When I complain about being a ‘gifted’ kid who grew into a talentless adult I don’t mean that I’m not trying to work on my talents or anything
I mean that the ‘gifts’ I had are useless
Reading books above my age isn’t a talent when I’m not eleven
Knowing big words isn’t a talent when I’m not a kid, it’s just growing up
It’s just a weird thing that happens and it feels shitty when you’re brought up being told you’re an exceptional child only to realise as an adult you’re just average
This
I did a lot of reading about gifted kids and especially gifted adults when I got my “diagnosis” because I was told I was gifted at 23 and well, it serves no purpose to have a confirmation that you’re gifted at 23
Thing is, gifted children are not amazingly better than everyone else. Gifted brains just don’t work the same so they build their skills in a different order
Basically when you’re very young, most people brain learn social skills and how to interact with their peers, but gifted brains are already at the next step which is how to understand and interact with the world
That makes the stereotypical young children that are very good at math, always asking questions about how things work, very upset when they don’t know a thing
But the thing is, when everyone gets older, they’ve mastered most social skills and now turn towards understanding the world
But the gifted children have already mastered that part and are turning towards how to build social skills. Except there’s no one left to teach us about that! Because we’re late to that party
Long story short, at the end everyone, gifted or not, goes through all the necessary steps to make functioning adults, so the difference that was obvious as a child has disappeared
But us gifted people often end up with social anxiety and impostor syndrome because we are actually less equipped than others to face a world that taught everyone to be confident and talk to people while we were busy reading books above our age
……………that last paragraph.
damn.
And, in fact, given the US’s entrenched anti-intellectualism, the skills academically accelerated kids were praised for often become not just superfluous but actually disadvantageous in adulthood.
In school, I frequently won spelling bees and vocabulary contests. As an adult, I’m almost constantly being encouraged to “dumb down” my writing or accused of “showing off with big words.” But that’s how I write and talk. It’s a lifelong habit and practically impossible to shut off.
In school, Piespouse was consistently praised for how much they read. As an adult, they’ve encountered friction and suspicion from coworkers who think Piespouse is “standoffish” or “antisocial” for preferring to spend their lunch hour reading at their desk to watching tv in the lunchroom.
I do understand educational privilege. I know that not everyone in the US receives the level of instruction that the students in these examples did. I’m aware that most kids in the US who fall under the academically accelerated umbrella tend to be white, NOT because we’re smarter than our peers of color, but because 1) only majority-white schools tend to have the resources to test for these capacities and then, perhaps, educate these students at the appropriate level and speed; and 2) white educators and administrators are more likely to see the signs of academic acceleration in white students.
I just wish that 1) the US could ditch this attitude that everyone needs shit-tons of schooling but no one should get anything out of it; and 2) any adult in my life had warned me that these things I was being taught to be so proud of as a kid wouldn’t mean shit as an adult.
This punched me right in feels I'd forgotten that I had.
