Introduction

My best friend walks in the white doors of my house. As we walk upstairs, I find the nerve to ask her about something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I can’t help but wonder, how much of my identity issues stem from me being a gifted kid?

The answer I got was shocking.

A Classic Case of “Gifted Kid Syndrome”

I want to start this article off with a disclaimer. I am in no way trying to victimize myself, or any other former child prodigy. The goal of this article is not and will never be to excuse narcissism, a lack of a work ethic, or any other negative behavior.

The goal of this article is to expose some of the problems with our current approach to the gifted system, and offer up some positive ways to treat someone who seems to be out of the ordinary in some way. I also apologize for any broad generalizations I make during this article, obviously studies into the gifted child’s mind are not extensive, and any claims I make are regarding patterns, not rules.

I’ll get to my story in a second, but first, think of Rory Gilmore.

Rory Gilmore is one of the best known fictional characters of all time, and one of the best examples of the phenomenon of a gifted kid’s suffering as an adult. Rory is an exemplar for teenage girls as far as studying and looks go, earning a guaranteed spot on most teen’s vision boards, but she is also considered one of the most selfish, narcissistic, and ill-adjusted characters in sitcom history.

Image Credit: Aaron Burden from Unsplash

Rory shows a shocking inability to tolerate criticism, as well as unusual resistance to taking responsibility for her actions. She finds herself dropping out of Yale following one negative comment about her abilities, and then commits a crime to unleash her anger. She also seems unable to comprehend the fact that she may not be “special” in the real world, at one point being convinced she was being pranked when a magazine refused to publish her story.

“Did I do something to offend you?” she also questions. “Was there not enough space?”

When she is told the problem is her writing, she persists, finding other reasons for the disappointment.

She consistently finds herself unable to face the world, self-victimizing when faced with the typical disappointments of adulthood (boyfriend troubles, rejection in the workplace), and worse, lashing out and making rash decisions. She even finds herself sleeping with a married ex-boyfriend at one point during the show, refusing to take responsibility because “he was mine first”.

Rory Gilmore was constantly criticized and hated in Gilmore Girls, and rightfully so. But (albeit, to different extents), as a former gifted girl, nearly everyone I know in this system has some sense of familiarity to this story: you grow up feeling superior, you grow up with Stockholm Syndrome to your perfectionism, and then suddenly, your own rules are the reason you’re being suffocated, because you never learned to live without them. It’s a shameful, privileged feeling, one we all do our best to ignore and shrug off, for fear of ending up like Rory.

(All of the people I’ve interviewed in this story have been given a fake name, quotes have been slightly paraphrased, and some details may be changed to protect their privacy.)

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The Environment of a Gifted Child

It is a basic human desire to feel superior in comparison to others, we’ve all dreamed about being the It Girl. The one who’s beautiful, kind, and smart, the one who’s good at everything, perhaps even exceptionally good. A true one in a million.

A gifted child has that desire fulfilled at an early age, or at least, they think they do. They’re all told they’re one in a million, that they’re special. Overexcited parents combined with expectant educators make sure to drill it into their kids from an early age- you’re different. And at age 5, you’ve developed 90% of your brain- and you’ve learned something that you can’t just erase.

“I never learned about not needing to be the best, how everyone is different and special,” says Kim, now a senior. “When I heard it, I always disregarded it, thought it was for people that were weak, who couldn’t do what I did. That’s what everyone told me.”

It’s fairly common, I think, for gifted kids to have some version of the phrase, “everybody wants to see me fall,” imprinted onto their minds. From comments well-meaning adults make- everyone will be jealous of you- to the sheer awareness of being watched, gifted kids develop coping mechanisms. They constantly feel the need to prove they’re not piteous or weak.

I brought up Gilmore Girls during my conversation with my friend- for privacy purposes, let’s call her Amelie. “There’s this one scene, I remember”, I told her, “that made me fall in love with Paris Geller.”

Maybe this wasn’t the correct interpretation, but at the time in which I saw the scene, Paris was shown to be the Girl Who Had it All at Chilton, the one who was smart and competitive and fierce.

Perhaps that’s why, when Paris snapped, “I’m not pathetic!” something in my brain just clicked. For the majority of my life, I had been repeating this phrase to myself, over and over in my head.

So had Kim. The friends she made, who she hadn’t liked and didn’t need- all to prove Ishe wasn’t pathetic, that she had friends, to her imaginary audience. Her obsession with gaining competency in hobbies she had no remote interest in, all to avoid anybody poking holes in her perfection. She needed to be the Girl Who Had it All.

“I’m not pathetic!” Kim wanted to shout, angrily, to the whole world.

Humans want to be liked. Humans want to be admired. We thrive on it.

And, if you learn to young enough, you feed on it. It’s why we’ve all, at least once, wished we were a movie star or being followed by paparazzi- admit it, for a second, it sounds tempting.

Picture you had this: picture how, when you were young, you thought you had this. You thought you had earned it, you had what everyone else wanted, what you had learned to live off of. And then it’s gone.

And, (to you), it’s all your fault. You were lazy, you let yourself slip, you let yourself down. This could go one of two ways: you could go into firm denial, and develop your ego and excuses, or you could fall into a self-hating spiral and perfectionistic mania. Neither of these are healthy, of course, and ego is not at all the same thing as self esteem, because it is projected on an imaginary, idealized person rather than an acceptance of the full version of yourself. But, in my experience, gifted children were never taught how to be healthy. Being a regular kid and acting out would mean disappointing all the adults in our lives that praise us for being so “mature” and “obedient.” They teach you the perfect personality, until you stop trying to develop your own. With no internal sense of self, they end up depending on others' opinions to construct a narrative about themselves.

Apologies for the long quote, but I think this paragraph from The Brain Scramble sums it up.

“If you tell a child they’re one thing from the moment they can grasp what it means to have personality traits, then this child will never seek to cultivate their character in any other way. What you’re left with is a young adult that is nothing more than an underdeveloped shell of a person who needs to grasp fruitlessly at nostalgic straws for remnants of an identity that never really existed. Gifted kid burnout is the modern incarnation of the Disney Channel basketball star impishly fretting over what they should do post-graduation—they don’t really even like basketball, but they’ve never learned to like anything else!

I’m not throwing away my dream, dad. I’m throwing away yours! Gifted kid burnouts latch onto their own misery because they don’t have anything else to give them personality, the same way they latched onto the giftedness itself while it was there: because they were never given the chance to discover anything else about themselves. “

Many of us aren’t the good kids so much as the ones that turn to depression and eating problems and addiction problems to let out some of the pain. Nobody ever taught us the healthy way to do that. “Getting emotional would be embarrassing, would let other people win,” Kim said. “And if it doesn’t matter [being special], then why did you only ever speak to me, praise me, when I was?” she adds.

“What do you mean, win?” I questioned.

“I mean.. Win,” she says, confused as to what I was asking. To her, life was a competition.

Consequences When You’re Older

“Gifted programs reinforce the idea that talent = potential for success. Schoolwork is easy. We develop an association between ease of effort and ability to succeed.” - Medium

I think some form of the belief that you are subnormal exists for all humans, especially teenagers who are still developing the ability to fit and discover their identity. Gifted children, who often feel they missed their childhood- being taught to push away “childish things”, because they were better, more mature. You feel this constant competitiveness, this idea that you’re running a race of sorts, and can’t see any point doing things for fun or for enjoyment.

They often try to seem “normal” or “fun” during adolescence, constantly repeating the questions “do you think they noticed? Did they think that I was normal?” in their mind. They feel the need to prove how different they are, having been taught that being normal is an insult, and, at the same time, are desperately trying to attain some sense of normalcy, some proof that they did not, in fact, miss out or fail at being ordinary. “I would do anything to keep you looking at me.” says one girl. “And I would do anything to know what it’s like to be someone else.”

“You feel like you’re constantly playing a character,” she adds. “You’re constantly being watched, at all times. You seem arrogant to non-gifted kids, but at the same time you always think of how your old self would be ashamed of you, how everyone who praised you is laughing now. So you can’t do anything you’re not good at.”

“I’m obsessive,” Kim says. “Many of us are. And I know I’m privileged, and I know I’m no saint." "I don't care if you like me,” she also says, “but you have to envy me”.

Being a gifted kid also contributed to my mental health crisis in middle school (I want to note that it was NOT the sole cause, however). In some way, I found I welcomed my mental illness, thinking it a break from a life of controlled perfection. Being the depressed kid was better, I still believe, looking back.

I found myself admiring the nerve of people engaging in self-destructive behaviors, like excessive drinking and self-harm. Despite this, I had no ability to measure my pain, except in comparison to others. Therefore, I was never sick enough.

The Superiority-Inferiority Complex and Statistics

“You’ve got a superiority complex,” a therapist says in one of the most iconic scenes in Buffy, “and you’ve got an inferiority complex about it.” This statement became one of the most "memed" parts of the show, because as odd as it sounds, it actually makes a twisted kind of sense.

According to Zella Life, the superiority complex (that many formerly gifted people embody), is very commonly paired with an inferiority complex, (a feeling of unworthiness, incompetence, and a tendency to take criticism as personal attack). This makes logical sense- after all, having a firm belief that you’re perfect inevitably leads to disappointment when you realize how far you are from being so.

This double complex can arise when a person initially feels intensely inferior and subpar. They may compensate by using a superiority complex as a defense mechanism, which allows them to mask their insecurity from others. Those who have superiority complexes often have underlying self-disgust and self-hatred.

The superiority complex is often a “facade”, a result of an initial inferiority complex, and the narcissistic ego and self-importance of the person is used as an “attempt to escape feelings of inferiority”. Zella Life categorizes these two phenomena as “two sides of the same coin,” and when both of these thought patterns apply to the same person, it can lead to a vicious cycle that attacks their mental health, stress level, and ability to form relationships.

As WHO points out, 450 million people suffer from mental disorders. Adolescents are statistically more prone to engaging in alcohol and drug abuse. And adolescents report a 14% higher stress level than adults.

Horrifyingly, pressure is the most common generator of mental illness. According to a study of sophomores and juniors by Anda et al (2000), studying 323 students, a third of the participants experienced high mental illness, the majority of which were connected to the future goals of the participant.

It is widely accepted by now that many "gifted students" are just students with undiagnosed neurodivergence, such as ASD or ADHD. Around 20-40% of students in gifted programs qualify as a neurominority, but many state that the term giftedness itself is a form of neurodivergence. For those who qualify as twice exceptional, the label of "child prodigy" may interfere with getting a diagnosis and treatment- studies show that around 50% of gifted children were either misdiagnosed or not diagnosed.

Other Examples

(All of the following quotes were taken from Buzzfeed, Reddit, or social media.)

"Almost every former gifted and talented kid I know, including myself, ended up with anxiety, and/or depression, and/or autism, and/or ADHD, none of which were diagnosed in childhood even though they were definitely already present. No one bothered to test us for things like ADHD or autism because we were smart and got good grades and had enough intelligence/mental capacity to mask long term because we weren’t being taxed at school and then got to adulthood when we had to use that brain power to actually do stuff and couldn’t figure out why we couldn’t cope."

Image Credit: Alexander Gray on Unsplash

—paladin12

“I feel like anything less than perfection makes me a disappointment and not worthy of love."

—emilyfoster2

"I didn't know I was autistic until I was 25 because I was a 'gifted kid' and all of my blatantly autistic qualities were overshadowed by my intelligence, so no one ever thought to have me evaluated. I knew I was the smartest person in any room but I also felt like there was some sort of secret trick to making friends and being socially accepted, and everyone else was in on the secret except for me."

- Kaylie3

“It meant that I have always felt the need to do 'more' to live up to my 'potential.' Why? In the eyes of whom? I'm nearly 40 and I'm only now getting it, but this pressure has over the years led to unhealthy situations like overconsumption of alcohol, and elevated cholesterol and triglycerides from stress eating, comfort eating, and a sedentary lifestyle due to working all the time."

"Just this month, I've made a change in one of my three jobs (see? Why three jobs?) that will allow me to work 40 to 45 hours a week instead of 50 to 60. Having a kid has helped; it's changed my priorities drastically."

—yesterdayspants

"In late high school and college, it became much more apparent that intelligence alone was not enough anymore — I had not developed the social skills, study skills, coping skills, executive functioning skills, etc. that were crucial to academic success and just life in general, so I had a really rocky start to adulthood. Now I'm thriving and I love my intelligence and I embrace being autistic, but being a gifted kid was the reason I missed out on resources that could have spared me a lot of trauma and failures as a teenager and young adult."

—kaylie3

Dealing with a Gifted Child

As Amelie pointed out, there are struggles with never being recognized as “gifted enough” as well. She describes growing up in the shadow of others, despite being objectively extremely intelligent and most likely gifted in some kind of way. “You learn to get smaller and smaller so others can take up your space,” she says, “and you always put others first. You feed off scraps of attention. You’re not good, you think, you’re not special.”

“And I’ve had the always-an-angel-never-a-god complex,” I laughed. I guess neither of those things sound great.

So, what do you do? How do you give a child the attention they rightfully deserve, without making them feel bound to impossible expectations.

You teach them not to associate ability with attention, but hard work. You praise them for how hard they try, not what they get out of it, and you encourage them to measure subjects by interest, not by “natural attention”. Praise is great, and absolutely necessary when raising a child!

And there’s nothing wrong with encouraging your little boy or girl’s interests. Just make sure that your praise isn’t due to their accomplishments, but who they are as a person, and give them attention whether or not they meet the “extraordinary” label.

“You made us this way,” Kim states, “and that made me angry for a long time. But then I realized- this is an opportunity, what I know now.”