Parents’ roles in talent development

Talent development research has uncovered common conditions for nurturing talented individuals: enriched early environment, appropriate instruction, long-term and deliberate practice, singleness of purpose, and centers of excellence. Talent research also reveals that parents play a critical role in arranging and facilitating these conditions and helping their child’s talent to blossom. This article reports six talent-nurturing things parents do according to case-study research by Kiewra and colleagues across various talent domains such as chess, figure skating, baton twirling, violin, writing, and spelling. Parents provide an enriched early environment, arrange for appropriate instruction, facilitate long-term and deliberate practice, support singleness of purpose, gravitate to or establish a center of excellence, and are fully committed and make life-changing sacrifices to nurture their child’s talents.