Parallel Session Proceedings »
3.4.12 Helping Anxious Students Build Confidence and Achievement
Teachers and parents increasingly report anxiety among gifted students. Educators and parents can help these children and adolescents overcome their anxieties and their avoidance behaviors by encouraging them to gradually engage in small steps toward achieving success and confidence.
Caring parents and teachers who respond to children’s anxieties may unintentionally reinforce their avoidance of challenge. Perfectionistic students can spend hours overdoing already excellent work to avoid completing assignments that feel threatening. Oversensitive students may convince teachers to excuse them from assignments claiming boredom instead of confessing the fears they feel. Student tears and fears may prevent teachers from giving positive criticism. Poorly written IEP's can unintentionally prevent students from discovering their capabilities. They may receive more help than they require, thus decreasing their confidence and increasing their dependence and feelings of helplessness. Parents and educators can learn to prevent students from assuming that they are permanently anxious people.
It isn't easy for sensitive parents and educators to respond counterintuitively to anxious children because it feels uncaring to them. For their students’ sakes, adults who guide them must promote the goals of achievement and self-efficacy as they help them struggle toward building confidence. Adults who steal children’s struggles also steal their self-confidence and achievement.
Participants will receive practical suggestions for how to encourage students to speak up in class, cope with mistakes, work independently, enter competitions, take risks in writing, avoid procrastination, learn to accept criticism, and finally learn to cope with their own oversensitivities by productive engagement.