«Even gifted people have to learn to deal with failure»

Mr Gyseler, it's assumed that gifted children can cope effortlessly at school. Is that true?

No. Gifted children can also have problems at school - not despite their giftedness, but precisely because of it. You can think of giftedness as a medal with two very different sides: These children process academic content faster than others, which can bring advantages at school. However, they usually do so just as quickly that they hardly have time to realise exactly how they have solved the task. You can even see this in brain scans. Children lack these learning strategies when they really need them - often when they move on to a higher school level. This can result in learning difficulties, behavioural problems and a high level of stress. In order to avoid problems at school, gifted children must therefore be turned into learning professionals.

What characterises such learning professionals?

Three skills are at the centre of gifted people. Firstly, the learning strategies mentioned above, especially problem solving. Take open-ended tasks that do not have exact solutions: How many trees are there in Switzerland? For example, children learn to work cleverly with assumptions - one child recently began his argument by saying that there are probably about as many trees in Switzerland as people. Interesting! A second skill is being able to perform at their best in exams. This comes naturally to many gifted children in the first few years of school, but needs to be addressed - especially if there is a risk of perfectionism. Thirdly, dealing with failure. If an exam suddenly goes wrong, this is extremely difficult for many gifted students. However, there are techniques that can be used, such as «if-then plans».

Can parents also support their gifted child?

Basically, the school is responsible for these skills, which for me is the promotion of talent. But let's take dealing with failure: the culture of failure plays a major role here, including the culture at home. Sometimes it would be enough to have a quick chat over dinner every now and then at the end of the week about the biggest mistake you've made in the last few days and discuss how you could prevent this from happening in the future. A little ritual, perhaps for a month - it doesn't take much effort, but it can have an amazing effect.