MyGiftedLife.org

The adolescent years are an important stage of gifted development, made especially difficult when multiple talents make it difficult to choose educational and career paths and determine an identity. The emotional and psychological needs of the gifted are often neglected. Adults are all too often interested in the product of giftedness - developing the potential for academic and career success - and all too seldom interested in supporting the process and fulfilling the unique needs of those on whom they place such extraordinary expectations.

I will never forget the Swarthmore alumnus who interviewed me for a scholarship. My father had groomed me for a career as a doctor because of my talents in math and science. He arranged for me to volunteer at hospitals for three summers in a row during high school and bought me a microscope with a nameplate on which he'd had engraved the title of Doctor and our family name. Even my high school physics teacher, whom I'd always liked, made me promise to stick with math and science. But my interviewer looked at me and said, "You know, you have all these good reasons for being a doctor, but when you talk about writing, your eyes sparkle." It was one of the rare moments that anyone paid attention to what mattered to me. A good mentor is hard to find, and it was only after I crashed and burned in my freshman year at Duke University that I was able to reach out and accept mentorship.

Hiding talents (often by way of underachievement) in order to belong is not uncommon. I was fortunate to have attended a high school where giftedness was the norm rather than the exception, but even there I stuck out. Also common is impostorism, described by Professor Sue Wick of the University of Minnesota as "the persistent belief in one's lack of competence, skill or intelligence in the face of consistent objective data to the contrary; an internal experience of intellectual fraudulence, particularly among high-achievers; the belief that one is not deserving of his/her career success, and that others have been deceived into thinking otherwise." My most memorable bout with impostorism came during a pre-freshman backpacking trip after I'd nearly earned Duke University's highest scholarship. I was on a 36-hour solo, and had the persistent feeling that I didn't belong there, despite all evidence to the contrary. It wasn't until I was an adult that I discovered this phenomenon was typical, especially of gifted women.

True peers are difficult to find, and when they are found, it is often in the context of academic achievement -- in summer programs or at tournaments and science fairs, for example, where the focus is not on enjoying the company of peers, but in eking out the last drop of learning, competing with peers, and earning the highest accolades. There is not enough time to rest in the company of friends and develop normal relationships. My own experiences after 7th grade at the University of Southern Mississippi's Summer Program for Academically Talented Youth bore this out. I skimped on studying Biology in favor of playing gin rummy with the other girls in our dorm, shooting hoops, watching MTV, eating Cocoa Krispies in chocolate milk for breakfast, and crushing on a boy from Alabama (or was it Arkansas?) named Roger. These were all experiences that I'd been denied at home. Gifted kids are a surprisingly normal bunch. But after I came back with a C in my summer Biology class, my father threatened to send me to boarding school.

In addition to an innate drive to perfect, there is often the feeling that "all eyes are on you" that causes making mistakes to be particularly painful and shameful. Often teasing by peers and pressure to be perfect from parents and teachers exacerbate this. My own father, instead of praising near-perfect grades on tests, scrutinized my errors and made me go back and fix them. But the best experiences I've had occurred when I took chances learning in areas in which I couldn't ensure absolute success - martial arts, writing, counseling. This fear of making mistakes and having them known prevents us from reaching out and receiving the help we need, as well as trying new things that don't automatically promise exceptional success.

Multipotentiality is, I think, one of the biggest challenges that face gifted people. It's like standing in the aisles of a large supermarket, bewildered by 20 different brands and not knowing which to buy. The article "Helping adolescents adjust to giftedness" cites premature identity formation as one of the developmental challenges of gifted adolescents; multipotentiality, competing expectations, and impatience with ambiguity all contribute. My career path as a doctor was chosen for me before I even reached high school. I never had a real opportunity to explore my options.

It is this thwarted need to explore, whether it's in relationships or areas of interest, that sums up, I think, many of the problems with gifted development. We need focus, but also to understand that our focus won't be single, and that our multiple interests will almost certainly change over time. We have the same need as everyone else to belong and connect, to explore who we are in relation to other people. And while we may thrive on challenge, we can reach our greatest potential only when we have the freedom to take chances in our explorations and make mistakes. Above all, we need to be able to explore who we are as human beings. This self-exploration is not a process that directly produces straight A's, awards, or a climb up the corporate ladder, but it is perhaps the most important endeavor we can undertake.

References
"Helping adolescents adjust to giftedness," by Thomas M. Buescher and Sharon Higham, from www.sengifted.org