The "gifted child" problem

Sweet Snow

Sweet Snow

Dreams delight
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Let's say you were considered smart and mature as a young child, now you have to look up "how to make food" or "how to pay taxes" on the time you have.

Basically, kids were not praised for their abilities but how convenient they were have around, you got good grades but for things that are ultimately super easy to learn as an adult, however, both self-sufficient and social abilities are near non-existent, I can not talk to anyone I don't know face to face for too long and I am too scared to approach an oven to actually make something for me to eat.

What I am saying, with this attitude, kids value the wrong things and turn into anxious wrecks when this could been prevented if you actually gave a shit, I do not feel bad that I don't understand algebra, I am angered that I was only taught it for "harder math", when skills that I will actually need are not mentioned at all
 
One thing I hate about being gifted at a young age is that even as you grow older you are always expected to do your very best. I memorized the alphabet at age 1 and a half and knew all the politicians of the country by heart back then (according to my parents, I've no actual memory of this.)

I'm still smart, but I just don't focus on schoolwork as much as I used to, and no, being smart not at all correlates to getting good grades. You get good grades if you know how to read and store info. Because of this my average grades nowadays pass up as "bad for my level" when they're really just... average, and my parents always bring up the fact that I'm a genius to argue that I should be getting better. Well fuck it if I'm this much of a smartass then maybe I don't even need numbers to succeed, eh?
 
What I find to be a riot was that I was put into this program called "GATE" (gifted and talented education) probably because my test scores tend to be really good, so maybe they thought that ordinary classes were too easy for me so I get bored from them. This is true to an extent. However, GATE failed to address my undiagnosed ADHD which was a likely source for me constantly forgetting to do or turn in work or pay attention to boring subjects. I didn't quite fail classes so I was seen as a smart kid who didn't apply herself and got herself in trouble nearly every year in school for not being able to control frustration very well and could get explosively mad (I guess anyone with extensive forum history with me knows how mad I can get). What GATE did was just pile more homework, validate the extremely difficult expectations set for me (get 4.0 G.P.A. and score 95 and higher) and make my struggles with ADHD even worse, and overall made my school life rougher, so I've come to associate "GATE" and "4.0 GPA" with a bit of a cringe even though I'm well past grade school.

I get that education has to be administered at an individual level to an extent. It's natural for some kids to grasp subjects better and quicker than most of the other class. If you force students to all learn at the same pace, that's going to be problems for the categorized "gifted" students because they'll get bored of learning and they're wasting their time going through concepts they know when they could be learning something more challenging (while students that take longer to learn fall behind and also get frustrated and work extra to try to get ahead). But the gifted and talented bit just failed to address my problems with school, and I did went undiagnosed up until middle school. If anyone has been diagnosed, you probably know how rough things are before you realize there's a pattern of behavior common in another subset of people, and you share it, but just imagine having to deal with something like ADHD for over half of your school career. You get told (and you internalize) you're lazy, you don't try hard enough, you don't organize, you're not applying yourself, your behavior notes is a "needs improvement", and you question your sanity after you break promises for "maybe next year I'll turn in homework regularly and I will actually organize for once" and this happens for 6 years,
 
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Empress Of The Dark Winds said:
Let's say you were considered smart and mature as a young child, now you have to look up "how to make food" or "how to pay taxes" on the time you have.

Basically, kids were not praised for their abilities but how convenient they were have around, you got good grades but for things that are ultimately super easy to learn as an adult, however, both self-sufficient and social abilities are near non-existent, I can not talk to anyone I don't know face to face for too long and I am too scared to approach an oven to actually make something for me to eat.

What I am saying, with this attitude, kids value the wrong things and turn into anxious wrecks when this could been prevented if you actually gave a shit, I do not feel bad that I don't understand algebra, I am angered that I was only taught it for "harder math", when skills that I will actually need are not mentioned at all
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actually that kind of describes me but i'm making an effort to learn skills such as cooking and cleaning now. my family says i'm lazy and useless but i'm not lazy or useless, i want to make an effort to be self-sufficient
 
Huh well you have still a lot of years to learn. I'm 25 and my sister and I have been cooking for, well, a really long time now. Not sure when I seriously started cooking, maybe in high school, but I do know how to cook eggs, hot pot, dumplings, rice, pasta, stir-fry vegetables, pressure-cook artichoke, and more.

I used to be really scared of handling even a 9 inch dull santoku knife back in the day but I use it all time now for cooking and I don't know what I'd do without one. Heck my mom helped me not get so scared of a knife because she empathized with me, having the same problems with the knife.

Family shouldn't be saying you're lazy and useless. They need to devote time teaching you cooking skills as well as cleaning the laundry and doing the bed and cleaning the bathroom, sink, tables, carpet, etc. If they don't bother, though, you should really try to look at basic cooking skills online. Online's just a really good resource on navigating life, you have a lot of helpful information within a few clicks. People generations before you didn't have such easy access to knowledge, so take advantage of them.
 
I've heard the best way to encourage kids at school is to congratulate them on the effort they put in and progress, not the results/grade. Don't say 'you're good at this, bad at this' because you can learn to do the second thing.

I haven't heard of a single 'gifted kid' that grew up well adjusted.
 
This entire premise sounds very familiar to me. Maybe not in the exact same terms, but I do relate in some ways.

I have high functioning autism, which I never received help for during my school years. This is because I was not diagnosed until well after it ended (age 22). My confidence has taken a hit in the last decade or so because I struggle to do basic adult things.

Honestly, I feel like I was pushed through the system. Whenever I struggled in school, it felt like teachers would assume I simply wasn't trying, so they wouldn't take the time to help me. In reality, while I'm an intelligent guy (at least I'd like to think so), I learn differently than most.
 
My 'favorite' part of being put in the gifted/advanced classes was my grandparents would act disappointed with me if I got anything below like an A on my work.
 
One thing I'll say about being "gifted" in school is that it doesn't instantly mean you'll be successful. There's a lot of other factors involved such as social skills and such. So perhaps society does place too much emphasis on good grades, though there are at least some pros to the traditional system. It's certainly true that life skills that you'll need in the real world such as doing taxes or car maintenance are not taught enough considering how essential they are later on.
 
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