is especially true of intensely negative feelings. This may lead to these children to be unable to set interpersonal boundaries and cope by either withdrawing or trying to make other people happy. Both of these responses can lead them to disassociate from themselves or withdraw from others.

These two traits, intensity and sensitivity, which provide the gifted child with the ability to experience life deeply and genuinely, also can become twisted and distorted when combined with inadequate adult guidance.

Overprotection

Michaal Thomas and W. Peter Metz discuss two types of overprotective parents—the indulgent parent and the controlling parent. The indulgent parent-child relationship is characterized by a guilty, anxious parental attachment to the child. As the child becomes more independent, setting limits becomes more difficult for the anxious parent who has unresolved feelings of guilt or grief that continue to resurface. Parental guilt can then be overtaken by anger. The parent suddenly becomes punitive toward the child, with a shift from overly indulgent to overly controlling and demeaning behaviors. This shifting behavior is terribly confusing to the child. Parents need to understand how their own unresolved anxiety over limit- setting impacts their children. It is vital that parents get help to develop consistent and effective behavioral strategies to use with their children.

The controlling parent-child relationship is characterized by a parent who is highly supervising and vigilant, who has difficulties with separation from the child, and who discourages independent behavior. Sometimes it is the child’s traits that cause negative interactions to occur. The child’s role in either initiating and or maintaining an overprotective relationship may consist of an inherent temperamental vulnerability, such as excessive shyness or a heightened emotional response to the environment which elicits increased vigilance from the parent. Or the child may respond to the anxious, controlling parent in a submissive manner, with depression and anxiety disorders emerging later in life, when the parent is no longer immediately available. Other children may respond to overprotection with defiant behavior which results in the parents redoubling their efforts to control.

The parent contribution to this equation involves overprotective behaviors that may be in response to previous unresolved traumas in the parent’s life—leaving the parent with a view of the world as an unsafe place. When parents are not fully conscious and aware of their own anxiety and unresolved social-emotional issues they may respond with overregulation of their children’s lives and activities or a guilt-laden anger or a hostile attachment to their child. Any of these may interfere with the parent’s ability to recognize the child’s separateness and can cause social-emotional disaster for the gifted child.

Another scenario includes the family system perspective. Usually a history of a distant, uninvolved spouse is discovered when evaluating families in which one parent is overprotective toward the child. Often (but not always) this is the father, who has minimal direct interaction with the growing child, leaving the mother to address the issues of separation and individuation. The work of parenting is shouldered by one individual, whose energy and tolerance for daily stresses are depleted, setting the state for anger and hostility toward the child. Once again unresolved aspects of previous relationships (between the parents) are repeated within the parent-child relationship instead of between the child’s parents or caregivers.

Parents must be able to modify their protective behaviors based on the environment and the child’s developmental level. The environment can contribute to the development of an overprotective parenting style, too. Detrimental school environments can be disastrous for the gifted child. If parents have to go to extremes to get the required, appropriate educational services for their gifted child with over-the-top advocacy, an unnatural situation results, which the gifted child’s radar is primed to absorb. When the gifted child witnesses and overhears parents pointing out errors made by teachers, principals, and school districts this provides too much power to that child as the natural order or balance of roles is askew. Parents must be careful to modify their protective behaviors resulting from their advocacy efforts. Such flexibility can be difficult for a highly anxious parent responding to internal danger cues.

Avoiding Social-Emotional Disaster

Intuitive children pick up on more of the hidden social-emotional states of their parents.” Many gifted children, who are intuitive, introverted, and intellectual, are at risk when parented inappropriately by overindulgent or over-controlling parents who rescue them at every turn and fail to allow them the opportunities to learn from their own mistakes in a safe supportive environment. Parents and teachers need to understand the fears and anxieties surrounding issues of safety for both parents and children and to promote age-appropriate autonomy and independence for the children.

Protection of your gifted child is essential. But be sure that the protection you are offering is based upon their needs and developmental level not your own unresolved emotional issues. Are you, as a parent of a gifted child, meeting your own needs or the needs of your child, if you continually rescue or remove him or her from negative social emotional consequences or involve your child in the projections arising from your own personal fears and worries? If you recognize your parenting style described herein, guidance and help are available. Many books have been published which provide insight into parenting sensitive and intense children. Major issues or concerns are best left to professional counselors and therapists. They can provide assistance if the impact of negative parenting styles has reached harmful levels and can help your family develop healthy parent-child interactions.
—Debra A. Troxclair, PhD

Debra Troxclair is assistant professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.

Remember the nasty note passed around at school or the mean graffiti scrawled on the bathroom wall? Bullies and mean girls are still in school classrooms, hallways, and playgrounds; they just can use new digital tools to be cruel now. Cyberbullying is the term most people use to describe bullying another person via e-mail, instant or text messaging, comments on webblogs or in online video games, or postings to Web sites or chat rooms. What’s different is that cyberbullying can be much crueler, often happens on public internet sites, and can spread virally.

Fortunately, cyberdrama is a lot more common than extreme cases of cyberbullying.

In many ways cyberbullying has democratized bullying because you don’t have to be able to physically overpower your victim—a person can simply log on, create a new identity, and bully away. Cyberbullying is mostly relational bullying, or the “mean girls” phenomenon gone digital. Instead of whispers behind teens’ backs, the insults are posted for everyone to read. Instead of one girl silently listening in on a phone conversation, two girls can watch incriminating IMs from an unsuspecting “buddy” pop up on a computer screen. Instead of a clique not letting a girl sit with them at lunch, a group of friends can decide to keep her off everyone’s buddy lists. Teachers and parents may never suspect that it’s the well-behaved or high-achieving students who may be tormenting their peers. Cyberbullies are often known for being the teens who would be least suspected of these behaviors.

Nancy Willard, the executive director of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use, describes the most common tactics used in cyberbullying:

Flaming: Teens will flame each other with a nasty instant message, text message, or e-mail that uses harsh language or profanity, usually in the heat of the moment as part of an argument.

Harassment and cyber stalking extend beyond flaming when the messages become more frequent and escalate into being obsessive.

Impersonation involves stealing an individual’s password and hijacking that person’s online account or creating an account as someone else to either flame others or humiliate the person you’re impersonating.

Denigration involves statements meant to put another teen down circulated by texting, IMing, or posting to public Web pages or profiles, for example “Janie is a such-and-such.” This also happens a lot on rating sites where teens are ranked as the “ugliest” or other undesirable trait.

Outing happens when a teen shares another’s secret online without permission, such as posting a potentially damaging photo or disclosing sexual identity without the subject’s knowledge.

Because cyberbullying often happens on public sites, the stakes are much higher for both the bully and the bullied. There have been expulsions and lawsuits filed over MySpace pages dedicated to ridiculing students, teachers, or administrators or YouTube videos showing teens fighting and being beaten up.

Communicating digitally makes it easier to be a lot meaner, since teens can’t see the people they’re bullying, their emotional response, or the look into their eyes. And just like chain e-mails and urban legends spread prolifically, so can humiliating or explicitly-detailed hidden camera video or photos. Teenagers can use technology to broadcast text or images to hundreds of people in a simple click..

Fortunately, cyberdrama is a lot more common than extreme cases of cyberbullying. Cyberdrama tends to be gossip that wasn’t supposed to be shared on a blog or a flame war that ends after a few messages. Most teens are savvy about telling each other to cut it out, will block a user, or even open a new account, if necessary.

If your teen is the victim of more extreme cyberbullying, save every message, image or sound file, or Web page as documentation should you decide to build a legal case. If your teen doesn’t know who is behind the cyberbullying, contact the Web site host, instant messaging client, wireless company, or your Internet service provider where the bullying behavior is taking place to find out who is responsible.

Just as teens don’t like to tell parents or other adults when they’re being bullied offline, the same goes for extreme cases of cyberbullying. They fear that if they tell, their parents will cut them off from using the Internet. The best way to encourage open dialog with teens about cyberbullying is to grant them amnesty—tell them you won’t take the computer away, even if they’re involved in the bullying (there can be a different consequence).

Most importantly, when you are teaching your children ethics, be sure to add the “cyber” aspect to this discussion. Remind them that the Internet is a public place, that information (good or bad) can spread virally, and that kids can be crueler online than face-to-face. Teach them never to record hidden camera video or images. You don’t have to be a computer whiz to do what parents do best—teach your children how to treat others with respect and dignity.
—Anastasia Goodstein, MSJ

Anastasia Goodstein is the founder of Ypulse.com and author of Totally Wired: What Teens & Tweens Are Really Doing Online, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2007

The Duke Gifted Letter asks Paul Beljan about pediatric neuropsychology, how it differs from school and educational psychology, and how and when families can benefit from a practitioner’s expertise.

DGL: What is pediatric neuropsychology?

The outcomes are happy children with high self-esteem, positive relationships, and unlimited futures.

Beljan: The American Board of Pediatric Neuropsychology (ABPdN) defines pediatric neuropsychology as a specialty within the field of psychology and related health-care sciences. The emphasis in pediatric neuropsychology is the study and understanding of brain-behavior relationships specifically in children with known or suspected brain injury. A pediatric neuropsychologist uses special tools and assessment devices to test children and to determine their strengths and weaknesses across the domains of executive functioning and attention, learning and memory, language, sensory and motor abilities, and visual and spatial abilities. Although the definition specifically cites children with known or suspected brain injury, the reasons to obtain the services of a pediatric neuropsychologist go well beyond brain injury.

Understanding the brain-behavior relationship is a key to understanding all human beings. For children, however, brain behavior is not evaluated in isolation from their environment and family unit. In other words, pediatric neuropsychology looks at the whole child in relation to cognitive functioning and the impact of nature and nurture on their development. This is commonly known as the biopsychosocial model. A pediatric neuropsychologist has advanced clinical training to understand the dynamic developmental changes of a child's brain and how behavior quickly evolves during the child’s rapid periods of development. The child is not seen as a static entity. These dynamic changes and the knowledge of appropriate developmental phases helps pediatric neuropsychologists identify what is considered a deficit versus normal behavior and development.

DGL: How does a pediatric neuropsychological assessment differ from school psychology or a psycho-educational assessment?

Beljan:  Pediatric neuropsychology is drastically different than educational psychology. Whereas the pediatric neuropsychologist looks at the origin of learning skills and motivation in the brain, the educational psychologist focuses on assessment outcomes and behavior. In my experience, most educational psychologists function as school psychologists, who are most commonly known for administering psycho-educational evaluations.

A psycho-educational evaluation generally is a determination of the child’s intellectual and achievement abilities. For years Public Law 94-142 (originally known as the Education of All Handicapped Children Act) mandated that psychoeducational testing be used to determine which children receive services for learning disorders and how that would take place in the least restrictive environment. The law also heralded the advent of what became known as the discrepancy model. A child can meet the discrepancy model in either of two ways:

1. The child’s intellectual score is 1.5 standard deviations (approximately 22 points) above their achievement test scores.
2. The child is functioning two grade levels below grade placement based on achievement test scores.

Unfortunately, Public Law 94-142 handcuffed school psychologists from rendering an accurate clinical diagnosis of learning disorders. The discrepancy model is not a clinical diagnosis of learning disorders. It became a means of ‘drawing a line in the sand’ and determining that children on one side of the line received special education services, while children on the other side of the line did not. Many children who have learning disorders such as phonological dyslexia or dyscalculia never met criteria for the discrepancy model rule and were denied services. Public Law 94-142 was re-authorized in 2004 with the advent of No Child Left Behind legislation (and renumbered PL 108-446). Now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), it eliminated the requirement to use the discrepancy/achievement model; however, many states still use the original laws’ guidelines to identify students with learning disabilities to determine which students receive services.

A pediatric neuropsychologist determines the presence of a learning disorder based on its neuroanatomical and neuropsychological antecedents without considering the discrepancy model. For example, reading is a language-based ability and does not conform to the discrepancy model rule or the normal bell curve. Therefore, to determine whether or not a child has a learning disorder for reading without testing that child's language abilities is problematic and can be considered unethical given that the correct science is widely available.

The outcome of using the discrepancy model to determine who receives specialized educational services or accommodations can be devastating to an individual’s educational, career, and interpersonal future. For example, during an assessment with a gifted teen, “John” was upset because he obtained only a 75th percentile score on his PSAT. John was distraught because he earned top grades, studied hard and wanted to attend an Ivy League college. He knew his score had been lowered by his need to keep re-reading the passages during the Comprehension portion of the test so did not have the time to answer all of the questions about the passage.

Neuropsychological test results revealed John had an IQ of 138 and basic reading and spelling scores at the 130s. On a reading comprehension task, however, John obtained scores at the ninth percentile. He was able to answer some multiple-choice questions about comprehension, but he could not relate comprehension information on his own. On tests of phonological processing and language expression, it was discovered that John had a phonological processing deficit and expressive language disorder.

John suffered from phonological dyslexia. His early childhood articulation deficit, his language usage, and a family history of dyslexia were all red flags for the disorder. Diagnostic interviewing revealed that John spent far more time studying word recognition and spelling than same-age peers. He also spent an inordinate amount of time working on papers and other projects for school. His mother, a dedicated parent, developed a streamlined study method that helped John encode and consolidate information. Pediatric neuropsychological testing revealed that John was simply reading words on a page without comprehension. He was only recognizing words. Furthermore, a qualitative study of his test results revealed phonological errors when John spelled unfamiliar words—the examiner could not tell what John was trying to spell.

John obtained achievement scores consistent with his IQ and, therefore, never met criteria for the discrepancy model rule. Previous testing by school psychologists never determined the presence of phonological dyslexia. The results of our evaluation took place when John was a junior in high school. John received intervention for dyslexia as well as untimed SAT testing accommodation. He significantly improved his phonological processing, earned his highest grades ever as a senior, and obtained superior scores on the SAT. John was accepted to Yale by the time he graduated from high school.

John’s example exemplifies another key difference between a pediatric neuropsychological assessment and a psychoeducational assessment. A pediatric neuropsychological assessment takes more time and is more expensive than a psychoeducational assessment; however, it is this up front investment in a child that saves an enormous amount of childhood emotional pain and suffering and time and money spent on remediation. Children who endure years of academic struggle do so at the cost of self-esteem and motivation, often resulting in behavior problems that can distract educators from the real problem. An initial investment in a comprehensive pediatric neuropsychological assessment yields an accurate diagnosis and guides appropriate intervention. The cost savings in time, appropriate resources, and the child’s self esteem is immeasurable.

DGL: In what instances should parents seek the expertise of a pediatric neuropsychologist?

Beljan: While assessment is the primary domain of pediatric neuropsychologists, we also are heavily involved in developing and directing interventions to help remedy or improve the various deficiencies and conditions we discover. Although, brain injury and seizure disorders historically are the cornerstone of pediatric neuropsychology, the applications of pediatric neuropsychology holds far reaching applications as the field becomes more sophisticated.

Some reasons to obtain a pediatric neuropsychological assessment include a detailed determination of attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and executive function deficit, language disorders, movement and sensory disorders, memory disorders, and learning disorders. The services of pediatric neuropsychologists are frequently sought in cases of developmental delay and autism spectrum disorder. A commonly unknown but wide-spread application of pediatric neuropsychology is the assessment of infants. Infants suffer from many neuropsychological issues secondary to prematurity, birth injury, and other syndromes that effect cognition and development. Finally, the fastest growing area of pediatric neuropsychology is the identification and management of sports-related concussion, which has reached epidemic status in the United States, yet remains one of the most unidentified neuropsychological conditions of childhood.

Pediatric neuropsychology is a wonderful profession as it enlightens parents about their children in a way that no other profession can. When parents learn that the origin of their child’s negative behavior is due a brain-based disorder, the parent-child relationship and family dynamics immediately and positively shift. The outcomes are happy children with high self-esteem, positive relationships, and unlimited futures.
Paul Beljan, PsyD, ABPdN

Paul Beljan is a pediatric neuropsychologist, past president of the American Board of Pediatric Neuropsychology and currently serves as Chair of its Examination Committee.