Parents of children who are talented but not fully achieving face a number of dilemmas.  How can they insist on high performance without pressuring or alienating the child?  How can they encourage and motivate, without creating increased resistance?

In case after case, even with seemingly improbable chances for success, a specific set of approaches from parents induce children to to want to achieve.  Here are specific things to do, and not do. 

• Be involved with your child. Create a democratic atmosphere but not a democracy.  Allow and encourage verbal “give-and-take.” Value your child's ideas and perceptions and let her know you are on her side. Let your child come up with some of the ideas for how to change as long as they make sense.  But stick to your guns about change.

• If, as a family, you have set up a pattern that has allowed your child to escape responsibility for schoolwork, realize that this is going to take extensive effort and support to change. Make your verbal interventions brief and loving. And put equal effort into changing the patterns that supported the old way.

• Monitor your child’s progress and show an interest in what he or she is actually learning—the content of their studies, not the grades.  Show them that learning is valuable and interesting in its own right. 

• Avoid conversations containing dire predictions about their future if they do not study. Emphasize the present value of education, not the distant possible future value of going to a good college or getting a good job.

• Eliminate the use of rewards and punishments, because these imply that the work that the child is doing is of no immediate personal value and therefore bribes and/or coercion are needed.

Research has shown that families who value learning for its own sake have children who perform better than those who stress inducements, rewards and punishments.

• Be sure not to harangue and cajole. Be calm and patient. Develop an approach that makes you a supportive part of their gaining more skill and control in their lives.

• If your child appears stuck or hesitant, ask him or her if he or she wants help in getting started. If he or she invites help, provide help that allows your child to learn to get unstuck through personal effort. You can do this by asking what he or she could do first to get started. Put your child in touch with his or her own resources and ideas for tackling the problem and breaking it down into a manageable sequence of steps.

• Do not impose your ideas for how to do or organize work. This blocks your child from learning how to reach inside and come up with solutions. If asked, aid your child in a limited way to get started but grant him or her the autonomy to come up with his or her own particular steps.

• Be a catalyst. Do not take over the process or the project. Severely limit your suggestions. Push their coming up with their own.

Children need to exercise autonomy to develop independence. But they need to depend on you to insist that they develop autonomy. Give them help that truly helps.