Maybe gifted? What does that even mean to an adult?
December 18, 2019 1:19 AM Subscribe
My parents recently told me that I had scored unsually high on IQ tests they gave to all children in my elementary school. I had the option to go to a school for gifted children, but they declined, because they "didn't want to raise a socially awkward person." I did some research, and feel as though giftedness may explain many of my struggles as a child. Now I am trying to make sense of it as an adult. Please share perspectives or resources!
As a kid, I had a lot of trouble making friends and generally preferred hanging out with adults. I was also constantly in trouble with older family members or school teachers for being disrespectful/ asking too many questions. I've internalized my parents' explanation of these things as me having "a bad personality" and "bad characters" and had spent years working really hard to please others, suppress my emotions, and contain my crazy.
I remember being depressed and didn't know why, and my parents would yell at me for being unhappy (out of frustration; they felt I was ungrateful for what they've done for me). I read nonstop and I read everything I could get my hands on, often during class in school. I did well in school and in every extracurricular they enrolled me in, but I couldn't understand why my parents were never satisfied with my achievements, while my siblings got praises for the smallest things. I could tell there was something about me they feared. I thought I was a freak and they didn't love me. I had intense fears that I had lost my mind.
I'm now in my 30s. 2+ years of therapy (so far) has really helped me unlearn some of that self loathe and perfectionism, though I am still very much a work in progress. I am rather high achieving for my age in my professional field, but I struggle with intense and sometimes debilitating anxiety, and have a hard time accepting good things or compliments without punishing myself. I also have a habit of working myself into the ground and require a very conscious effort to stay healthy.
I've found books and resources targetting undiagnosed gifted adults, but I am less interested in how to achieve more professional success or getting along with managers than in the introspective/emotional dimension, and in how people make sense of it. Also, this is kind of an embarrassing and awkward thing to consider about oneself, and I am hesitant to talk to people about this IRL.
Please recommend (or share!) narratives of similar experiences in books, podcasts, movies, or just...any first-person accounts, really.
As a kid, I had a lot of trouble making friends and generally preferred hanging out with adults. I was also constantly in trouble with older family members or school teachers for being disrespectful/ asking too many questions. I've internalized my parents' explanation of these things as me having "a bad personality" and "bad characters" and had spent years working really hard to please others, suppress my emotions, and contain my crazy.
I remember being depressed and didn't know why, and my parents would yell at me for being unhappy (out of frustration; they felt I was ungrateful for what they've done for me). I read nonstop and I read everything I could get my hands on, often during class in school. I did well in school and in every extracurricular they enrolled me in, but I couldn't understand why my parents were never satisfied with my achievements, while my siblings got praises for the smallest things. I could tell there was something about me they feared. I thought I was a freak and they didn't love me. I had intense fears that I had lost my mind.
I'm now in my 30s. 2+ years of therapy (so far) has really helped me unlearn some of that self loathe and perfectionism, though I am still very much a work in progress. I am rather high achieving for my age in my professional field, but I struggle with intense and sometimes debilitating anxiety, and have a hard time accepting good things or compliments without punishing myself. I also have a habit of working myself into the ground and require a very conscious effort to stay healthy.
I've found books and resources targetting undiagnosed gifted adults, but I am less interested in how to achieve more professional success or getting along with managers than in the introspective/emotional dimension, and in how people make sense of it. Also, this is kind of an embarrassing and awkward thing to consider about oneself, and I am hesitant to talk to people about this IRL.
Please recommend (or share!) narratives of similar experiences in books, podcasts, movies, or just...any first-person accounts, really.
My son was selected for the gifted scheme at his school. IMO, it did him nothing but harm. He was invited to a lot of extra-curricular stuff that he mostly declined, because he didn't think that doing more schoolwork was a worthwhile reward for being good at schoolwork. It also means that his teachers have higher expectations for him that they do for others, and they're on his back the whole time for not "fulfilling his potential". We spend a lot of effort at parents' evenings trying to dial down their expectations, and we also work hard at home to foster a kind of self-knowledge that's not based on achievements, to head off any fear-of-failure bullshit that he might pick up from his teachers.
He's always been clever, from a very young age. I was too. I did well at school, but I worked in low-paid temp jobs after I left education, until I figured out a direction for myself in my late 20s. I wouldn't be surprised if my son does the same. That's fine. It's not a race.
My parents were mostly indifferent to whatever I achieved at school. I resented that at the time, and it did me harm in other ways, but in retrospect it was probably better than if they'd put pressure on me to excel at this or that - because I didn't internalise anybody else's high expectations or perfectionism. To me, it feels like your own parents' expression of dissatisfaction with you is maybe a bigger deal than the underlying reason for their dissatisfaction, to the extent that the gifted label is maybe a side issue in the end - but I can totally see why you're reaching out for people with similar life experiences.
I still freak people out with detailed questions & long explanations, from time to time. I roll my eyes when nobody else gets stuff that I think is simple. But it's just a skill or ability that I happen to have - same as some other people can play the piano or ski or paint. None of those things give us magic powers or special responsibilities. Try and use it well, the same way that you would if you could sing beautifully.
posted by rd45 at 3:26 AM on December 18, 2019 [15 favorites]
He's always been clever, from a very young age. I was too. I did well at school, but I worked in low-paid temp jobs after I left education, until I figured out a direction for myself in my late 20s. I wouldn't be surprised if my son does the same. That's fine. It's not a race.
My parents were mostly indifferent to whatever I achieved at school. I resented that at the time, and it did me harm in other ways, but in retrospect it was probably better than if they'd put pressure on me to excel at this or that - because I didn't internalise anybody else's high expectations or perfectionism. To me, it feels like your own parents' expression of dissatisfaction with you is maybe a bigger deal than the underlying reason for their dissatisfaction, to the extent that the gifted label is maybe a side issue in the end - but I can totally see why you're reaching out for people with similar life experiences.
I still freak people out with detailed questions & long explanations, from time to time. I roll my eyes when nobody else gets stuff that I think is simple. But it's just a skill or ability that I happen to have - same as some other people can play the piano or ski or paint. None of those things give us magic powers or special responsibilities. Try and use it well, the same way that you would if you could sing beautifully.
posted by rd45 at 3:26 AM on December 18, 2019 [15 favorites]
If what I hear about the US is close to correct, anti-intellectualism runs about as deep in Australia as it does there. I worked out pretty early in my school career that being able to produce correct answers instantly on demand was doing me no social favours with my classmates, most of whom seemed to be having difficulties with the curriculum that I just didn't. So I basically cruised through school on autopilot until Year 11, at which point I ran out of native cunning in maths classes and had to start using trig and integration identities that I'd never put in the work to memorize, having formerly been able to rely completely on working stuff out from first principles every time and still being able to complete it faster and more accurately than my peers.
I scraped bare passes in Year 12 pure and applied maths, and I've failed every post-secondary course I've enrolled in since. Just never learned how to study in thirteen years of schooling, through not really having needed to for the first eleven.
I took the Mensa home pre-screening test at about 14 to find out for myself whether I would have got in, and I'm sure I would have done easily had I pursued it, but I finished the test feeling so much loathing for whoever designed it that the idea of joining an outfit that used that as an entry criterion soured completely. So many of the multiple-choice questions had multiple defensible answers that it was just tedious having to sift out the ones most likely to be judged "correct" by whoever had posed the questions in the first place.
I count myself really lucky that both my parents were as easily able to blitz an IQ test as I was and that neither of them saw Mensa as anything more worthwhile than the rather up-itself bragging circle it appeared to be at the time; Mum had joined before I was born, hated it and quit. I don't know if it's got better. In any case, I didn't get griefed by my parents for being smart, just for being lazy. That, plus being the weird school fat kid who would rather hang out in the library at lunchtime than Participate in Organized Sport, is where I got my own dose of the self-loathing that takes decades to wash off.
So yeah, probably gifted and not enrolled in any kind of specialist education for that. And I agree with rdr45 that unskilled parenting, rather than giftedness per se, is the most likely root of the trouble you've been having in your own life. They fuck you up, your mum and dad :-)
I am rather high achieving for my age in my professional field, but I struggle with intense and sometimes debilitating anxiety, and have a hard time accepting good things or compliments without punishing myself. I also have a habit of working myself into the ground and require a very conscious effort to stay healthy.
That was me in my thirties as well. Good friends and colleagues and the love of wonderful women got me through it.
It gets better. And once it has, you'll still be really fucking smart. Keep smiling.
posted by flabdablet at 4:40 AM on December 18, 2019 [7 favorites]
I scraped bare passes in Year 12 pure and applied maths, and I've failed every post-secondary course I've enrolled in since. Just never learned how to study in thirteen years of schooling, through not really having needed to for the first eleven.
I took the Mensa home pre-screening test at about 14 to find out for myself whether I would have got in, and I'm sure I would have done easily had I pursued it, but I finished the test feeling so much loathing for whoever designed it that the idea of joining an outfit that used that as an entry criterion soured completely. So many of the multiple-choice questions had multiple defensible answers that it was just tedious having to sift out the ones most likely to be judged "correct" by whoever had posed the questions in the first place.
I count myself really lucky that both my parents were as easily able to blitz an IQ test as I was and that neither of them saw Mensa as anything more worthwhile than the rather up-itself bragging circle it appeared to be at the time; Mum had joined before I was born, hated it and quit. I don't know if it's got better. In any case, I didn't get griefed by my parents for being smart, just for being lazy. That, plus being the weird school fat kid who would rather hang out in the library at lunchtime than Participate in Organized Sport, is where I got my own dose of the self-loathing that takes decades to wash off.
So yeah, probably gifted and not enrolled in any kind of specialist education for that. And I agree with rdr45 that unskilled parenting, rather than giftedness per se, is the most likely root of the trouble you've been having in your own life. They fuck you up, your mum and dad :-)
I am rather high achieving for my age in my professional field, but I struggle with intense and sometimes debilitating anxiety, and have a hard time accepting good things or compliments without punishing myself. I also have a habit of working myself into the ground and require a very conscious effort to stay healthy.
That was me in my thirties as well. Good friends and colleagues and the love of wonderful women got me through it.
It gets better. And once it has, you'll still be really fucking smart. Keep smiling.
posted by flabdablet at 4:40 AM on December 18, 2019 [7 favorites]
I was in gifted and talented classes then later AP classes then later honors college on the most prestigious scholarship offered by the university.
It created a fixed mindset, perfectionism and social isolation. It made me talk like a nerd, so that I've had multiple experiences of people thinking I was trying to make them feel bad because of the vocabulary I use.
However, I had so much fun in my gifted classes, and I imagine the fixed vs growth mindset material has infiltrated the schools such that this is less of an issue now.
I am haunted by feeling that I am not measuring up because my achievements then led to a crash and burn. Gifted classes should teach emotion regulation and life skills not just Odyssey of the Mind and logic puzzles.
The expectations on me were immense. I wouldn't wish the IQ I scored at on anyone unless they are at a boarding school surrounded by others like them. Being mixed into general classes definitely screwed me up socially.
posted by What a Joke at 4:54 AM on December 18, 2019 [2 favorites]
It created a fixed mindset, perfectionism and social isolation. It made me talk like a nerd, so that I've had multiple experiences of people thinking I was trying to make them feel bad because of the vocabulary I use.
However, I had so much fun in my gifted classes, and I imagine the fixed vs growth mindset material has infiltrated the schools such that this is less of an issue now.
I am haunted by feeling that I am not measuring up because my achievements then led to a crash and burn. Gifted classes should teach emotion regulation and life skills not just Odyssey of the Mind and logic puzzles.
The expectations on me were immense. I wouldn't wish the IQ I scored at on anyone unless they are at a boarding school surrounded by others like them. Being mixed into general classes definitely screwed me up socially.
posted by What a Joke at 4:54 AM on December 18, 2019 [2 favorites]
The supreme irony of “gifted” as a euphemism is that all children are “gifted” in some way. Society just rewards some precocious qualities over others, generally those that flatter the egos and improve economic prospects for already wealthy families. Or that reflect the developmental effects of wealth and early exposure to literacy and high culture.
Let this way of thinking go and you’ll be happier. It was always a lie.
posted by spitbull at 4:55 AM on December 18, 2019 [29 favorites]
Let this way of thinking go and you’ll be happier. It was always a lie.
posted by spitbull at 4:55 AM on December 18, 2019 [29 favorites]
they're on his back the whole time for not "fulfilling his potential"
Oh fuck yes. So much this. I don't think there's a single one of my school reports where at least one teacher has failed to point out to my parents that Stephen could do much better if he only applied himself.
posted by flabdablet at 5:00 AM on December 18, 2019 [9 favorites]
Oh fuck yes. So much this. I don't think there's a single one of my school reports where at least one teacher has failed to point out to my parents that Stephen could do much better if he only applied himself.
posted by flabdablet at 5:00 AM on December 18, 2019 [9 favorites]
I was tested as gifted the year I went to American school (overseas) when I was 8, and as a result was sent to a class 4 years older than me, there wasn't an alternative school option. I can recognize almost everything you write, including the award relation to my parents. We only lived there for a year, and when we moved to Denmark, where I live now, I asked to be with children my own age, in a normal class. By chance, or maybe not entirely, our class wasn't completely "normal", out of 19 pupils the 7 of us grew up to get PhDs and in general our grades were through the ceiling. But we weren't marked out as gifted in any way. Contrariwise, we were often mentioned as a class teachers wanted to avoid because we were epic troublemakers. I spent the most of three years in a locked room outside the school psychologist's office along with a boy from my brother's class. Or alternatively doing math with some older students. I don't think that was because I was the worst, I know I wasn't, but on top of all the other issues, I was raised to be critical of authorities. However this whole setup came about, I don't think you missed out on anything, school-wise.
I wish I'd never had that test done, though I don't know if it made any difference.
My daughter had a lot of problems in her private primary school, so bad that I took her to a psychiatrist who told me she was a gifted child and that was the reason for her problems. But she chose to change to a normal public school with no special options at all, and she thrived.
Fasts forward to now. I'm in my fifties, and have settled into the realization that it doesn't make a lot of difference regarding my personal well-being and relation to others. I have good friends and lovely children, I am close to all of my siblings and some of my other family. Work is hard for me and fun for me in some ways that are sometimes different from others, but they are just different, neither better or worse. I'm not even very good at math any more, since I rarely use it.
When I was younger, I sometimes resented when less insightful people came ahead, and I was often sad when people were scared of me, which happened. There are definitely opportunities I missed because people felt uncomfortable around me. Now I make a big deal out of talking with people: many people have told me that they were afraid of me before they knew me, and now they are really happy to know me. I'm obviously a geek, but since I'm not proud of it and I don't look down on others, it isn't scary if I only remember to open up a bit to people. This is all very important to me because I'm a teacher. I love teaching, and I want students to trust me and to do good.
I have to say, I am currently at a tech university, teaching engineers, before I was at an art academy teaching architects and designers, and tech universities are more tolerant of geeks. Maybe think of finding a workplace where they value your talents. I was at this university before, 15 years ago, and I regret that I changed jobs, though I have had some amazing opportunities at the art academy, precisely because I am a geek.
Sometimes, I have gifted students who struggle with their talents for some reason or other. I always try to help them find the joy in their work, rather than worry about externalities. It's individual for each student, so it's a little abstract explaining it. I supervised a group project where all three students were exceptional, and the genius thing for them was that they supplemented each other so well. One was good at drawing and integrating across disciplines, one was a coding wiz and the third was excellent at all forms of math. They were literally always smiling when they worked on that project because they were all doing what they liked to do best, though because they were very smart, they also knew what the others were doing all the time. If I were to learn from my own teaching, that would be an important thing: I love drawing, but I rarely allow myself to do it. It's like it's too fun to be work, though it really is an important part of my job, and there are plenty of people around me who don't enjoy it as much as I do. I would be a happier and better colleague if I drew more. And then also a better friend, daughter, mother because the job doesn't stress me out so much.
Another thing I need to learn from my own teaching is that regardless of how smart you are, you need to have method. Otherwise you will burn out. It's hard to keep that discipline when you can basically wing it in 99% of all situations, and if that has become a habit, you probably don't even think of it as winging it. But I can really feel the difference when I do all the steps, life becomes a breeze.
posted by mumimor at 5:04 AM on December 18, 2019 [7 favorites]
I wish I'd never had that test done, though I don't know if it made any difference.
My daughter had a lot of problems in her private primary school, so bad that I took her to a psychiatrist who told me she was a gifted child and that was the reason for her problems. But she chose to change to a normal public school with no special options at all, and she thrived.
Fasts forward to now. I'm in my fifties, and have settled into the realization that it doesn't make a lot of difference regarding my personal well-being and relation to others. I have good friends and lovely children, I am close to all of my siblings and some of my other family. Work is hard for me and fun for me in some ways that are sometimes different from others, but they are just different, neither better or worse. I'm not even very good at math any more, since I rarely use it.
When I was younger, I sometimes resented when less insightful people came ahead, and I was often sad when people were scared of me, which happened. There are definitely opportunities I missed because people felt uncomfortable around me. Now I make a big deal out of talking with people: many people have told me that they were afraid of me before they knew me, and now they are really happy to know me. I'm obviously a geek, but since I'm not proud of it and I don't look down on others, it isn't scary if I only remember to open up a bit to people. This is all very important to me because I'm a teacher. I love teaching, and I want students to trust me and to do good.
I have to say, I am currently at a tech university, teaching engineers, before I was at an art academy teaching architects and designers, and tech universities are more tolerant of geeks. Maybe think of finding a workplace where they value your talents. I was at this university before, 15 years ago, and I regret that I changed jobs, though I have had some amazing opportunities at the art academy, precisely because I am a geek.
Sometimes, I have gifted students who struggle with their talents for some reason or other. I always try to help them find the joy in their work, rather than worry about externalities. It's individual for each student, so it's a little abstract explaining it. I supervised a group project where all three students were exceptional, and the genius thing for them was that they supplemented each other so well. One was good at drawing and integrating across disciplines, one was a coding wiz and the third was excellent at all forms of math. They were literally always smiling when they worked on that project because they were all doing what they liked to do best, though because they were very smart, they also knew what the others were doing all the time. If I were to learn from my own teaching, that would be an important thing: I love drawing, but I rarely allow myself to do it. It's like it's too fun to be work, though it really is an important part of my job, and there are plenty of people around me who don't enjoy it as much as I do. I would be a happier and better colleague if I drew more. And then also a better friend, daughter, mother because the job doesn't stress me out so much.
Another thing I need to learn from my own teaching is that regardless of how smart you are, you need to have method. Otherwise you will burn out. It's hard to keep that discipline when you can basically wing it in 99% of all situations, and if that has become a habit, you probably don't even think of it as winging it. But I can really feel the difference when I do all the steps, life becomes a breeze.
posted by mumimor at 5:04 AM on December 18, 2019 [7 favorites]
Response by poster: Being designated gifted gave me access to a lot of educational opportunities I wouldn't have otherwise had. It also resulted in front tons of pressure from my mom to live up to my potential, deep anxiety about getting things wrong because I was supposed to be the smart kid, and accentuated my depression because I constantly felt I wasn't living up to my "gifts". I and my similarly gifted older brother ended up squandering those opportunities because we broke under the pressure; my also smart little brother who did not get half that treatment is far more professionally and socially successful than I am. You can tell from my answer to this question that I still beat myself up over "wasting myself". It was definitely not a boon, overall. I agree with those who say getting that "gifted" designation isn't a good thing unless it's paired with emotional and social development and a robust support system (though frankly all kids should have access to that stuff).
posted by Anonymous at 5:27 AM on December 18, 2019
posted by Anonymous at 5:27 AM on December 18, 2019
As an adult it doesn't mean anything, except as something to consider in therapy as a possible contributing factor to your anxiety and other issues.
all children are “gifted” in some way. Society just rewards some precocious qualities over others
Yes to the first, no to the second, at least in the US. Oh, you think you're smarter than the rest? Get back in line with your age peers. It does damage a lot of kids in ways others have described above, as much as a "cue the violins" problem to have that might be.
Basically, anon, the grass is always greener. I was identified gifted as a kid and yet can co-sign your entire second and third paragraphs. It's hard to be an outlier on either end of the bell curve in a system as normative and conformist as most schools.
posted by Flannery Culp at 5:34 AM on December 18, 2019 [1 favorite]
all children are “gifted” in some way. Society just rewards some precocious qualities over others
Yes to the first, no to the second, at least in the US. Oh, you think you're smarter than the rest? Get back in line with your age peers. It does damage a lot of kids in ways others have described above, as much as a "cue the violins" problem to have that might be.
Basically, anon, the grass is always greener. I was identified gifted as a kid and yet can co-sign your entire second and third paragraphs. It's hard to be an outlier on either end of the bell curve in a system as normative and conformist as most schools.
posted by Flannery Culp at 5:34 AM on December 18, 2019 [1 favorite]
I think people are (or used to be) scared of a smart kid and act out that fear on them in inappropriate and unfair ways. It seems to be really common. If you're a smart kid you're damned if you do (know it all!) and damned if you don't (potential!!1) and usually all at the same time. Schools aren't set up to guide kids into life like they should be, they're just there to teach, and that's it. It's up to parents to do the rest and they don't always get it right. "I'm sad because I don't feel accepted" gets heard as "I'm sad because you're not good enough" which just compounds the original problem.
posted by bleep at 5:36 AM on December 18, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by bleep at 5:36 AM on December 18, 2019 [3 favorites]
I benefited from gifted ed as a kid and have always sort of taken its importance for granted. Now I'm raising a kid who's in one of these programs, and it's overall been a weird experience I haven't felt great about, and I'm a lot less confident in my earlier assumptions. Which, stepping back from the emotions, is an interesting place to be as a parent and as a person.
As a child, I struggled with perfectionism, and being in an environment where I actually could get everything right was not good for me. My story to myself about this has always been that gifted ed helped, but truthfully I didn't feel like this flaw of mine was really dealt with until well into adulthood. We only get one life, so I can't know what role my early years really played in how this unfolded. But I can at least reassure you that it isn't too late to put this burden down!
The accommodations that were available to me in the early grades mostly made me feel like a freak, and bluntly, it took moving to a special classroom for a few years for me to feel like a normal person. I've heard similar stories from friends: that meeting other gifted kids was critical for their social development. I know that the goal is to be able to connect with people who are unlike you, but you can't necessarily start there. You don't say what connections with your peers were like as a kid; what are they like now?
From your post it feels like the piece with your parents might be worth some therapy energy. Why did they tell you about this now, as an adult? Have they had second thoughts about their decision? Or did they tell you for some less savory reason? It feels from what you've written like you have worried about them not loving for who you are. I get that, and it's really painful. I'm sorry that happened to you. There's another anonymous AskMe post that someone pointed me to that might be helpful to you; it's framed in terms of parenting decisions but the meat of it is someone still struggling with leftover feelings from childhood that who they were might not be okay.
I said above that I've had second thoughts about the whole project of gifted ed and ironically, something similar to the above is the meat of those concerns. When people have said to me before that gifted programs seemed awfully pressure-y, I've always kind of blown it off (internally if not out loud), feeling like my own experience qualified me to say that no, actually, the extra challenge is good for these kids. But Little eirias' particular program ... actually does feel awfully pressure-y in some really surprising ways. I think there's just not a perfect answer sometimes, on the parenting side.
posted by eirias at 5:38 AM on December 18, 2019 [3 favorites]
As a child, I struggled with perfectionism, and being in an environment where I actually could get everything right was not good for me. My story to myself about this has always been that gifted ed helped, but truthfully I didn't feel like this flaw of mine was really dealt with until well into adulthood. We only get one life, so I can't know what role my early years really played in how this unfolded. But I can at least reassure you that it isn't too late to put this burden down!
The accommodations that were available to me in the early grades mostly made me feel like a freak, and bluntly, it took moving to a special classroom for a few years for me to feel like a normal person. I've heard similar stories from friends: that meeting other gifted kids was critical for their social development. I know that the goal is to be able to connect with people who are unlike you, but you can't necessarily start there. You don't say what connections with your peers were like as a kid; what are they like now?
From your post it feels like the piece with your parents might be worth some therapy energy. Why did they tell you about this now, as an adult? Have they had second thoughts about their decision? Or did they tell you for some less savory reason? It feels from what you've written like you have worried about them not loving for who you are. I get that, and it's really painful. I'm sorry that happened to you. There's another anonymous AskMe post that someone pointed me to that might be helpful to you; it's framed in terms of parenting decisions but the meat of it is someone still struggling with leftover feelings from childhood that who they were might not be okay.
I said above that I've had second thoughts about the whole project of gifted ed and ironically, something similar to the above is the meat of those concerns. When people have said to me before that gifted programs seemed awfully pressure-y, I've always kind of blown it off (internally if not out loud), feeling like my own experience qualified me to say that no, actually, the extra challenge is good for these kids. But Little eirias' particular program ... actually does feel awfully pressure-y in some really surprising ways. I think there's just not a perfect answer sometimes, on the parenting side.
posted by eirias at 5:38 AM on December 18, 2019 [3 favorites]
It didn’t quite resonate with me, but other people that I’m close to found The Drama of the Gifted Child to be helpful in understanding their experiences.
posted by doctord at 5:51 AM on December 18, 2019
posted by doctord at 5:51 AM on December 18, 2019
It sounds like you had a really difficult time as a child and your parents and other adults were being pretty terrible, and you thought that it was your fault and that there was something wrong with you. Now it turns out that maybe you had a difficult time because you were smart (and because the adults around you were reacting badly/being kind of terrible).
When I was a child I was weird and didn’t have any friends really and acted out. I was pretty miserable. Life was a serious of constant physical symptoms of anxiety, but I had no way of knowing that’s what was happening and no adults made the connection, so they were just another source of shame. And in retrospect maybe the reason why they set up a time where I was reading novels out loud to my 5th grade peers in class every day was because they, the kids and the teacher, knew I was smart and different and they were trying to work with that, and they actually liked me sometimes and maybe I wasn’t just a freak.
I think the thing is, you thought there was something wrong with you, you were bad and sick etc. but as adults we hopefully start to understand that we were never freaks. In my case my problem was a combination of being relatively smart, being in a tiny school with nobody I felt I could really talk to, and also being anxious as fuck with eating/body issues. It’s still difficult remembering childhood even now, even as I write this, to not default into “basically there was something wrong with me and it was my fault.”
I don’t know how to heal from that. Maybe it takes trying to salvage positive or humorous memories from that period of time. Maybe it takes avoiding those memories in the first place and trying to focus on now. Maybe it could be consciously creating another narrative for that period of time that establishes you were a good kid and it wasn’t your fault, and retelling that narrative to yourself until it feels true.
Anyway, you were a good, worthwhile kid and there was nothing wrong with you. Now you’re a good, worthwhile person and there’s still nothing wrong with you. I hope you find a way to really feel that and feel OK. All the best.
posted by sacchan at 5:52 AM on December 18, 2019 [9 favorites]
When I was a child I was weird and didn’t have any friends really and acted out. I was pretty miserable. Life was a serious of constant physical symptoms of anxiety, but I had no way of knowing that’s what was happening and no adults made the connection, so they were just another source of shame. And in retrospect maybe the reason why they set up a time where I was reading novels out loud to my 5th grade peers in class every day was because they, the kids and the teacher, knew I was smart and different and they were trying to work with that, and they actually liked me sometimes and maybe I wasn’t just a freak.
I think the thing is, you thought there was something wrong with you, you were bad and sick etc. but as adults we hopefully start to understand that we were never freaks. In my case my problem was a combination of being relatively smart, being in a tiny school with nobody I felt I could really talk to, and also being anxious as fuck with eating/body issues. It’s still difficult remembering childhood even now, even as I write this, to not default into “basically there was something wrong with me and it was my fault.”
I don’t know how to heal from that. Maybe it takes trying to salvage positive or humorous memories from that period of time. Maybe it takes avoiding those memories in the first place and trying to focus on now. Maybe it could be consciously creating another narrative for that period of time that establishes you were a good kid and it wasn’t your fault, and retelling that narrative to yourself until it feels true.
Anyway, you were a good, worthwhile kid and there was nothing wrong with you. Now you’re a good, worthwhile person and there’s still nothing wrong with you. I hope you find a way to really feel that and feel OK. All the best.
posted by sacchan at 5:52 AM on December 18, 2019 [9 favorites]
I think it's likely that your anxiety and other issues have nothing to do with your being "gifted" (which I agree with above posters is just a socially-charged label and that all kids have giftedness) but might have a lot to do with your parents' reaction to that label -- as if it were a reified feature that defined you as elite or special in some way they resented, felt confused and awed/threatened by, for reasons that have nothing to do with you. I think you might have suffered from their treating you as different in this way, not from being too smart or gifted. (And yes you might also have had the desire to read more and have been bored in school and socially awkward. School sucks for anyone who isn't completely on the Normative Track, which is not the same as not being "normal".)
posted by nantucket at 5:56 AM on December 18, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by nantucket at 5:56 AM on December 18, 2019 [4 favorites]
Tips for the Gifted, number 63 in a series:
Knowing how to do a thing is not at all the same as being able to do the thing, and even less like being able to do it well, and less still like being able to do it with joy.
Schools typically put a lot of time into making sure students know how to do a thing, because most students need that amount of time put into that. Gifted kids, not so much; we often see how to do the thing almost instantly on first exposure, then kind of shut down and drift off into our own little worlds while the nuff-nuffs struggle to catch on behind us.
But the thing about that is that the way the nuff-nuffs are acquiring knowing-how-to involves practice, because it has to; and the way we do it doesn't, or not to anywhere near the same extent. And once somebody's done that practice, they tend to end up better at the actual being-able-to than we are. Because it doesn't matter how fucking smart you are, you are still an embodied being; and the only way embodied beings acquire actual skills is via practice. It's just the way we function.
Testing in schools does a piss-poor job of finding out who can actually do things, as opposed to merely knowing how to. Testing takes a point-in-time sample of a student's knowing-how-to and just assumes that this has something meaningful to say about ability-to. That works pretty well at the middle of the bell curve but it fails badly at both edges.
I spent the first eleven years of my school career totally looking forward to tests and exams because I could just ace them, every single one, and I couldn't understand why my peers regarded them with such dread. But give first-year-of-high-school-me a maths worksheet to do with a hundred of the same kind of problem I'd known how to tackle in a test since at least two years earlier and I'd just feel insulted. Don't they understand? I already know how to do this tedious shit! Why are they making me do this again, and for fuck's sake why so much of it?
I failed a subject for the first time ever in the first term of first form, and it was maths, and I failed it because I just didn't hand in the worksheets. Could do better if he applied himself, Mrs Casey's report said. And she was my mother's friend and colleague (Mum was teaching French at my school at the time, though not to my year) so Mum took her opinion seriously.
At no time did anybody point out to me that the purpose of a worksheet was not to help me learn how to do problems of that kind, but to give me an opportunity to practise doing them until doing them became as effortless as breathing. Had I understood that at the time - had I seen some point to the frankly insulting kiddie-problem worksheets - I would have applied myself. But I just never got the point, and nobody ever showed me what it was.
For me, practice had always looked like useless busywork that the nuff-nuffs apparently had to do for reasons I never really understood. The point of school, for me, had always been learning how to do things, and the fact that I had always got such consistently high results on school tests had always reinforced my perception of the correctness of that view. But it just wasn't correct, not by a long shot. Evaluation via testing is just broken for smart kids.
It wasn't until my mid-thirties that I finally figured out that the only way to get good at chess was just to play a lot of fucking chess. At which point the scales fell from my eyes, I grasped the generality of Tip 63, and also got interested in meditation; the direct result of doing which, not merely knowing about which, is that first the anxiety, and eventually the self-loathing and depression, have finally been tamed to the point where I'm no longer consumed by either.
posted by flabdablet at 5:58 AM on December 18, 2019 [50 favorites]
Knowing how to do a thing is not at all the same as being able to do the thing, and even less like being able to do it well, and less still like being able to do it with joy.
Schools typically put a lot of time into making sure students know how to do a thing, because most students need that amount of time put into that. Gifted kids, not so much; we often see how to do the thing almost instantly on first exposure, then kind of shut down and drift off into our own little worlds while the nuff-nuffs struggle to catch on behind us.
But the thing about that is that the way the nuff-nuffs are acquiring knowing-how-to involves practice, because it has to; and the way we do it doesn't, or not to anywhere near the same extent. And once somebody's done that practice, they tend to end up better at the actual being-able-to than we are. Because it doesn't matter how fucking smart you are, you are still an embodied being; and the only way embodied beings acquire actual skills is via practice. It's just the way we function.
Testing in schools does a piss-poor job of finding out who can actually do things, as opposed to merely knowing how to. Testing takes a point-in-time sample of a student's knowing-how-to and just assumes that this has something meaningful to say about ability-to. That works pretty well at the middle of the bell curve but it fails badly at both edges.
I spent the first eleven years of my school career totally looking forward to tests and exams because I could just ace them, every single one, and I couldn't understand why my peers regarded them with such dread. But give first-year-of-high-school-me a maths worksheet to do with a hundred of the same kind of problem I'd known how to tackle in a test since at least two years earlier and I'd just feel insulted. Don't they understand? I already know how to do this tedious shit! Why are they making me do this again, and for fuck's sake why so much of it?
I failed a subject for the first time ever in the first term of first form, and it was maths, and I failed it because I just didn't hand in the worksheets. Could do better if he applied himself, Mrs Casey's report said. And she was my mother's friend and colleague (Mum was teaching French at my school at the time, though not to my year) so Mum took her opinion seriously.
At no time did anybody point out to me that the purpose of a worksheet was not to help me learn how to do problems of that kind, but to give me an opportunity to practise doing them until doing them became as effortless as breathing. Had I understood that at the time - had I seen some point to the frankly insulting kiddie-problem worksheets - I would have applied myself. But I just never got the point, and nobody ever showed me what it was.
For me, practice had always looked like useless busywork that the nuff-nuffs apparently had to do for reasons I never really understood. The point of school, for me, had always been learning how to do things, and the fact that I had always got such consistently high results on school tests had always reinforced my perception of the correctness of that view. But it just wasn't correct, not by a long shot. Evaluation via testing is just broken for smart kids.
It wasn't until my mid-thirties that I finally figured out that the only way to get good at chess was just to play a lot of fucking chess. At which point the scales fell from my eyes, I grasped the generality of Tip 63, and also got interested in meditation; the direct result of doing which, not merely knowing about which, is that first the anxiety, and eventually the self-loathing and depression, have finally been tamed to the point where I'm no longer consumed by either.
posted by flabdablet at 5:58 AM on December 18, 2019 [50 favorites]
Also "gifted" here, or whatever you want to call being a fast learner with a high IQ. I completely understand the whole "not fulfilling my potential" mentality, but honestly, all it has done is drive me to make decisions that make me miserable to fulfill that "potential." I.e. I could have been perfectly happy earning a modest wage doing some menial task while working on my true love, illustrations and music, but, since I was labeled the golden child all the way through grad school, I felt there was an overarching expectation of me to be "more." Thus I've been seeking out something to suit that expectation for the last decade, even at the expense of my mental health. Academia almost drove me completely insane, but that seemed the pinnacle of my potential, and when I dropped out, I was super lost for a long time. I still feel that urge to "go higher" but it's calming down, sort of.
Socially, I have suffered from self-loathing, career woes (including, what I consider to be unfair, performance issues linked to the fact that I can complete my work faster and more efficiently than is normally expected and thus I have a lot of "free time" that must be filled with busy work that I loathe and, of course, being a bit inflexible and doing things my "way"), social antagonism from family, strangers, coworkers, and close friends alike, crippling perfectionism, etc. etc. It's been extremely rough, and I've labeled myself completely broken and separate from others for several years, to the point where I have accepted my role of the outsider looking in.
Therapy helped but not really. You can only accept and love yourself so much in the face of continued antagonism.
posted by Young Kullervo at 6:19 AM on December 18, 2019 [7 favorites]
Socially, I have suffered from self-loathing, career woes (including, what I consider to be unfair, performance issues linked to the fact that I can complete my work faster and more efficiently than is normally expected and thus I have a lot of "free time" that must be filled with busy work that I loathe and, of course, being a bit inflexible and doing things my "way"), social antagonism from family, strangers, coworkers, and close friends alike, crippling perfectionism, etc. etc. It's been extremely rough, and I've labeled myself completely broken and separate from others for several years, to the point where I have accepted my role of the outsider looking in.
Therapy helped but not really. You can only accept and love yourself so much in the face of continued antagonism.
posted by Young Kullervo at 6:19 AM on December 18, 2019 [7 favorites]
Tips for the Gifted, number 64 in a series:
Achievement is overrated.
I don't think that point requires further explication. It's just true.
posted by flabdablet at 6:24 AM on December 18, 2019 [7 favorites]
Achievement is overrated.
I don't think that point requires further explication. It's just true.
posted by flabdablet at 6:24 AM on December 18, 2019 [7 favorites]
Being in gifted programs as a child did not keep me from being ostracized by my peer group - in this case, other gifted kids. Some intellectually gifted kids are also gifted socially, and some are not. I was not.
My children are roughly your age, and when they were little, I got so tired of hearing about how people's kids were gifted. I wonder what percentage of children were designated "gifted" by someone or other during that time period. Honestly, you couldn't watch a talk show without three parents in the audience beginning their comments by saying their children were gifted. My daughter was quite bright, and a lot of people asked me if I was going to have her "tested." I never did - I knew she was smart, so I didn't see the point. And it all seemed so distasteful to me - part of the constant race to make sure your own children are the very super best. That said, for the first few years of school, she was in a gifted program, which I think was helpful to her. Unfortunately, we moved to a city where the school system opposed gifted programs on principle, so she ended up going back about three grades in reading and having a teacher who told her I should not have given her Animal Farm to read. Today she is a very happy stay-at-home mom. Both of my kids try to be good people, and that is way more important to me than whether they were considered gifted as children.
When I was teaching college, I used to have my students fill out a sheet of paper at the beginning of the year and one thing I asked for was just anything they wanted me to know. Two students took that opportunity to tell me they had "borderline genius" IQs. One of them I don't remember at all, except that he wasn't impressive. The other one was such an awful person that I had colleagues read his papers to make sure I wasn't grading him unfairly (he mostly got D's and F's - I'm pretty sure he failed the class.). I don't think the person who told him he was a borderline genius did him any favors.
Your parents made some mistakes (as all parents do). I'm not sure that opting out of the pernicious gifted system/race/contest is one of them.
posted by FencingGal at 6:24 AM on December 18, 2019 [6 favorites]
My children are roughly your age, and when they were little, I got so tired of hearing about how people's kids were gifted. I wonder what percentage of children were designated "gifted" by someone or other during that time period. Honestly, you couldn't watch a talk show without three parents in the audience beginning their comments by saying their children were gifted. My daughter was quite bright, and a lot of people asked me if I was going to have her "tested." I never did - I knew she was smart, so I didn't see the point. And it all seemed so distasteful to me - part of the constant race to make sure your own children are the very super best. That said, for the first few years of school, she was in a gifted program, which I think was helpful to her. Unfortunately, we moved to a city where the school system opposed gifted programs on principle, so she ended up going back about three grades in reading and having a teacher who told her I should not have given her Animal Farm to read. Today she is a very happy stay-at-home mom. Both of my kids try to be good people, and that is way more important to me than whether they were considered gifted as children.
When I was teaching college, I used to have my students fill out a sheet of paper at the beginning of the year and one thing I asked for was just anything they wanted me to know. Two students took that opportunity to tell me they had "borderline genius" IQs. One of them I don't remember at all, except that he wasn't impressive. The other one was such an awful person that I had colleagues read his papers to make sure I wasn't grading him unfairly (he mostly got D's and F's - I'm pretty sure he failed the class.). I don't think the person who told him he was a borderline genius did him any favors.
Your parents made some mistakes (as all parents do). I'm not sure that opting out of the pernicious gifted system/race/contest is one of them.
posted by FencingGal at 6:24 AM on December 18, 2019 [6 favorites]
In my school system, gifted was great because it meant I got to skip gym class, which I'm told was reliably the most traumatizing part of public school. I played soccer and basketball outside of school anyway so I did not particularly need it.
It did lead to high expectations, which was stressful, and I think plays a role still in my personal guilt and anxiety about not finishing my PhD. You had so much potential!
But in my 30s now, on the whole it was good for me. My gifted teacher let me learn to program on the class apple 2 and now I make a lot more than most professors doing that, and she mostly had us read "adult" literature and classics in a way that felt fun and adventuresome, so I get to be a stem nerd who also loves poetry and language. If only I was handsome I'd be a triple threat. We are in the age of the nerds now.
In all seriousness, it did lead to some bullying and strange treatment by the kids not admitted to the gifted program, but I think I would have gotten that anyway, smart and sensitive are an irresistible target.
And I had serious emotional maladjustment, anxiety and depression (and still do even as I've gotten better at acting like I don't). I don't think gifted helped or hurt here. I think those issues are comorbid with the malady of intelligence. All bell curve outliers suffer, from internal and external pressures.
I think I would enroll my kid in a program like that if I had a child, but I would not pressure them with expectations about all the great things they're going to do. It made school less boring, for me, even if it was only one class period a day.
posted by dis_integration at 6:40 AM on December 18, 2019 [1 favorite]
It did lead to high expectations, which was stressful, and I think plays a role still in my personal guilt and anxiety about not finishing my PhD. You had so much potential!
But in my 30s now, on the whole it was good for me. My gifted teacher let me learn to program on the class apple 2 and now I make a lot more than most professors doing that, and she mostly had us read "adult" literature and classics in a way that felt fun and adventuresome, so I get to be a stem nerd who also loves poetry and language. If only I was handsome I'd be a triple threat. We are in the age of the nerds now.
In all seriousness, it did lead to some bullying and strange treatment by the kids not admitted to the gifted program, but I think I would have gotten that anyway, smart and sensitive are an irresistible target.
And I had serious emotional maladjustment, anxiety and depression (and still do even as I've gotten better at acting like I don't). I don't think gifted helped or hurt here. I think those issues are comorbid with the malady of intelligence. All bell curve outliers suffer, from internal and external pressures.
I think I would enroll my kid in a program like that if I had a child, but I would not pressure them with expectations about all the great things they're going to do. It made school less boring, for me, even if it was only one class period a day.
posted by dis_integration at 6:40 AM on December 18, 2019 [1 favorite]
I had a horrible and personally destructive childhood and adolescence that threw my life markedly off course.
My family is Very Smart. We tend to achieve little due to odd personalities and a general bolshieness, but lord do we test well.
In a sense, my horrible childhood was because I was smart and spent my time around normies - I had my head in a book all the time, I shared few interests and experiences with my peers and I was raised in a rather odd home. I too was kept out of the gifted school because my parents thought it would make me weird and maladjusted. (Although to be fair to them, they also have ideological objections to those programs and feel that they are undemocratic). I'd probably have been a bit happier if I'd gone, since I literally had no friends for many years and was just physically miserable and afraid a lot of the time.
But when I was in college I met a couple of friends who were also Very Smart but who had friends when they were little and had a normal life and were much, much happier and more well adjusted than I was. They hadn't gone to gifted programs, although they like I had taken honors classes; one of them was actually from a not wildly great and extremely under-resourced high school.
Looking back, I can see that I wasn't really unhappy because I didn't go to a gifted program; I was unhappy because I was a fat poor kid in a rich suburb, because my family is extremely eccentric*, because people in my family are almost certainly very high-functioning but slightly on the spectrum and because my schools were horrible, snobby and right-wing.
I think that if I had gone to the gifted school, I would in fact have been happier, but it would have been because I'd had friends, not because of the gifted issue. If I'd had friends steadily through school and hadn't been so isolated and sad, I would have been like the people I met in college.
I guess what you describe makes me wonder if the problem isn't giftedness or non-giftedness but family shit, bad teaching, etc. Yelling at a kid for being depressed is terrible parenting no matter how smart the kid is, and so is treating a kid like they're primarily a discipline problem, and so is creating a school environment where a kid just goes along for years being lonely and miserable.
~~
I did want to say that the whole "thinking you just 'had a bad personality'" thing really resonates. What I took from my school experience was that 'acting smart' and using weird words and having non-standard interests were personality flaws that were much worse than anything anyone else did, and that therefore I should strive to just not, and that the choice was to "fit in" by being a sort of boring normie or be totally alone and universally disliked, and these ideas did not help me with career or social choices later in life. I'd say I still, deep down, think I have a bad personality.
*And I know it sounds like I'm running them down a lot, but our family's eccentricity has in the long run given me more than it's taken, and my parents have always been very loving and steadfast.
posted by Frowner at 6:41 AM on December 18, 2019 [17 favorites]
My family is Very Smart. We tend to achieve little due to odd personalities and a general bolshieness, but lord do we test well.
In a sense, my horrible childhood was because I was smart and spent my time around normies - I had my head in a book all the time, I shared few interests and experiences with my peers and I was raised in a rather odd home. I too was kept out of the gifted school because my parents thought it would make me weird and maladjusted. (Although to be fair to them, they also have ideological objections to those programs and feel that they are undemocratic). I'd probably have been a bit happier if I'd gone, since I literally had no friends for many years and was just physically miserable and afraid a lot of the time.
But when I was in college I met a couple of friends who were also Very Smart but who had friends when they were little and had a normal life and were much, much happier and more well adjusted than I was. They hadn't gone to gifted programs, although they like I had taken honors classes; one of them was actually from a not wildly great and extremely under-resourced high school.
Looking back, I can see that I wasn't really unhappy because I didn't go to a gifted program; I was unhappy because I was a fat poor kid in a rich suburb, because my family is extremely eccentric*, because people in my family are almost certainly very high-functioning but slightly on the spectrum and because my schools were horrible, snobby and right-wing.
I think that if I had gone to the gifted school, I would in fact have been happier, but it would have been because I'd had friends, not because of the gifted issue. If I'd had friends steadily through school and hadn't been so isolated and sad, I would have been like the people I met in college.
I guess what you describe makes me wonder if the problem isn't giftedness or non-giftedness but family shit, bad teaching, etc. Yelling at a kid for being depressed is terrible parenting no matter how smart the kid is, and so is treating a kid like they're primarily a discipline problem, and so is creating a school environment where a kid just goes along for years being lonely and miserable.
~~
I did want to say that the whole "thinking you just 'had a bad personality'" thing really resonates. What I took from my school experience was that 'acting smart' and using weird words and having non-standard interests were personality flaws that were much worse than anything anyone else did, and that therefore I should strive to just not, and that the choice was to "fit in" by being a sort of boring normie or be totally alone and universally disliked, and these ideas did not help me with career or social choices later in life. I'd say I still, deep down, think I have a bad personality.
*And I know it sounds like I'm running them down a lot, but our family's eccentricity has in the long run given me more than it's taken, and my parents have always been very loving and steadfast.
posted by Frowner at 6:41 AM on December 18, 2019 [17 favorites]
One other thing. I didn’t understand until I was an adult — and this maybe speaks well of the particular flavor of gifted schooling I had — that there are a variety of reasons people support these programs. For me the point is internal to the student: you do it because you want all kids to learn resilience and to have friends and to know that mistakes are okay, and you think that appropriate challenge is part of the how. But there is a strain of advocacy that focuses on eminence and the fulfillment of potential, and it has this creepy space-race-era feel to it, like, these children are a national resource we shouldn’t squander. And — I mean this with all my heart — fuck that noise. I do not care if my kid grows up to be “eminent.” If she knows how to overcome obstacles in order to build a happy life for herself, I’ll have done my job well.
posted by eirias at 6:53 AM on December 18, 2019 [7 favorites]
posted by eirias at 6:53 AM on December 18, 2019 [7 favorites]
One more aside: I was fired from a job for having a "bad personality" so you're not alone there. I took it super personally until it was confirmed by coworkers I trusted and respected that I just made people in power "feel dumb." Not because I insulted them or ignored their input, but just because I existed and did my job well.
posted by Young Kullervo at 6:57 AM on December 18, 2019 [7 favorites]
posted by Young Kullervo at 6:57 AM on December 18, 2019 [7 favorites]
scoring highly on an IQ test doesn't explain a thing about how your parents treated you badly. Only facts about them can explain that, not facts about you. "gifted" is not a disease or a diagnosis, and the less euphemistic way to describe someone who scores highly on IQ tests without advance prep is "smart." Smart people whose smartness can only be detected by specialized tests and not through regular observation don't have a gift, they have a party trick. what I mean is, nobody (teachers, peers, you) was prevented from noticing that you were more intelligent than the norm by your parents keeping it from them. your parents didn't have the ability to sequester that information. all they could quarantine was the IQ test number and the possibility of a different school. and that isn't such a large part of the whole.
The world is full of anxious and depressed smart people, you certainly aren't alone in that. but the suggestion that you didn't know/ couldn't have known you were an unusually smart child until your parents let it come out in adulthood, and therefore couldn't have previously taken it into account as a factor in your personality formation, is surprising and unusual. If I were you and I wanted to do more than treat the most urgent mood problems, this is where I would focus my introspecting: what does smart (or "gifted," if you must) mean to me, and how can it be both true and a thing I never knew about myself?
[a side note: smart people are often very sure about a potential correlation between the two conditions, intelligence and unhappiness or intelligence and self-hatred. One obvious reason, though not the only reason, is that who wants to be the person who stands up and speculates about how hey, I'm both dumb AND depressed, anybody think there's a connection? So there's only so far you can draw conclusions from self-reporting before feeling a little ridiculous. ]
posted by queenofbithynia at 7:04 AM on December 18, 2019 [12 favorites]
The world is full of anxious and depressed smart people, you certainly aren't alone in that. but the suggestion that you didn't know/ couldn't have known you were an unusually smart child until your parents let it come out in adulthood, and therefore couldn't have previously taken it into account as a factor in your personality formation, is surprising and unusual. If I were you and I wanted to do more than treat the most urgent mood problems, this is where I would focus my introspecting: what does smart (or "gifted," if you must) mean to me, and how can it be both true and a thing I never knew about myself?
[a side note: smart people are often very sure about a potential correlation between the two conditions, intelligence and unhappiness or intelligence and self-hatred. One obvious reason, though not the only reason, is that who wants to be the person who stands up and speculates about how hey, I'm both dumb AND depressed, anybody think there's a connection? So there's only so far you can draw conclusions from self-reporting before feeling a little ridiculous. ]
posted by queenofbithynia at 7:04 AM on December 18, 2019 [12 favorites]
gifted + ADD meant I never got a report card that didn't have "lazy", "messy", and/or "does not meet potential". Sounds like you dodged a bullet by avoiding the label.
posted by scruss at 7:08 AM on December 18, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by scruss at 7:08 AM on December 18, 2019 [2 favorites]
I experienced this from both sides. As a kid in the 1950s, I attended a small town elementary school. I got quite a lot of "not working to his potential", was teased about "using big words". I was never really "one of the guys" until I got to high school where I had a peer group of friends who were at a least as smart as me.
I remember something that happened when I eventually went off to college. Three or four of us, including a senior, were walking along, and I introduced an idea and started to explain it as I was accustomed to doing. The senior stopped me saying "we'll all smart here, we get it, you don't have to explain."
My son was depressed as a 4th-grader. A bit of investigation revealed that he was just excruciatingly bored in school, caused by a combination of his being bright with his being a bit of an autodidact and teaching himself all the hard bits before they were encountered in school. He was allowed to enter the gifted and talented program a year early, and that gave him a bit of release. I'm not sure if the program itself was the important thing, or just getting out of his regular classroom for a few hours a week.
I agree with the comments above that programs for the gifted are complicated by all sorts of different points of view and agendas. Some parents fight to get their kids in, and some fight to keep their kids out. One of the points of view that comes up all the time is "We have special programs for the high achievers and special programs for the low achievers, but what about the regular kids?" Well, the entire curriculum is aimed at the regular kids.
Self image is difficult to change. I was overweight for most of my life, but in my 50s, I got back to a normal weight. I took, a long time to stop feeling like the fat guy. Even now, at 73, made underweight by age and medical issues, I'm surprised when it turns out that I wear a Medium size.
posted by SemiSalt at 7:15 AM on December 18, 2019 [5 favorites]
I remember something that happened when I eventually went off to college. Three or four of us, including a senior, were walking along, and I introduced an idea and started to explain it as I was accustomed to doing. The senior stopped me saying "we'll all smart here, we get it, you don't have to explain."
My son was depressed as a 4th-grader. A bit of investigation revealed that he was just excruciatingly bored in school, caused by a combination of his being bright with his being a bit of an autodidact and teaching himself all the hard bits before they were encountered in school. He was allowed to enter the gifted and talented program a year early, and that gave him a bit of release. I'm not sure if the program itself was the important thing, or just getting out of his regular classroom for a few hours a week.
I agree with the comments above that programs for the gifted are complicated by all sorts of different points of view and agendas. Some parents fight to get their kids in, and some fight to keep their kids out. One of the points of view that comes up all the time is "We have special programs for the high achievers and special programs for the low achievers, but what about the regular kids?" Well, the entire curriculum is aimed at the regular kids.
Self image is difficult to change. I was overweight for most of my life, but in my 50s, I got back to a normal weight. I took, a long time to stop feeling like the fat guy. Even now, at 73, made underweight by age and medical issues, I'm surprised when it turns out that I wear a Medium size.
posted by SemiSalt at 7:15 AM on December 18, 2019 [5 favorites]
any first-person accounts, really.
I'm going to . . . kinda buck the trend I see in the answers so far and say that I actually rather enjoyed and found value in being "gifted." I won't at all deny that I was lucky to some extent - I am about 20 years older than you and a cis straight white male, so I was schooled in a different time and quite possibly had a different set of social/cultural expectations and pressures and influences.
That said, however, how it worked for me was in elementary school I had 1 class a day that was just "gifted class", with a relatively free-form structure (art projects one day, history the next, reading the next) with a teacher who emphasized that trying new things and doing your best at them had intrinsic value, perfection or "success" not at all necessary. I also participated in "gifted" extra-curricular activities (Academic Games) which put me in touch with gifted kids from other elementary schools - some of whom I'm friends with to this day. (It probably didn't hurt that the odd structure of our school system at the time meant that kids from multiple elementary schools all went to one junior high for 2 years before splitting back out to different high schools whose boundaries were different from the elementary schools. This meant that I had a bit of a built in social network of gifted kids through the difficult adolescent years.)
Once I hit junior high & high school there were no "gifted" classes, but of course I wound up in a lot of advanced/AP courses, and that meant I spent a lot of time among "my people" - other smart/gifted kids. And most of those classes had teachers that were happy to have engaged, interested, smart kids and gave us quite a bit of leeway.
Count me another who wound up "skipping" gym class for a lot of school thanks to gifted/AP course loads, which was a god-send for a pudgy un-athletic kid. (I actually had to take gym in summer school, which meant that we went bowling and swimming and roller-skating a lot - a lot better than getting pounded in dodge ball by the jocks.) I also had musical talent, which gave me a whole other scholastic & social network, and one where "smarts" were not really relevant.
All the above is not to put forward some kind of "Ha Ha you poor saps had a terrible gifted life", but to contrast it with this:
"I was also constantly in trouble with older family members or school teachers for being disrespectful/ asking too many questions. I've internalized my parents' explanation of these things as me having "a bad personality" and "bad characters" "
"my parents would yell at me for being unhappy (out of frustration; they felt I was ungrateful for what they've done for me)"
"I couldn't understand why my parents were never satisfied with my achievements,"
" I could tell there was something about me they feared. I thought I was a freak and they didn't love me."
This . . . is bad parenting/teaching/role modeling. I had and have had plenty of difficulty with my parents, it was not at all all sunshine and roses, but they NEVER made me feel that my intelligence or "giftedness" was a problem or a threat to them. I was never pushed to be perfect, they were never angry at me for not living up to their expectations, any grumbling about "under-achieving" was mild disappointment because they knew darn well that I'd gotten that "B" by putting in virtually no effort at all. Most of my teachers were delighted to have at least some kids willing to actually engage with the lessons.
IOW, this is about your parents (and other adults) reacting badly to your giftedness and smarts. Obviously this is not at all an uncommon problem, but I do want to emphasize that I believe this is not a problem inherent in "giftedness", but in how you were raised, and your maladaptive coping strategies and defense mechanisms are certainly a thing you can continue to work on in therapy.
posted by soundguy99 at 7:30 AM on December 18, 2019 [4 favorites]
I'm going to . . . kinda buck the trend I see in the answers so far and say that I actually rather enjoyed and found value in being "gifted." I won't at all deny that I was lucky to some extent - I am about 20 years older than you and a cis straight white male, so I was schooled in a different time and quite possibly had a different set of social/cultural expectations and pressures and influences.
That said, however, how it worked for me was in elementary school I had 1 class a day that was just "gifted class", with a relatively free-form structure (art projects one day, history the next, reading the next) with a teacher who emphasized that trying new things and doing your best at them had intrinsic value, perfection or "success" not at all necessary. I also participated in "gifted" extra-curricular activities (Academic Games) which put me in touch with gifted kids from other elementary schools - some of whom I'm friends with to this day. (It probably didn't hurt that the odd structure of our school system at the time meant that kids from multiple elementary schools all went to one junior high for 2 years before splitting back out to different high schools whose boundaries were different from the elementary schools. This meant that I had a bit of a built in social network of gifted kids through the difficult adolescent years.)
Once I hit junior high & high school there were no "gifted" classes, but of course I wound up in a lot of advanced/AP courses, and that meant I spent a lot of time among "my people" - other smart/gifted kids. And most of those classes had teachers that were happy to have engaged, interested, smart kids and gave us quite a bit of leeway.
Count me another who wound up "skipping" gym class for a lot of school thanks to gifted/AP course loads, which was a god-send for a pudgy un-athletic kid. (I actually had to take gym in summer school, which meant that we went bowling and swimming and roller-skating a lot - a lot better than getting pounded in dodge ball by the jocks.) I also had musical talent, which gave me a whole other scholastic & social network, and one where "smarts" were not really relevant.
All the above is not to put forward some kind of "Ha Ha you poor saps had a terrible gifted life", but to contrast it with this:
"I was also constantly in trouble with older family members or school teachers for being disrespectful/ asking too many questions. I've internalized my parents' explanation of these things as me having "a bad personality" and "bad characters" "
"my parents would yell at me for being unhappy (out of frustration; they felt I was ungrateful for what they've done for me)"
"I couldn't understand why my parents were never satisfied with my achievements,"
" I could tell there was something about me they feared. I thought I was a freak and they didn't love me."
This . . . is bad parenting/teaching/role modeling. I had and have had plenty of difficulty with my parents, it was not at all all sunshine and roses, but they NEVER made me feel that my intelligence or "giftedness" was a problem or a threat to them. I was never pushed to be perfect, they were never angry at me for not living up to their expectations, any grumbling about "under-achieving" was mild disappointment because they knew darn well that I'd gotten that "B" by putting in virtually no effort at all. Most of my teachers were delighted to have at least some kids willing to actually engage with the lessons.
IOW, this is about your parents (and other adults) reacting badly to your giftedness and smarts. Obviously this is not at all an uncommon problem, but I do want to emphasize that I believe this is not a problem inherent in "giftedness", but in how you were raised, and your maladaptive coping strategies and defense mechanisms are certainly a thing you can continue to work on in therapy.
posted by soundguy99 at 7:30 AM on December 18, 2019 [4 favorites]
Gifted classes are special education classes. They exist because gifted kids often don’t thrive in regular classes. (Now, lots of regular kids don’t thrive in regular classes, and plenty of gifted kids struggle with gifted classes too.)
posted by Huffy Puffy at 7:31 AM on December 18, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by Huffy Puffy at 7:31 AM on December 18, 2019 [6 favorites]
The world is full of anxious and depressed smart people, you certainly aren't alone in that. but the suggestion that you didn't know/ couldn't have known you were an unusually smart child until your parents let it come out in adulthood, and therefore couldn't have previously taken it into account as a factor in your personality formation, is surprising and unusual. If I were you and I wanted to do more than treat the most urgent mood problems, this is where I would focus my introspecting: what does smart (or "gifted," if you must) mean to me, and how can it be both true and a thing I never knew about myself?
queenofbithynia, I didn't read the question that way, maybe because the asker's experience matched mine so near perfectly. I was well aware that I was relatively smart as a child, but I couldn't understand why my mum and stepdad and some other family members acted so strange towards me, and I certainly felt that I was somehow a misfit. That experience has shaped me in ways that have sometimes made it hard for me to function as an adult, up to just recently when I finally connected the dots with the help of a therapist. To cut it short, when people act towards me in any of the ways my parents and stepparents did, I fall into the trap of acting like I did as a child in response to my parents. There are different responses to different actions, non of them appropriate in a job setting.
When I was told about that high IQ, also as a young adult, I didn't directly see the connection but I did understand it as something sad that I wished had never happened.
I can understand how the OP wants to know wether an other version of that experience could have turned out differently. And it could, as you can see here in this thread. I also had friends in my class in school whose parents were completely relaxed about their achievements. It was so cool to be with them, and their families. I loved it. But in a gifted children program you won't necessarily get those families, for reasons that are also outlined in the thread.
Luckily, I had other family that were loving and caring. Specially my two grandmothers were very aware that I was a lonely kid and needed to learn social skills and feel loved. They helped me find friends at school and participate in stuff that wasn't about academic achievement. My granddad followed my grandmothers lead emotionally, but also tried to stimulate me intellectually, so with him I got the best of both worlds.
Therapy has helped me to focus on that part of my experience, and to bring that love and care into my adult life, rather than the neglect from my parents. And also to forgive my parents, who did what they could with their knowledge and parenting skills.
posted by mumimor at 7:40 AM on December 18, 2019 [5 favorites]
queenofbithynia, I didn't read the question that way, maybe because the asker's experience matched mine so near perfectly. I was well aware that I was relatively smart as a child, but I couldn't understand why my mum and stepdad and some other family members acted so strange towards me, and I certainly felt that I was somehow a misfit. That experience has shaped me in ways that have sometimes made it hard for me to function as an adult, up to just recently when I finally connected the dots with the help of a therapist. To cut it short, when people act towards me in any of the ways my parents and stepparents did, I fall into the trap of acting like I did as a child in response to my parents. There are different responses to different actions, non of them appropriate in a job setting.
When I was told about that high IQ, also as a young adult, I didn't directly see the connection but I did understand it as something sad that I wished had never happened.
I can understand how the OP wants to know wether an other version of that experience could have turned out differently. And it could, as you can see here in this thread. I also had friends in my class in school whose parents were completely relaxed about their achievements. It was so cool to be with them, and their families. I loved it. But in a gifted children program you won't necessarily get those families, for reasons that are also outlined in the thread.
Luckily, I had other family that were loving and caring. Specially my two grandmothers were very aware that I was a lonely kid and needed to learn social skills and feel loved. They helped me find friends at school and participate in stuff that wasn't about academic achievement. My granddad followed my grandmothers lead emotionally, but also tried to stimulate me intellectually, so with him I got the best of both worlds.
Therapy has helped me to focus on that part of my experience, and to bring that love and care into my adult life, rather than the neglect from my parents. And also to forgive my parents, who did what they could with their knowledge and parenting skills.
posted by mumimor at 7:40 AM on December 18, 2019 [5 favorites]
In the 1980s in the U.S. my city started up a grade school (primary school) program for gifted & talented students. I was joined it for fourth grade, and it was mostly glorious: I got to stay in my class all day instead of going up the hall to be with older kids for reading and math, for instance, and we did logic puzzles and had a philosopher named Peter Shea teach us philosophy every Wednesday right after recess and we played the stock market game and learned to draw with our left hands and and and.
Also, we were total shits to the oddest among us, who in retrospect were the brightest but also somewhere out on the autism spectrum.
I left the program for private school after a few years, but my classmates continued on as they city developed gifted programs in middle school and then high school. They got to take IB classes and do other things that I missed out on, and they had each other.
Around this time I realized that my three older siblings (and cousins, and aunts & uncles) were all as smart as or smarter than me, but this program simply didn't exist for them. And maybe just growing up in a big family of bright, verbal people taught me to think nimbly, and I am not so special after all?
In adulthood I often think l that I still haven't reached my potential, possibly thanks to internalizing the message that I was smarter than everyone around me (and after comparing myself to classmates and childhood friends who are VERY successful in their fields). On the other hand, I am pretty good at my job, and I have figured out that I don't have to be perfect, and I am learning to ignore the self-sabotage most of the time.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:48 AM on December 18, 2019 [2 favorites]
Also, we were total shits to the oddest among us, who in retrospect were the brightest but also somewhere out on the autism spectrum.
I left the program for private school after a few years, but my classmates continued on as they city developed gifted programs in middle school and then high school. They got to take IB classes and do other things that I missed out on, and they had each other.
Around this time I realized that my three older siblings (and cousins, and aunts & uncles) were all as smart as or smarter than me, but this program simply didn't exist for them. And maybe just growing up in a big family of bright, verbal people taught me to think nimbly, and I am not so special after all?
In adulthood I often think l that I still haven't reached my potential, possibly thanks to internalizing the message that I was smarter than everyone around me (and after comparing myself to classmates and childhood friends who are VERY successful in their fields). On the other hand, I am pretty good at my job, and I have figured out that I don't have to be perfect, and I am learning to ignore the self-sabotage most of the time.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:48 AM on December 18, 2019 [2 favorites]
All it means is that you were good at IQ tests as a kid. Also that you are probably white & middle class as the tests tend to favor people from that background. I was also one of those people, went to the Gifted classes got to go to amazing concerts & art gallerys & travel as part of the program. I was also the dumbest kid in the smartest class which for me was a huge shock I'd cruised by all my life until then and suddenly I was in a class with actual math geniuses & a violin playing virtuoso & the most amazing artists & kids that spoke 3 languages, many of whom went on to amazing careers & I often see them in the news or as leads in world symphonies. Instead of feeling motivated & stimulated I felt like an idiot because I couldn't keep up with the smart kids & I had been told my whole life I was a smart kid and I felt like a fraud. When we moved & I ended up back in the main stream classes elsewhere I kind of just cruised along, lost & passing classes without even trying then gave up on education. I never graduated University, never went on to a great career, I am lucky enough to have a good happy life now a days, but it took me 30 years to get over that feeling of being a fraud.
None of this has been helped by finding out after my mother passed & we went through her paper work my old childhood medical records which have diagnosis for problems I didn't know I had a as a kid from doctors I don't remember seeing, but talking to my current doctor that was basically the sort of diagnosis a young girl on the autism spectrum got back in the 1970's when a diagnosis of Autism was only for the most extreme cases.
So what I'm saying is even if you'd gone to the classes, there is no guarantee it would have been the panacea for all your problems & may well have made them worse.
posted by wwax at 7:56 AM on December 18, 2019 [2 favorites]
None of this has been helped by finding out after my mother passed & we went through her paper work my old childhood medical records which have diagnosis for problems I didn't know I had a as a kid from doctors I don't remember seeing, but talking to my current doctor that was basically the sort of diagnosis a young girl on the autism spectrum got back in the 1970's when a diagnosis of Autism was only for the most extreme cases.
So what I'm saying is even if you'd gone to the classes, there is no guarantee it would have been the panacea for all your problems & may well have made them worse.
posted by wwax at 7:56 AM on December 18, 2019 [2 favorites]
Okay. I had a really positive experience in my elementary school "gifted" class (it wasn't offered past that), but this was almost entirely due to a piece of random good luck, which is that it gave me the opportunity to meet the person who became my lifelong best friend. That ended up having a far bigger impact on my social and intellectual development than anything we learned (or didn't) in super-special smart kid class. She and I have talked extensively over the years about our mixed feelings toward the program itself. Like, we had a really amazing teacher and it was definitely beneficial for us to receive the kind of focused, individual attention that we did -- our school district was chronically short on funds and resources and the schools were horribly overcrowded, so it was really easy for kids to just get swallowed up and forgotten. But the flip side of that is pretty uncomfortable, you know? Like, our test scores as first graders and the "potential" they supposedly conveyed clearly made us more worthwhile in the school's eyes. I don't feel great about that, even if the whole thing was a net positive for me specifically. (I do not know what the schools were doing for the kids who were really struggling, but I do know that my high school class had 100 students drop out between freshman year and graduation, so.)
Plus, like a lot of people have mentioned, yanking a 6-year-old out of "normal" classes and consistently and repeatedly implying that they're so smart and special and amazing and better than all those OTHER kids isn't a great recipe for building a well-adjusted adult. I'm in my 30s now and doing fine, but I've definitely struggled at points to reconcile my supposed potential and special-ness with how I'm actually just a regular person with slightly above-average verbal skills. And like many "gifted" kids, I've had my share of pretty intense anxiety issues (as has my friend). I don't think the class CAUSED those, but I also don't think it helped.
Anyway, I agree with what a lot of other people are saying, that your parents' behavior towards you as an awkward and precocious kid is way more of a factor here than anything about getting or not getting the "gifted" label. I mean, telling a child they have a "bad personality" is incredibly fucked up! And even if they had let you join the class, I'm not convinced that would've done much to mitigate the effects of them viewing you with suspicion and fear for just... existing.
I hope therapy continues to be helpful, and I seriously wouldn't dwell on this too much if you can help it.
posted by catoclock at 8:01 AM on December 18, 2019 [2 favorites]
Plus, like a lot of people have mentioned, yanking a 6-year-old out of "normal" classes and consistently and repeatedly implying that they're so smart and special and amazing and better than all those OTHER kids isn't a great recipe for building a well-adjusted adult. I'm in my 30s now and doing fine, but I've definitely struggled at points to reconcile my supposed potential and special-ness with how I'm actually just a regular person with slightly above-average verbal skills. And like many "gifted" kids, I've had my share of pretty intense anxiety issues (as has my friend). I don't think the class CAUSED those, but I also don't think it helped.
Anyway, I agree with what a lot of other people are saying, that your parents' behavior towards you as an awkward and precocious kid is way more of a factor here than anything about getting or not getting the "gifted" label. I mean, telling a child they have a "bad personality" is incredibly fucked up! And even if they had let you join the class, I'm not convinced that would've done much to mitigate the effects of them viewing you with suspicion and fear for just... existing.
I hope therapy continues to be helpful, and I seriously wouldn't dwell on this too much if you can help it.
posted by catoclock at 8:01 AM on December 18, 2019 [2 favorites]
So I went to a school for academically gifted kids for high school, was identified as an asynchronous learner (my preferred term) very early on, was bullied in elementary school despite an enriched curriculum being given to me (basically I was sent to the library a lot.)
My parents were the opposite of yours in some ways. They were huge advocates for my brain, as I think of it. They took pride in bringing me out at parties (literally) to entertain their friends and certainly provided whatever I wanted in terms of books/microscopes/etc. I got a lot of positive reinforcement for being a Very Smart Girl. Also a Very Good One.
I will say that going to an entire high school made for people like me was really empowering as well as humbling. First, we weren't all going to be at the tops of our classes, which was a very good lesson at that time. Second, learning was cool, or at least cool enough. Third, everyone had their obsessions, some of them super-nerdy, some of them not so obviously super-nerdy. To be in an environment where it was okay to be obsessed with things and share them incessantly was really, really nice.
Overall some of my peers have gone on to great success although some of that success falls into the Evil category including a reality show franchise you've heard of and a political speechwriter you've heard of. Some of my peers have not, including one spectacular suicide. I myself flailed out of university for PTSD issues and my parents still, still, still are upset I don't have a PhD. Very upset. I am fully at peace with this.
And most of us high school peers, when we get together (and some of us still do regularly, plus reunions, etc.), have shared that we also had to learn how the world works, to not (basically) have our hands up TALKING OVER EVERYONE (which was the way we were in high school) in our workplaces. To move from a fixed mindset. To fight issues around perfectionism and a feeling of...lost potential. Of early burnout. We were encouraged towards excellence and leadership and...some of us just want a break from that and to enjoy a "good enough" life. It is really nice to have each other for that discussion, but it has been a real struggle. I kind of feel like a lot of us end up where Luke does in The Last Jedi. Grumpy yoga practitioners who occasionally drag themselves out to provide Narrative and then go back to bed. (This may be more a Gen-X thing.)
Having experienced really high quality "gifted" education, it was great, but it didn't let any of us out of existential and other angst.
For me...my parents had other issues and so did I, but you know what? In a way I am your mirror image in that my parents treated me like I was a brain, and my adulthood has been an experience of reclaiming my body and my emotions and now I work in what looks from the outside as a very sporty job (in fact it does relate some to philosophy.) Being book smart is fine, I wouldn't trade it, but really...the thing is, being happy. I think it's great you're realizing your parents' limitations and seeing your talents as something that should have been nurtured, not suppressed. I wish they had been. But I would caution you against idealizing any one thing.
posted by warriorqueen at 8:11 AM on December 18, 2019 [5 favorites]
My parents were the opposite of yours in some ways. They were huge advocates for my brain, as I think of it. They took pride in bringing me out at parties (literally) to entertain their friends and certainly provided whatever I wanted in terms of books/microscopes/etc. I got a lot of positive reinforcement for being a Very Smart Girl. Also a Very Good One.
I will say that going to an entire high school made for people like me was really empowering as well as humbling. First, we weren't all going to be at the tops of our classes, which was a very good lesson at that time. Second, learning was cool, or at least cool enough. Third, everyone had their obsessions, some of them super-nerdy, some of them not so obviously super-nerdy. To be in an environment where it was okay to be obsessed with things and share them incessantly was really, really nice.
Overall some of my peers have gone on to great success although some of that success falls into the Evil category including a reality show franchise you've heard of and a political speechwriter you've heard of. Some of my peers have not, including one spectacular suicide. I myself flailed out of university for PTSD issues and my parents still, still, still are upset I don't have a PhD. Very upset. I am fully at peace with this.
And most of us high school peers, when we get together (and some of us still do regularly, plus reunions, etc.), have shared that we also had to learn how the world works, to not (basically) have our hands up TALKING OVER EVERYONE (which was the way we were in high school) in our workplaces. To move from a fixed mindset. To fight issues around perfectionism and a feeling of...lost potential. Of early burnout. We were encouraged towards excellence and leadership and...some of us just want a break from that and to enjoy a "good enough" life. It is really nice to have each other for that discussion, but it has been a real struggle. I kind of feel like a lot of us end up where Luke does in The Last Jedi. Grumpy yoga practitioners who occasionally drag themselves out to provide Narrative and then go back to bed. (This may be more a Gen-X thing.)
Having experienced really high quality "gifted" education, it was great, but it didn't let any of us out of existential and other angst.
For me...my parents had other issues and so did I, but you know what? In a way I am your mirror image in that my parents treated me like I was a brain, and my adulthood has been an experience of reclaiming my body and my emotions and now I work in what looks from the outside as a very sporty job (in fact it does relate some to philosophy.) Being book smart is fine, I wouldn't trade it, but really...the thing is, being happy. I think it's great you're realizing your parents' limitations and seeing your talents as something that should have been nurtured, not suppressed. I wish they had been. But I would caution you against idealizing any one thing.
posted by warriorqueen at 8:11 AM on December 18, 2019 [5 favorites]
You should watch this movie called Good Will Hunting to see a pretty funny take on this issue. FWIW, I identify with Ben Affleck's character as I was kind of gifted but saw the workaday side too as a kid, and how it feels when you are basically without options and it's too late to go back. Maybe that is rude and loaded with difficult discussion about potential gained or lost, but it's also true.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:56 AM on December 18, 2019
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:56 AM on December 18, 2019
I had a markedly different experience in gifted programs than most of the commenters here. I was in a 'gifted' session 2x per week for 5th-8th grade. For me, they were an escape from the constant bullying and contempt I received from both fellow students and teachers in the regular classes. My school/town was conservative, lower class, and extremely anti-intellectual, very much punished tall-poppy syndrome. I was regularly mocked by teachers for getting correct answers or having perfect test scores. There were only 5-6 kids in my gifted class and I think we were just relieved to be away from that. What I can say is that for all of the kids in that class, being 'gifted' gave us opportunities for better colleges/scholarships — we got lots of brochures, a couple of us went to gifted summer camps (I even got scholarships for that), but 20 years later it didn't really impact the outcomes of our lives that much, we all ended up pretty much where we would be according to our parent's backgrounds.
One kid dropped of high school, completed it a few years later, went to college then dropped out of that, learned to code, works in tech. One went through college and has a middle-manager job in tech. One is a vet. One is a phd in something sciencey, he had the most intellectual parents. Those were the kids who came from middle-class families, parents went to college. I was from a poor family, only 1 parent even had a high school degree. After years of struggling with mental health I'm in a not-particularly-challenging middle-class career. Other kid from a lower class background never went to college, got involved with the mob and was arrested for running drugs.
Regardless of the lack of any sort of extraordinary outcomes, I think gifted programs can be really positive for kids. But it depends on the overall culture. It seems like a lot of middle/upper class schools (and parents) make it all about which kid is the 'best' rather than... which kids need a different learning environment. I agree with the poster above who said that gifted programs are special-education programs, I also think they should be seen/treated that way.
In addition to my middle-school gifted program, I left high school early for an accelerated early college program (though if I hadn't had that, I would have dropped out of high school anyway). My friends from college are a similar mix of good & bad outcomes. Like, really, all across the spectrum from chronically unemployed & homeless to high-powered lawyer/judge with political aspirations, with most of them somewhere in the middle.
Honestly, looking at where we are now, it seems like class background and mental health is a WAY bigger determinant of 'success' than intelligence, ability to succeed in classes, or gifted opportunities.
posted by 100kb at 10:09 AM on December 18, 2019 [6 favorites]
One kid dropped of high school, completed it a few years later, went to college then dropped out of that, learned to code, works in tech. One went through college and has a middle-manager job in tech. One is a vet. One is a phd in something sciencey, he had the most intellectual parents. Those were the kids who came from middle-class families, parents went to college. I was from a poor family, only 1 parent even had a high school degree. After years of struggling with mental health I'm in a not-particularly-challenging middle-class career. Other kid from a lower class background never went to college, got involved with the mob and was arrested for running drugs.
Regardless of the lack of any sort of extraordinary outcomes, I think gifted programs can be really positive for kids. But it depends on the overall culture. It seems like a lot of middle/upper class schools (and parents) make it all about which kid is the 'best' rather than... which kids need a different learning environment. I agree with the poster above who said that gifted programs are special-education programs, I also think they should be seen/treated that way.
In addition to my middle-school gifted program, I left high school early for an accelerated early college program (though if I hadn't had that, I would have dropped out of high school anyway). My friends from college are a similar mix of good & bad outcomes. Like, really, all across the spectrum from chronically unemployed & homeless to high-powered lawyer/judge with political aspirations, with most of them somewhere in the middle.
Honestly, looking at where we are now, it seems like class background and mental health is a WAY bigger determinant of 'success' than intelligence, ability to succeed in classes, or gifted opportunities.
posted by 100kb at 10:09 AM on December 18, 2019 [6 favorites]
Contrary to what a lot of the others here have described in their stories, I enjoyed being in the gifted program in grade school. I did have a bit of trouble with getting bored in class, and it was nice to have one day a week where I'd go to a different location with other kids and do a bunch of stuff that was pretty different from regular school, like outside-the-box different. I also liked having a bit of choice in what I wanted to study at that age - we had electives, which was new and novel for 9- to 12-year old kids. It was challenging and fun and taught me to think differently in a lot of ways. I have fond memories of it and of particular kids and teachers in the program.
I don't think I had more trouble than the average kid in figuring out social norms and where I fit in. It seems pretty much everyone hated middle school like I did, when I was trying out a bunch of different friend groups and interests and getting frustrated all the time. I really hit a stride by high school and enjoyed it a lot. I think being in the gifted program for a few years helped me in that I got to know other groups of kids, it gave me more confidence, and kept me challenged and engaged. In retrospect, I can see it maybe being harder to succeed socially, academically, and eventually professionally without that experience in the gifted program. But it's hard to say for sure *shrug*
posted by hootenatty at 10:14 AM on December 18, 2019 [1 favorite]
I don't think I had more trouble than the average kid in figuring out social norms and where I fit in. It seems pretty much everyone hated middle school like I did, when I was trying out a bunch of different friend groups and interests and getting frustrated all the time. I really hit a stride by high school and enjoyed it a lot. I think being in the gifted program for a few years helped me in that I got to know other groups of kids, it gave me more confidence, and kept me challenged and engaged. In retrospect, I can see it maybe being harder to succeed socially, academically, and eventually professionally without that experience in the gifted program. But it's hard to say for sure *shrug*
posted by hootenatty at 10:14 AM on December 18, 2019 [1 favorite]
Growing up, I liked being labeled "gifted" (starting around age 8) but looking back, it was definitely a mixed bag.
Pros: Pulled out of class now and then to do more stimulating work and could do interesting projects for extra credit; able to connect with other kids in my school who were also gifted and we communicated well; qualified for some programs like a gifted summer school program with fun classes. Advanced classes and AP classes were fun in junior high and high school and I made some good friends there; it was a good opportunity to really figure out where my interests and strengths were.
Cons: I hitched my self-esteem wagon to the "gifted" train and that caused some big problems later on as my peers caught up and sheer brainpower wasn't enough to get me through harder subjects. No one really did anything to dissuade me from the idea that "gifted" = "better" so in elementary school I was kind of a precocious know-it-all who also FELL APART (like, humiliated tears in class) if I needed help with anything academic because I was so embarrassed and felt I *shouldn't* need any help at all. Any time I needed help or was asked to redo an assignment, I felt like I was failing everyone who was so proud of me being gifted. I was praised for my high grades and high test scores when actually I hadn't really done anything, because it was so easy.
I fell victim to the idea that "if I can't be the best at it on the first try, it's NOT WORTH DOING and INFERIOR to my cultured interests" (sports) so that didn't win me any friends with the athletic crowd.
I hit a wall with math in 6th grade and suddenly started floundering with it. I didn't test into the advanced math class track in junior high but no one had told me, and I PANICKED on the first day of junior high when I saw I was in the "regular" math class and I went to the office and tearfully asked them to switch me over to advanced because I thought it was a mistake. They did, but my math grades suffered well into high school because the advanced material was beyond me and yet I couldn't admit I might not be gifted in this area and actually did need additional help and support. My parents didn't know to intervene, and I wish they had sat me down and told me it was OK to need help and set up a tutor for me and overruled my insistence that I was "fine," rather than tut-tutting over my Cs and Ds in math.
In college I was still a quick learner but other students had caught up to me. I also stumbled at first my freshman year, because years of effortlessly acing tests and papers meant I had no idea how to actually study, so I bombed a few finals before I figured out that I did actually need to study now.
Career-wise, I do OK but the high praise heaped on me as a kid made me feel I had to be Famous & Outstanding in some way as an adult, and I haven't achieved that and it gave me some angst in my twenties. I work in university administration and have a BA but didn't go on to any higher degrees; my friend who struggled with tests and had to retake the SAT multiple times now works in a high profile genetics lab because she is top-notch at studying and applied herself throughout grad school.
Now my son is about to enter school and his preschool teachers have mentioned maybe having him assessed for being gifted. If he does fall into that category I'm going to try to come at it from an angle of "everyone learns differently, including you, and that's okay" and I'm not going to let him see his standardized test scores if I can help it.
posted by castlebravo at 10:50 AM on December 18, 2019 [2 favorites]
Pros: Pulled out of class now and then to do more stimulating work and could do interesting projects for extra credit; able to connect with other kids in my school who were also gifted and we communicated well; qualified for some programs like a gifted summer school program with fun classes. Advanced classes and AP classes were fun in junior high and high school and I made some good friends there; it was a good opportunity to really figure out where my interests and strengths were.
Cons: I hitched my self-esteem wagon to the "gifted" train and that caused some big problems later on as my peers caught up and sheer brainpower wasn't enough to get me through harder subjects. No one really did anything to dissuade me from the idea that "gifted" = "better" so in elementary school I was kind of a precocious know-it-all who also FELL APART (like, humiliated tears in class) if I needed help with anything academic because I was so embarrassed and felt I *shouldn't* need any help at all. Any time I needed help or was asked to redo an assignment, I felt like I was failing everyone who was so proud of me being gifted. I was praised for my high grades and high test scores when actually I hadn't really done anything, because it was so easy.
I fell victim to the idea that "if I can't be the best at it on the first try, it's NOT WORTH DOING and INFERIOR to my cultured interests" (sports) so that didn't win me any friends with the athletic crowd.
I hit a wall with math in 6th grade and suddenly started floundering with it. I didn't test into the advanced math class track in junior high but no one had told me, and I PANICKED on the first day of junior high when I saw I was in the "regular" math class and I went to the office and tearfully asked them to switch me over to advanced because I thought it was a mistake. They did, but my math grades suffered well into high school because the advanced material was beyond me and yet I couldn't admit I might not be gifted in this area and actually did need additional help and support. My parents didn't know to intervene, and I wish they had sat me down and told me it was OK to need help and set up a tutor for me and overruled my insistence that I was "fine," rather than tut-tutting over my Cs and Ds in math.
In college I was still a quick learner but other students had caught up to me. I also stumbled at first my freshman year, because years of effortlessly acing tests and papers meant I had no idea how to actually study, so I bombed a few finals before I figured out that I did actually need to study now.
Career-wise, I do OK but the high praise heaped on me as a kid made me feel I had to be Famous & Outstanding in some way as an adult, and I haven't achieved that and it gave me some angst in my twenties. I work in university administration and have a BA but didn't go on to any higher degrees; my friend who struggled with tests and had to retake the SAT multiple times now works in a high profile genetics lab because she is top-notch at studying and applied herself throughout grad school.
Now my son is about to enter school and his preschool teachers have mentioned maybe having him assessed for being gifted. If he does fall into that category I'm going to try to come at it from an angle of "everyone learns differently, including you, and that's okay" and I'm not going to let him see his standardized test scores if I can help it.
posted by castlebravo at 10:50 AM on December 18, 2019 [2 favorites]
I was labeled gifted as a kid, now I'm a special education director who works with gifted kids.
Essentially, people get the gifted diagnosis based on one single IQ test, usually the Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children. If a kid scores 130 or over, that's considered gifted.
The WISC assesses these five areas:
Verbal Comprehension, Visual Spatial, Fluid Reasoning, Working Memory, and Processing Speed.
The Verbal Comprehension Index reflects the ability to access and apply word knowledge.
The Visual Spatial Index reflects the ability to understand visual details and relationships in order to solve puzzles and construct geometric designs.
The Fluid Reasoning Index reflects the ability to detect relationships among visual objects.
The Working Memory Index reflects the ability to register, maintain, and manipulate visual and auditory information.
The Processing Speed Index reflects the speed at which a child can accurately make decisions.
What does gifted really mean? It means that a child scores relatively high in ALL areas, and that's what seems to matter. Kids with 130+ don't have a huge variability in their scores and essentially, can pick up most things pretty easily without really thinking about it.
But that doesn't mean we DO learn things quickly, nor does it mean that we ever learn how to learn. We rely on our innate ability to read and listen and understand, but being gifted does not give us the skills to work hard and persist, because things mostly come so easily for us.
I'm sorry your parents were harder on you. That seems awful and it's good you're getting help. What does it mean as an adult? For me, it's just that some things come really easily, but nothing more than that.
Also, this is kind of an embarrassing and awkward thing to consider about oneself, and I am hesitant to talk to people about this IRL.
It shouldn't be awkward. It's like eye or hair color because you're born with it or you aren't. It's like feeling awkward about your eye color. It's no biggie.
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 1:38 PM on December 18, 2019 [7 favorites]
Essentially, people get the gifted diagnosis based on one single IQ test, usually the Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children. If a kid scores 130 or over, that's considered gifted.
The WISC assesses these five areas:
Verbal Comprehension, Visual Spatial, Fluid Reasoning, Working Memory, and Processing Speed.
The Verbal Comprehension Index reflects the ability to access and apply word knowledge.
The Visual Spatial Index reflects the ability to understand visual details and relationships in order to solve puzzles and construct geometric designs.
The Fluid Reasoning Index reflects the ability to detect relationships among visual objects.
The Working Memory Index reflects the ability to register, maintain, and manipulate visual and auditory information.
The Processing Speed Index reflects the speed at which a child can accurately make decisions.
What does gifted really mean? It means that a child scores relatively high in ALL areas, and that's what seems to matter. Kids with 130+ don't have a huge variability in their scores and essentially, can pick up most things pretty easily without really thinking about it.
But that doesn't mean we DO learn things quickly, nor does it mean that we ever learn how to learn. We rely on our innate ability to read and listen and understand, but being gifted does not give us the skills to work hard and persist, because things mostly come so easily for us.
I'm sorry your parents were harder on you. That seems awful and it's good you're getting help. What does it mean as an adult? For me, it's just that some things come really easily, but nothing more than that.
Also, this is kind of an embarrassing and awkward thing to consider about oneself, and I am hesitant to talk to people about this IRL.
It shouldn't be awkward. It's like eye or hair color because you're born with it or you aren't. It's like feeling awkward about your eye color. It's no biggie.
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 1:38 PM on December 18, 2019 [7 favorites]
It shouldn't be awkward. It's like eye or hair color because you're born with it or you aren't. It's like feeling awkward about your eye color. It's no biggie.
I agree and disagree with this. I think we’ve seen some comments in this thread that are good examples of how it can be awkward. I mean, I think some of that awkwardness comes from people overvaluing it, and from other people reacting to that overvaluing. So I think if everyone could take this relaxed attitude, it might actually become a neutral biographical fact, and all of us might breathe a little easier. But I don’t think the OP is wrong to feel weird about it; they’re hardly the first. Plus it’s an odd thing to learn late; I’m reminded of a friend who discovered at 18 that he had a trust fund. Maybe not the best thing to spring on a person.
It’s also worth pointing out that hair and eye color aren’t actually neutral either, not really, not in this world that brought us the idea of “Aryans.”
posted by eirias at 3:29 PM on December 18, 2019 [1 favorite]
I agree and disagree with this. I think we’ve seen some comments in this thread that are good examples of how it can be awkward. I mean, I think some of that awkwardness comes from people overvaluing it, and from other people reacting to that overvaluing. So I think if everyone could take this relaxed attitude, it might actually become a neutral biographical fact, and all of us might breathe a little easier. But I don’t think the OP is wrong to feel weird about it; they’re hardly the first. Plus it’s an odd thing to learn late; I’m reminded of a friend who discovered at 18 that he had a trust fund. Maybe not the best thing to spring on a person.
It’s also worth pointing out that hair and eye color aren’t actually neutral either, not really, not in this world that brought us the idea of “Aryans.”
posted by eirias at 3:29 PM on December 18, 2019 [1 favorite]
Pros: [...] able to connect with other kids in my school who were also gifted and we communicated well
I was not smart enough for "gifted" in elementary school, but was in the advanced set of courses in high school, which I generally enjoyed, and I got some college General Ed (GE) courses done early. I even took some city college courses during summers, because why not? I did one with friends, the other I might have done alone (and met an awesome person who was already in college), but that's probably beside the point.
Our first kiddo is on the gifted track, but in 3rd grade he's not in any special classes yet. He was in a really small school from kindergarten through half of 2nd, and teachers at his prior school thought he might be on the autism spectrum because of some awkwardness with social interactions. Turns out, he just had trouble connecting to other kids because his mind was somewhere else, and now he has peers at a much larger school, and some of those old traits (not meeting peoples eyes when talking to them) aren't present now. This sounds like it might line up with your difficulty making friends as a kid, where your mind was working in different ways from your peers, and you found more similarities in discussions with adults, or perhaps enjoyed the challenge of the discussion.
As others have said, "gifted" is not one thing, and how it relates to your life varies greatly. When discussing such topics, everyone has their own takes based on their own experiences.
Finally, I believe that your instinct to be careful sharing these feelings with others is a good one.
Agreed. To me, it sounds like a weird humblebrag to bring up that you were in a gifted program in elementary school, or talk about being high achieving in your current work. Which is not to say you shouldn't celebrate your current successes or ever talk about elementary school experiences, but how and when you bring them up depends on context. Those shouldn't be an opening in your introduction, unless you got recognition for some of your work and want to celebrate with others. Otherwise, these topics may come up with friends, and in a different way, family, and might be normal to talk about in those contexts.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:21 AM on December 19, 2019
I was not smart enough for "gifted" in elementary school, but was in the advanced set of courses in high school, which I generally enjoyed, and I got some college General Ed (GE) courses done early. I even took some city college courses during summers, because why not? I did one with friends, the other I might have done alone (and met an awesome person who was already in college), but that's probably beside the point.
Our first kiddo is on the gifted track, but in 3rd grade he's not in any special classes yet. He was in a really small school from kindergarten through half of 2nd, and teachers at his prior school thought he might be on the autism spectrum because of some awkwardness with social interactions. Turns out, he just had trouble connecting to other kids because his mind was somewhere else, and now he has peers at a much larger school, and some of those old traits (not meeting peoples eyes when talking to them) aren't present now. This sounds like it might line up with your difficulty making friends as a kid, where your mind was working in different ways from your peers, and you found more similarities in discussions with adults, or perhaps enjoyed the challenge of the discussion.
As others have said, "gifted" is not one thing, and how it relates to your life varies greatly. When discussing such topics, everyone has their own takes based on their own experiences.
Finally, I believe that your instinct to be careful sharing these feelings with others is a good one.
Agreed. To me, it sounds like a weird humblebrag to bring up that you were in a gifted program in elementary school, or talk about being high achieving in your current work. Which is not to say you shouldn't celebrate your current successes or ever talk about elementary school experiences, but how and when you bring them up depends on context. Those shouldn't be an opening in your introduction, unless you got recognition for some of your work and want to celebrate with others. Otherwise, these topics may come up with friends, and in a different way, family, and might be normal to talk about in those contexts.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:21 AM on December 19, 2019
I was in a gifted program when I was a kid and I'm trying to figure out what to do with my daughter as her school has done a couple of screenings that indicate a high likelihood of her being gifted. My own experiences were positive but I don't have anything to compare them to so maybe I would have had similar ones in regular classes. I've been talking with two of my friends about it who were in the same program with me and have children of similar ages. One of them said that getting into the program was a lifesaver for him and his parents and that if his son was accepted then he'd put him in the gifted program in a heartbeat. The other was more ambivalent about his own experiences and likely wouldn't move his daughter if she was accepted. My wife and I haven't made a decision about our daughter yet and at this point we could go either way.
In my case I think it did change my relationship with my parents and I think they gave me more independence because I was in gifted and was generally a good kid. For example, when I was 16 or 17 I decided to go on a week-long cycling trip with 3 of my friends. I just kind of told my parents about the plan a few weeks in advance and they didn't ask about our route planning, logistics or anything. I don't even think they asked for the phone numbers of the other parents. They did give me a calling card so I'd be able to phone home though.
Ultimately getting into gifted could have been a life-changing event for you for good or ill or it could have done absolutely nothing. There isn't any way to know because we're all different and react to our environment in different ways. I don't think my former classmates are on the whole more successful than other kids living in our area of similar SES and I'm pretty sure I haven't seen any of them in the news because of the amazing things they've done. It is OK to feel grief about a missed opportunity but you don't know what would have happened after that point and never can know.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 7:10 PM on December 19, 2019 [2 favorites]
In my case I think it did change my relationship with my parents and I think they gave me more independence because I was in gifted and was generally a good kid. For example, when I was 16 or 17 I decided to go on a week-long cycling trip with 3 of my friends. I just kind of told my parents about the plan a few weeks in advance and they didn't ask about our route planning, logistics or anything. I don't even think they asked for the phone numbers of the other parents. They did give me a calling card so I'd be able to phone home though.
Ultimately getting into gifted could have been a life-changing event for you for good or ill or it could have done absolutely nothing. There isn't any way to know because we're all different and react to our environment in different ways. I don't think my former classmates are on the whole more successful than other kids living in our area of similar SES and I'm pretty sure I haven't seen any of them in the news because of the amazing things they've done. It is OK to feel grief about a missed opportunity but you don't know what would have happened after that point and never can know.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 7:10 PM on December 19, 2019 [2 favorites]
This thread is closed to new comments.
As a college student, a close friend of mine and I commiserated over how screwed up the whole thing is because it didn't actually help us with being smart. It was just dumb smart people activities, and not talking to us about life skills. Every smart kid eventually hits a wall where they can't just coast on being smart and then either figures out how to swim, or in our cases, has a real issue where not simply knowing the answer immediately was really challenging to their identity as "the smart kid."
Years later, in a different lifetime, I had a chance to talk to this educator Susan Winebrenner who does gifted education professional development. She was phenomenal and not fooled by any of my shit at all. She quickly and firmly talked about a number of habits and behaviors I took for granted that were all marks of post-gifted. It was specific to.me, but she gave me advice. I was seen.
I probably wouldn't send my kids to gifted today, don't get fomo, and would advise you to supplement the therapy with either talking to knowledgeable people or books on the more general issue of "how do you deal with the perfectionism aspect as a projection of your sense of self?" Winebrenner was great for me, but I don't think she wrote about it specifically.
Lastly, being smart is valued, but if you live in the states, anti-intellectualism is in the groundwater. Weird tension, poindexter? But being smart is just a thing, it's not the thing. Use it for good. We live in a time of immense challenges: incredible wealth inequality, climate change, constant war. Plug in, get involved, everyone has something to contribute. Use your thing, smarty-pants.
posted by history is a weapon at 2:19 AM on December 18, 2019 [27 favorites]