16th International Congress of ESCAP European Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Spain, 20 January 2015, no.24
Despite some of the studies on the gifted children indicated that these
children have more emotional difficulties, lately, there is an increasing consensus on the idea that these children don’t experience more
difficulties than normal children. However, studies showed that gifted
children have some vulnerabilities such as perfectionism, intense
sensitivity and unsynchronized emotional-physical and mental development. In addition studies indicated that their parents have some
characteristics such as unrealistic expectations and over involvement.
It is thought that these factors are posing a risk for gifted children to
develop behavioral and emotional problems.
Objectives: The aim of this study is to determine whether the effect
of parental variables on psychological difficulties of gifted children is
more than that of non-gifted children.
Method: Participants (Sample): 158 Turkish gifted and 214 nongifted children aged between 8 and 12 participated.
Measures: The Parenting Scale (PS), Child Parental Acceptance Rejection Questionnaire/Control Mother-Father (Short Form) (Child
PARQ/Control M-F (SF), The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) and a demographic form were used in this study.
Results: Regression analysis results showed that perceived parental
acceptance-rejection and the parental styles have more predictive
power in psychological difficulties of gifted children than that of nongifted children.
Discussion: The results can be explained by sensitivity of gifted
children to the environment.
Keywords: Gifted child, Parenting, Parental acceptance-rejection,
Psychological difficulties.