The Pitfalls and Paths Through Potential

From Hosting Coupons, 5/7/2022: 

Great post but I was wanting to know if you could write a little more on this subject? I’d be very grateful if you could elaborate a little bit further. Cheers!

I’d be happy to elaborate a bit further my friend.

Imagine, if you would, a middle school child who is petrified of her future. In gifted classes since the fourth grade, she has been told that endless opportunities await her. She is so fortunate. She is so lucky. But… she doesn’t feel either of those things. 

She hasn’t done anything particularly noteworthy. She does not feel particularly smart-especially not compared to her peers. Mostly, she likes to read, laugh with her friends, and talk about things at a super sonic pace. Mostly, this girl feels odd. Different from her family. Different from her friends. She talks about things they don’t and falls down rabbit holes of questions few want to follow.

Her every 93% score is a reminder that she is a barely there member of some elite group defined by IQ and aptitude tests. Every 100% feels stolen. Everything is so big and the choices are so many. No one can explain how she is supposed to navigate the mire of her own future and she has no place to start. They assure her that she has potential.

But the future is coming. She might only be in 7th grade but her teachers are talking about high school and college. She doesn’t know what she might want to study in college! Is she supposed to know?!

Her parents agree to let her take a career placement test. She works furiously to answer the questions as honestly as she can and to ignore the challenges of picking the best answer when maybe she likes two or three of the things. She eagerly awaits the test results only to be told that she shows aptitudes in several areas. Crestfallen, she leaves with results that suggest that she is equally as likely to be an actor, a teacher, a philosopher, a therapist, or an event planner. She has potential. She is social, artistic, and investigative. What does it mean? With the potential to be so many things, how does she choose?

The Pitfall of Potential

This is a pitfall of potential-a plethora a choices unanchored. In my earlier post, I said, “Potential encourages you to live in the future rather than the now. It is a fantasy of some imagined you that looks down on the real you slogging through the mire of today. How can today measure up against the fantasy of potential?” (To see the full post, click here. https://breathedeep212.com/ruminating-on-promises-and-potential/)

Simply, it can’t. When too many choices present themselves, the joy of the present is overshadowed by the questions of tomorrow. The many versions of you that you might become tantalize you with possibilities that grow ever distant when the fear of choosing wrong paralyzes you. Decision paralysis can disrupt focus and negatively effect  performance. 

Gifted Children

“Gifted” may be defined as “those who demonstrate an advanced ability or potential in one or more specific areas when compared to others of the same age, experience or environment. These gifted individuals excel in their ability to think, reason and judge, making it necessary for them to receive special educational services and support to be able to fully develop their potential and talents (2021).” While universal consensus has not been reached, averaging an IQ north of the mean IQ score of 100 could land you this label and suggest a need for additional educational resources or even challenges. 

Gifted does not mean well-rounded or successful. Many suffer from asynchronous, or uneven development. They are high performers in some areas but low performers in others. Their high intellectual functioning may not require the development of good study skills until later in school. Imagine if everything always came easy to you. You never needed to study…until you did. And you had no idea how to do it. 

For the child with potential, the gifted child, potential teaches nothing. Essentially, a heritable trait, potential cannot teach a child how to handle challenges. Or failure. It cannot guarantee a drive toward hard work. It CAN invite in stress, unrealistic expectations, control issues, and a desire for perfectionism. It can wreak devastation upon the developing person. For a child with already elevated perceptions of their environment and judgment, worrying about meeting the expectations of their potential can easily overwhelm them and produce anxiety. For an adult who was a gifted child, failing to meet the specter of  one’s potential can foster self-criticism and discontentment. 

Some Problems Gifted Children May Experience:

What Can We Do?

Now picture a precocious chatterbox of a 7 year old, curled up on the couch listening to her mother read Harry Potter aloud. She asks, “How does the Sorting Hat know who they are? I don’t know really know what I want to be when I grow up. I mean, I want to be a trapeze artist, to work at Chick Filet, and to run my own business but I don’t know which one. Do I have to pick one thing?”

What do you tell her?

In the Tomorrowland film based on a story by Brad Bird, Damon Lindelof, and Jeff Jensen, the character Casey Newton challenges her teachers by asking what can be done. It is a powerful question that invites action. It is not enough to recognize a problem but to act toward its solution. Often I find that in voicing the problem, the solution is presented. 

The Problem: How do I help the gifted child, the child with potential, the child with too many choices?

Solution: I help the gifted child by seeing them first as a child. I help them by seeing that potential is not a threat but an invitation to explore, to mess up, and to try again. I help them to explore choices without the pressure of permanency. After all, if the average person will have 12 jobs in a lifetime, permanency isn’t really such a hurdle (2022). 

For the child involved in advanced classes, who has an after school tutor, music lessons, and homework we need to ask ourselves what that packed schedule provides. There must be a balance between boredom and beaten down. I have a child with a high drive to do and try and learn. As his mother, it is my job to help him manage his schedule so that he is not so bored that he is a menace to my household and not so beaten down that he is a mess of psychosomatic symptoms of stress. It is also my job to help my hyperkinetic bundle of energy move enough so that her heart sings but her body doesn’t collapse from exhaustion; to feed her mind’s need for questions and creativity without overwhelming her. 

My husband and I set the limits until they are old enough to set their own. As they grow it becomes our job to teach them to listen to their bodies’ communication and to honor it; to step back and support their steps away from me. It becomes my job to celebrate their explorations, advocate for their independence, and champion their capability.  

It is my responsibility not to compare the two children I am gifted to call my own and to never describe one as lacking. Different strengths exist for a reason. 

Rather than praising talent, I invite you to praise effort. Complement the hours your child(ren) spent working on something more than the grade he/she/they received. Model frustration appropriately and brainstorm with them how to cope when they too experience it. Model decision making and normalize new directions in your life. Sometimes I teach. Sometimes I write. Sometimes I spend a week creating some elaborate art project that I never want to see again. Sometimes you probably want to try something new. Do it. Show them that THEIR path doesn’t have to be ONE path. 

Offer them opportunities outside of their skill sets and celebrate their efforts to improve at something that does not come easily. I have a klutz for a kid that enjoyed a 6 week hip hop class tremendously. He doesn’t dance and  he doesn’t listen to hip hop but he did smile and he did enjoy himself. This spring I had a movement-driven girl in a cast who couldn’t swing or do cartwheels or draw. She worked so hard to use her left hand that her left-handed handwriting is now better than her right. 

 Laugh. The neurological benefits of laughter are well founded. Laughter grounds us in our humanity and invites us to remove the shackles of expectation. These gifted kiddos are often so bound to their perfectionism that they create unrealistic expectations for themselves. Laugh so hard with them that you cannot breathe. Laugh so hard that you snort. If your children are anything like mine, they are goofy little weirdos. Enjoy the weird together. 

That little girl  who took a test to determine her future is still social, artistic, and investigative. She has dabbled in many things and walked down many a path. Her best paths are not explored alone and she is nowhere near done walking. 

References:

17 remarkable career change statistics to know (2022). Apollo Technical LLC. (2022, March 24). Retrieved May 29, 2022, from https://www.apollotechnical.com/career-change-statistics/ 

What is giftedness?: Gifted definition & meaning. Davidson Institute. (2021, July 19). Retrieved May 29, 2022, from https://www.davidsongifted.org/gifted-blog/what-is-giftedness/