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I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

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Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#311

Post by jdefr89 »

dougmwne wrote: post #24

I think the central problem here is not asking more of gifted people during early school years. I was pretty disengaged with school before college. It just wasn't challenging enough in the right kinds of ways. I flourished when I got to college since I was finally in an environment with unlimited challenge and rewards. I learned to set my own standards for achievement and be less worried about how I would be judged e…

This "we need to make kids do more" mindset is cancer in our society. Contributing to burn-out and depression rates that are sky-rocketing.

If you have a child please do not put more pressure on him/her than society already seems to. It will not go well, read up on "tiger moms" and the children who belonged to them. It doesn't really turn out well...

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#312

Post by Nano2rad »

Putting gifted students into separate class or being allowed to skip grade is not a good idea. The children should study with others of the same age at least up to 18 years. There should not be skipping grade and no failing grade as in the past. The thinking of children changes rapidly from year to year until they are 18. A lot of what we study is understanding how we interact with our fellow human beings. This is affected when skipping grade. It will be difficult to interact with fellow students not your age.

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#313

Post by tomp »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #118
amelius wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing, but why do you refer to your sibling as "they"?

My siblings gender is Female. Why does it matter? Did that change your perception of the story?

Yeah, before I read amelius's comment (i.e. after first reading your story) I thought you had multiple siblings.

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#314

Post by jdefr89 »

Lets not forget that most of the people labeled as gifted, are in fact probably not. Identifying a person as "gifted intellectually" at such a young age is bound to be inaccurate. The development of the mind is super complex. And although it might seem like we can identify someone as gifted, we need to make more careful decisions with ANY label. We simply are not that great at determining success when it comes to individuals, and at the extreme ends of the bell-curve we get much much less accurate.

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#315

Post by colomon »

ken wrote: post #304
microtonal wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was your criteria for choosing the city you are in presently? We lived in Tübingen (Germany) for five years. But the city was just a tad too small for my taste. There are only few stores (outside tourism-focused stores) and it there is fairly little to do in terms of concerts, etc. It is part of the Stuttgart metropolitan area, so there are a lot of work opportunities. I loved the scenery of Southern Germany, bu…

> It's really a drag that you can't do groceries on a Sunday, In America I can buy groceries any day of the week, but as someone who often works odd hours, I find it a drag that almost none are open past 10 or 11pm. The buses don't run after midnight~1am, either, so if I need a dozen eggs at 3am, I have to get in my car and drive. I feel that's not the sort of behavior that a city with aspirations should be encouragi…

Huh. Here in Michigan I live in a city of 30,000 people, with my usual grocery store open 24 hours a day and about five minutes' drive away.

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#316

Post by nugget »

amykhar wrote: post #296
waterhouse wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just going to keep posting this when the subject comes up... "A 20-year longitudinal study has traced the academic, social, and emotional development of 60 young Australians with IQs of 160 and above. Significant differences have been noted in the young people’s educational status and direction, life satisfaction, social relationships, and self-esteem as a function of the degree of academic acceleration their sch…

Acceleration has its benefits, but the ideal solution would be to accelerate the educational aspects for the child without accelerating the social side.

I'd rank the options (from most ideal to least) as

1. Gifted kid with other gifted kids, with individualized coursework (ex: Davidson Academy in Reno, Nevada)

2. Gifted kid with other gifted kids, with standardized but accelerated coursework (ex: a g&t magnet program)

3. Gifted kid in general population, with individualized coursework

4. Gifted kid accelerated several grades ahead

5. Gifted kid remains in general population at normal grade level for age

And 3, 4 and 5 are really toss-ups depending on the personality of the child

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#317

Post by spraak »

kirsebaer wrote: post #252
tmaly wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I you watch the TED talk by Angela Duckworth, author of Grit book, she says one thing where they still really have not figured out how to teach resilience to kids. I was speaking to a high school teacher last week, and they use these grit scores and all the tips mentioned in the grit book. But at the end of the day, they still do not have a sure fire method to teach it or the growth mindset. Years ago I spoke to a re…

Kids who went to Sudbury Schools (no curriculum, democratic free schools) report developing high resilience. In these schools kids do what they like: read, videogames, singing, whatever, without any academic pressure or expectations. They try stuff and fail. They have to think about what they actually want to do, rather than looking to the teacher to tell them what to do.

A great book with a similar perspective is Summerhill by A. S. Neil.

We do Sudbury inspired home schooling. My daughter learned to read "late" by most standards (at age 9), but once she decided to it only took her a few weeks to be at the same level as her friends who go to public school. She also learned to read 3 languages at once while her friends can only still speak just one language (part of our home schooling has been language immersion). I feel proud of what she knows, but most proud of her motivation and determination to learn what she wants to.

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#318

Post by jdefr89 »

lalos wrote: post #261
Bakary wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who also follows the rules well like your sibling (but isn't gifted), the more time passes the more I understand it to be a serious character flaw.

Why/how did you come to that conclusion? I'm surprised to see that self-reflection and conclusion of following rules is a character flaw.

As someonbe who obsessively did/does the same. It might be that most who do such things have a detrimental quality that makes them need to live up to social pressures. While obviously blending in is good. It can become unhealthy quickly if you feel the need to constantly portray perfection equanimity in everything you do. In my case "perfection" can prevent "greatness" They may seem like orthogonal qualities but they are probably rooted closer to each other than most would consider.

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#319

Post by fred_is_fred »

Nano2rad wrote: post #312

Putting gifted students into separate class or being allowed to skip grade is not a good idea. The children should study with others of the same age at least up to 18 years. There should not be skipping grade and no failing grade as in the past. The thinking of children changes rapidly from year to year until they are 18. A lot of what we study is understanding how we interact with our fellow human beings. This is af…

Skipping a grade versus giving gifted students work that challenges them are wholly different things that you have conflated. We cannot and should not let kids sit in class and be bored because the work is too easy. What you are describing is a least common denominator education system, which I think we are already in enough to some extent.

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#320

Post by mixmastamyk »

maire wrote: post #294

Heather Jones seems like a classic fixed mindset child. An excellent book to read on this subject is Mindset by Carol Dweck. Essentially, by labeling a child as Gifted we are setting up in a child's mind that their intelligence is what they are and not what they do. This is a "fixed mindset". Fixed mindset children will stop trying as soon as they hit a barrier because failure proves that they are not gifted. This is…

Great summary, came to mention this too. I experienced similar growing up.

One good sign is that the "gifted" program at my daugther's school mentioned this book, which is how I came to read it.

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