Whether giftedness itself is a burden depends entirely on whether you have experienced true understanding from others. Feeling grossly misunderstood your entire life is most definitely a burden. There may also be aspects of asynchrony and intensity that make life more challenging.
I recently found a file of old journals. My senior year journal, shared only with my English teacher, revealed a resentful teen who put up barriers between herself and her peers because everything seemed so much easier for them. It was more complicated than that, though; in middle school, I had been in a program for highly gifted kids with only three to four other students in my grade. When I moved up to high school, my program had eighteen students in my grade, and it was based more on high achievement than cognitive ability. I knew, having been in that smaller class in middle school, that I must have been technically smarter than many of my peers, but they were all high achievers. The fact that they tried to kick me out of the program for underachievement in tenth grade certainly didn’t help.
I read an entry about why I didn’t care if I bonded with my class (that I’d been with for four years) when I had only really connected with one friend (who’d left after ninth grade). My teacher wrote a note that said, “I wish you’d do a little soul searching to come to terms with why you withheld yourself from bonding with anyone after they [my friend] left.”
Now I know exactly why. You see, I had fallen prey to the whole, “giftedness is hard, and these people had it way too easy to be really gifted” trap. I still see this sentiment frequently, but what I’ve since learned is that giftedness is not the problem; being misunderstood and not having your needs met is the problem. In hindsight, I also came to realize that I was probably twice-exceptional, which added to the challenge.
On the flip side, I often see giftedness conflated with high achievement and realize how easily I could have been overlooked entirely. I was, after all, not identified until fifth grade, when most of my friends were identified in third. This was likely due in part to attending a Spanish immersion school for the first five years, not learning to read English until third grade, and my executive function challenges. When they did identify me, though, they sent me to a whole new school for a full-time gifted program.
I was miserable in my elementary school classes and resentful in my high school ones. That tiny class in middle school was probably the only time I consistently had my educational needs met, with the exception of the one high school teacher who really understood me.
I was fortunate that my social and emotional needs were understood in my home and community. I came from a family of gifted and likely twice-exceptional individuals over multiple generations on both sides. My parents found a church community (UU) where nonconformity was not only accepted but celebrated; so, while school itself was often difficult, I had a solid foundation of support and friendship. Because I found I didn’t quite “fit in” with most groups, I tended to create my own. I was able to transfer the skills I’d developed through community to making friends at school, and we formed our own little band of misfits.
But I still held on to the “us vs. them” mentality that “truly gifted” people were outside-the-box nonconformists, and all those other people were simply high achievers.
This belief is just as damaging as the more common one, found in education, that ALL gifted kids are also high achievers.
One of the most generally accepted definitions of giftedness, developed by the Columbus Group, is, “Giftedness is asynchronous development in which advanced cognitive abilities and heightened intensity combine to create inner experiences and awareness that are qualitatively different from the norm. This asynchrony increases with higher intellectual capacity.”1
Notice they don’t say anything about achievement?
Some other beliefs I’ve seen thrown around recently include:
Giftedness is never a burden/Giftedness is always a burden.
Whether giftedness itself is a burden depends entirely on whether you have experienced true understanding from others. Feeling grossly misunderstood your entire life is most definitely a burden. There may also be aspects of asynchrony and intensity that make life more challenging.
Because I had family and community who truly understood me and experienced a few teachers through the years who did, I came to the conclusion that the problem was not giftedness itself but the system that failed to truly understand me.
Gifted minds don’t think differently, they think better.
The definition above notes “inner experiences and awareness that are qualitatively different from the norm,” not necessarily “quantitatively” different. Even if someone scores extremely high on specific tests, there are so many limitations with those tests and so many aspects of intelligence that can’t be quantified. I appreciate Scott Barry Kauffman’s take on how we define intelligence in Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined.2 He shares his own journey about scoring low on an IQ test, when it is quite clear to anyone reading the book how truly gifted he is!
Personally, I found that while I scored extremely high on some of those tests, I would never have said I “thought better” in any way. I could not memorize math formulas, but I would figure them out through logic. I could not keep up with the reading in school, but I could have in-depth discussions about books I never read.
Even for those who are gifted without additional diagnoses, it is not uncommon to find more complicated challenges easier than most, while things that seem basic and dull can be difficult.
Advancement is required for enrichment.
At a SENG conference years ago, I heard someone say that our job as parents and educators was to keep the spark and love of learning alive. Sometimes this means advancement, if that’s what drives the student, but often it’s more about depth, complexity, and engagement than advancement.
I’ve seen this recently in my own son’s school, where they did away with the advanced track in math; They do have a class for those who tested gifted in that area, but they aren’t doing advanced grade level material. Though these kids scored extremely advanced in this area, the teacher does an amazing job of keeping them highly engaged.
Looking back, I know my own view of giftedness was shaped by my unique experiences, and I know that this is true for others. I remind myself that everyone’s experience of giftedness is different and valid. There is no one way to be gifted.
References
1. “The Columbus Group,” ISAD, Gifted Development Center, https://www.gifteddevelopment.com/isad/columbus-group
2. Scott Barry Kaufman, Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined. New York: Basic Books, 2015.
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