A qualitative study of how 20 gifted children and adolescents cope with demands and pressures they experience is the basis of the model of social and emotional adjustment presented in this article. The model combines patterns in the ways the children and adolescents responded to the stressors in their lives with theoretical and empirical information from the fields of child development and personal adjustment to stress. Intrapersonal, family, school, and peer influences, as well as functional and dysfunctional patterns of social and emotional adjustment, are explained within the framework of the model.
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