ABSTRACT

Although few would sympathize with parents who find themselves trying to raise a child with exceptional talent, it is in fact one of the most daunting and often discouraging challenges that family life has to offer. It is not simply the fact that parenting at the extremes of ability requires substantially greater resources of all sorts, although that is certainly the case. Contrary to conventional wisdom, whichwould have it that themore talented the child, the easier it should be to care for her or him, based on recent findings it appears that the reverse is actually the case (Albert, 1990a, 1990b; Bloom, 1981, 1985; Feldman and Goldsmith, 1991; Radford, 1990; Sears, 1979). In addition, rearing children who have extraordinary abilities sometimes engenders negative responses from others in the community, ranging from mild ambivalence to downright hostility.