One weekend, I came across an interesting post: A gifted kid graduates from college at just 11 years old. Sure, this sounded like an outstanding achievement, but something just seemed off.
That’s when I began thinking to myself, how did they feel being in these classes at such a young age? What happens when they enter the workforce? How did the parents feel about sending their child off to college? Did they truly wish to attend college at such a young age and miss out on hanging out with kids their own age?
The term gifted is used to describe someone who is very talented or has a natural ability in a certain skill. This ranges from education, hobbies, and even acting. Typically, as soon as this natural ability is noticed in a child, caretakers and adults will try to influence the child to dig deeper and express their skill to its fullest potential. The child’s ability to do something so easily will be met with reward, but when it comes time when the child is challenged, naturally, they are filled with doubt in themselves. Say if someone is given plenty of boxes of cookies, but the person next to them is given ingredients, and the goal is to sell the most cookies for the longest period of time. The child with the cookies will sell quicker than the child who must go through trial and error and make the cookies themself. Soon, when the child with the ingredients learns to make different cakes and cookies, the child who initially sold more is left distraught. The gifted kid is the one selling the cookies, as they have a certain skill that comes at ease and are rewarded for. They miss out on building from their mistakes and have pride in themselves that everything they do will come with ease, often preventing them from changing. The kid who started with ingredients is the average child, who learns how they can tackle certain challenges, giving them the ability to overcome their ego at times to leverage their ability.
Entering high school, the gifted child has little to no experience with studying since everything always came easily to them, while the average student spends hours finding methods to help them the best. The gifted kid will start to name themselves as the former gifted child, and latch onto that as their sole identity, pushing poor self-esteem and image upon themself. Soon, they will treat everything in comparison to when they were the most ahead, and eventually, burn out.
Jeanette McCurdy, a former child star who played in numerous shows on Nickelodeon, speaks about her experience in an interview with The Minimalists. She speaks on the topic of how she dealt with child star attention, claiming that “it was not easy,” and how she “felt incredibly anxious.” With hordes of people that she mentioned following her from 14 to 22 years old, it is devastating to imagine what that has done to her mental health. Having all this attention can sometimes lead to children wanting to hide and question themselves on why people are so intrigued.
The gifted children who graduate from higher levels of education at ages as young as 11 may go on to change the world, but it’s important to remember that these are still children. They are still developing their personality, building relations, and experiencing the world in front of them. Being gifted is exemplary, but to have a system that enforces kids to place this as their sole identity and purpose is truly inadequate.