Seeking Help for Young Gifted Children with Emotional or Educational Problems: Who Looks for Counseling? Part I: Between the Telephone Call and the Meeting

Abstract

Research literature dealing with the issue of “who seeks help for gifted children and adolescents who have emotional psychological, educational and familial problem” is very meager. The main reasons for this situation are:

a. Seeking help is not considered a “pure” pedagogical or psychological subject, and thus it falls “in-between” many categories and does not seem to fit exactly to any of them;

b. When a student is referred to a counselor by a school teacher or headmaster the school is not interested in questions such as who else is sent to therapy, or what are the problems of other gifted students who need psychological help;

c. When a gifted student sees a therapist it is the interest of the student’s family that this intervention remains private while the counselor is obliged to confidentiality. Thus it is very rare that any party will be interested in giving any details regarding the treatment to a third party who might use them as statistical material “for the sake of science”.

d. There are only few psychologists of the gifted who are also theoreticians of giftedness and do both: treat gifted children and write quantitative studies about the cases they have approached.

This article intends to start filling this gap. It is based on data from the years 2014-2017; in summa – about 400 parents and other family members of the gifted; thus it has statistical validity. It analyzes the characteristics of parents contacting me in order to get help by email or telephone; the main problems motivating parents to seek counseling; the gender problem – namely, the facts that 1. The vast majority of callers are boys’ parents, and 2. when a mother calls she almost never makes an appointment; some legal problem that might be caused, such as calls from parents who are in the middle of custody battle; and calls from people who are not family members, e.g. therapists who feel helpless and grandparents who – in many cases – try to make an appointment without informing the child’s parents about it.

The main conclusion of the study is that in most cases children and adolescents who need immediate, even urgent help do not get it, and while it seems quite easy for many parents to find an appropriate expert, about 90% of them prefer not to start treatment and not even to show up for one meeting.

Keywords

• counseling the gifted,emotional problems,educational problems,seeking help

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