Stop telling kids they are "gifted."
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Anonymous
| Never describe your kid as athletic, creative, talented, artistic, musical either. Heaven forbid! |
Anonymous
It's not the same. Not even close. |
Anonymous
Doubt you can avoid labels. I know a lot of prodigies in music, math and chess and these kids know they are "prodigies." They aren't stupid. Also, they know the value of hard work and having mental toughness: Even prodigies need to practice/work to let their talent reach full potential and if you can't perform under pressure and collapse then you can't perform under pressure. The ones who can't perform under pressure end up quitting no matter how talented they are. |
Anonymous
Why not? Academic ability should count in the mix |
Anonymous
I understand this. It is part of the anti-intellectualism. My theory is people understand deep down that being smart is more essential than being athletic and artistic. They feel free to praise people based on their other talent but balk at ranking people base on intellect. This is the one aspect they want to pretend everyone is equal. |
Anonymous
I don't believe the label has a darn thing to do with it. In the early years they are in fact succeeding based on innate talent, not because of hard work and practice, because the work isn't hard and they get it right the first time so they don't need to practice. That is the problem. They are never asked to do hard work when they are young, so they never learn the skills that go with facing challenges. The reason they give up later when they first face a challenge in their teen years is because they haven't had to a chance to learn the skills to face an academic challenge, and now they are older and in that social fish bowl where how you look to others is more important than your future. These kids need academic challenge sooner, not later. They have to be given something to work on that is too hard FOR THEM while they are still young. |
Anonymous
But I doubt the musical prodigies were given a xylophone and "row-row-row your boat" as the only thing to practice every day for 5 years, were they? Nor was the musical prodigy forced to to stick with the grade school music class only. But this is what we do to academic prodigies. |
Anonymous
Oh come in. Do you really not understand this? Telling someone they are "gifted" (in academics, sport, music, whatever) implies that their achievements are due to a "gift" outside of their control rather because of any effort in their part. |
Anonymous
+1 It's not useful to praise talent instead of effort for any of those things. If the kid is going to go anywhere with any ability, hard work is more important than innate talent. |
Anonymous
The only true prodigies exist in math, chess and music. Btw, many of these kids are very gifted academically - several I know skipped high school and went to college instead. So if you have such an "academic" prodigy, you can do the same if they need that amount of challenge to thrive. But seriously when people talk about being "gifted" they are talking about bright kids who do well in school not prodigies and no, these kids/prodigies weren't just given a xylophone in grade school - iit is pretty obvious you have a prodigy in music, chess or math when you have one because they are so far above other bright kids in terms of talent. Amazingly so. |
Anonymous
Disagree. Some people can work very very hard and never reach a certain level because they lack the talent. You need both innate talent + hard work. But hard work is controllable so it makes sense to praise that. |
Anonymous
^plus they have the motivation and personality to work really hard and practice because they LOVE what they do. |
Anonymous
I think this is a good part of where the studies break down. People seem to assume that every gifted child wants to be academic. We have this conception that if you are Andre Agassi, you somehow must love tennis. How many kids are really interested in strengthening an academic skill? Certainly, some are. But if education was not mandatory or socially encouraged, how many kids would choose learn algebra? I suspect that those same kids would not care about improving thier skills, even if they never heard the word gifted. For some people, school is and will be a thing to be endured. Is the gifted label responsible for every outcome? To the partent of the high-anxiety, ESE teacher. I am sorry that your daughter has struggled so heavily with anxiety, but from my completely lay perspective, I fail to see the connection. It sounds like your daugther created her own anxiety, rather than having an enviromental stressor create this for her. Perhaps I am wrong, but I can't imagine that anyone was giving her a hard time about a 98%. And if that is the case, then chances are, your daughter was going to have this even if you had homeschooled her and never knew that she was so intelligent compared to others. Again, perhaps I am wrong and the school/program/peers was a major driving factor, but I think it is pretty unusual, even in intense academic programs, to regard a 98 as not successful. For my own part, I can say that the gifted label changed my life completely, but I grew up in very different circumstances than DC. I lived in an interior state that did not particularly value education. Most of my high school class mates went to college, but only 4/200 ish went more than an hour away. That radius would not include any school that you have heard of, absent some random connection or perhaps a scheduling fluke of a college sports. DCUM would uniformly gasp in horror at the lack of engagement that my parents had with my education. For example, the day that I took the SAT, I woke up at 1 a.m. in order to drive 45 minutes to get the newspapers that I would deliver. I then drove back home and spent a couple hours delievering papers, before driving 75 minutes away to the nearest testing site (the area is ACT-centric). But I only did any of that because years before someone told me that I was smart and backed it up with support. Absent the gifted program, I would probably be a well-read (in fiction only) truck driver. At that time in my life, I really needed somebody to believe in me and convince me to expect more from myself. I certainly understand the desire to praise effort and not talent, but even that needs to be moderated. No amount of work on my part was going to make me a professional athlete or musician. And while an unhealthy obession and identity as "smart" is not good, the inability to relax is no better. If you constantly drill home that anything is achievable with work, then it isn't difficult to see a generation without empathy. After all, if anything is achievable with work, then any failure is must be because of a lack of work. Of course, that isn't true, but it is the kind of misperception that could sink in just like "I'm smart so I don't need to work hard." Or "I don't need to work on this math, because I am good at reading". Will/drive/ambition is as valuable as any other positive attribute, but like all the others overemphasis leads to some twisted results. |
Anonymous
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I don't think there's anything wrong with a kid knowing they are smart/gifted. It's kind of hard to hide "gifted" from a kid who is getting pulled out of class for "RTG" classes - they are going to ask what that is all about.
I think the trick is to say something like, "Some things will come to you more easily than they come to others. Try not to take that for granted. It doesn't mean you shouldn't work hard. You should always work hard." I'd say the same thing to a kid who was good at music or a sport. That kid has a gift in a particular area, and they should work hard to get even better, and not take it for granted. I was identified gifted early on. I LOVED learning, so for me, it was sort of a twofold thing. For the subjects I didn't love, I definitely was able to spend less time on them than other people did and still got good grades, and I appreciated that. Being able to knock out some of that work gave me time to focus on really diving into the stuff I did love to do. Gifted provided me enrichment reading and activities I might not have found on my own before the internet was a thing. |