Since children might not have extensive life experiences to otherwise mark their progress, transitioning from one school level to the next often becomes a matter of particular importance. Even more than individual birthdays, a school level transition is significant in that it marks the turning of the social calendar. It is larger than just moving up one grade-level, and yet is still experienced with most of the same classmates. Coupled with adult excitement and cultural markings that usually mark a school level transition, such as new clothes and more “grown up” school supplies, children may experience higher levels of anxiety than when already established in a school routine.
Gifted students might be especially vulnerable to the pitfalls of these transitions. Because they are usually developmentally, socially, and/or emotionally different from their peers, the gifted are more at-risk of internalizing stress and becoming susceptible to bullies as they navigate the social reshuffling often experienced during a school level transition.
Primary School to Middle School: More Treacherous Than Anticipated For Gifted Students
While the transition from middle school to junior high might seem more significant and daunting to adults, a 2014 study argues differently: the one before is actually tougher. The authors state that, “fourth graders, before transition to middle school, reported a significantly higher prevalence of bullying compared with the fifth graders…”
The study also discovered that victimization and the processing of distress correlate: “We also found significant, strong correlations between victimization and levels of internalizing and total distress, and between bullying and levels of externalizing distress.” Gifted children, then, are bullied well before what most adults consider as the most difficult social meshing phase—middle and junior high.
Transitions Are Ripe For Bullying
When any child makes a school level transition, the change can be frightening. A new building, even one made familiar through the trailblazing of an older sibling, can be daunting. Especially-structured gifted students might be upset with suddenly changing classes several times a day or finding themselves suddenly split from trusted friends. Losing these moorings can unsettle even the most well-adjusted child, if only temporarily.
Most significantly, changing schools can completely upend the social structure to which a child has grown accustomed. They have gone from being the oldest and biggest children in a school to the youngest and smallest. Some schools may engage in hazing rituals for new students, the inherent injustices of which might be especially upsetting or bewildering for the gifted.
A gifted child might loudly object to such changes, become bored with slower peers, or even become bossy to attempt to control this new and upsetting reality. New classmates might interpret such behavior as being a show-off or trying to become teacher’s pet. Some bullies might assume that such ostentatiously capable students are purposely showing up their own shortcomings.
Pack Mentalities
Children transitioning from grade school to middle school are at an age in which they are beginning to establish themselves as a part of a non-family group, and might be especially sensitive to where they fit socially. When these peer groups are dumped together in a new school from a patchwork of old ones, they may be flailing to re-establish themselves in the social melee.
This might create a vulnerable situation for gifted students, who for a variety of reasons, already stand out from other children of the same age. Students seeking to avoid coming under social fire themselves, might easily join in and contribute to the bullying of the potentially easy target of a gifted child.
Emotional Components
Some gifted students synthesize information with strong emotion, potentially on a complex level surpassing that of some adults. This may manifest in physical symptoms such as headaches, stomach upset, disordered sleep, appetite reduction, or nausea. Students who are bullied physically or emotionally throughout the transition might experience this acutely, and attempt to avoid school or even fret themselves into such medical conditions as irritable bowel syndrome.
Gifted children, with their capacity to imagine strongly and collect subtle cues from the world around them, might over-anticipate the change in grade levels, leading to anxiety and even depression. If a gifted student is struggling with the transition, it could be because he or she has already recovered from a similar difficult experience and is remembering the same feelings. A strong affective memory could keep the negative emotions from the prior situation replaying.
Coping Mechanisms
Gifted students who are bullied during school level transitions might cope in various ways, depending on their age, emotional and social maturity, and type of giftedness. Some intellectually advanced children might get frightened and worry their parents by regressing to habits of an earlier age, such as bedwetting, sucking thumbs, or expressing fear of the dark.
Others could unplug socially, shrugging off peers who have rejected them, and finding solace in their own rich personal worlds or the arena of their interests. For example, a student who is musically gifted might fling himself into writing a symphony to escape from bullying and misery at school. While this might result in creative output and perfectly normal alone time for introverts, social isolation might further drive a gifted child away from his peers.
As the transition progresses, gifted children could cling to locations dear to them, such as a vacation place or symbolic refuge where they felt they could be themselves. For example, a student who enjoyed herself at a museum camp over the summer may beg to be taken to the same spot. Here, she can revisit the positive emotions and enjoyable intellectual challenges she experienced. Reinforcing the connection between a child and the gifted peers he or she may have met under such circumstances may help combat the damage a bully can inflict during a school-level transition.
Others might accentuate attachment to the family pet, a beloved toy, or their favorite sibling. Some look for solace in the non-parent adults around them, particularly staff members they know from previous grades or those who teach in the field of their giftedness. Not only do these adults represent human, non-family acceptance to the gifted child, they also function as natural shields from bullies.
