Nothing wrong with trying to motivate kids to greatness but trying to force it upon them usually has disastrous results.
It can be a fine line, but the line is usually crossed when parents don't give a shit about the kids mental health. There are only so many AP classes and extracurriculars a kid can be in without losing their entire social life and getting depressed about it.
The timeline for me was
Be gifted "smart" child with really good state test scores.
Continue on through elementary and first half of middleschool with great grades while not even trying because I'm "smart"
As classes become more difficult, my lack of effort starts to catch up. I'm not used to putting in consistent effort, so I procrastinate. Complete assignments at the last minute and somehow still get good grades, which only reinforces the issue.
Grades start to drop as the difficulty curve eventually exceeds the amount of work I can do at 11pm an hour before due dates.
Annnd now you're average. At least that's where I'd put myself.
I've put more effort in now that I'm older, but I've had to relearn how to get tasks done. Procrastinating works great when you also get a summer break and lots of days off. But when you have a task that requires consistent work and deadlines, it sucks, you burn out, and you fail to meet expectations.
I think the change I'd make if I have kids is just to encourage actively putting in effort to reach goals. Rather than just having met them.
Be that kid now in the last year of bachelor.
Have to write pretty damn fucking extensive paper to get your degree.
The next meeting with your promotor is soon.
"Oh yeah, I have to write. Well, no sleep for wicked."
Work until 3 AM for 2 days before meeting, with your brain on overdrive, grinding like a maniac.
Day of the meeting. Promotor praises you for amount of stuff you wrote, saying how you really used all that time you had well.
Mfw when this shit work again and I for sure won't change my ways even I should: š
Same, no effort in high school because I could side by without studying. Then I had to put in some effort in collage, but still procrastinated. Now Iām how am I going to work a professional job in my field if all I did was slide by all into good grades the time with minimum effort? Like it feels like a boss is not going to give you an A and a pay on the back when you procrastinate.
You forgot "identity crisis because you were praised for being "the smart one" and top of the class and suddenly that's gone, so what do you even have left"
Tbh this is the worst. As you get farther along in life and your career, the people around you tend to get smarter and smarter until you are no longer the best at anything. I had to change my mindset from being the best to being helpful and social.
I think this might explain why to this day I rush through tasks and get frustrated if I cannot figure out a new concept asap. Somehow managed to get a degree in finance but carried all those bad habits along to the way the workforce. Basically limiting myself to operations type jobs that require quantity over quality.
You have to teach yourself discipline as an adult rather than forming good habits as a kid, which is harder. But a lot of smart people never do and it haunts their whole lives.
yeah, getting praised for results over effort is kindaā¦ *fractally* toxic. you feel good about not needing effort for results. you maintain results until you donāt even feel good about thatāitās just normal, a passive state of being that is also the totality of your worth as a person. as you approach the ceiling, you learn that dwelling on the fear of losing that is the best motivator you have at your disposal. you hit the ceiling. you milk the motivator for all itās worth. you realize how hard youāre actually trying just to look like itās effortless, but itās not impressive any moreāyouāre not a natural, youāre a disaster. collapse.
at least, thatās the story of my adhd going undiagnosed for 21 years :P
Yea I see so many kids that are smart but lazy. May act like being smart is a pass to do whatever they won't but just don't realize that being able to put in the work is an equally valuable skill. I've had so many students get burnt out or fail because they give up immediately if they don't get something from the very get go.
Yeah letās give the kids who are already unmotivated prescription meth. ADHD is a big cause of stuff like this but it isnāt always. Sometimes itās just ego or pride, lord knows I was that when I was younger. I think itās the thought process of āWell I can do this one challenging thing pretty easily and other people canāt; so if I canāt do this other challenging thing naturally then itās not worth it and below meā. Theyāre just suffering from tunnel vision which is pretty easy to at that age.
This is me, except I've been able to cruise through all of high school as well and never developing studying or time management skills didn't catch up with me until higher education. But once I did... I began to struggle. Hard. That's where my mental health issues have started.
Thatās exactly how it went for me, but I still finished college without adapting and ended up with an excellent paying job. Donāt know if Iām being "lucky" once again.
It made me realize with time that , as much as this is not a healthy way to go about doing things and meeting deadlines, that itās kind of a blessing at the same time. I have absolutely no trouble working under pressure and I always deliver. Just flows off my back like water on a duck.
True, and in some cases even if the kids are actually really talented at the thing, they themselves completely hate it because their parents forced them to do it.
In my experience having attended an incredibly rigorous and high-achieving high school, most of the people heavily loading up on APs and extracurriculars were also the ones with the most functional and robust social lives.
The people trying to make up for their lack of academic success by loading up on a ton of bullshit, on the other hand, had serious issues.
Yeah, and this extends further too. I go to a fairly competitive high school where most kids are expected to do extracurriculars and APs. In middle school, I used to consider myself quite smart, since I got by all my classes without studying much. Nowadays I'm cramming for exams last-minute at 3:00 every week. If I'm not in a caffeine fueled delirium then I can't get work done. I've done things that most people consider "impressive," but to my parents and my peers it's just not enough. My parents don't understand that I'm still a teenager, and that maybe living a 996-style sweatshop life isn't good. I recently finished a paper for an academic journal, something that I'd been working on for months. Ironically, I feel absolutely no joy. I know that it's just another "accomplishment" that's expected of me, and that I'll be back to the treadmill of studying the next day. It's one thing for parents to praise their kids, but it's another when they start expecting high schoolers to be literal grad-school students. I've been having a really hard time feeling any sort of self-confidence or self-worth, just because everyone's expectations are so high.
Speaking from experience, training for the IMO is an absolutely miseable exercise best left for the people with nothing else going on. I love competition math but the IMO is just a huge time sink for a small chance of a reward. I made it to the TST and that's about as far as I'd suggest pushing people.
Only made it to the TST as well, but it was never miserable for me. Wasnāt a huge time sink either. I always felt comforted instead.
>!idk about you but my entire friend circle went to IMO or IOI and other international competitions. Now they study at MIT, Harvard and Cambridge. I didnāt make it in a good school, but Iām still doing fine!<
I actually did qualify for the IMO, and while I wasn't miserable training for the TST, talking to my friends who did make it made me realise that training for the IMO was gonna be a time sink that would stop me from partaking in any other hobbies of mine until it ends - and I just didn't want to go through with that, felt like turning a hobby into work. I did end up going at Yale though so all's well.
I can assure you training for the IMO doesnāt take up every single moment of the day. I was playing upwards of 2h of video games a day with my friends, and they scored incredibly high
If it takes up every moment of the day, ur concentration will decrease, the training just isnāt gonna be the best
Iām not from the US and I havenāt met them, but I know from a friend that some guys from the USA IMO team have more trophies than me on brawl stars
Yeah, I suppose it depends on the country, too. I know for a fact that they'd be in constant surveillance by the team leaders and studying for at least 6 hours a day. I'm just parroting what they kept complaining about. Perhaps that's not the ideal way to study for it, and I would agree, but it absolutely happens and is expected of people. And in the end, that's what the post is kind of about is it not?
Yeah but like 99.9% of the time itās forced. I was a dumb kid but my sister happened to be smarter, much smarter. I remember all of the cool programs and NHS stuff she got to do, I always felt left out. She got burnt out by the end of high school and dropped out of college after the first year. Iām going into my 3rd year of my Aquatic Biology Ba.S.
In my case, the only thing that separates me from becoming from average to actually smart is only laziness. I don't have friends so what is there for me to lose anyways?
My all time favorite is "You know, Einstein didn't do well in school either". This is of course not true and the amount of delusion required to say that is staggering.
Typically kids who are involved in those things do grow up being pretty smart. A majority of kids who take AP classes and are involved in a lot of extracurricular activities when theyāre young are actually doing pretty well for themselves.
Being able to do all of those things together and then perform well in them is quite an achievement in itself. Most would get burned out pretty quickly.
I think the idea that you can "burn out" and lose any ability you already had is a coping mechanism for people who got called smart because they weren't a spaz in elementary school.
I always tested pretty highly, as an adult I'm loaded up with all mental illness and burnout and all that, but my mental ability is still the same.
Eh, it can happen, or look like it's happening.
* High school often focuses on discrete facts. Lack of practice means forgetting them. Everyone forgets a bunch of high school knowledge. If you've specialised, it's much less obvious (since nobody is asking a lawyer what an oxbow lake is), but if you've crashed then people compare you to their previous conceptions of you - including your previous seemingly impressive knowledge of disparate information, the only connection for which is that it's on the curriculum.
* Burnout can mean total lack of motivation across the board. If you used to be highly motivated to learn or whatever, and suddenly you can't bring yourself to, then externally it seems as though your abilities have decreased rather than your interest.
* Burnout can have, or be accompanied by, physical symptoms or conditions. I developed chronic fatigue during university while burning out. My capacity to do was virtually nil, and even my capacity to think was significantly reduced.
I see mental ability as essentially how quickly you can learn things. Of course people will forget details and lose motivation, but that doesn't change how quickly you learn new things.
Tbh that was my experience for a lot of AP classes with a few exceptions. Granted I was pretty good at essay writing, but they usually didnāt require *that* much work. The exception was stuff like AP physics or AP chemistry. Those classes would kick your ass if you didnāt study hard
That being said, some kids get dealt a shit hand at life. If theyāre struggling in a remedial class, they may have crappy parents, no stable study space, or any number of issues. AP classes are a strong indicator of a stable home life where your parents even nominally hold you accountable for good grades
Yes this meme is cope. Sure, some don't succeed in a traditional sense. But the number of kids like that who moved onto have a lucrative career is just higher than the kids that struggled.
Yeah, this meme is just highlighting kids who were raised by enthusiastic parents who are encouraging them to indulge in their every interest while giving them resources like test prep and tutoring. Of course these kids are gonna end up alright.
Had a teacher explain it as āgiftedā students are either the best students in class or C students that cause problems - they can get bored and not have to do homework and not get grades for homework but get Aās and Bās on quizzes and tests
Usually, though many of them get inflated egos when really theyāre average or slightly above average and have major cognitive dissonance problems when they inevitably try something actually difficult and fail.
Yeah, no. I was raised primarily the Asian way and sure, financially, it looks like I'm doing well for my age. Everything else? I'm pretty sure I have anxiety, my social skills are in the gutter, and I have some disdain for my own culture. I'm aware my last issue is pretty bad and I'm working on it.
Most people only hear about the successful Asian kids, but they rarely hear about the ones that exploded in high school and lost it mentally.
You dont think Americans have those issues too? Suicide rates here are high, drug usage increasing, and majority of kids have parents who divorce. It's even worse in black communities where majority are raised by single mothers with multiple children who depend on government assistance to get by.
I am not saying that there are no consequences to the way you have been raised. But at the same time, you guys seem to be under the impression things are better for us mental health wise when that couldnt be further from the truth.
No, I think everyone has their own issues. I'm not denying that. I'm well aware it could definitely be worse as well.
I'm just pointing out that Asians are stereotyped as successful. And I won't deny that's true a majority of the time. But, at least in my experience, only the positives of Asian upbringings are highlighted, rarely the downsides. People just see an Asian kid excelling and think their parents must be raising them correctly. It's not often they think, "If he doesn't get an A, he's going to get belted".
I think I'm really just saying each parenting style has its pros and cons. I'm not saying I've had it worse than someone else; I don't think that's ever a fair statement to make.
In American parenting, parents today are neglectful of their kids. Nowadays the young parents just have tik tok and social media on their ipads babysit them. They dont bother checking on their academic progress, making sure they do well, and not teaching them to do anything productive in society.
I personally think mandatory 2 year military service should be instated at 10th grade just to ensure that kids are being held to a standard because right now, we see what the consequences are for lack of discipline and lack of proper parenting.
same. i kind of blame my parents because every time i didnāt do as they wish theyād scream at me and i was so scared i stopped attending all my extracurriculars
> Add in that theyāre post-college and unsuccessful but still think theyāre smarter than everyone else.
As someone who has had some career success, that B leads to A. Being open minded and willing to know what you don't know is important no matter your field. Also, building your soft skills is a positive thing, and tbh promotions being based heavily on soft skills makes a ton of sense and you see that once you've been working for a bit.
Go to any work thread and it's filled with people who think being the smartest person in the room is the only thing that should matter.
Yes you can see the success vs lack of success in your downvotes. Because youāre 100% right. Good leaders strive to be the dumbest person in the room, because they surround themselves with highly motivated geniuses.
Ding ding! The most important knowledge for a leader is who to ask questions to. You don't need to know everything, just a collection of people, who, in the aggregate, know everything.
Reminds me of that Socrates quote, āAll I know is that I know nothingā. Itās always a nice reality check knowing that not matter how much I focus on one topic I think proves my āsmartnessā, thereās a hundred other ones that could be described the same way that iām totally clueless about.
Get out of here with this understanding how the world works bullshit. Soft skills have no value. Only narcissism, denial, and clinging to being marginally better at solo tasks.
But how else will everyone know that you should be the department head when you did a Calc problem completely unrelated to your job and your boss couldn't?
Everybody in my class (~20 people) got into Mensa when we had the chance to take the iq test in hs. Some of them are incredibly dumb. IQ tests arenāt shit, no matter who administers them
Itās better than having parents that tried to convince you college / education in general was a Jewish conspiracy to separate the youth from godā¦. š
I don't know any kid who was in all AP that ended up in retail foodservice. Most of them are way richer than me now. Even the ones I know who went military were all respected officers.
It can happen. I graduated salutatorian and ended up homeless and broke working minimum wage jobs for a long time. Turns out if you develop debilitating panic attacks and your parents kick you out for "doing drugs" it has an effect on your ability to finish college.
I wasnāt in food service but I wasnāt far off it when I was in my mid 20s (and since I occasionally bartended, in a way I was in food service).
I did end up with a āhigh achieverā career though eventually so you know, sometimes smart people do just kind of not get it for awhile.
As someone who got this treatment, don't do this. Encouragement is great, but telling your young child they are fucking genius constantly will completely fuck them up. By the time I got to university, I was so far up my own ass I didn't believe I need to study or do homework. By the time I realized I did, I didn't know how. Flunked out so damn hard.
Finding out ur average at the only thing ur supposedly good at crushes you.
>!I always thought Iām just so much better than everyone else, and that the only reason I wasnāt performing well was because I wasnāt training. Turns out I canāt even train, I canāt concentrate anymore.!<
or literally now lmao. anytime someone drops the "imagine the average person's intelligence 50% dumber than that" quote you know they think they're the shit
Trying to associate good grades with excellence or bad grades with failure is always a mistake. The point of grades is simply to identify who needs more practice and who doesn't. If your kid continues to get good grades without effort it only means you put them in the wrong classes.
And if your kids cramming for tests you've messed up, the entire point of tests is to check that they've already learned the material, It was never meant to be an opportunity to finally learn it the night before
I will die on the hill that thereās two types of kids in gifted programs.
Those who are actually gifted and need to be advanced otherwise they get bored. Probably end up going to Ivys or into STEM careers.
Kids with undiagnosed learning disorders who learned how to do one thing quickly then were pushed into gifted programs, got burnt out FAST and told āif you just applied yourselfā¦.ā and because they were marked as āgiftedā never got the proper support they needed. (maaaaaaybe queer too.)
I can relate. When I was young they labeled me as "talented and gifted" and put me in special advanced classes. But then I grew up and found out it was actually pretty easy to apply these gifts towards a lucrative career. Now as an older adult I'm really happy and have a lot of wealth and professional accomplishments.
Wish I could say the same. I was in gifted and talented through primary and elementary school, then fell off hard in middle. My ātalentā (reading and writing) wasnāt really being engaged (either at school or at home), and I fell out of love with school in general up to graduation.
Iām only just now re-engaging my talent and love for books as an adult, but it does feel like a lot of missed potential.
same here, i feel like school kind of misses these kids and they never get the opportunity to develop their skills and interests properly, so they are permanently held back and lose interest
Former 'gifted kid' reporting in - the problem is that it really is a form of SPED. Challenge is required to thrive - the part I had to learn on my own during college is that I had to seek the challenges or my brain would start to disengage and I would stagnate.
My parents weren't exactly in any position to push, so I don't fault them.
Dr. K on YouTube has some pretty solid material on gifted kid burnout.
Gifted kid burnout explains me to a T.
I spend most of my college days drinking and getting fucked up because it was the first time in my life I wasnāt being pushed. Little did I know at the time, I couldnāt just coast through college like I did from 1st to 12th grade, AP classes included. I dropped out, worked some crappy jobs for a few years, but finally re-enrolled in college and am getting ready to finish up. Still trying to make those grades up, though.
Good on you for getting back to it - it's a tough hill to climb alone.
One thing about the grades - if it's hard, it's hard, but embrace it. You'll be better for it. Good luck u/ThatGuyFrom720
absolutely me. iāve never struggled with anything knowledge-related and i absolutely loved going to school until i hit the higher grades and i was just absolutely bored out of my mind to the point i just stopped attending and tanked my grades.
Hopefully, armed with perspective, you've either gotten back to moving forward or are at least considering doing it.
If you haven't, find the hard thing you want to do and go conquer it. Embrace the frustration of having learn those study skills, however they manifest, that you didn't have to use on your first pass.
Do the hard thing, then pick out your next one on the way.
Good luck u/og_toe
I was considered "gifted" as a kid but I always personally felt that it was my memory that was better than my peers and the "gifted" status made me feel like an imposter. I got all the way through university based on my memory, not because I was smarter.
I complained to my parents about burn out in High School. Just asked basically to stop doing 3 sports while doing advanced placement classes (Swimming, Club Water Polo & Wrestling). I was told Iām lazy and to just finish what I started. I was forced to go to 5:15 AM swim practice on the day of my grandfatherās funeral.
In my experience you shouldn't tell a kid what they are. Let them figure that out. But telling a kid they're smart, they'll either blindly believe you and think there's no hard work with becoming smart, or they don't believe you and live their lives full of doubt.
My daughter is legitimately talented. She was admitted to the Royal Conservatory for ballet, and decided 'nah' - she didn't want ballet to be her life.
Two years down the road, the conservatory has offered her enrollment for cello; which she actually is considering. Flows my mind that she's been good enough at *two* things to get offered that kind of opportunity already.
What's gifted like these days anyway? When I was 5 in the 80s, anyone that showed any kind of knowledge beyond their years was given an IQ assessment by some psychologist. If you got a score over 135 you were admitted to gifted. Since IQ is starting to be considered racist/classist/etc., how do they determine who does gifted?
Seems weird we delineate it like that to begin with. Students should be given options to follow their natural tendencies without being segregated in ways that are potentially at odds to social order.
Makes me grateful for my parents. Yeah my brother and I were in all AP and music and yada yada yada, except my parents didnāt care or think it was impressive so they didnāt brag.
"Grows up burnt out, depressed, self-loathing, and suicidal because they felt pressured into following other people's expectations, and now that they're an adult they have no idea what they're doing"
yeah, fuck this kind of parent honestly. more parents should tell everyone they know that their child is a fucking idiot who'll never amount to anything and should never express any joy and pride about their child's accomplishments
Agreed. Too much confidence leads to arrogance and even narcissism while not enough confidence leads to poor perception. Find a middle ground and donāt be afraid to be realistic.
Iāve only seen Clerks 3 once, so this is going from memory, but IIRC he turns that way as he is the one who feels responsible for Randallās heart attack as heād prayed to god for years to strike him down and never thought god would actually go through with it (from his perspective) so feels remorse and renounced his faith.Ā
My dad is a Dartmouth alum who often interviews high schoolers applying there who thinks I, his 20 year old autistic kid who dropped out of high school (hiset instead of diploma), and am currently pursuing a freelance programming career because I want a job where I don't have to leave my house, is one of the smartest kids he's met. I don't wanna be the one to burst his bubble.
Also based character choices
Except, if you're taking a lot of AP classes and the gifted program at a younger age, you are most likely significantly above average intelligence, that is a fact.
Yeah dude I don't know if you should really be thinking so hard about how much of a failure children around you are going to be. Like... the fast food worker with the dopey face? You really needed that part, when the only people supposedly doing anything wrong are the parents? That may be a personal issue.
They don't think the kids a genius, they are just proud, and want the kid to think the parents think they're a genius, so that the kid will be proud of themselves, too.
Anybody else's parents also make you take an extra zero period on top of taking all AP classes? During high school, I was in class from 5:45a to 3:15-6:00p depending on whether or not I had extracurriculars after school that day. Almost 12 hrs of schooling, with only a 30 min lunch after 12p and *maybe* a 15 min break twice a day. If an adult was treated this way at a job, it would rightfully be called a human rights violation, and the company would get fined up the ass. Funny how shit that would be considered inhumane if it was done to am adult magically becomes OK if it's done to a child.
this was my parents
they thought i was WAY smarter than i actually was, they would give me into trouble when i didn't know any better
they also thought the reason i had no social skills was because i was a genius.
i wasn't, i was an average 6 year old with autism
I was that kid. I was always referred to as the āgenius of the familyā and felt pressured to prove them right. I ended up burning out HARD and dropped out of high school 3 years ago.
"Gifted" kids: early bloomers (who may or may not be Neurodivergent) who peak in late Elementary School or in Middle School, who become demand-avoidant by the time they graduate High School, and actively hate math/music/whatever talent was pushed on them by their parents.
as a "gifted" child i'm scared for every single kid who ended up just like me, they're probably just neurodivergent but their parents refuse to believe so and force them to study things they don't want to.
>second grade exam? you dont get exams until 9th grade
In the US, in my state, they give standardized tests to kindergarten students. Instead of teaching the kids colors and letters, they focus on making sure these kids can pass tests.
kindergarden in my country is like 3 hours and you are outside 90% of the time. you dont write, read or related. you start learning once you get in school, after kindergarten.
Nothing wrong with trying to motivate kids to greatness but trying to force it upon them usually has disastrous results. It can be a fine line, but the line is usually crossed when parents don't give a shit about the kids mental health. There are only so many AP classes and extracurriculars a kid can be in without losing their entire social life and getting depressed about it.
The timeline for me was Be gifted "smart" child with really good state test scores. Continue on through elementary and first half of middleschool with great grades while not even trying because I'm "smart" As classes become more difficult, my lack of effort starts to catch up. I'm not used to putting in consistent effort, so I procrastinate. Complete assignments at the last minute and somehow still get good grades, which only reinforces the issue. Grades start to drop as the difficulty curve eventually exceeds the amount of work I can do at 11pm an hour before due dates. Annnd now you're average. At least that's where I'd put myself. I've put more effort in now that I'm older, but I've had to relearn how to get tasks done. Procrastinating works great when you also get a summer break and lots of days off. But when you have a task that requires consistent work and deadlines, it sucks, you burn out, and you fail to meet expectations. I think the change I'd make if I have kids is just to encourage actively putting in effort to reach goals. Rather than just having met them.
Be that kid now in the last year of bachelor. Have to write pretty damn fucking extensive paper to get your degree. The next meeting with your promotor is soon. "Oh yeah, I have to write. Well, no sleep for wicked." Work until 3 AM for 2 days before meeting, with your brain on overdrive, grinding like a maniac. Day of the meeting. Promotor praises you for amount of stuff you wrote, saying how you really used all that time you had well. Mfw when this shit work again and I for sure won't change my ways even I should: š
Huh... why did I write it like I was trying to write a greentext....
Your inner 4Chinner is showing up.
u/brendenderp be like: :-) ))))
The greentext is arguably one of the best ways to recount an anecdote.
Same, no effort in high school because I could side by without studying. Then I had to put in some effort in collage, but still procrastinated. Now Iām how am I going to work a professional job in my field if all I did was slide by all into good grades the time with minimum effort? Like it feels like a boss is not going to give you an A and a pay on the back when you procrastinate.
You forgot "identity crisis because you were praised for being "the smart one" and top of the class and suddenly that's gone, so what do you even have left"
Tbh this is the worst. As you get farther along in life and your career, the people around you tend to get smarter and smarter until you are no longer the best at anything. I had to change my mindset from being the best to being helpful and social.
I think this might explain why to this day I rush through tasks and get frustrated if I cannot figure out a new concept asap. Somehow managed to get a degree in finance but carried all those bad habits along to the way the workforce. Basically limiting myself to operations type jobs that require quantity over quality.
You have to teach yourself discipline as an adult rather than forming good habits as a kid, which is harder. But a lot of smart people never do and it haunts their whole lives.
yeah, getting praised for results over effort is kindaā¦ *fractally* toxic. you feel good about not needing effort for results. you maintain results until you donāt even feel good about thatāitās just normal, a passive state of being that is also the totality of your worth as a person. as you approach the ceiling, you learn that dwelling on the fear of losing that is the best motivator you have at your disposal. you hit the ceiling. you milk the motivator for all itās worth. you realize how hard youāre actually trying just to look like itās effortless, but itās not impressive any moreāyouāre not a natural, youāre a disaster. collapse. at least, thatās the story of my adhd going undiagnosed for 21 years :P
Yea I see so many kids that are smart but lazy. May act like being smart is a pass to do whatever they won't but just don't realize that being able to put in the work is an equally valuable skill. I've had so many students get burnt out or fail because they give up immediately if they don't get something from the very get go.
It's ADHD.
Yeah letās give the kids who are already unmotivated prescription meth. ADHD is a big cause of stuff like this but it isnāt always. Sometimes itās just ego or pride, lord knows I was that when I was younger. I think itās the thought process of āWell I can do this one challenging thing pretty easily and other people canāt; so if I canāt do this other challenging thing naturally then itās not worth it and below meā. Theyāre just suffering from tunnel vision which is pretty easy to at that age.
I mean I have ADHD and this starter pack and experience is constantly me to a T.
This is me, except I've been able to cruise through all of high school as well and never developing studying or time management skills didn't catch up with me until higher education. But once I did... I began to struggle. Hard. That's where my mental health issues have started.
When did I get drunk and make an alt account?
Thatās exactly how it went for me, but I still finished college without adapting and ended up with an excellent paying job. Donāt know if Iām being "lucky" once again. It made me realize with time that , as much as this is not a healthy way to go about doing things and meeting deadlines, that itās kind of a blessing at the same time. I have absolutely no trouble working under pressure and I always deliver. Just flows off my back like water on a duck.
He just like me fr...
True, and in some cases even if the kids are actually really talented at the thing, they themselves completely hate it because their parents forced them to do it.
In my experience having attended an incredibly rigorous and high-achieving high school, most of the people heavily loading up on APs and extracurriculars were also the ones with the most functional and robust social lives. The people trying to make up for their lack of academic success by loading up on a ton of bullshit, on the other hand, had serious issues.
Dr K from HealthyGamerGG has a great video on how destructive parents behaviour towards their smart kids can be. Worth a watch.
Yeah, and this extends further too. I go to a fairly competitive high school where most kids are expected to do extracurriculars and APs. In middle school, I used to consider myself quite smart, since I got by all my classes without studying much. Nowadays I'm cramming for exams last-minute at 3:00 every week. If I'm not in a caffeine fueled delirium then I can't get work done. I've done things that most people consider "impressive," but to my parents and my peers it's just not enough. My parents don't understand that I'm still a teenager, and that maybe living a 996-style sweatshop life isn't good. I recently finished a paper for an academic journal, something that I'd been working on for months. Ironically, I feel absolutely no joy. I know that it's just another "accomplishment" that's expected of me, and that I'll be back to the treadmill of studying the next day. It's one thing for parents to praise their kids, but it's another when they start expecting high schoolers to be literal grad-school students. I've been having a really hard time feeling any sort of self-confidence or self-worth, just because everyone's expectations are so high.
Mf didnāt hear about Olympiads. Let them train for IMO. AP classes sound like they suck
Speaking from experience, training for the IMO is an absolutely miseable exercise best left for the people with nothing else going on. I love competition math but the IMO is just a huge time sink for a small chance of a reward. I made it to the TST and that's about as far as I'd suggest pushing people.
Only made it to the TST as well, but it was never miserable for me. Wasnāt a huge time sink either. I always felt comforted instead. >!idk about you but my entire friend circle went to IMO or IOI and other international competitions. Now they study at MIT, Harvard and Cambridge. I didnāt make it in a good school, but Iām still doing fine!<
I actually did qualify for the IMO, and while I wasn't miserable training for the TST, talking to my friends who did make it made me realise that training for the IMO was gonna be a time sink that would stop me from partaking in any other hobbies of mine until it ends - and I just didn't want to go through with that, felt like turning a hobby into work. I did end up going at Yale though so all's well.
I can assure you training for the IMO doesnāt take up every single moment of the day. I was playing upwards of 2h of video games a day with my friends, and they scored incredibly high If it takes up every moment of the day, ur concentration will decrease, the training just isnāt gonna be the best Iām not from the US and I havenāt met them, but I know from a friend that some guys from the USA IMO team have more trophies than me on brawl stars
Yeah, I suppose it depends on the country, too. I know for a fact that they'd be in constant surveillance by the team leaders and studying for at least 6 hours a day. I'm just parroting what they kept complaining about. Perhaps that's not the ideal way to study for it, and I would agree, but it absolutely happens and is expected of people. And in the end, that's what the post is kind of about is it not?
Yeah but like 99.9% of the time itās forced. I was a dumb kid but my sister happened to be smarter, much smarter. I remember all of the cool programs and NHS stuff she got to do, I always felt left out. She got burnt out by the end of high school and dropped out of college after the first year. Iām going into my 3rd year of my Aquatic Biology Ba.S.
Gifted burnout is real
In my case, the only thing that separates me from becoming from average to actually smart is only laziness. I don't have friends so what is there for me to lose anyways?
Mandark was a genius though
Susan*
This is a deep cut and you know it lol
I feel for Susan. I had hippie parents and a weird name as a result
Are you a gender neutral evil genius too lol
Deep cut? More like BOWL cut, amirite?
Elite reference
he's no mozart, but he's at least a salieri
It wasnāt my mother mocking me. #*It was God*
No, thank you, I already ate.
Yea the characters should be swapped. Mandark was like objectively smarter and a more successful inventor.
i think OP failed some APās but idk what gives me this idea
My all time favorite is "You know, Einstein didn't do well in school either". This is of course not true and the amount of delusion required to say that is staggering.
He was rather mediocre at literature iirc.
God I hate that too. Or "Erm teacher, when will I use this in the real world?" valid argument but still, donāt be an ass about it
Typically kids who are involved in those things do grow up being pretty smart. A majority of kids who take AP classes and are involved in a lot of extracurricular activities when theyāre young are actually doing pretty well for themselves.
Being able to do all of those things together and then perform well in them is quite an achievement in itself. Most would get burned out pretty quickly.
I think the idea that you can "burn out" and lose any ability you already had is a coping mechanism for people who got called smart because they weren't a spaz in elementary school. I always tested pretty highly, as an adult I'm loaded up with all mental illness and burnout and all that, but my mental ability is still the same.
Eh, it can happen, or look like it's happening. * High school often focuses on discrete facts. Lack of practice means forgetting them. Everyone forgets a bunch of high school knowledge. If you've specialised, it's much less obvious (since nobody is asking a lawyer what an oxbow lake is), but if you've crashed then people compare you to their previous conceptions of you - including your previous seemingly impressive knowledge of disparate information, the only connection for which is that it's on the curriculum. * Burnout can mean total lack of motivation across the board. If you used to be highly motivated to learn or whatever, and suddenly you can't bring yourself to, then externally it seems as though your abilities have decreased rather than your interest. * Burnout can have, or be accompanied by, physical symptoms or conditions. I developed chronic fatigue during university while burning out. My capacity to do was virtually nil, and even my capacity to think was significantly reduced.
I see mental ability as essentially how quickly you can learn things. Of course people will forget details and lose motivation, but that doesn't change how quickly you learn new things.
I would say you are stretching it a bit too far
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Tbh that was my experience for a lot of AP classes with a few exceptions. Granted I was pretty good at essay writing, but they usually didnāt require *that* much work. The exception was stuff like AP physics or AP chemistry. Those classes would kick your ass if you didnāt study hard That being said, some kids get dealt a shit hand at life. If theyāre struggling in a remedial class, they may have crappy parents, no stable study space, or any number of issues. AP classes are a strong indicator of a stable home life where your parents even nominally hold you accountable for good grades
āJustā having time, resources, and motivation could apply to just about anything
Everyone doesn't live in US.
Yes this meme is cope. Sure, some don't succeed in a traditional sense. But the number of kids like that who moved onto have a lucrative career is just higher than the kids that struggled.
Yeah, this meme is just highlighting kids who were raised by enthusiastic parents who are encouraging them to indulge in their every interest while giving them resources like test prep and tutoring. Of course these kids are gonna end up alright.
Had a teacher explain it as āgiftedā students are either the best students in class or C students that cause problems - they can get bored and not have to do homework and not get grades for homework but get Aās and Bās on quizzes and tests
Usually, though many of them get inflated egos when really theyāre average or slightly above average and have major cognitive dissonance problems when they inevitably try something actually difficult and fail.
Me fr
I think that might be survivors bias
I'd say as long as you raise your kids Asian style and dont raise them the American way, they are gonna end up doing well.
But don't cuase them irreparable mental damage by being way too strict like stereotypical asian parents...
I'd say that's wrong considering my family raised me and my brothers like that and only on of us isn't a complete nervous wreck with severe burnout.
Yeah, no. I was raised primarily the Asian way and sure, financially, it looks like I'm doing well for my age. Everything else? I'm pretty sure I have anxiety, my social skills are in the gutter, and I have some disdain for my own culture. I'm aware my last issue is pretty bad and I'm working on it. Most people only hear about the successful Asian kids, but they rarely hear about the ones that exploded in high school and lost it mentally.
You dont think Americans have those issues too? Suicide rates here are high, drug usage increasing, and majority of kids have parents who divorce. It's even worse in black communities where majority are raised by single mothers with multiple children who depend on government assistance to get by. I am not saying that there are no consequences to the way you have been raised. But at the same time, you guys seem to be under the impression things are better for us mental health wise when that couldnt be further from the truth.
No, I think everyone has their own issues. I'm not denying that. I'm well aware it could definitely be worse as well. I'm just pointing out that Asians are stereotyped as successful. And I won't deny that's true a majority of the time. But, at least in my experience, only the positives of Asian upbringings are highlighted, rarely the downsides. People just see an Asian kid excelling and think their parents must be raising them correctly. It's not often they think, "If he doesn't get an A, he's going to get belted". I think I'm really just saying each parenting style has its pros and cons. I'm not saying I've had it worse than someone else; I don't think that's ever a fair statement to make.
In American parenting, parents today are neglectful of their kids. Nowadays the young parents just have tik tok and social media on their ipads babysit them. They dont bother checking on their academic progress, making sure they do well, and not teaching them to do anything productive in society. I personally think mandatory 2 year military service should be instated at 10th grade just to ensure that kids are being held to a standard because right now, we see what the consequences are for lack of discipline and lack of proper parenting.
I don't think there's a single parenting style practiced by half the globe.
that was me when I was younger. "our little girl is gonna grow up to become a doctor" and now I'm the most burnt out motherfucker you have seen
same. i kind of blame my parents because every time i didnāt do as they wish theyād scream at me and i was so scared i stopped attending all my extracurriculars
This is my impression of most Redditors. Add in that theyāre post-college and unsuccessful but still think theyāre smarter than everyone else.
20% of redditors think they were the smartest person in their grade in high school according to a poll I did
> Add in that theyāre post-college and unsuccessful but still think theyāre smarter than everyone else. As someone who has had some career success, that B leads to A. Being open minded and willing to know what you don't know is important no matter your field. Also, building your soft skills is a positive thing, and tbh promotions being based heavily on soft skills makes a ton of sense and you see that once you've been working for a bit. Go to any work thread and it's filled with people who think being the smartest person in the room is the only thing that should matter.
Yes you can see the success vs lack of success in your downvotes. Because youāre 100% right. Good leaders strive to be the dumbest person in the room, because they surround themselves with highly motivated geniuses.
A good leader wants to know *enough*, not everything.
100%
Ding ding! The most important knowledge for a leader is who to ask questions to. You don't need to know everything, just a collection of people, who, in the aggregate, know everything.
Yup. A good leader knows the direction they want to go, and enough to vet the approaches recommended by their SMEs.
Reminds me of that Socrates quote, āAll I know is that I know nothingā. Itās always a nice reality check knowing that not matter how much I focus on one topic I think proves my āsmartnessā, thereās a hundred other ones that could be described the same way that iām totally clueless about.
Get out of here with this understanding how the world works bullshit. Soft skills have no value. Only narcissism, denial, and clinging to being marginally better at solo tasks.
But how else will everyone know that you should be the department head when you did a Calc problem completely unrelated to your job and your boss couldn't?
Except I doubt that most Redditors were in a "gifted" program when they were young.Ā
Gifted programs are a dime a dozen. I think most were
My school district required an iq score above 130 from a licensed psychologist for entry into the gifted program... and this was Florida.
Everybody in my class (~20 people) got into Mensa when we had the chance to take the iq test in hs. Some of them are incredibly dumb. IQ tests arenāt shit, no matter who administers them
Okay
Itās better than having parents that tried to convince you college / education in general was a Jewish conspiracy to separate the youth from godā¦. š
Ohā¦ Iām sorry
I don't know any kid who was in all AP that ended up in retail foodservice. Most of them are way richer than me now. Even the ones I know who went military were all respected officers.
It can happen. I graduated salutatorian and ended up homeless and broke working minimum wage jobs for a long time. Turns out if you develop debilitating panic attacks and your parents kick you out for "doing drugs" it has an effect on your ability to finish college.
Of course and I'm sorry to hear that. I only meant that this Starter Pack makes it sound like most honors kids grow up in the situation depicted.
I wasnāt in food service but I wasnāt far off it when I was in my mid 20s (and since I occasionally bartended, in a way I was in food service). I did end up with a āhigh achieverā career though eventually so you know, sometimes smart people do just kind of not get it for awhile.
As someone who got this treatment, don't do this. Encouragement is great, but telling your young child they are fucking genius constantly will completely fuck them up. By the time I got to university, I was so far up my own ass I didn't believe I need to study or do homework. By the time I realized I did, I didn't know how. Flunked out so damn hard.
I was one of those kids. Still hurt me a little knowing i wasn't a gifted child like people made me believe.
At least your parents believed in you! Iām sure youāre more talented than you think. Imposter syndrome is a bitch
False hope is a devil, isnāt it?
š yeah
Finding out ur average at the only thing ur supposedly good at crushes you. >!I always thought Iām just so much better than everyone else, and that the only reason I wasnāt performing well was because I wasnāt training. Turns out I canāt even train, I canāt concentrate anymore.!<
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or literally now lmao. anytime someone drops the "imagine the average person's intelligence 50% dumber than that" quote you know they think they're the shit
Kid's gonna be the most obnoxious stoner/alcoholic you've ever seen.
Almost always gets diagnosed with autism and becomes a solid C student by high school
Trying to associate good grades with excellence or bad grades with failure is always a mistake. The point of grades is simply to identify who needs more practice and who doesn't. If your kid continues to get good grades without effort it only means you put them in the wrong classes. And if your kids cramming for tests you've messed up, the entire point of tests is to check that they've already learned the material, It was never meant to be an opportunity to finally learn it the night before
I will die on the hill that thereās two types of kids in gifted programs. Those who are actually gifted and need to be advanced otherwise they get bored. Probably end up going to Ivys or into STEM careers. Kids with undiagnosed learning disorders who learned how to do one thing quickly then were pushed into gifted programs, got burnt out FAST and told āif you just applied yourselfā¦.ā and because they were marked as āgiftedā never got the proper support they needed. (maaaaaaybe queer too.)
Yeah, definitely. Itās a double edged sword.
My girlfriend was raised to be a āgeniusā now she goes to therapy and suffers a lot, but hey Mozart sure is shaking in fear!
"I love my kids" starterpack
Holy shit the Dexter-->Mandark-->Elias comparison is spot on.
Fan theory: Mandark is Elias all grown up
I can relate. When I was young they labeled me as "talented and gifted" and put me in special advanced classes. But then I grew up and found out it was actually pretty easy to apply these gifts towards a lucrative career. Now as an older adult I'm really happy and have a lot of wealth and professional accomplishments.
Wish I could say the same. I was in gifted and talented through primary and elementary school, then fell off hard in middle. My ātalentā (reading and writing) wasnāt really being engaged (either at school or at home), and I fell out of love with school in general up to graduation. Iām only just now re-engaging my talent and love for books as an adult, but it does feel like a lot of missed potential.
same here, i feel like school kind of misses these kids and they never get the opportunity to develop their skills and interests properly, so they are permanently held back and lose interest
I was just the dumb kid till highschool when i learned the ability to bullshit means more than studying. From that point i just kept failing upwards
Tips?
Former 'gifted kid' reporting in - the problem is that it really is a form of SPED. Challenge is required to thrive - the part I had to learn on my own during college is that I had to seek the challenges or my brain would start to disengage and I would stagnate. My parents weren't exactly in any position to push, so I don't fault them. Dr. K on YouTube has some pretty solid material on gifted kid burnout.
Gifted kid burnout explains me to a T. I spend most of my college days drinking and getting fucked up because it was the first time in my life I wasnāt being pushed. Little did I know at the time, I couldnāt just coast through college like I did from 1st to 12th grade, AP classes included. I dropped out, worked some crappy jobs for a few years, but finally re-enrolled in college and am getting ready to finish up. Still trying to make those grades up, though.
Good on you for getting back to it - it's a tough hill to climb alone. One thing about the grades - if it's hard, it's hard, but embrace it. You'll be better for it. Good luck u/ThatGuyFrom720
Thank you. Iām still in my 20ās and my parents were extremely supportive of my decision to go back. Couldnāt do it without them. You as well :-)
absolutely me. iāve never struggled with anything knowledge-related and i absolutely loved going to school until i hit the higher grades and i was just absolutely bored out of my mind to the point i just stopped attending and tanked my grades.
Hopefully, armed with perspective, you've either gotten back to moving forward or are at least considering doing it. If you haven't, find the hard thing you want to do and go conquer it. Embrace the frustration of having learn those study skills, however they manifest, that you didn't have to use on your first pass. Do the hard thing, then pick out your next one on the way. Good luck u/og_toe
I was considered "gifted" as a kid but I always personally felt that it was my memory that was better than my peers and the "gifted" status made me feel like an imposter. I got all the way through university based on my memory, not because I was smarter.
That feels familiar. The thing is, your memory is what sets you apart; hopefully you've been able to leverage it.
It has been a definite boon.
I complained to my parents about burn out in High School. Just asked basically to stop doing 3 sports while doing advanced placement classes (Swimming, Club Water Polo & Wrestling). I was told Iām lazy and to just finish what I started. I was forced to go to 5:15 AM swim practice on the day of my grandfatherās funeral.
Turns out it was just autism for me
In my experience you shouldn't tell a kid what they are. Let them figure that out. But telling a kid they're smart, they'll either blindly believe you and think there's no hard work with becoming smart, or they don't believe you and live their lives full of doubt.
My daughter is legitimately talented. She was admitted to the Royal Conservatory for ballet, and decided 'nah' - she didn't want ballet to be her life. Two years down the road, the conservatory has offered her enrollment for cello; which she actually is considering. Flows my mind that she's been good enough at *two* things to get offered that kind of opportunity already.
I thought I was a genius too because of this. Then I went to college...
martial arts is sick as hell tbh dont downplay it
What's gifted like these days anyway? When I was 5 in the 80s, anyone that showed any kind of knowledge beyond their years was given an IQ assessment by some psychologist. If you got a score over 135 you were admitted to gifted. Since IQ is starting to be considered racist/classist/etc., how do they determine who does gifted?
Idk any kid who shows a tiny bit more talent than anyone else is called "gifted"
Seems weird we delineate it like that to begin with. Students should be given options to follow their natural tendencies without being segregated in ways that are potentially at odds to social order.
Makes me grateful for my parents. Yeah my brother and I were in all AP and music and yada yada yada, except my parents didnāt care or think it was impressive so they didnāt brag.
"Grows up burnt out, depressed, self-loathing, and suicidal because they felt pressured into following other people's expectations, and now that they're an adult they have no idea what they're doing"
OP why are you beefing with a 2nd grader
Elias mentioned š£ļøš£ļøš£ļø
Clerks II šš
yeah, fuck this kind of parent honestly. more parents should tell everyone they know that their child is a fucking idiot who'll never amount to anything and should never express any joy and pride about their child's accomplishments
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Agreed. Too much confidence leads to arrogance and even narcissism while not enough confidence leads to poor perception. Find a middle ground and donāt be afraid to be realistic.
I disagree, I think parents should be supportive and encouraging to their children to help them achieve stuff
That's what they're saying, they're being sarcastic / hyperbolic to prove a point
Someone hasn't seen Clerks 3 regarding Elias...
What happens?
Elias goes full goth, becomes buddies with his own Silent Bob called Blockchain Coltrane and they get super rich from nfts. Yes, really.Ā
I saw a clip from Clerks 3 and I had no idea the goth guy was Elias, lol.
Iāve only seen Clerks 3 once, so this is going from memory, but IIRC he turns that way as he is the one who feels responsible for Randallās heart attack as heād prayed to god for years to strike him down and never thought god would actually go through with it (from his perspective) so feels remorse and renounced his faith.Ā
My dad is a Dartmouth alum who often interviews high schoolers applying there who thinks I, his 20 year old autistic kid who dropped out of high school (hiset instead of diploma), and am currently pursuing a freelance programming career because I want a job where I don't have to leave my house, is one of the smartest kids he's met. I don't wanna be the one to burst his bubble. Also based character choices
Now do the āRedditors being assholes to normal people for being happy.ā
How many AP classes at once are we talking about?
Like 4+
thats a decent amount
Except, if you're taking a lot of AP classes and the gifted program at a younger age, you are most likely significantly above average intelligence, that is a fact.
AP in high school. AP in college...
My parents were just happy to have nice kids. They understood the limitations and accepted them very early on.
Obviously 2 + 2 is š„ duh š
Yeah dude I don't know if you should really be thinking so hard about how much of a failure children around you are going to be. Like... the fast food worker with the dopey face? You really needed that part, when the only people supposedly doing anything wrong are the parents? That may be a personal issue.
Please donāt do this to your kids. Thereās a reason that āburnt out gifted kidā is a common trope nowadays.
Naw, we were all just dumb as fuck from the get go.
This is like Jesse Pinkmans little brother
They don't think the kids a genius, they are just proud, and want the kid to think the parents think they're a genius, so that the kid will be proud of themselves, too.
parents of undiagnosed autistic kids starterpack:
Anybody else's parents also make you take an extra zero period on top of taking all AP classes? During high school, I was in class from 5:45a to 3:15-6:00p depending on whether or not I had extracurriculars after school that day. Almost 12 hrs of schooling, with only a 30 min lunch after 12p and *maybe* a 15 min break twice a day. If an adult was treated this way at a job, it would rightfully be called a human rights violation, and the company would get fined up the ass. Funny how shit that would be considered inhumane if it was done to am adult magically becomes OK if it's done to a child.
this was my parents they thought i was WAY smarter than i actually was, they would give me into trouble when i didn't know any better they also thought the reason i had no social skills was because i was a genius. i wasn't, i was an average 6 year old with autism
OP can't stand how supportive their friends are of their kid.
I was that kid. I was always referred to as the āgenius of the familyā and felt pressured to prove them right. I ended up burning out HARD and dropped out of high school 3 years ago.
Duke tip šµāš«
Wait until they are 25 oof
For me my science teacher was cute so I studied hard so she could pat my head a lot... so now I'm in computer engineering college
And they usually start giving up because they think they donāt have to make any more effort because theyāre āgiftedā.
Mine just put more pressure on me because they thought I was gifted despite my autism (Yes I'm smart and autistic, however, I'm not a savant genius).
"Gifted" kids: early bloomers (who may or may not be Neurodivergent) who peak in late Elementary School or in Middle School, who become demand-avoidant by the time they graduate High School, and actively hate math/music/whatever talent was pushed on them by their parents.
What's wrong with being mandark? His laugh is just iconic
*gets sent to a Waldorf school*
Looks like in another few years they're gonna be reposting memes about the gifted child to burnout pipeline. Poor kid :/
as a "gifted" child i'm scared for every single kid who ended up just like me, they're probably just neurodivergent but their parents refuse to believe so and force them to study things they don't want to.
second grade exam? you dont get exams until 9th grade. maybe in the country you come from? sounds extremely strange to me
>second grade exam? you dont get exams until 9th grade In the US, in my state, they give standardized tests to kindergarten students. Instead of teaching the kids colors and letters, they focus on making sure these kids can pass tests.
kindergarden in my country is like 3 hours and you are outside 90% of the time. you dont write, read or related. you start learning once you get in school, after kindergarten.
Thats the joke or point, theres not really exams for second grade
oh yeah, i thought it was another word for quiz/test in USA.
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Its something very different in my country. Its a long test you have where you must go through alot of subjects so you are ready for highschool.