"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

[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 *looks it up* Ah, apparently I'm out of date; http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=syndrome mentions disease in the first definition.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...)