When the Fear of Underachievement Becomes Greater Than the Risk Itself

Many parents of gifted children are familiar with the concept of underachievement. Sometimes too familiar. The moment a child becomes bored, procrastinates on homework, seems less motivated, or does not fully show what they are cognitively capable of, fear quickly arises:

“Is my child going to underachieve?”

That concern is understandable. Underachievement is real. Research clearly shows that a mismatch between cognitive abilities and the educational environment can lead to a loss of motivation, reduced engagement, and eventually performance below one’s potential (Reis & McCoach, 2000). In practice, we also see children disengage, adapt themselves to the group, or fail to develop effective learning strategies.

But at the same time, something else is happening as well.

Why Underachievement Sometimes Seems to Be Everywhere

The more parents read about giftedness, the stronger the feeling can sometimes become that things are almost bound to go wrong. As if giftedness automatically leads to boredom, frustration, perfectionism, dropping out of school, or psychological difficulties. In conversations with both educational and care professionals, I regularly hear statements such as:

“More than half of gifted children underachieve.”
Or:
“Almost all gifted children eventually run into problems.”

It sounds convincing.

But it is not accurate.

And that is precisely where the work of Daniel Kahneman becomes interesting. Kahneman, Nobel Prize winner in economics and author of Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), describes how our thinking constantly relies on shortcuts. Our brain tries to quickly make sense of complex situations. This fast thinking — what he calls “System 1” — is usually efficient, but it also makes systematic errors, especially in situations involving uncertainty.

The Stories We Remember

One of these errors is that we give too much weight to striking examples while paying too little attention to the so-called base rates: the actual prevalence of a phenomenon within the broader population.

We see this with underachievement as well.

When parents immerse themselves in giftedness, they often read books written by people for whom things went wrong. That makes sense: difficult trajectories are the ones that get told. They move people. They explain why someone later became an expert, coach, or author. But this creates a distortion. You rarely come across books with titles such as:

“My gifted child actually developed quite well.”

Successful, stable trajectories are far less visible — and therefore far less available in our memory.

Kahneman calls this the availability bias. What comes easily to mind because we frequently hear, read, or see it is automatically perceived as occurring more often than it actually does in reality.

Experts Are Not Neutral Either

Professionals are not immune to this bias either. A therapist who works daily with underachieving gifted adolescents will naturally get the impression that underachievement is extremely common. But this is comparable to a cardiologist who mainly sees heart patients: their practice is not a representative cross-section of the population.

When I ask professionals in our training programs how many gifted students they believe underachieve, I strikingly often hear the same answer: “More than 50%, guaranteed!”

Yet the research literature paints a far more nuanced picture. White et al. (2018) found prevalence rates ranging from approximately 9% to 28%, depending on how giftedness and underachievement were defined. Flemish research by Ramos et al. (2019) within Project TALENT also shows that cognitively gifted students generally experience successful school trajectories and encounter less academic retention than their averagely gifted peers.

Not Every Difficulty Is Underachievement

Perhaps this is an important message for parents.

Not every child who occasionally feels bored, temporarily shows less motivation, or struggles at school is automatically entering a process of chronic underachievement. According to Reis and McCoach (2000), underachievement involves a serious and long-term discrepancy between potential and actual performance — not simply a temporary dip or momentary frustration.

By long-term, we mean that the pattern continues over time and becomes visible across different contexts or school years. A difficult transition period, a temporary drop in motivation, or a semester in which a child functions less well is therefore not enough to immediately speak of underachievement.

By serious, we mean that the gap between what a child is cognitively capable of and what they actually demonstrate becomes substantial. Not only in grades, but also in engagement, learning attitude, or level of cognitive challenge. A cognitively strong child who still achieves good results may nevertheless show early signs of underachievement when they consistently work below their level of thinking, rarely need to exert effort, fail to develop learning strategies, or completely disengage from intellectual challenge. At the same time, we must remain cautious there as well: not every form of boredom or resistance automatically means a child is underachieving.

We also need to be aware of another cognitive bias Kahneman describes: what you see is all there is (WYSIATI). We quickly construct a complete story based on limited information. A child who says at home that school is boring is immediately viewed as a future dropout. A child who dislikes repetitive practice is automatically associated with serious motivational problems. But behavior always requires context.

Underachievement is therefore not a label you apply based on a single observation or one difficult period. It requires time, context, and nuance.

Hitting Limits Is Also Part of Development

At the same time, I often tell parents not to panic too quickly or try to prevent every possible difficulty in secondary school by heavily focusing on “learning how to learn” from an early age.

Many cognitively strong children will hit their limits somewhere during secondary education — or perhaps only later, in higher education — for the very first time. As difficult as that can sometimes be, it is often an important developmental moment. For the first time, they experience that they, too, need to put in effort, that making mistakes is part of the process, and that intelligence alone is not enough.

Perhaps we should therefore fear that first real collision a little less — and even embrace it, to some extent. Not because failure is enjoyable, but because it teaches children something they may not have had to develop for years: perseverance, practice, adapting strategies, asking for help.

In a way, such a moment almost deserves a symbolic high-five:

“Finally, you’ve run into something difficult. Not because something is going wrong, but because this is the first time you can truly begin to learn what challenge feels like.”

Of course, this does not mean you should simply let them fall. Quite the opposite. It helps when parents talk with their child beforehand about mindset: the idea that intelligence and talent are not fixed traits, but that growth also happens through practice, mistakes, and effort. Cognitively strong children who have rarely needed to struggle can be shocked when something suddenly no longer comes easily. In those moments, it helps if they understand that challenge and perseverance are a normal part of learning — not proof that they are “not smart enough.”

And just as important is the message parents communicate, implicitly or explicitly:

“At some point, somewhere along the way, you are going to hit a limit. That is normal. And when it happens, we will be there for you.”

Not to prevent every fall, but to be the safe landing mat your child can fall back on when things become difficult.

That sense of safety often makes a bigger difference than parents realize.

Perhaps We Also Need to Reflect on Our Own Fear

Yes, some gifted children struggle.
Yes, a lack of challenge can be harmful.
Yes, preventing underachievement matters.

But we also need to be careful not to fall into a narrative where giftedness becomes almost automatically associated with failure or psychological vulnerability. That picture does not reflect the many cognitively strong children who are actually doing well, especially when they are met with understanding, appropriate challenge, and a supportive environment.

Perhaps the challenge is therefore not only about recognizing underachievement.

Perhaps it is also about recognizing our own cognitive biases around it.

Because parenting from fear tends to narrow our perspective.
Parenting from insight creates space.

And that is exactly where slower, more deliberate thinking — Kahneman’s “System 2” — can help: taking a step back, allowing room for nuance, considering the broader statistics, and realizing that the most striking stories are not necessarily the most common ones.

And perhaps one small reflection exercise for this week.
When you find yourself worrying about your child, pause for a moment and ask yourself:
“Am I basing this on what I truly see in my child, or on stories and fears I have heard repeatedly?”

Then consciously try to identify one sign that shows your child is also growing, learning, or developing resilience.
Sometimes slower thinking simply begins with slowing down for a moment.

References

• Kahneman, D. (2011). Ons feilbare denken. Business Contact.

• Ramos, A., De Fraine, B., & Verschueren, K. (2019). Schoolloopbanen van cognitief begaafde leerlingen in Vlaanderen. Tijdschrift voor Onderwijsrecht en Onderwijsbeleid, 2019-20, 23-33.

• Reis, S. M., & McCoach, D. B. (2000). The underachievement of gifted students: What do we know and where do we go? Gifted Child Quarterly, 44(3), 152–170. https://doi.org/10.1177/001698620004400302

• White, S. L. J., Graham, L. J., & Blaas, S. (2018). Why do we know so little about the factors associated with gifted underachievement? A systematic literature review. Educational Research Review, 24, 55-66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2018.03.001 

Copyright © 2026 Dr. Sabine Sypré – All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced in any form or by any means, whether electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the author. Sharing online is permitted provided the author is credited and a link to this article is included.