In today’s world, we’ve grown to expect nearly immediate results in every aspect of our lives. I, for one, have caught myself clicking repeatedly in frustration on a link when it doesn’t load within a fraction of a second. We likely all know someone who has abandoned a new health regimen within a week because they didn’t see the positive changes they were expecting. Most adolescents in developed nations are growing up not ever knowing a world where they don’t have instant access to any video, song, image or fact ever posted. These technological advances are undeniably positive in the grand scheme of things, but they also have caused us to project this expectation of instant gratification onto areas of our lives where immediacy is impossible.

That’s where grit comes into play.  Grit, which is defined as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals,” is necessary to overcome this tendency towards lack of patient discipline. Working in the gifted community, I interact with profoundly intelligent, creative and innovative young people on a daily basis. Many of these individuals also possess grit when they have a specific goal they are truly passionate about achieving. They will linger after class until their wind turbine turns smoothly, phrase an idea in numerous ways until their classmates understand their ingenuity, or borrow a logic puzzle to take home so they can finally solve it after hours of trying.

But how do we teach our children or students to have the tenacity to accomplish tasks they’re not as eager or well-equipped to complete? I found four big ways to encourage grit in gifted students as an educator or parent.

1. Praise children for their effort, not just the final outcome

Many gifted children are used to being recognized for their great memory or intelligence, but they may become easily frustrated when a task proves to be difficult. Encourage perseverance by applauding hard work and tenacity, not just what they produce on tasks that come easily. Additionally, you can point out this hard work and resilience to children when you see it in Olympic athletes, history lessons, book or movie characters, or friends and family members they admire.

2. Focus more on independence than perfection

It’s very tempting to intervene when a child is working through a challenging task, especially if the child is gifted and both of you are used to things coming easily to them. Instead of focusing on perfection as the ultimate goal for a task, lightly coach students in a way that allows them to be independent while still understanding that you’re there for help and encouragement if needed. Perfectionism is common in gifted students so this can be a tough, but healthy, transition to make.

3. Empathize and teach self-encouragement

Try to show your child or student how to encourage themselves without disregarding their emotions. After what may seem to them like a failure, say something like, “You might be feeling disappointed, but you should feel really proud of yourself for trying your best. When you’re ready, let’s try again!” Because gifted children often feel different from their peers, knowing someone is able to understand their emotions can work wonders for their self-esteem. Eventually, they’ll be able to recognize their own emotions with clarity and then encourage themselves through trials.

4. Model positivity and resilience in your own life

Most children, but especially gifted children, absorb and reflect the behaviors they see in the adults around them. Because of this, stay away from making self-disparaging comments about yourself in front of children and, instead, talk openly about your mistakes and how you recover from them. Not only will this help the children watching you avoid developing a negative self-image or fear of failure, but it will have positive impact on your own well-being! Your ability to model this trait and make it relevant in the lives of children will show them how to lessen their fear of failure in the short-term while still striving for success in the long-term.

What suggestions do you have for teaching gifted children grit?

Sources:

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This post originally appeared on September 4, 2012, on . It has been republished here with the permission of the author, who is a writer and mother of three. This post is about her gifted oldest son leaving home for college. While it is not an experience limited to parents of gifted children, it is an experience many of you will have. It may come when you send your child to a boarding school because it is what will best fit his or her individual needs, or it might be when your child heads off to college, or it might be after college, when your child decides to move out. After years of advocating for them in school and supporting their unique needs, your gifted children will leave home and must learn how to support these needs on their own. And no matter how much you help prepare them for that, it is still difficult to watch them set out on their own.

On the day my eldest son left for college, my youngest son got his first zit. This had to be some kind of sign, I thought. Time marches on or some such thing.

Maybe this was God’s little joke aimed at a mom whose “baby” is no longer a baby and whose first child was flying the coop. If so: not funny.

So many words have been spilled on this very subject – the first kid leaving for college – that it feels unoriginal to be thinking about it, let alone writing about it. And yet it pierces uniquely.

In the months leading up to Jonah’s departure, I’d find myself crying at unpredictable moments. I’d wander past his closed door, hear the sounds of his guitar playing on the other side, and think: Starting in September that room will be empty and silent. Cue the tears.

As Jonah and I made our cross-country sojourn from the San Francisco Bay area to Brown University in Providence, leaving his two younger brothers (17 and 13) at home with my husband, strange coincidences ensued.

Jonah has always had out-of-the-mainstream interests. Two examples: he became borderline-obsessed with Napoleon Bonaparte in middle school and is endlessly fascinated by 19th-century French history; and his favorite musician is Mark Knopfler, known mostly by people my age as the lead-man and guitarist of the 80’s band, Dire Straits.

A couple of nights before we left home, Jonah played his guitar at an open-mic night at a music club in our hometown of Mill Valley. The song he played was Dire Straits’ “Romeo and Juliet” – a fairly obscure choice for non-Knopflerphiles.

A few days later, our rental car stuffed to the brim with Target purchases, we stopped for lunch on our way to Providence. The restaurant was playing music, 60’s Motown-type stuff. Then out of nowhere, we heard the sound of Mark Knopfler’s voice: it was “Romeo and Juliet.” I burst into tears, sending our alarmed waiter scurrying away.

When we got to the Brown campus on Friday, the very first kid we met was a history-obsessed young man from North Carolina with a special passion for Napoleon who, out of a class of 1500 freshmen, also happens to be in Jonah’s history seminar of 20 kids.

On Sunday I attended a parent seminar entitled “Saying Goodbye, Letting Go, and Learning to Live with a Brown Student.” Much of the discussion centered on being supportive without being intrusive. The faculty members and upperclassmen running the seminar did a few skits, re-enacting phone calls that typically occur between parents and children during the first few weeks of freshman year.

As one faculty member, playing “Mom,” phoned her “son” with a variation on the “you don’t call, you don’t write” complaint, parents in the audience laughed nervously. You mean they really won’t call? We were encouraged to give our kids some space; we were reassured that they’d get in touch eventually; we were instructed to let them try to solve roommate issues on their own.

As I sat in the crowded auditorium, I felt slightly better. I realized that while this experience was specific and personal, it was also universal. And it’s exactly what is supposed to happen. We raise our kids from babies to toddlers to children to adolescents to young adults, and then they leave us to begin their own lives. It’s only logical: if they never develop the skills to live independently, we haven’t done our job. Who wants to suck at being a parent?

And yet.

I didn’t feel ready for Jonah to go. I don’t feel like I had enough of his company during those short 18 years. I wish I had more time to see him interact with his brothers at the dinner table; to observe his thought process as he works through a research paper or a discussion about politics; to listen to him play guitar along with Mark Knopfler. I simply loved having him around, and the loss feels huge.

So as I watched him walk back toward his dorm before I left, his roommate’s arm slung around Jonah’s shoulder in a protective and brotherly way, of course I cried. But eventually, I had to drive away and to fly back home.

After all, I need to help Aaron with his college applications. And maybe we’ll see if we can do something about Henry’s zit, like introduce him to face soap. Life goes on. As for Jonah, he can’t get rid of me that easily: I just figured out how to use Skype.

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