"Only my brainy nails..."

[ailbhe]

I am better! Well, I still can't speak properly, and my sinuses are a bit gooey, but I'm mostly better. And so's my eye.

In other news, I have been pondering (inspired by someone else's journal, as so many of these things are) Gifted Child Syndrome. This is the one where you

• are born with talents which set you apart somewhat,
• madly crave approval while feeling sure that you haven't earned it because, after all, you were born with these talents,
• fear failure enough that if you're not actively good at something you don't try to do it,
• usually end up having a particularly hard time relating to real actual people, partially due to not learning how to hide being more [talent] than the people around you.

I know an inordinate number of people suffer from this, and more people who don't think it exists.

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

One of the more interesting comments about being gifted that I remember from my childhood was the observation that someone who has an IQ of 130 is as far away from normal as someone who has an IQ of 70. And may need similar help.

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

2 and 3 are so me.

Whcih is why I forced myself to volunteer to learn something new at work and am now miserable because I never quite learnt how to keep going when stuff is harder than I expected.

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. A curious pancake altogether.

I don't know about "syndrome", now - it makes the whole thing sound more like a disease than I'm comfortable with.

I think, also, that it's not as simple as "talents you're born with", it's a question of how you're instructed (explicitly or implicitly), in your early years, to react to and evaluate your experiences.

In my case, I grew up mostly around intellectual, over-achieving adults, for whom it was always a cause for much rejoicing when I achieved a certain kind of thing. If they had crowed as loudly when I brought home a new friend as when I showed them a new story or raced through a new book or produced a stellar report card, then I might have turned out a more balanced person.

It's also an artefact of the traditional education system, of course, where metrics for intellectual achievement reign supreme (at least as far as officialdom is concerned), and social development can fall through the cracks entirely.

My ideas about education are fairly rabid and radical (along the lines of this or this), and I know they're largely a product of my own frustration and anger (which I bottled) at school.

[ailbhe]

Um. A syndrome isn't a disease, it's a syndrome. Isn't it? *looks it up* Ah, apparently I'm out of date; http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=syndrome mentions disease in the first definition. Sorry. I was using "group of symptoms" and "pattern of behaviour" definition.

The Sudbury school pages almost - but not quite - made me cry. I didn't bottle my anger at school, I left. But then, my mother agreed with me about school, to a certain extent - she agreed that mostly it was to be endured rather than enjoyed, and that in many ways it did more harm than good.

I have very little first-hand experience of the effects of praise on children, but I do remember academic failures being criticised more or less equally with general "stupidity" or clumsiness. I have no idea what I was told about human interaction, but strongly suspect that it was treated as one of those things that everyone is supposed to "just know".

[radegund.livejournal.com]

On the matter of what to call this ... thing, I think I'm uneasy about the name "Gifted Child Syndrome" because it sets up a paradigm whereby being "gifted" (and we musn't forget that the use of this word itself makes massive assumptions about what sort of abilities are valuable) is a problem.

I fervently wish that I had grown up in an environment where it was acceptable, in a broad and fluffy sense of the word, to be the way I naturally was. I was seen as a freak by most of my classmates - granted, according to the standards they were using, they were quite right! - and the behaviour that led to that assessment just got twistedly reinforced and reinforced over the years. Many people, in such situations, learn to pretend that they are other than they are, but I didn't see this as an option.

At school (on the traditional model), the competitive environment and the unequal power structures (among other things) mean that being good at academic stuff can make you the enemy of your classmates, the ally of your teachers. That is an insidious position to impose on any child, and one who already has an approval thing going is particularly screwed. (When I interacted with other children outside school I got on much, much better - couldn't figure out why, at the time...)

The Sudbury school pages almost - but not quite - made me cry.

Me? Rivers.

I have very little first-hand experience of the effects of praise on children...

Yeeowch!

I have too much, in a way - but again, it's the unbalance that I think caused the most difficulty. My parents are, in their way, at least as fucked up as me :-) (Note to self: if 'n' when, remember to take an interest in the social side of their lives...)

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Wow. What I hear more often in the U.S. is a complaint that social success is more valued than academic success, by peers and school administration.

[(Anonymous)]

Wildly butchering Douglas Adams here, but it's apposite:

"Yes, it is the case that unusually intelligent and sensitive children may appear to be stupid, but it is also the case that stupid children may appear to be stupid, and this is a possibility I think you should consider."

Appearing stupid

[ailbhe]

Hmm. None of the people I'm thinking of have ever, as far as I am aware, been accused of this. The AD(H)D thread isn't in this journal.