Teaching gifted students requires special strategies and approaches to keep them challenged and engaged. Some tips include designing lesson plans with Bloom’s, using interactive content, creating complex problem-solving activities, fostering collaboration, using tiered learning, and playing a variety of questions. Teachers should also consider the interrelationship between four engagement dimensions (behavioral, affective, social, and cognitive) and Neihart and Betts’ six.
Gifted students may have areas in which they are not as strong in math, so it is important for teachers to identify those areas and provide support. They should also help gifted students learn a variety of strategies to solve math problems.
Teachers can use differentiated AR sound worksheets, phonics activities, Common Core reading, phonics puzzles, and teaching kindergarten. They should also incorporate choice, offering them freedom and respect to choose their own activities. Having a connection in the learning environment allows gifted learners to be themselves and engage in conversations that align with their interests.
Group tutoring can be a fun and engaging way to cover vast amounts of material by incorporating creative and challenging activities that require higher-order thinking skills. Engaging gifted students in the curriculum decision-making process allows them to take responsibility for their own learning.
In summary, teaching gifted students requires special strategies and approaches to keep them engaged and motivated. Teachers should consider the interrelationship between the four engagement dimensions and the six dimensions of engagement, as well as the importance of social emotional learning, differentiation, and support.
📹 Student Engagement Through a Different Lens | Candy Suiso | TEDxFargo
Beautiful beaches, stunning sunsets and extremely engaged students. The perfect environment for learning happens at Wai’anae …
What are the exercises for gifted students?
Puzzles engage gifted students during math. Some examples are Sudoku, logic puzzles, KenKen puzzles, brain teasers, or riddles. These can be used at any grade level.
What activities do the gifted child engage in?
Let’s look at some math activities for gifted students. Puzzles engage gifted students during math. Some examples are Sudoku, logic puzzles, KenKen puzzles, brain teasers, or riddles. These can be used at any grade level.
How to provide enrichment for gifted students?
Make activities more interesting. Students can move on to new material when they’ve mastered the previous one. If your students can complete two chapters a day, let them get ahead. Let them create a presentation, project, or podcast script. Let students explore and understand more deeply. Let gifted students do enrichment activities by themselves at their desks. Let students do special projects. But don’t give them busywork. They’ll know it’s not important.
Allow for flexible learning groups. You can create small groups for flexible learning based on students’ readiness, strengths, and interests. This planning tool helps create a dynamic learning environment. Groups change based on student needs. Studying the data may reveal hidden talents. Include gifted students in group work. Gifted learners can work independently, but they need to socialize with their peers. Ask creative questions. Gifted learners are curious and ask questions to learn more. This curiosity goes beyond simple interest. It can extend to things that are outside the scope of a lesson. Respect your students’ curiosity and encourage them to ask questions. Students may ask unusual questions. When this happens, ask where the question came from and what it is connected to.
How to keep a gifted child busy?
Many gifted kids have a specific area of interest that they are curious about. These kids love learning more about their interests. Independent studies work well for students with such interests. They’ll be engaged in their independent study, and you can use the promise of more time investigating their interests to get them to finish their regular schoolwork. Gifted kids need to know why what they are learning is important before they are willing to invest in it.
What is the ideal classroom for gifted students?
A good classroom for gifted students has supplies for creativity and deeper learning. Designing, building, and testing are ways to differentiate lessons. A flexible classroom allows for this.
Which is the most appropriate activity for gifted students?
They should read lots of different books and learn new words.
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How do you prevent gifted kids burnout?
Help a gifted child overcome burnout by assessing their environment. … Be imperfect. … Focus on effort and enjoyment, not results. … Teach coping skills. … Be open with each other. … Let your gifted child rest. … Take care of yourself. What is gifted kid burnout? What causes it? Common signs How to help When to seek help In my experience Additional resources Infographics.
With 16 years of experience, Michael helps youth grow through CBT, mindfulness, and solution-focused therapy. Specializes in ADHD, anxiety, and trauma. Heidi Moawad, MD, is a neurologist with 20 years of experience. She focuses on mental health disorders, behavioral health issues, neurological disease, migraines, pain, stroke, cognitive impairment, multiple sclerosis, and more.
How do you keep gifted students motivated?
Teachers, here are some tips. Gifted students often don’t work on challenging material. Another barrier to intrinsic motivation is that gifted students are often praised for completing work quickly and easily. Praise for effort, learning new material, and mastering new skills helps students develop intrinsic motivation.
Identify areas where the student has improved and encourage them to take on more challenging work. Teachers should consider if deadlines and other constraints will be seen as controlling. Allowing students to choose from activities and to help set rules helps them feel in control. Small groups, especially those with similar interests and abilities, can help students solve problems in new ways. Students persist in challenging tasks and process information more deeply when they adopt mastery goals. Mastery goals are about learning new skills. Students, including gifted ones, who adopt performance goals are motivated to complete tasks to show they can do them or to avoid difficult tasks to avoid being seen as not gifted. Mastery and performance goals are linked to mindset. Teachers, here are some tips. Teachers can help students achieve mastery goals by:
What are some extra activities for gifted children?
Some activities are better for gifted students than others. If you’re looking for good options, consider book clubs. Gifted kids love to read. … Spelling bees. Spelling bees are another extra-curricular activity for gifted students. Chess Club. … Music. Arts and Crafts. Many gifted students benefit from extra-curricular activities. The right activities are engaging and rewarding for gifted children. They are also a great way for students to use their time. Some activities are better for gifted students than others. If you’re looking for good options, consider these ideas. Gifted children often enjoy reading. Book clubs let them read more than school requires. They can also talk about things with other people. Another extra-curricular activity for gifted students is a spelling bee. Students can compete in different levels of spelling bees. A spelling bee lets them use their minds and speak in front of others. Spelling bees help students learn to think under pressure.
How can a teacher ensure that gifted children maximise their learning potential?
Create an environment that challenges gifted children in all areas. Move quickly through the curriculum and onto more advanced material. Make it challenging.
How do you engage gifted students in the classroom?
7 Ways to Engage Gifted Students in the Classroom. Let these gifted students work on their own. … Volley of Questions. Problem solving. … Extra study options. … Challenge them. … Group learning. … Think about the student’s personality. What are gifted students? Why do they need special attention? Gifted students are children who are above average in one or more areas. These students need extra help to calm their minds. Their teachers need to plan and think carefully about how to help them. Read on to learn more about how to teach these talented kids. 1. Flexible and in-depth learning. Let these gifted students work on their own. Use blended learning to make this happen for their personalized learning. And suggest ways of learning more about topics and content.
What are the learning needs of gifted students?
Gifted students need an academic environment to learn and make progress in school. They need: • challenging curriculum; • extra help; • faster learning; • social and emotional support.
📹 Why Gifted Kids Are Actually Special Needs
Listen in on how Dr. K breaks down how being a gifted kid may not be all it’s cracked up to be. Talking through the pathway of …
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Being “gifted” is like driving an automatic while everyone else is driving a manual. You never truly learn how to drive a manual because you simply never had to. Meanwhile, everyone praises you for your driving ability and tells you that you could be a professional driver or – who knows – maybe even a race car driver! You start to believe them and think, yeah… I could totally be a pro racer! Suddenly, you’re stuck at the starting line wondering why the hell you can’t even get your car to start while everyone else does laps around you
I was academically gifted…managed to study enough to be valedictorian of my school. At the graduation ceremony saw all the other parents happily telling their kids well done. My parents didn’t even acknowledge me at all. When I was 50 I finally asked my dad if he had been proud of me. He said he just expected it of me. Because of this expectation my parents never assisted me emotionally or financially. I literally starved at uni and have totally looked after myself ever since. My parents brought properties for my 4 “dumb” siblings but told me I was smart enough to do it myself without their help. I’m smart enough these days not to have too much to do with any of them.
Another part of that “Shame gap” is the inability to ask others for help, whether it’s from your classmates or your professors. There’s constantly a feeling of “I’m smart, I shouldn’t have to ask for help” weighing you down. I got into my university on a specialized scholarship which required us to all take a class and spend 10 hours a week in a lab to keep it, so we all kind of knew each other. 90% of them lost their scholarship after the first year.
I remember my mom once telling me of a kid who flunked out of her “advanced math”. As in, he was completely incapable of it. When she confronted him about why he didn’t go to “regular math” his answer was this: “I’d fail regular math too, but failing an advanced class looks better on paper.” It’s important to know your own limitations.
Man this hits close to home. I hit that wall around high school. I had been in advanced/”gifted” classes all my life, and even those had been easy, until they weren’t anymore. My grades plummeted hard; I desperately begged my parents to let me drop down to regular classes. I knew I was out of my depth even though at the time I really didn’t understand how it had happened. My parents refused; insisted that being in the advanced classes was the best thing for my future. Their refusal to listen to my needs fucked me up so bad. They thought their child had this bright and shiny future, only for reality to set in when I didn’t even make it into college. I went from being the kid they bragged about to being their biggest disappointment. Life’s funny like that.
As a “gifted kid” I was burnt out 24/7. One time my class had a test in math that I hadn’t studied for I took LONGER THAN THE WHOLE CLASS. I had to skip my next class and finish the test. My older sister (Who was a child who needed help) was in the class after me and when she walked into the classroom she kept giving me looks that just said, “Girl why are you still here? The test isn’t that hard, is it?” then she finished before me and got a higher grade than me. After that day at school, I just went home and started crying because my “Special needs” sister finished a test before and got a higher grade than me. And I know you’re thinking, “Oh, well your parents probably didn’t care-” They did. A lot. They were very mad.
It really hits you like a train. Sitting at your pc with anxiety knowing if you dont start learning you will get kicked out of school wich causes slight panic but you still cant get yourself to do anything because the easiest tasks are overwhelming. I wasnt gifted but never had to learn up until 6 grade or so. Then grades started declining to average, under average, and then trash.
I remember being in an honors class and the teacher said “If you’re struggling to understand then you shouldn’t be in an honors class”. Like what. Just because we are in an “advanced” class doesn’t mean we’re superhuman. Isn’t that the point of being in an advanced class, too? To challenge you when grade-level classes might not be your speed? So why shouldn’t students face struggles in a class meant to teach and challenge? This was years ago but I still think about it to this day.
I am in the gifted program, and I want to confirm that everyone in the gifted program generally hate it. There is a social barrier, like everyone one in normal classes generally despise us, we have tiny classes, everyone is more dumb than smart, and it seems everyone is awkward. Once in class a awhile ago, our teacher wanted to teach us essays, so he made us write an essay on the gifted program. He said that we could choose whether we were for or against the gifted program. Almost EVERYONE in the class went against the gifted program. I feel as if the majority of us stay in because of either parent’s pressure or because of a future education. Edit: OMG 1 LIKE IM SOO POPULAR
I was in high school when fallout 2 came out, and one of the most interesting perks it had was ‘gifted.’ It let you put more points into your base attributes, but you took a hit to all your skills because ‘growing up, you never really had to try all that hard to succeed.’ It only made strategic sense to take this perk if you planned to pour mountains of extra time into the slog that it would take to get your basic skills up to normal.
I’m 32 and this is exactly what happened to me in college. Went to a highly ranked engineering school after never studying a single time in middle/high school. Straight A student in AP classes, 99% percentile on act/sat and a national merit scholar. Failed out of college because no matter what i could not figure out a studying regiment. I thought i could study a couple days before hand and be good. I dont blame anyone but myself for this and dont want it to sound like an excuse, but it is nice to know kind of why I mentally imploded after being “gifted” and above average my whole life.
Thanks to you i’ve massively improved with my perfectionism, giftedness and analysis paralysis! A simple thing i do inspired form your articles is replace the massive goal with a “priority” and arrange goals as the steps i take along the way. This way the goals are limiting and they’re always achievable, but the priority is no longer limiting, it’s just controlling what are the next goals.
“If you fail, then no big deal” is literally mind boggling to someone who just spent the past decade or more hearing that failure isn’t an option because either of schools themselves forcing the issue or the expectation of everyone who told you that you’re gifted, special, and have potential to build a mansion.
Something just as bad as being a gifted kid and not developing proper study habits is being a normal kid of a parent who desperately WANTS their kid to be gifted. I knew one such person growing up. His parents (especially his mother) were extremely strict and didn’t allow him to come hang out unless he did all of his homework for the week along with other extra assignments that they gave him to complete. It got worse in high school when his course load was so immense that it got to the point that we never even saw him outside of school. When we did speak to him, he was always really short with his responses and could barely manage to converse without stumbling over his words and just being awkward in general. The studying eventually paid off when he got accepted into some prestigious program at Stanford, and I’m sure his parents were absolutely thrilled about it. He committed suicide two years later.
I appreciate that you talked about your own struggles and the experience of a great many other gifted persons. I have watched the shame happen to many of my peers in the gifted high school that I attended. The staff at the school could not figure out why the gifted school had a higher depression and suicide rate of all the schools in the district combined. They certainly didn’t bother to ask the students nor listen to the student council about it. I was certainly glad when they shut the school down and returned it to being a normal high school. My experience was quite different in that learning has been easy for me throughout my life and studying habits also came easy. The hardest challenge had been raising my own gifted children with very different needs and personalities to my own!
I had a friend who was considered a “gifted” child though elementary school, he then got went face first into a brick wall in middle school, his parents blamed everything like article games, his friends, the school, everything except even considering that their son wasn’t as intelligent as they thought he was He eventually got through school, skipped college and opened a restaurant, turns out hours of tycoon games gives you some level of managerial skill
The problem with telling kids that they are full of potential, gifted, or have leadership skills is that most will grow up feeling like a failure for having an average life. You don’t need a high iq to make millions and you don’t need to be mentally ill to live on the streets. Maybe we should tell our kids that it’s OK to be normal. 🤔
I’m glad I found this. It was suggested after perusal your ADHD/Obesity article. I recently discovered my ASD/ADHD, and along with that article and this one, so many things in my life have clicked into place with such finality and perfection, that my entire paradigm has shifted. For over a decade, I have lived with the view that I have somehow gone from a gifted kid in school to being over a decade behind my peers in some way or another. That’s not to say I am devoid of success, but it’s been a view impossible to shake. Learning what twice exceptional is, learning why some of my life choices have occurred, learning why being “gifted” means… I feel like a weight has lifted. Thank you for your content and the way you present. We need more of this!
Some people are confused so….Y’all’s, not everyone’s gonna experience the same things, these are just somethings that have been in my circle not nessesarily in yours. This is really helpful because most people saw “gifted kids” as these extremely smart people that should always know things when we are really just people that are able to have a faster and higher understanding and can learn ahead. “Gifted kids” also develop mental illnesses very easily so…
The article was a Godsend for me. It made my life make so much more sense. I was deemed “gifted” around the age of one and it’s like you literally described my life while in school. College was THEE WORST for me and I underwhelmed my family with my academic performance. Unfortunately, my “gifted and talented” label has ran its course as I’m 40, struggling to do anything since I have a crippling fear of failure.
There are a couple things I wish you had mentioned: 1. Most people grow up not realizing that they’re gifted. The societal expectation of a “gifted” kid is skipping grades and being academically ahead of everyone else. So, a lot of people who are smart think they’re just “above average” without realizing they’re actually gifted. 2. Imposter syndrome. 3. Multipotentialism. This “gift” is more like a curse when you don’t have the freedom in life to do whatever you want. 4. High sensitivity. 5. Gifted adults in the workplace. Society assumes gifted kids grow up to be CEOs and NASA members. Yet, it is expected 1-2% of the population is gifted, so obviously, that isn’t the case. What society ignores is the gifted adult forced to flip burgers or do repetitive desk work for a living because of financial or mental disadvantages. In work environments where employees aren’t able to have freedom in their work nor a way to express themselves creatively, gifted adults become targets. Bosses like them for their quick learning and work ethic but hate them for questioning the way things are done or for trying to find a more efficient or creative way to do something or for wanting to learn something beyond their assigned position that they’ve already mastered. Bosses want them to just shut up and comply, which further eats away at the gifted adult’s motivation and potential. Edit: Wow, I never expected this comment to get so much attention in just 2 days. I really want to respond to everyone, especially those who asked questions.
Thank you, Dr. K. I’ve dervied tons of value out of several dozen of your articles, but there’s one gem in here that shines brightest for me, and that’s the simple reframing — even though I know you’re saying it in a slightly sarcastic tone of voice, it totally resonates for me and makes this all land more gently — of saying I’m taking the scenic route. That brings this whole mess back around to feeling like a gift after all :’ )
FINALLY someone who understands. Been binging your articles since I first found them a couple days ago and not sure I’ve ever felt so understood. Former “gifted kid”, undiagnosed (and unmedicated) ADHD, gen anxiety & panic disorder.. got by “well enough” until 4th year of undergrad (dual deg program) when covid finally threw me over the edge😅(now diagnosed, in therapy, and medicated) hoping we can keep developing better methods to detect what is hiding behind compensatory mechanisms at a younger age.
As a gifted kid, I would feel a kind of “rush” when I knew the answer to some random question the teachers would ask. It felt like I needed to get the answer right no matter what and to do it before anyone else did. Over time, this has developed into crippling self doubt over the things that I am not good at. Curious to see if anyone else had the same experience.
Beautifully expressed. I do think that every person’s experience has different details, some of which will seem to deviate from what you’ve described. But I also think society (almost by definition) caters poorly to those who are in any way “different.” My personal experience involved getting the highest university entry mark in my state, then the highest mark in my engineering course. But decades later, I’ve only been employed for a third of my working life. Part of that was undiagnosed ADHD being entirely incompatible with a research environment. But building back up, now that I understand so much more about myself, is incredibly hard. And finding good help is even harder. Good luck to everyone on a similar journey.
This is why I, as an adult, will immediately give up on absolutely anything – a job, a hobby, a relationship – that I’m not instantly great at. Having to start at the bottom and progressively work your way up to being skilled at something is a concept I never had to grapple with as a “gifted” child and teenager, and it’s only now that I realise that is in fact a reality of life that most people live with… I don’t have the resilience to be able to live happily like that though, because I never had to develop that sense of grit whilst growing up. To this day, it causes me a lot of distress, mental health issues, difficulty holding down jobs, difficulty maintaining relationships, and struggles to feel content in myself and my identity.
Excellent article as always!!! I was nodding the whole time as I agree, my case is the opposite but paralels what you are saying somewhat I have mild ADHD, have high functioning autism and have a learning disability(I process information a lot slower and it would take me a month to learn something big where it would take most I knew in highschool 1 week. I was told by everyone, including family that I was a failure and stupid and it did depress me a lot but I realized later in life that I have an excellent skill of awareness and analitical skills. I worked insanely hard, studying 4 hours a night in HS to pass tests and after HS I never went out to party but looked into the real world and how everything work(work, tax, superannuation etc) and tried everything I did many labor jobs eventually qualifying as a mechanic and I am proud of myself, I then became self aware and that drove me in a 6 month depression as I know how the world works and it broke me mentally. After this I worked hard and am now proud of where I am, I make mistakes but I accept it and find ways to resolve them for next tine
I was put in a gifted program in the mid 1960s. It was experimental education and teachers and administrators were anxious to show good results, high test scores and really good grades. I was a good student through the 5th grade, In the 6th grade, my scholastic performance tanked. The teachers and administrators said “Gifted children ask why. Why do I have to work harder, do better than my peers?’ So, they set about to motivate me. With punishment, even Corporal punishment. No parent teacher conferences. They never asked why I was suddenly not performing up to their expectations. My Dad was murdered midsummer.
My mother was definitely banking on not having to put in effort to have a successful child. My other two siblings dropped out of highschool, so my mom was definitely happy when she was told I was gifted and it was going to be easy for me to go far. But now, my oldest sibling has a good degree, and is doing fairly well, and I completely missed the net for university. I don’t blame her for not putting in extra effort for me, she was told she wouldn’t have to and she was relieved to have a “good child” finally.
I have never been able to put into words why I struggled academically despite being “intelligent” until this article. It didn’t help that I grew up in a “your homework better be done by the time I get home” household instead of a “what are you working on in class? do you need help?” type of parenting style. I was an independent reader by 3 so I was never helped in school or by my parents because they thought learning came easy to me. Advanced classes in middle school became a struggle because homework scores started to outweigh test scores. By high school, I was labeled “lazy” because I never did homework but passed every test. I dropped out senior year and got my GED to the disappointment of my family. Guilt tripped by them over “not having the opportunity to throw me an open house” because I “failed”. Lost out on thousands in celebratory gifts that I saw my siblings receive upon graduation. By age 30 I am finally diagnosed as autistic. I am just now starting to receive the support I desperately needed as a child and am returning to community college for a fresh start.
We should also talk about how when gifted kids inevitably face that burnout and difficulty later on, when they try building mansions with the materials for a shack it takes away that innate love of learning that a lot of us had because “Well if I can’t build the mansion I’m expected to with the materials I’ve been given I must be stupid so I should just stop trying”. and I think that is also a big part of why so many of us “fail” later in life because after we hit that wall we just think that that’s it, we can’t continue on after this because all we’ve ever been told was about how intelligent and better we are to other kids so when we struggle and those other kids don’t it says to us that we aren’t smart enough to succeed so we stop trying.
As a gifted kid, I realized that I sort of skipped the manual and straight entered into hard mode. It was insanely hard at first so I had to adapt. Almost like I was replaying the game millions and millions of times until I could get the right controls and mechanics as to be truly active and “normal” by social standards. I haven’t finished this process yet, being a young teen. While facing that dilemma of having to enter the world without any guidelines or instructions, I found it extremely difficult to find myself being fond with other kids that were apparently on my level of intelligence and smarts. I was genuinely appalled to know that I was on their level at first. Throughout my years, I soon began to realize that I was far better than what I thought I was years ago. I began thinking differently, pushing myself out of the comfort zone as much as I could, et cetera. TL;DR: it’s really worth it to go ahead as a gifted kid and push your limitations, even when you’re a burnt out perfectionist. You must always stay determined and fight for what you want in life.
This is about right, I feel. I was “gifted” at the piano from very early on. People assumed my ‘gift’ would carry me on to my greater destiny without hiccups. Rather, I harshly found out in my teen years that, yeah, I was gifted, but so are dozens of other people that I had to compete with. And by that time, I had never developed a proper mechanism for studying and coming back from “behind” so to speak. I was literally outclassed by people who, I wrongly thought were less gifted, but had a better work ethic. Lesson learned: your work ethic can and will supersede any gift you have, eventually, if done right. It’s almost like just being really talented, but having a badly organized spirit.
Oh my gosh, this is mind blowing. I was a “gifted kid” who started to crash and burn in 7th grade. I went from being treated like a golden child to a slacker bum. I even had a teacher write in my yearbook a snarky comment about how I had the ability to do better work if only I’d bothered to apply myself. By the time high school was over (low average GPA) I didn’t even want to bother with college and ended up marrying very young. I’m now 48 years old, wondering what to do with the rest of my life. Thank you so much for this article, it has caused me to look at so many things in an entirely new light.
I was gifted, and this led me to becoming so hateful and resentful that almost everyone I knew thought I suffered from machiavellianism. I never had a gf, never been able to have any friends, and now struggling to find employment, and was bullied for my entire life. So partly he is right. Some truth in his words. God help these people should I become successful, seeing these people homeless would bring me infinite amount of pleasure and satisfaction
I have a friend who was deemed gifted, and skipped 2nd grade. Literally one day he got called into the principals office, and the next he was in 3rd. Fastforward 8 years and he struggled to barely pass highschool and extreme mental health issues. Thankfully from what ive heard hes attending a community college and is much happier.
As a former “gifted” kid myself, I can tell you a lot of my problems stemmed from undiagnosed ADHD and autism. As a young child, those things presented themselves as “gifted” behavior, but when I got to high school suddenly I was a “slacker”. Now as an adult I have everything diagnosed and treated by doctors, suddenly all of my past behavior makes perfect sense. I just wish more parents would pull their heads out of their asses and recognize the problems kids have aren’t just with motivation or discipline.
Speaking as a former “gifted child”, gifted children are absolutely special-needs. Instead of needing special help to understand basic concepts, gifted children need special help to keep from becoming bored and disillusioned with education, and later on, life as a whole. Paradoxically, that can leave “gifted children” in a position of being unable to cope when something difficult does present itself. Being smarter than the vast majority of people is like redlining in first gear and not being allowed to upshift. Don’t tell gifted children they are really smart. Tell gifted children they are really good at learning. Narrow-down the scope of their “gift” so they aren’t burdened with the (false) expectation of being able to do everything without trying hard. Being really good at learning makes it easy to acquire new knowledge and skills, but applying that knowledge and honing those skills isn’t going to be any easier for them than it is for anyone else — in fact, it may end up being harder because they will probably have to tackle more difficult problems to feel satisfaction from accomplishment. EDIT: Wow, 6200 likes? I don’t think I’ve ever gotten that many likes on anything I’ve ever said before in my life.
Holy shit. I was never called a “gifted” kid but I relate so much with this article. I was treated as a very smart bright child with an abnormally large reading level and comprehension as well as writing and communication skills. I rode that wave until college and then just dropped off hard. I never knew why. I was so confused and burned out. I never realized that I just didn’t have the skills to properly study.
Got a new sub here. The article game addiction thing is very interesting to me as all 3 of my boys currently struggle with that. You hit the nail on the head though. I’m in my 40s now but i remember. I was labelled a “chronic underachiever” even though I got straight A’s. Was constantly being told how smart I was and how much potential I had. Got into a selective high school for the top 1% of the biggest state in the country. On top of that I am over 6ft tall and was athletic. What happened ? That high school crushed me. I was suddenly surrounded by people that not only were on my level but in some cases far surpassed me. (It’s humbling when a kid in your grade who is 2 years younger than you tells you how he’s going to beat you in a game of chess before you’ve even sat down and then does it.) I discovered that it didn’t matter how smart I was, exactly as you said, the raw intellect wasn’t enough as I had never done homework or learnt good study habits (dv filled homelife didn’t help with that). I dropped out at 15 and collected trolleys at a supermarket so that i could just drink, play article games and smoke weed. Told myself it was to support my single mother. Spent the next quarter of a century flipping burgers and mopping floors. What happened to my dreams of being a research scientist? Here’s the interesting part. I went back to university years ago, I was maintaining a GPA above 6 (7 is a perfect score here) and was being paid by the uni to run study sessions for other students for programming, it was easy.
I absolutely adore the analogies he’s using in this article. Being gifted since 3rd grade, I have always struggled to explain to my father why I struggled in high school when homework became 75% of the grade. I was able to avoid homework and studying until Middle/High by passing every exam I took with ease. I was a bad test taker when it came to anything over a specific set time like college tests. I know I’m smart, I know I have the capability to do things other people can but my brain is hardwired differently. Exactly how he explained the shack vs mansion discussion. I flunked out of college after two years of Dual Enrollment. Now that I have watched this article I have faith I can do everything I always told myself it was just too much. Woo! Thanks Dr. K
I’m studying to be a teacher and this is such an interesting topic in psychology! Gifted kids need specific instruction that challenges them A LOT so they develop study habits because they often don’t ever use studying as a way to learn because they’re ‘too smart’. I was a ‘gifted’ kid and I never had to study until I got to college and I really screwed up my first and second years because I didn’t how to study bc I was never taught how or needed to. I had to get a tutor for the first time in my life in order to pass my classes and I really had to break down that thought process that I didn’t need to be tutored because I was always told that I was ‘too smart’ to be tutored. Facing failure and learning how to accept help was so hard for me because I never had to do it until I was 19/20, and I hate that. I can’t imagine how much grief I would have been able to take off my shoulders if someone just sat me down and told me that studying, failing, and going to tutoring are all a part of the learning process and never a bad thing!!
Why is this article so relatable— I’m only in middle school and I’m already experiencing anxiety and feeling as though I’ll never be good enough because of these expectations. My family always tells me, “Hey, you’re going to grow up to do something great like becoming an artist or an author.” And it’s nice until I start to question whether or not I want to make that my life. Then it’s just high goals that I just will never reach. I feel so much pressure to be the best of my group, and it’s hard, cause then I start thinking “Wow, I must be the dumbest kid in my gifted class. I need to be better.” I have lost all want for learning. I also have trouble setting realistic goals and finding pleasure in things. My only hobbies are roleplaying and drawing. That’s it. And I’m sorry if I’m ranting but I had to get this off my chest.
As a “gifted kid” I really felt the whole studying thing. All throughout elementary I was getting nothing but As. then middle school rolls around, I’m fine, but slightly struggling. Last year of middle school I hit a brick wall. I physically couldn’t study, my grades plummeted, and I was already struggling mentally so I really was hopeless. As went went straight down to Ds and Fs because I physically couldn’t keep up. I passed 8th grade with one point higher than the minimum requirement, my only motivation being pure spite of my “giftedness”.
Wow, I love that mansion example you gave, it’s so true. Sorta helped to open my eyes about how things work, because yeah I (not to brag) have always found school pretty easy for the most part, got As and Bs (for the most part, except for math, I always sucked at math), and had teachers and my parents praise me for being smart and tell me that I was gonna go far. I didn’t have to study all that hard back when I was in school (again, I’m really sorry if this sounds like bragging I don’t mean to). When I did run into stuff I couldn’t grasp intuitively (like math) I unfortunately shut down and gave up, thinking I wasn’t good at it. I thought it should be easy to build that mansion, since that’s kind of what I’d been indirectly taught. But like you said, mansions are a lot of work to build, just being “gifted” isn’t going to allow you to build that mansion any faster or using less wood. You pretty much hit the nail on the head with this article, everything in it I can relate to and makes sense.
Oh yeah I love being a gifted child! I love when they keep pushing me in higher level math classes with zero foundation and now that I’m so ahead, going to the basics will actually completely derail me and cost me so much time. Love resorting to learn what to do on the test rather than learn how it actually works. I just passed Calc 2 and now I struggle with Physics because I don’t have any real math skills
I was a gifted child. Expectations were super high for me but I never needed to study even in things like trig. Things were bad at home though so I didn’t have a environment conducive to study anyways. But this made me go through a crash my senior year when depression hit really really hard and I couldn’t get help because my parents didn’t want me to go through therapy because they didn’t want me talking about what was going on at home. I was in an AP class at the time and I started failing because I couldn’t do the work. That teacher was an angel though. She was known as a super hard nose that wouldn’t let students make up work. She was really just a good teacher that couldn’t tell when students were just being lazy or when they were actually studying. She could tell I was struggling and she did everything she could to help me get through things. She saw me a few years later and it was nice to catch up. I’m grateful for people that recognize that we’re human too and don’t put us on a pedistal.
heres a strat for parents, dont say your kid is special or better than everyone else, just let them make their own identity EDIT: not saying parents should be detached from your life, they should support you in your ventures and all, be your ally and that kind of stuff. Don’t force them to be something!
Two things that I wanted to point out: 1) there’s also a sense of guilt surrounding the idea of being told that you’re”gifted” or more intelligent than others. Perhaps from other kids telling you that you have it easier, or maybe from seeing other kids struggle more for things you find easy. You start feeling like you don’t deserve to be more intelligent and it makes you feel ashamed. At the same time, it’s also feeling competitive and like you constantly need to prove yourself and your “superiority”. And when you get an average grade or someone else in the class shows off that they have higher grades than you, you feel insecure and you’re reminded that you’re just normal. 2) from growing up and having it easy, you start setting the bar low because minor signs of things starting to feel mentally challenging become exhausting. It’s a dichotomy though, because you still feel like you need to maintain good grades, and I think this causes burnout and lack of ambition and goals.
Wow this man just described my whole life. I have been moving away from the expectations, perfectionism and burnout but when people see my success and chalk it up to talent or me just being gifted it pisses me off. Just reminds me of all the times my effort blood and sweat was overlooked and seen as nothing.
I tested at 130 IQ in middle school and was expected to get straight As the rest of my life. The pressure folded me, I dropped out of college at 19 and got addicted to opiates and did nothing with my life for 10 years. Finally accepted that I need to want success and to work hard and I’m just finishing my first semester of software engineer degree now at 29
I just need to express how much I appreciate this article. I was labelled gifted as a kid, dropped out of highschool at 15. Never felt dumber and more useless. It took me years to get my life back on track. Im now 21 and still learning to cope with being a couple years behind, but fighting through all of it taught me how to work hard and goddamn am I thriving. Went back to school, Im now studying astrophysics, top if my class. Couple years ago I didnt even believe I was capable of finishing highschool. Shit gets better.
I know this is a two year old article but man this really hit home for me. I didn’t hit a wall until I got to college. I got there and suddenly, I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was. The only identity I had was shattered. And then it took me 6 years to finish my undergrad and I came out with a much lower gpa than expected. Even after that, I don’t think I understood the reason why I always burn out on things and had that feeling of being a failure until I watched this article. I had never thought about it from this perspective
As a “former gifted kid”, I personally was never given real incentive to succeed other than it was just expected from me. Success and a high paying job we’re sorta expected of me, but I never felt like I ever had the self motivation to find meaning in any of that success. Which is why I threw away the idea of success early on.
My experience was even with good self-taught study habits, such gave to tremendous success, I began becoming depressed because I lacked inspiration. And when I tried getting out of the depression, I fell to an episode of self-harm and a year of recovery. I fully recovered and now am better than ever, thankfully, and I discovered that part of my failures earlier was a lack of genuine challenge. This tended to existentialism in part, and also not having grounding. I actually rarely was told much of my giftedness, but I was very self driven 10th grade to second year of University.
I’m a 46 year old woman, gifted my whole childhood, got a degree in mathematics and a second one in physics…ended up homeless and addicted for 10 years before pulling myself together, and now I’m happy to be making $15 at an (oddly challenging but grossly underappreciated) job. I connected so much with this article and I’m not even halfway through – I just had to stop to say thank you for making this. (It’s getting me right in the feels! Oh, my heart! *sniffle*)
Honestly, reading a lot of these comments with backstories I kinda feel like one of the lucky ones. Long story short, I was put into a “highly capable” program as a kid, and let me tell you, years upon years later, I’m thankful to that teacher for setting us up right. Mr. Clarke, if you’re out there somewhere, thank you endlessly for contantly challenging us and prioritizing life skills over the generic curriculum. For teaching us good study and organizational habbits and for inspiring curiosity rather than heaping rote memorization on us. Perserverance is still hard when meeting roadblocks, compared to others, but if it weren’t for those experiences I would have given up a loooong time ago.
“The pace of the child” was huge for me as a kid. My school had an alternative learning path where you could do classes online at your own pace (they were bunk, and very easy to cheat, which is what everyone else was encouraged to do …). I loved it, finished three classes in 3 days, was really motivated to knock out all of my classes and maybe start college classes earlier, then they told me that no I would still have to show up to this schoolroom even if I had no credits left to do. I slowed way down and just played games on the school laptop, because there was no point.
I was definitely set up to fail. I was always put in classes for smart kids but even those never challenged me and but I was really great up until Covid. Covid ruined my grades. My teachers all said I was extremely smart and mature but it was all because of how I was raised (I was raised around adults most of the time and rarely had any real friends my age because I was so smart and gifted. I was also an only child and had no siblings around). I never had to grind like you said and did no studying but I was able to keep up the facade up until Covid hit. It really ruined my school career. I wanted to be valedictorian and now I’m in an online school barely doing work on time in my classes because it just feels so hard and heavy. Finding you at 2:30 AM on some random Sunday is really nice.
It’s terrifying how precisely this explanation mirrors my entire existence. I’m desperately in need of assistance. This year, I will face my final high school exams before venturing into the real world. It’s been a shameful these four years where I’ve struggled to grasp new concepts and maintain a solid foundation of the basics. When the mid-exams arrived, my results were dismal, shattering everyone’s expectations, losing their faith in me, and plunging me into a profound sense of despair. I desperately need tips to change my personality to prepare for my final exams at the end of this year.
Children NEED to fail, and they NEED to learn how to power through that failure. Confronting failure is how a child learns to confront their insecurities. I, a gifted child, was NEVER given this opportunity when I was young. I had to learn it later, when I was in college. A lot of money was wasted because of my mistreatment, and I was blamed for it…
I was quite gifted when it came to history, like easily getting 90% in tests in foundation teir, O didn’t even haveto study. I moved to higher teir, easily 80%. In year 12 (15 to 16yrs) I started struggling. Was getting around 60% in my tests. That was one of the best things thet ever happened to me. My confidence in myself took a big hit, my self esteem took a bit of a hit and I had to rebuild my self-esteem and confidence to not need good grades in history. And it taught me that studying history wasn’t about my grades at all, it was just about enjoying the subject material. I was gifted in a few other subjects and at times I started doing worse suddenly, and it was hard to take. I’d get 60 something % in RE and I’d cry in the middle of class about it. But the self-esteem that I had tp build after those falls was so much more robust than what I had before. When I did my A levels I needed that more robust confidence and self-esteem. Low grades weren’t a confidence knocking problem for me anymore.
As a “gifted” kid I literally coasted through all of high school on A’s with no studying. I unfortunately hit my wall in the second years of college. Years later people ask what I’d like to do instead of what I do now or what degree I’d get if I went back to school but I can never really answer well because there is nothing I “want” to do
I was an all A student for the entirety of elementary and high school (in a gifted program) with next to no work at all. Then I went to college in science and my complete lack of study/work structure really hit me hard in the face. Turns out I also have ADHD on top of that, and I had just daydreamed my way through school all the way to college. Thankfully I pulled through, but it was a though lesson to learn!
“Taking the scenic route”. I’m about to start uni for the second time at 27 after being in the top of all of my classes in school and had “so much potential”. This is such a perfect reminder to help dismiss the shame that I am not where everyone else expected me to be at this point in my life. I’ll get where I want in the time that suits me.
I think a more accurate comparison to the mansion/shack analogy is that the “normal” kids are told to build a shack and given a blueprint, but “gifted” kids are told to build a mansion and given nothing, because they’re “gifted” and don’t need the blueprints. So even if they give up trying to build a mansion and instead try to build a shack, they still don’t have blueprints to work from and wind up with just a pile of wood.
As someone with ADHD I could confidentally say that we are just the normal guys but just really inconsistent. We have the stats of a greek god in our favorite subject, but we time travel in pretty much everything else at school. Just because I’m really good at one subject, that doesn’t mean that it could be applied to everything else. We have a lot to give in our favorite subject, so please be forgiving if I take a bit long to load.
Here’s an added piece: Try being a working-class gifted kid. The working class gifted kid grows up being told that being smart and working hard WILL result in success. They can go to college and do perfectly fine, but they still don’t have the parental connections and startup funds. To borrow your metaphor? There’s two ways to build that mansion instead of the shack. You can work really hard and travel the path, or you can pay a lot of people to do the work for you. The working-class gifted kid often winds up looking at their own house – even if its not a shack – and feeling like its THEIR fault they don’t have a real mansion, not understanding that a lot of the mansion builders had a lot of help building that mansion. The myth that if you’re gifted AND you work, you have an equal chance of “success” comes back to bite working class kids on the ass extra hard.
I consider myself pretty fortunate because I found out really quickly that my habits as a gifted student didn’t work because I was really bad at sports. All that failure helped me a lot with my expectations and I’m still holding my own in college, but I still know that I haven’t overcome it completely. Hearing everything you said definitely gave me a lot of perspective on what I’m experiencing. (Also, wow that Chemical Engineering example hit me hard, considering that’s what I study.)
I was tested as gifted as a kid, and I’m proud to say I was a relentlessly solid B student throughout school. Despite the gaslighting from parents and teachers (“you have so much potential”, etc.), it was necessary to block out that pressure and dissapoint them in order to avoid burning out in school. The truth is you don’t need to get all A’s, honors, AP, ivy league, etc. to do well in life. I did fairly well at my local university and got a good job in IT, mostly through intense self study. The school system felt like a trap.
its so awful places that have specific, separated “gifted programs” too. i was put in a program that was faster paced, and claimed to be “more student centered”. we were supposed to get more individual attention, but we really just got unrealistic expectations and were alienated from everyone else in the school. most of us had no idea how to socialize because we had the same classmates every year, sometimes since kindergarten. as i got to know those kids over the years i realized that the vast majority of us were, metaphorically speaking, misdiagnosed with being “gifted”. we were really all just neurodivergent, autistic, special needs kids who struck really bad luck. now we’re stuck in the program, and because of how fast paced and isolating it is, moving into the normal curriculum would be even worse academically and emotionally. nobody will help us, nobody will teach us, because we were “gifted” enough to get into the program but not gifted enough to fly blind.
4:19 This hits me in the core. I never studied for public school. As long as I did my “Homework” I scored really well. School was super boring to me. I stopped doing homework, so if I couldn’t get it done in class it didn’t get done. It drove teachers nuts that I would be failing due to missing homework. But then score high 90s on the tests and be in the top 10% on the end of instruction tests.
So the last point brought back a flood of memories from different times in my life where I was challanged. In particular my senior year of highschool I took an internship at an offroad shop. And it was me and the owner, that man would put me in a shop alone with a jeep and said heres a manual take the transmission apart tell me whats wrong, i’ll be up front if you have a question, you only get 2 questions. So I would be there maybe 2 hours at a time 3 days a week….of course I didnt finish the first day I came back 2 days later that transmission was still there on the bench untouched he said keep going. By the end of the week I figured out what was wrong. He said ok can you fix it, I said yeah. He said great go for it . Never had I felt so accomplished in myself. Im even more greatful now understanding what he was doing. I cant imagine how much he was biting his nails though
“We assume that when someone is gifted, things are actually gonna be easier for them, that they need to work less to accomplish the same amount. But in my experience, living up to a gifted child’s potential involves MORE work. It’s just like building a shack versus building a mansion. Like, sure the mansion is capable of so much more than the shack is capable of, but let’s not forget for a moment that the amount of effort that goes into building a mansion is actually way more than what’s required to build a shack.” Such a bullseye, I took the time to transcribe.
Gifted Kid to Autistic depression husk pipeline. I was literally in a program at school called “gifted”, i never studied and for years i had a perfect honor rolls grades. As i started deteriorating, people were angry at me for not living up to this perceived gifted-ness. I was told that the idea i needed help as a gifted smart perfect kid was ridiculous. I was denied tutoring until i almost failed 6th grade. and then it happened again in 7th grade. and then finally in 8th grade my parents decided i needed help. But by that point i had been told i didn’t need help and was denied help so much that i didn’t want help. i wanted to torture myself until i got it right. I failed 9th grade/freshman year and when that happened, the next year my principal personally put me in doubled classes so i could “catch up” because i was smart enough to handle it. Then i failed sophomore year because turns out, giving a child two years worth of classes within a one year time span when they are so depressed they cant get out of bed most days isn’t the best idea. So i failed. And then i dropped out. and I went from this golden child who could do no wrong to an angry and depressed high school drop out who doesn’t want to wake up in the morning.Its almost as if giving 7 year olds this idea that they can do anything without needing help and when they ask for it, denying them help because they are perfect is not a good idea. Also every single person i knew in the “gifted” program is now depressed and has been diagnosed or is awaiting an adhd and or autism diagnoses.
I can totally relate to what you are saying. High-school and undergrad was so easy for me. The only time I felt that I would fail if I didn’t put effort was in Med school. But good thing I was exposed to online MMO RPG games wherein grinding was the core mechanic of getting strong. Med school was a grind but I can say being gifted made it easier and the ability to see the big picture of studying modular subjects was big advantage.
My biggest problem was when I realized I was nothing more than intelligent, the idea of your personality solely being “smart”. So any failure in school would make me feel like shit, if I’m not the smartest person in here, what am I? The results include an eating disorder because I was trying to be pretty as something else than being smart and a huge fear of failure, making me have a panic crisis because I got a B+ and no an A
I was always considered gifted and hearing these stories about others makes me feel lucky. I’ve heard the term “apply yourself” for years and only ever did it back as a freshman. I’ve spent my years failing simply because I didn’t wanna try and devoted my time to make friends. I developed a nice social/academic balance and I hope those who are struggling find peace within themselves
Thank you for breaking this down. I become very frustrated when other people project their perception of me as an “overachiever” when, in reality, I was the “gifted kid” who never had to put in effort to succeed in school until maybe middle school. I received a scholarship to attend a very prestigious private high school, and that was the first time I was ever challenged in a serious way. I was okay with just passing classes in subjects I didn’t care about, like math and science. I was a student who loved English and Humanities. STEM was never my thing, so I just did my best to graduate and get by. But my mother and the teachers put an unnecessary level of stress and expectation on me to excel at a higher level than what I was capable of because I was supposed to be the “gifted scholarship kid.” It wasn’t until college that I could finally create a curriculum for myself that fit my personal interests and I was far from home so no one could see my transcripts but me. I excelled in college, not because I was so much smarter than the others in my classes or because I put in more effort. I chose classes that piqued my interest and aligned with the strengths I already had so that it wouldn’t feel like a chore to read the material or study for a test. I just wanted to learn and have fun in an environment where there were no expectations misplaced onto me. Ultimately, that’s what sets a “gifted kid” apart from an overachiever— effort. The overachiever goes above and beyond to try and get the A.
I was called “gifted” as a child, BUT one thing neither my parents or teachers took into consideration was my ADHD diagnosis. I was kicking butts in everything I liked (languages, litterature) but for the subjects I had no interest into i was failing hard because no matter how many hours I spent studying, I couldn’t seem to remember more than half of it because it was boring. I remember crying and feeling dizzy over math homework… I still don’t know how I managed to get my high school diploma, but I totally nailed my degree in university. All thanks to my mom who kind of knew and who always told me “pass the test, get out of the scolar system and THEN it’s gonna be interesting”. But the rest of my family was putting an insane amount of pressure on me. “You can do so much better” “that is disappointing of you” “your cousin does it better” etc so I was pushing myself hard because I HAD to be the best. I kept that bad habit at work, and… ended up in a psych ward for a burn out.
I ain’t perusal all that, I just saw the title and thumbnail but I can assume what it’s talking about because I’ve been through this and thinking about it and it’s one of the biggest advice I’d give to new parents – if your kid is gifted or even just above average, make sure you teach them something above their level. Above what school is teaching them. So they don’t slack off and relax too much. So they can learn to work hard and study. Discipline and hard work is something that you learn young. It’s really hard to learn when you’re older. Growing up, I never had to study. I did not do a single thing at home and I was top of my class, pretty much top of the school actually, just by listening in class… But after a few years, at some point I found out that I couldn’t keep up anymore. Took me a bit by surprise and I didn’t know how to fix it. I just I couldn’t keep up, I didn’t have any experience working hard or studying. So I went from top of the class/school student to barely passing in several subjects. Meanwhile, the same students that were always below me, they were doing fine… They still weren’t top of the class, but they were doing better than me. They knew how to study. They had learned to work hard and I hadn’t. This really bit me in the ass… Luckily, I got my stuff together at some point and it kinda worked out but man… Sometimes I think what could have happened… But at least I’ve learned what to do with my kids when the time comes…
This is true, even the final part; in highschool i was really struggling with the basic program of many subjects, but the times where i absolutely peaked the ladder were when the teacher was smart enough to challenge me and making me go to the next level, studying more advanced themes or arguing with me with “difficult” things about their subjects, this kind of approach to teaching sadly was really rare.
People can’t understand when I say, “I’ve never persisted doing anything hard.” They look at things I’ve done that are hard to them, but are easy to me. While things that are easy to them, such as grinding away at boring tasks, are extremely difficult to me and I consistently fail at. Graduating college in 3 years was the easy way out. The thing I couldn’t do was last another year. I failed a class where I got high A’s on the midterm and final because 60% of the grade was from daily work.
This describes me perfectly… except I don’t think I’m gifted, I mean school was pretty easy for me before 5th grade and at certain points after that but… I’m too much of a failure to shamelessly say I am “gifted”, but everything he’s describing happened to me. It feels great to hear someone describing what I’ve been feeling my whole life. Thanks Dr. K… I hope I can fix myself soon before my dark thoughts take over completely.
As a former “gifted kid” I was absolutely baffled by the amount of things this article has cleared up for me. I knew being a gifted kid could set you up for misery/failure and all that jazz, but never really thought in depth about how that comes to be. Hopefully with this knowledge and some more research I’ll be able to get myself back on track in terms of self-improvement, because university really gave me a reality check. Thank you so much for this article, I’m sure it helped a tonne of people.
Graduated with National Honors as a pregnant, homeless teenager. Didn’t study and received a B in a physics online course my senior year because I didn’t feel comfortable walking into the school with a big stomach. Still, here I am- no family, a statistic of abuse. But I will not stop trying to build that mansion <3 Great article, thank you.