SouthCoastToday recently featured a question from a teacher who has noticed that students who are focused on being right all the time often forget to be happy. In response, the news source stated that for gifted children, perfectionism can be a serious problem.

In some cases, when gifted children receive a lot of praise at a young age, they may feel tremendous pressure to be perfect, or always do the right thing, according to the news outlet. Furthermore, these youths may feel threatened when they make mistakes.

To help gifted children focus more on being happy, rather than striving to be perfect, the news source suggested that teachers and parents change their approach to dealing with these youths. For instance, they can explain that mistakes are a part of the learning process. If schoolwork is always perfect, then students may not be picking up any new information.

Furthermore, it may help to teach gifted students that it is more important that they do their best, rather than the best.

In addition to problems that result from a need to be perfect, gifted children’s abilities may make them shy or overly sensitive, according to Gifts for Learning, an online resource for parents of gifted children.

To avoid these problems before they have a chance to surface, parents may want to have their child take an IQ test for kids to see if they should be considered gifted.