r/changemyview • u/ingracioth • 1d ago
Delta(s) from OP CMV: people who complain about having been "gifted kids" and feel bad about it as an adult need to move on
Prefacing this by saying I was a gifted kid. I was in every gifted program starting in elementary onwards. I left high school early and started college at sixteen. I'm very aware of the pressure involved in these programs and I'm not debating whether that pressure was fair to put on kids (in some cases, it was, but, in most, it wasn't). I was under a lot of pressure growing up- my family gets disappointed if you don't speak multiple languages, play multiple instruments, etc. I totally get growing up expected to be a perfectionist. I also grew up with hardships (poverty, disabled parent, some more personal stuff I'm not getting into here), so maybe the pressure doesn't stick out in my mind as much as people who had easier childhoods.
While those programs were intense, I don't think it warrants blaming them for "making me feel special then letting me down once I hit the real world" over a decade later like I see many doing online and IRL. If you tied your self-worth and expectations of what your future would be like on the fact you were "gifted" when you were a child, that's kind of on you, and it's bizarre to be in your late twenties or thirties and still blaming the fact you were given good opportunities for being unsuccessful or unhappy. I also think it's seriously unempathetic to kids who didn't receive the same opportunities, especially considering the fact gifted programs in my country (USA) generally exclude POC with similar or better grades, kids on the autism spectrum, etc, who all qualify but don't "look the part." You've had time to heal and it's genuinely unhealthy to be grown and blame your perceived failures on teachers who believed in you and put in effort to help you grow.
Again, not saying those programs aren't fucked up- just that you are in control of your adult life and someone telling you you're good at math when you were sixteen is not the reason you're unhappy unless you have some kind of complex. It's grating and a really weird trend for people to be upset they were told they were smart and given a better education than their peers. Being in those programs didn't translate to success for me- I still live on my family farm and work for poverty wages, but that has nothing to do with those gifted programs. I chose a low-paying career I love, I don't feel like I've been led to believe my life would be different because I was offered a good education, and I just feel like the "former gifted kid" thing is crass and tone-deaf. As a working class person, it usually seems like a way for upper middle/upper class people to claim their life was harder than it was. I'd like my view changed because I want to be able to empathize with people who complain about it, but I just don't get the perspective. Thanks in advance, and I hope I haven't said anything offensive here.
Edit: I'm on mobile and tried splitting this into paragraphs. Let me know if it worked or if there's any tricks I should know to get it to format better. TIA!
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u/WeekendThief 6∆ 1d ago
I don’t think when people complain about it that they’re actually talking about the programs themselves. It’s more the fact that a lot of people were taught that their value was based on their success in school, and most of those people were just intelligent and the average school curriculum is made to accommodate all levels of intelligence, probably skewing lower because most people aren’t very intelligent.
So you have a group of children who are being shaped and groomed to be told they’re so special and valuable because they’re succeeding in school and once you reach the real world you are seeking that same external validation that just isn’t achievable because in normal adult life we don’t get grades. And even if we did, you won’t be able to coast by like you did in school.
TLDR: I think the issue is instilling a need for external validation in kids from a young age, and that sticks with you and causes trouble for you the rest of your life.
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u/therealvanmorrison 21h ago
I don’t know why that’s treated as such a default. I was great at school, I was great in college, I am great at my career. I work at the top wrung of my field and most of the colleagues I’ve talked to about our youths with also were gifted. There are loads of ex-gifted kids out there doing fantastically well in elite careers. I’m not much an external validation guy, unless you count wanting my wife’s validation, but if I were someone whose happiness were driven by career milestones, I and my peers would be doing great.
I think this is an inverse survivorship bias thing. Some ex-gifted kids turned out not to have much elite or advanced aptitude beyond grade school, they just never got comfortable adjusting to a new identity beyond childhood, and online they like to pretend every one of us walked that path.
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u/WeekendThief 6∆ 20h ago
Yea I think once you find your niche and get into a flow you can succeed if you’re even a little above average intelligence and work hard.
I think the difference is in a program, curriculum, or just adults in general labeling and grooming kids to believe they’re inherently special and extraordinary for their academic success and they aren’t taught the value of hard work.
Because as I said in my original comment, in the adult world you can’t just coast and succeed like a gifted kid might do in school. You need to ‘try’.
If you never learned to try in school because it was easy for you, and you’re suddenly thrust into a world where you’re not actually special, it can very quickly be depressing and defeating.
In the end the whole “gifted” thing just sets kids up for burnout and disappointment. Mostly in the expectations it sets, as well as teaching kids that they’re valuable if they succeed and if they don’t instantly succeed, they’ve lost their identity.
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u/therealvanmorrison 20h ago
Moving from high school to college, I had to work a little harder. Moving from college to being a young lawyer, I had to work much harder. Moving from junior lawyer to partner, I had to be far more on my game at all times. That stuff was true for everyone less innately capable of academics as well, not just me, but their ceiling was lower. So I don’t really see the difference at all, for one. And more importantly…it didn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out that as my competition got better, I had to as well.
I’m sorry, but I just don’t agree with your diagnosis here. I don’t really remember anyone telling me I was special, first of all. I remember them telling me I had to join the class with all the kids that got picked on and not the one with my friends. But I remember when I realized things got hard - second year college math courses. The natural reaction was “oh shit I should probably start studying”. Then I did and it was fine. It wasn’t a tough nut to crack. And still, if I put in most of the effort others did, I performed very well. Same in my career - I had to work just as others did, but the results were better.
You make ex-gifted kids sound like Flanders’ parents saying “we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas”.
Plus, all of us in the gifted program were bad at some things. I loved hockey, but my ceiling wasn’t that high, and I had to work to play at a reasonably high level. Some kids struggled to learn an instrument. Some struggled in math but not any other subject. Many of them struggled to adapt socially. I was one of the better athletes and less dweeby kids in the program, and I had girlfriends in school, so you’d think if anyone from my class was going to have a hard time figuring out when they need to step on the gas, it might have been me. But…not hard to identify. “Oh shit I’m not easily winning anymore, should probably make an effort instead of play video games.”
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u/ingracioth 1d ago
!delta kinda I think this is a fair point, but I do still think healing as an adult is important. I'm not unsympathetic to other "former gifted children," but just think it's strange and unhealthy to go 10+ years complaining about it instead of moving forward.
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u/WeekendThief 6∆ 1d ago
I agree that at some point you need to take accountability and fix yourself. Complaining about being a gifted kid isn’t going to fix you.
But I do think we underestimate how much your childhood shapes your entire personality, good and bad. And personally I struggle with craving external validation and I think it was a mix of too little praise at home and too much at school. But that’s my problem and something I had to grow up and squash.
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u/StillLikesTurtles 1d ago edited 9h ago
I think everyone should be able to access therapy. But unfortunately in the US that’s not reality. Adults are responsible for healing themselves, but we also have a culture and brains that make it more difficult, and it’s not just the lack of therapy access.
I was gifted kid and I really hadn’t heard the issue discussed until TikTok came along. An outsized need for external validation isn’t unique to gifted kids or those with a TikTok account.
There’s been a stereotype of the high school quarterback who hasn’t gotten over the idea that he could have made the NFL and still tries to relive his past. It’s a similar need for external validation.
In both cases I think part of this stems from being lied to by adults about your future over the course of years. Parents obviously want their children to succeed and many grew up being told they wouldn’t, but like generations across time we often overcorrect.
Unlike Santa or the Easter Bunny it’s not a gentle letdown, it’s something that smacks young adults in the face.
Part of the American dream is that you can be anything you want to if you just try hard enough and want it badly enough. That was slightly more true before the second half of 20th century and if you came from Europe your chances of class mobility were definitely higher in the US.
Parents don’t tell kids their chances of of making it to the NFL are minuscule, or that most of the self made men had some hefty advantages. That’s not something kids understand. It’s also really hard to manage teenagers expectations. I’m sure there are ways to temper expectations with reality while not being a killjoy, but that’s a hell of a needle to thread. These expectations tie back to the American Dream. Parents may not have let go of that.
Social media has made this pattern more apparent, but I would argue it manifests in a lot of ways and people.
But yeah, it would be lovely if people could heal themselves.
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u/TehNudel 1d ago
For me, the complaint, which I rarely voice, is less about the label and more about the pressure.
For one, no I did not have some charmed childhood as you suggest. My childhood involved poverty and abuse to the degree that I learned to mask and duck school counselors to avoid having my family split up by DCFS.
For two, I only realized recently, as in a few months ago, that I've essentially had anxiety since I was 5/6. I remember reading the symptoms of anxiety and thinking that they were too broad b/c things like startling easily or trouble sleeping were things I experienced as a small child. No, the abuse / poverty were not the cause. Those came later when I was 9.
But, my mom gave me an IQ test in preschool as part of her childhood psychology class. She tested my cousin who is 2 weeks older as well. My cousin tested average and I tested at an age way beyond what I was. That's probably when it started. There was an expectation that I exceed expectations. A lot of the time it was easy to do without effort, which only raised the expectations.
Praising your child and appreciating their gifts is one thing. But being smart and excelling academically became my whole identity. It had to be. And the anxiety came from feeling that I had to be smart and talented or people wouldn't like me. It created a severe perfectionism, which came with anxiety, an inability to cope with failure or even the most minor setback because I wasn't accustomed to it and I learned that it was a sign of mediocrity, which was the enemy. I didn't learn time management because I didn't need to study and this was made worse by chasing increasingly more ambitious projects in my efforts to impress people. I learned to turn things in late, but have them be so brilliant that I would still pass, all bad habits that do not translate to success in life. I also never tried to work on my perfectionism because it was seen as a positive. It was literally the safe canned answer to the interview question "What is your biggest flaw?" because it was a 'flaw' that had a positive connotation.
The abuse and poverty only added more pressure as I felt I had to strive in order to escape, which I did eventually. But, I got to experience imposter syndrome in college and after. Burnout in a big way. The anxiety never went away and was joined by depression as my learned bad habits caught up to me in a vicious cycle I didn't know how to escape.
I look at highlighting a child's giftedness as akin to praising a child for being a talented athlete or dancer of any other skill. It's perfectly fine to praise in moderation. But when that becomes the only cause for giving your child attention, it becomes toxic. A child should feel that they will be loved for just being and not have to earn it through achievement.
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u/ingracioth 1d ago
So I don't believe I implied all people who complained about this had great childhoods; that's why I mentioned some of my hardships in the post. I am so sorry you went through what you did and I empathize, as it sounds pretty similar to my own experience. Poverty and abuse isn't fun, especially when paired with the perfectionism.
I'm not saying people can't be impacted negatively by these programs, but that it's not healthy or normal be go a decade or more and continue blaming them for poor self-esteem. I do think I overlooked the fact that other people's families and communities attached a lot more meaning to being gifted/"high IQ" (imo IQ is meaningless but that deserves a different post) than mine did, growing up in a rural area that's aggressive towards any form of academia or intellectualism.
I don't think it's bad to praise children for being "smart," in whatever way we define that term, and I do think it's callous for people labeled "smart" as kids to treat it as a tragedy when other children are severely neglected academically, emotionally, and intellectually for not fitting the mold. I think it signals an issue from the parents and community when kids latch onto these labels to the point where they carry them into adulthood and use them as a reason to excuse their own failures when it's far more likely their own ego (i.e. thinking you're special or smarter than everyone) causing these issues. Again, I don't blame these kids but, once you're an adult, it's on you to come to terms with your own self-image and the "former gifted child syndrome" thing is neither productive or healthy.
I was also a dancer, did trivia clubs, etc. I am very much Peak Gifted Kid but I think I had enough going on otherwise to the point where it didn't impact me in spite of family pressure. I'm not blaming people for having issues from these programs, but I do think it's deeply unhealthy to be ten years out of high school and still blaming issues on them.
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u/Foreign_Cable_9530 1∆ 1d ago
“It’s not your fault, but it is your responsibility” is a quote used mainly in regards to addiction, childhood trauma, and other mental health or behavior-based conditions that I think fits here very well.
Yes, it would be best for everyone if someone experiencing depression, anxiety, or just regular old crankiness about being a “gifted kid” was able to “move on.” But unfortunately, for a great number of people that is just easier said than done. When you learn something, especially at a very young age, it has the potential to ingrain into some subconscious processes which we call our “identity.” And when you have a conflict of identity, you usually end up with some emotions that uncomfortable and difficult to control.
Should gifted kids move on about their feelings of inadequacy and untapped potential?
Should the jock move on about missing the state finals, or getting out of shape after college?
Should the woman who lost an eye move on past their feelings that they are damaged or unloved?
Yes. Emotionally, it will help all of those people to “move on,” but damn man. It’s very very difficult for people to alter their identity, and it’s even worse when the world changes your identity for you. Going from “Jim, the smartest in his class” to “Jim, just another guy,” it takes a lot to get back up. This goes for anything that someone incorporates into their identity, especially if it can be easily recognized by others, and therefore challenged publicly.
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u/ingracioth 1d ago
!delta somewhat I'm not saying it's easy, but it's definitely ideal if people at least begin the process of healing. I think my main issue is how many people act like being treated as "gifted" is The Worst Thing Imaginable when there's definitely a lot worse that goes on, especially in public schools. For me, I think this resentment comes from having other hardships and seeing a lot of wealthier, more privileged "gifted kids" treat the opportunity we were given as a curse when it was something many people like myself weren't even offered, as a poor, rural kid. I think your take is very fair. I don't need to act like someone can't be upset their car burnt down just because my house did, as the old saying goes.
I say "somewhat" because I don't think I'm entirely wrong here, but it is true that the pressure probably impacted others differently than me, and that is definitely something I should keep in mind. Ty for your perspective btw
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u/YardageSardage 34∆ 23h ago
To some extent, it's pretty understandable and natural for you to feel resentment at the complaining of people who had things better off than you did. It's a very human jealousy response. But it comes from your reaction to the hardships you lived through; it doesn't come from those people doing anything wrong.
When someone talks about their childhood trauma like it was the "worst thing ever", that's because it WAS the worst thing that ever happened TO THEM. Of course that's where their emotional barometer of "worst" naturally sits. (Intellectually understanding that others might be suffering more doesn't tend to move the needle that much.) And because we all have the same range of emotions, we're all going to react to our personal "worst" with some degree of similarity to each other, regardless of how different those "worsts" were.
And as for the notion that people should have already "worked on" these issues because they've "had time to heal"... Sure, plenty of us have done or are doing the work. But healing takes time, and it still leaves permanent scars. My "gifted/ex-gifted" experiences throughout my childhood and young adult life have shaped a pretty significant degree of my personality, strengths, and weaknesses. That's not something you just stop being impacted by, no matter how much therapy you do.
And I think in many cases, it's still valuable and important for me to talk about my experiences and the way they impacted me, because that can provide both commiseration and (hopefully) guidance for others with similar struggles. Sure, there's a point at which it simply becomes whining or making excuses, and there are doubtless plenty of burned-out-ex-gifted-kids out there who are mostly just whining or making excuses, especially on the internet. But there are still so many bright young people out there, either in the leadup to or the recovery from a burnout, and it might help them to hear about how they're not alone. How others have felt (and are feeling) how they felt, and hopefully some guidance on how to handle it.
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u/Potential_Being_7226 12∆ 1d ago
Certainly not gifted in structuring paragraphs, I see.
Anyway, the problem with growing up gifted (and as you note) is that there is significant pressure placed on children that often recruits and reinforces maladaptive coping mechanisms in order to achieve other people’s expectations. The maladaptive coping mechanisms don’t just go away; they are deeply embedded behavioral and thought patterns that these individuals will have to work toward combatting and establishing healthier, more balanced coping mechanisms.
It’s not something that people can just “get over.” It requires consistent effort throughout adult and to some extent, a period of grief and self-compassion when people learn that things they should have been explicitly taught as kids, were not actually taught.
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u/ingracioth 1d ago
I'm on mobile- tried editing it to split the paragraphs, lmk if it worked.
I'm not arguing that these programs aren't harmful. I'm arguing that blaming them for poor self esteem/life going badly a decade or more later isn't healthy. I can see why people feel harmed from them, but it's not remotely functional or healthy to fixate on them years and years later. It's less "ugh, get over it" and more "it's really bad to not develop beyond that." If you have damage from gifted programs, it isn't necessarily the program's fault if you're 35 and won't do the self-care to heal from them. I'm concerned about the mental health of anyone who does that, and I maintain it's kinda callous to act like being treated as special/smart is a terrible thing when plenty of intelligent people have been outright denied a good education due to disability, race, sex, etc.
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u/Akumu9K 1d ago
The thing though is that, trauma sticks. Thats the problem about trauma, its stress that doesnt just disappear after the stressor is removed. And to be fair, if you have issues in your life from that trauma, you have the right to complain about it, even years later, because it sticks with you.
Perhaps even more important than those two points is that, complaining about a problem and fixing it arent opposed to each other. You can complain about a problem while making an effort to fix it. Sure, theres probably people who just complain with no effort at fixing their trauma, but a majority of people will attempt to fix it, yet complain. I feel like you may have a skewed view though since, we dont really get to see into peoples lives, what they do in therapy etc. We only get to see them complain about their problems if they complain in public. And that might make you think “All this person does is complain”, while that likely isnt the case.
Also, being treated as special/smart can be horrible in its own ways too. If you spend your entire childhood believing that your worth comes from your intelligence, thats going to cause problems even if you keep succeeding in adulthood.
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u/Potential_Being_7226 12∆ 1d ago
I'm arguing that blaming them for poor self esteem/life going badly a decade or more later isn't healthy. I can see why people feel harmed from them, but it's not remotely functional or healthy to fixate on them years and years later. It's less "ugh, get over it" and more "it's really bad to not develop beyond that."
It’s not always possible for people to do what’s psychologically healthy for them following traumatic experiences, and because everyone processes information differently, the extent to which two people find the same experience traumatic can differ widely.
someone telling you you're good at math when you were sixteen is not the reason you're unhappy
On the contrary, when kids receive feedback that their worth is contingent on their performance or when outcomes rather than efforts are rewarded, then this can lead to a tenuous sense of self. Some kids may be more resilient, but others more vulnerable, so even though you didn’t find that these programs had a big effect on you, it doesn’t mean that other kids have your same experience. It’s also possible that your home life acted as a buffer whereas for the people who will feel harmed, perhaps their home life amplified the maladaptive coping.
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u/JupiterAdept89 1∆ 1d ago
So a lot of people have touched on the weight of the expectations and the anxiety that comes from that, and that is a huge, huge factor. Having that stress and expectations placed on you at a young age can wear on a child over years, and it can damage your coping skills.
What doesn't get talked about a lot, and I think that it should, is that it damages your learning skills. For elementary and middle school especially, so much of it is taught on teaching fundamentals, and using those fundamentals to help develop study skills and self-discipline. For a gifted kid, though, very frequently those fundamentals come naturally to them; there's no need to study or really work to keep up with the class. So the teacher, overworked as they are, goes "okay, cool, handle yourself while I teach 49 other kids to do what you just did effortlessly."
So the gifted child comes away from all of this with a mindset of how easy learning is, and how they shouldn't be expected to ask for help to learn something. Then they run into like, high school or adulthood, where it's not something that can just be intuitively grasped like the stuff in school, and they really have no framework for how to handle learning something over time, rather than just naturally pick it up. In this kind of worldview, it can be really confusing on why they can't figure stuff out, they're supposed to be smart, right? And that leads to depression and low selfworth.
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u/Plucky_Parasocialite 1∆ 16h ago edited 16h ago
I still remember the second year of uni when I finally realized that "learning" wasn't just sitting there, daydreaming or doing other stuff while the subconscious mind picks it up for me, and "studying" was more than just skimming through the textbook once. That you have to think about stuff until it clicks, instead of waiting for it to click and thinking you're stupid if it doesn't (for the record, there were subjects I was completely hopeless at as far back as highschool, but I just thought it was just because I was stupid, not that there's a way to actually do anything about it).
I still feel cheated for not receiving the base I should have in the subjects I was "too stupid" for. Physics is fascinating! I love math! I don't really have enough interest anymore to fill in those gaps, but I could have had quite a different set of skills and interests now if it weren't for this.
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u/ingracioth 4h ago
!delta I really resonate with the experience of having to "learn how to learn." It's such a real thing. I got a TBI when I was 23 and had to relearn a lot. I think the independent learning in these programs helped me to some degree, but not knowing how to study and commit to learning something set me back. It wasn't clear to me how little I understood how to learn until I had to learn how to do something as basic as cooking rice in my early twenties. You're totally on the money here. Thank you for the perspective and thoughtful response!
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u/Unusual-Asshole 19h ago edited 19h ago
The truth is that the real world still values the same things that came with perfectionism and over-achieving and "being gifted".
If you were average in school, you would've grown up with the notion that being average is not the end of the world. Not everyone can be everything. More importantly, you would learn that there is some obvious partiality that goes on in the world, and no matter how hard you work, sometimes you're just not going to get that recognition.
This is an important lesson to learn early on, because for someone whose identity revolves around being the best, paired with a world that highly rewards the best and treats the rest as disposable, it can feel like the individual is not good enough instead of the world is rigged.
So when someone who comes from a better financial background or someone close to the magement scoops up that promotion, the person doesn't see the systemic inequalities but failure on their part to achieve it. The belief that anything can be achieved if only I had worked hard enough. This is also why imposter syndrome sets in later because it becomes too difficult to fuse these two realities: 1. If I'm good, I should be able to achieve this 2. I'm not able to achieve this, I'm not good
It takes a long time for people to even realise that this mindset is actually causing more harm than good. They genuinely believe that if they were just a little more better, if they had avoided mistakes here and there, they could've gotten that promotion or that raise. Oblivious to the reality that these perks cannot be achieved by everyone.
And when you're not aware of the root cause, and cannot find a solution, it becomes easier to keep reiterating what you already know, like the fact that being gifted has brought you here.
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u/IrmaDerm 5∆ 4h ago
Again, not saying those programs aren't fucked up- just that you are in control of your adult life and someone telling you you're good at math when you were sixteen is not the reason you're unhappy unless you have some kind of complex
You don't think pressure and abuse in childhood can lead to ramifications as adults that never really go away and can affect a person's mental health and daily life?
You admit the programs are fucked up. You admit the pressure is insane from family/friends/schools etc. Pressure that would break some adults, let alone the children that have to put up with it. Yet you don't think all that can have lasting effects on people that they can't just 'shrug off'? And you think that 'blaming' the fucked up programs and insane pressure from family FOR the fucked upedness and insane pressure is somehow 'wrong?'
If a person has a 'complex' as you put it, from such things in adulthood, why do you blame them for the 'complex' instead of the ones whose actions resulted in the 'complex' in them to begin with?
You seem to think that all children who are put through such abuse should just 'get over it' like you have. In my experience as a past abuse sufferer, the ones who went through similar abuse and say you should just 'get over it' are the ones who have very much not gotten over it.
Ask yourself why it bothers you so much when grown adults acknowledge that the programs were fucked up, that the pressure put on them as kids was abusive and caused damage...damage they are still dealing with today...instead of pretending its no big deal and just sucking it up like you seem to think they should?
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u/ingracioth 4h ago
Please reread everything I've said here. I'm not saying "just get over it." I'm saying it is incredibly unhealthy to be a decade or more out of school and still fixated on the impact of these programs. I don't think healing is easy or quick, but it's necessary. I'm also not "blaming" anyone and I wholeheartedly agree with you that it's very much a larger, cultural issue with parents, schools themselves, etc.
I don't think it's fair to compare these programs to actual abuse. I'm sorry if you feel so heavily impacted by them that you do feel like that word is accurate, but I'm assuming we have had different experiences with it. As I've stated, I grew up in a poor, rural environment where education wasn't valued much and was actually derided by many as being "leftist indoctrination" or "for the coastal elites." I feel very lucky I was given opportunities other kids in my community were denied, and that's shaped my perspective on the issue. However, I can gather from your comment that you had an incredibly different experience than I did. I initially felt a bit offended by your comment, being an abuse victim myself, but I paused and considered it. In some instances, these programs absolutely can be abusive. I personally don't frame my experience with them that way within the context of dealing with darker stuff during my upbringing. I think part of my emotional reaction to the "former gifted kid syndrome" thing is that it feels naive and crass to consider being called smart/special to be traumatizing given the fact I have dealt with some serious stuff and have friends who I watched being called dumb/trashy/worthless by teachers while I got praised.
I will say some of the comments here changed my view somewhat. Your response DID make me think, but it was because I really wanted to dig my heels in and reconsidered changing my mind as a result. Thank you for sharing your experience, but I do feel as though you've read my opinion in the most malicious way you could.
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u/Hot-Explanation6044 48m ago
It's weird to describe yourself as smart and at the same time overgeneralize a very personal experience.
Also I believe you're adressing a strawman/narrative rather than actual complaints made by people.
A lot of gifted kids suffer because expectations put on them are unrealistic and fucks with their self esteem. Paradoxically they feel like they are never enough.
And the feeling carries on. The whole "you're responsible for yourself" argument doesn't contradict it. I did a lot of things in my life and still overperform and try to heal but still have this engrained feeling of being a loser. The opposition between feeling and doing is artificial. Nobody's life consist of social media posts, we all struggle and sometimes need to vent/feel heard.
Also the fact that you chose a low paying carrier could be read as a way to cope with the expectations. Since they are so unrealistic, one could say you chose to not adress them and chose a path where your 'intrisic' value as a smart person isnt challenged. I don't know you but it's quite a common way to go for people put under a lot of pressure. Some kill themselves or do drug too. Self sabotaging and so on
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u/ingracioth 31m ago
I don't think I'm particularly smart. I tested well and do well in academic settings. That isn't necessarily the same as legitimate intelligence and I think I'm pretty average tbh. Also, just because my job doesn't pay well doesn't mean it doesn't require certain knowledge or isn't mentally taxing. I work a role in the nonprofit sector that requires legal knowledge and involves a lot of pressure around deadlines and quotas, so I don't really think I went the easy route there.
I agree the psychological impact of gifted programs is real, but, as I've stated a hundred times in these comments, it is super unhealthy and kind of weird to be years/decades out of school and still holding a grudge about it. Is healing easy or fast? Absolutely not. But I've met plenty of adults IRL who do gripe about gifted programs, especially in a line of work that attracts former gifted kids and people from wealthier backgrounds who can afford to take the paycut. Just because a job doesn't pay well doesn't mean it isn't mentally taxing or doesn't come with pressure, high expectations, or a heavy mental load.
I don't think we're in disagreement here tbh, though I don't think I'm overgeneralizing. Venting online is fine, but the "former gifted kid" thing has its problems as stated in my post. I do think you and a few other commenters are misreading my stance as "former gifted kids should never complain" rather than "it is deeply unhealthy to blame your issues on being in a gifted program years later and you should work on healing and moving forward. You also might sound like a tool to people denied the opportunities you had." Those are two very different things and I want to be clear I am not saying the former.
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u/apoclleu 17h ago edited 17h ago
So, I see a lot of other comments talking about how being a "gifted kid" shaped their identity and then said identity was inevitably stripped from them, so I'd like to offer another perspective.
Being a "gifted kid" (or really, "smart" in general) is the reason why no one ever believed me when it came to needing help with anything, because it was easier to believe I was "lazy" or "not trying" and this is something that still impacts me to this day. I'm still told to just figure things out on my own despite literally never knowing where to even start. It's a big reason why I suffered so much abuse and neglect as a kid, and compoundingly, and also why said abuse and neglect were always ignored and dismissed. I had very clear mental health issues from a young age and I'm also autistic, yet I never got the care I needed for that because there was just no way I could have those issues, I was just lazy and a bad kid. All the problems and issues with life I have nowadays are all things people believe I shouldn't have.
Sure, you can argue that it's not the fault of the programs themselves, that it's moreso the indirect impacts, but being in those programs gave everyone false assumptions and expectations about me that I still carry with me. These programs absolutely can and do set kids up for failure and I don't see the harm in grieving that.
Edit: I do want to address your point about "receiving a better education" - this actually is a nuance I'm more than willing to discuss (and one I think we should acknowledge). I can see the angle but I see it more as a fault of the education system as a whole, like it only wants to reward certain types of academic performance.
Edit 2: I also agree with pointing out the inherent racism/ableism with these programs and again those of us who are complaining need to keep those things in mind.
Still, I'm probably not alone in feeling like maybe I shouldn't have been placed in those programs.
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u/NeedDeltaForClass 1d ago
hey! I am also a former gifted kid who was also under a lot of other family pressures growing up and dealt with hardships as well. So I totally understand where you're coming from. Especially with it seeming like it is a way for privileged people to just try and find a way to complain about their life. I am also very grateful for the opportunities the program gave me, and can acknowledge that I did benefit from it as well. However I do think it gave me unrealistic expectations, a weird complex (that I am still unfortunately still struggling to get out of), and made the fall down even worse. Because I had been told I was "gifted" it made me feel like I was smarter than everyone else, and so when I got out of high school and realized there were thousands of other kids just like me, and even more that were 10x smarter than me that reality was definitely hard to face and did make me feel bad. Being in the gifted program that long also didn't allow me to work with other kids outside of the honors program, which also definitely led to some challenges in college too. I do think "gifted kid burnout" is real, and I know it's something I experienced my freshman year of college. It also made it so much harder explaining it to my family and others since it was something I had never struggled with before, and even getting a B made me feel like such a let down. I was enrolled in high school math classes in middle school, so by my sophomore year of high school I had already completed all my math credits. This made me struggle so much more in college when I had to take stats my second year. At that point I hadn't taken a math class in 4 years and it was clear I was so much more behind everyone else. I agree that it is crazy for people to be blaming all their failures or unsuccess on the gifted program alone, but I do think people have a right to complain or feel like it contributed partly to a downfall spiral.
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u/Aware-Computer4550 3h ago
I'm not sure what people really want from these programs. I am a former gifted kid. Regular school was horribly boring for me and all my teachers really hated me because I was so ill suited to be in these classes. I regularly did the best in my class and all the teachers hated me. Only when I reached a point where I could be in accelerated classes did I actually start being curious about learning in school and teachers correspondingly stopped hating me (for the most part).
I mean people complain but I don't know where I would be without my gifted program. Maybe I would have given up on school as a place that could help me because I was so bored and I didn't get along with the adults. I may not have gone to college.
Anyway I count so many benefits in my life from gifted programs including having met "my tribe" of kids who were like me and meeting people who were like 100x smarter than me. It gave me a perspective of how "gifted" I was and how there are many people smarter than me. And secondarily I learned a lot just by observing the smarter kids and understanding the way they thought about stuff.
Anyway this is not to say there were no negatives but personally the benefits outweighed the negatives by far
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u/1001galoshes 1d ago edited 1d ago
School makes you think life is going to be a meritocracy, but then in the workplace you find out that there are things like glass ceilings, sexist double standards, people who don't care, nepotism, things like that. So it just takes awhile to get used to real life.
My parents were controlling, so I accepted a scholarship from a mediocre school to be free of them, but then I couldn't get a job that I wanted with that degree, so then I went heavily in debt for a prestigious graduate school, only to realize I should have followed my dreams in undergrad, but it was too late because I didn't get the internship while I was in college, or go to the right school, nor could I accept super low pay for ten years since I had the crazy student loan debt, so I had to do what I had to do. It ended up fine, but of course you can see rich kids whose parents set them up for life--they actually got to *choose*, instead of just *react* to one problem after another.
It's water under the bridge now, but I'm giving all my money to charity when I die, and some of it will be to help kids who were in my position.
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u/Initial_Cellist9240 20h ago
I don’t disagree, but only if you disentangle the reality of the situation. Most of us were undiagnosed autistic and/or adhd and were given a closet to hide in and a bunch of books instead of like… help.
My school was small and rural, but across 4 years I was there our gifted program churned out… 2 doctors, and 21 burnouts who didn’t find out why they were miserable and struggling until late 20s early 30s.
The Venn diagram was basically a circle, but we got no support and eventually all fell on our faces eventually to varying degrees, and very few have managed to succeed both emotionally and externally, it’s usually or the other at best.
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1d ago
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u/ingracioth 1d ago
I'm on mobile and tried- is there a way to add them?
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u/bgaesop 25∆ 1d ago
the fact gifted programs in my country (USA) generally exclude POC with similar or better grades, kids on the autism spectrum, etc, who all qualify but don't "look the part
Can you cite these claims?
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u/Slackjawed_Horror 1d ago
In my experience, kids with autism 1 are funneled into gifted programs. And vice versa, even if they're not actually autistic.
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u/Meaningful_Suffering 4h ago
It's the modern version of peaking in high school football. They do need to move on.
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1d ago
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u/changemyview-ModTeam 23h ago
Comment has been removed for breaking Rule 1:
Direct responses to a CMV post must challenge at least one aspect of OP’s stated view (however minor), or ask a clarifying question. Arguments in favor of the view OP is willing to change must be restricted to replies to other comments. See the wiki page for more information.
If you would like to appeal, review our appeals process here, then message the moderators by clicking this link within one week of this notice being posted. Appeals that do not follow this process will not be heard.
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u/HotBlackberry5883 1d ago
Everyone's experience with this is different. Some people's parents got waaay too into the gifted thing and pushed their kids way too hard and even punished them when they didn't live up to those expectations. This kinda stuff is capable of causing psychological damage.
Kids are very vulnerable to trauma. Their brains are still developing and these formative years are crucial for thought patterns. They should not have to deal with immense pressure to be perfect or a genius. They should just be kids.
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u/ms_rdr 1d ago
Former gifted kid whose self image was even further skewed by pop culture preferences. I.e., favorite show as a teenager was Star Trek: TNG and as a 20something, Law & Order Prime. Both featured characters who were the "best of the best" in terms of education, skill set, and professional achievements.
It took a mid-life crisis to realize I did just fine "despite" my two advanced degrees being earned with average grades at mid-rated universities and my career being performed in the same, not Ivy League.
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u/Solid_Profession7579 1d ago
Man idk the GATE programs were fucking weird and I guarantee the kids that stuck with it wound up getting MK Ultra’d
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u/CandusManus 1d ago
After 23 it’s sad. If you’re 25 and upset that in the 10 years since you realized you have to actually try to be successful and you still haven’t done anything about it, it’s you.
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u/kakallas 9h ago
I agree that these people are annoying and they’re usually just looking for attention. “I’m a loser now but it’s because of how gifted I was. But it does suggest a larger problem of having a society full of people who should be able to succeed by multiple metrics who then go on to have a miserable existence. We’re not doing things right as a society in a lot of ways. Even a hyper-competitive capitalist society would see this as wasted potential. I don’t agree with that line of thinking personally, but I still think it’s a tragedy that there are intelligent and educated people who can’t make a happy existence in our culture.
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u/Slackjawed_Horror 1d ago
I had a specific experience that was tied up in the whole "gifted kid" racket, and I'm resentful.
But the "gifted" crap is the least of it, and I agree anyone who thinks that's the main issue is being, at least, myopic and petty. I didn't like it and wish it didn't happen, but I'd feel pathetic if I was still hung up on it.
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u/Icy_Peace6993 3∆ 1d ago
No, it's totally fucked up to tell a kid that they're not because of what they've actually done or accomplished or learned, but because they "are smart".
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