Parenting Styles Supporting Children's Academic Excellence: A Field Study in Some Middle Schools in M'Sila City

Abstract

Parental treatment styles toward their children vary between positive and negative. This study aimed to identify the most prominent parental treatment styles practiced with academically gifted students. These styles can either positively impact children's excellence by motivating them to exert more effort and sustain their high performance, or negatively through psychological pressure, fear of parents, and the psychological exhaustion imposed by parents to achieve the desired excellence- often without parental awareness or realization of its dire consequences on the children's future personalities.

Specifically, this study aimed to uncover the most common styles used with academically gifted students at the middle school level, from the students' own perspectives. The study sample consisted

of (113) gifted students, purposively selected from four middle schools in the center of M'Sila city. The descriptive approach was utilized, and the Parental Treatment Styles Scale, developed by researcher Fatiha Mekhout (2013), was applied using a response scale of (Always, Sometimes, Never).

The validity and reliability of the scale were re-calculated for this study. The findings indicated that the most frequently used positive style by fathers was "acceptance," while "equality" was the most used by mothers. Regarding negative styles, "rejection and neglect" was the most prominent for fathers, whereas "overprotection" was the most prevalent for mothers. Furthermore, the results revealed no statistically significant differences attributable to the students' gender (males, females), nor were there any statistically significant differences related to the parents' educational level, according to the study sample.