The Drama Of The Gifted Child By Alice Miller

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“The Drama of the Gifted Child” by Alice Miller is a book that every child psychologist should want to read in order to understand children at a young age. This book teaches the readers that a gifted child who is intelligent, sensitive and is emotionally aware can be accustomed to their parent’s expectations. Therefore they will do whatever it takes to fulfill her parent’s expectations, while ignoring their own feelings and needs. While trying to be the perfect child, they lose their true self and locks away their feelings. When the child becomes older, they still try to please their parents but are constantly looking to others for approval. If an adult cannot face the truth of his or her past as a child, then they are not going to …show more content…

If a parent has a negative emotion and negative reactions to children’s expression of emotion, it will cause children to also have negative emotions and low social competence. It states, “children reared in families in which emotions, particularly negative emotions are not discussed freely may be deprived of information about emotions and their regulation and may conclude that emotions should not be expressed” (Eisenberg 255). Children will grow with a disadvantage in terms of their emotional and social competence. These kids will lack emotion because it was not discussed when they were younger and they will not know how to express how they truly feel since they were deprived. In the article “The Lifelong Impact of Childhood Experiences: A Population Health Perspective” it discusses that early childhood experiences have a powerful effect on one’s life. It also focuses on different statuses of the family as a child and that can also have an effect on how a parent is raising their child. It states “Across North America approximately 50 percent of single parent families live in poverty, more than twice as many as Western Europe”(Hertzman …show more content…

She believes that a child’s feeling and personal goals is locked away, and instead is replaced with their parent’s expectations and desires. The child soon begins to develop narcissistic traits, in which the parent should allow the child to express feelings such as jealously and anger. In the novel Miller (1996) states “he develops something the mother needs…but it nevertheless may prevent him, throughout his life, from being himself” (p. 34). Allowing children to experience feeling such as anger and jealously provides an understanding on the child is not always perfect. However narcissistic disturbance occurs when a parent projects their own narcissistic desires onto their child, unfortunately suppressing their desires and acquiring their parents. Incidentally several students from Princeton University conducted a research in order demonstrate how narcissism is cultivated by the parents’ overvaluation and parental warmth. Eddie Mrummelman and colleagues (2014) stated, “When parents overvalue their child, they see their child as “God’s gift to man”…children might internalize the belief that they are special individuals who are entitled to privileges” (p 2). The article suggested that parents, who prevent their child from experiencing failure, encourage narcissistic attitudes. The important implication from this study demonstrates how a parent can overly evaluate their child’s

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