Giftedness is revered in our culture; inborn talent—whether intellectual, athletic, or artistic—ensures that children will be successful, or so many believe. How many times have you heard “Simone Biles was born to be a gymnast” or “Sarah Chang was destined to be a brilliant violinist”? Well, let me clear something up: No one is born to do anything, certainly not to do flips on the floor exercise or play a violin. The only thing that can be reasonably said is that some children are born with certain abilities that can help them excel at a particular activity. However, giftedness is no guarantee of success; the world is full of gifted failures, of “can’t miss kids” who missed. Yet so many parents hope beyond hope that their children are gifted.
Children have also fallen for this myth of giftedness. Whenever I speak to children, I ask them whether they would rather be gifted or hardworking. With almost complete unanimity, children say they would rather be gifted. When you’re gifted, they say, everything is easy. Yet parents and children don’t realize that giftedness can be as much a cross to bear as, well, a gift.
Problems with Giftedness
Because gifted children succeed at an early age with little effort, they often have little ownership of their successes (“I won the match, but I didn’t even try.”). Without ownership, gifted children don’t learn the connection between their efforts and their outcomes, and, without that link, they can’t take pride in their results. They can’t say, “I did well because I worked hard.” They may also develop the belief that they will always succeed in the future without effort.
Another problem with being labeled as gifted is that natural ability is not something that children can control. Gifted children didn’t earn their giftedness. They were just lucky that their parents gave them good genes. Also, when gifted children succeed, they, of course, attribute their success to their ability. Unfortunately, if they attribute their successes to their ability, when they fail—which they inevitably will sooner or later—they may attribute their failures to their lack of ability (they must be stupid or untalented) and there’s nothing they can do about it.
Challenges of Being Gifted
Because they’re gifted, these children experience early success and little or no failure. These children get straight As, compete above their age group in their sport, or take advanced classes in the performing arts. But sooner or later they reach a level where everyone is gifted (e.g., Harvard, the U.S. Olympic Training Center, or Julliard). At this point, giftedness isn’t what makes these children special, because they’re all gifted. And their giftedness isn’t what ultimately determines who becomes truly successful. What separates those children who are simply gifted from those who are gifted and successful is whether they possess the skills to maximize their gifts.
Unfortunately, these children will find that their inborn talent is no longer sufficient to be successful. Because everything comes so easily to them, many never learn the skills—hard work, persistence, patience, perseverance, discipline—that will enable them to become truly successful. Also, at some point, gifted children do something that they’ve never done before—they fail!—and this can be a traumatic experience. Because they have never failed before, they didn’t develop the tools to respond positively to failure. It is common for gifted children to either quit or start to underachieve when first faced with failure.
Redefining Giftedness
The value of giftedness—or the harm it causes—depends on how you and your children look at it. If you and they buy into our culture’s view of giftedness, then, yes, I believe that giftedness will be as much of a burden as a boon. At the same time, giftedness can be a wonderful opportunity for children to accomplish great things.
Here’s what I recommend. If you think your children may be gifted, have them tested by impartial experts—parents are notoriously poor judges of their children’s capabilities. If your children truly are gifted, don’t tell them. There’s no point. Labeling children as gifted places unnecessary pressure on them (“I have to be successful because I am gifted and if I don’t, I will be a complete loser.”). And whether gifted or not, there’s nothing they can do about it anyway. If they find out they’re gifted, tell them that they’re fortunate to have this talent, but it’s only a starting point. Whether it is ever fully realized is entirely up to them.
Erase Giftedness From Your Vocabulary
Instead of emphasizing your children’s giftedness (“You are so smart”), you should talk to them about the attitudes and skills—which are under their control—that they will need to fully realize their talents (“You worked really hard on that project”). Gifted children will only achieve true success if they enjoy the area of their natural talent, choose to pursue their talent, develop the skills necessary to maximize their gifts, and make every effort to fully realize their abilities. If your children aren’t gifted, that’s fine too, because they may have talents that haven’t yet been discovered and, if they learn the right skills, they can still do their best and become successful.
Potential Is a Pipe Dream
Another word that is closely linked to giftedness is potential. I regularly hear parents, teachers, and coaches saying, “She has unlimited potential.” But, as a basketball coach once said, “All potential means is that you haven’t done a darned thing yet.” When children are labeled as having potential, they’re being told that they have something that they might not have and are being saddled with an expectation that they may not be able to fulfill. Saying children have potential is saying that we can predict who will become successful with great certainty. Yet we’re lousy at predicting who becomes successful in school, sports, the arts, or any other achievement area.
Think of all of the “sure things” who were so sure in sports. For example, National Football League teams spend millions upon millions of dollars each year trying to identify which college players will become superstars, yet these efforts often go for naught. Ryan Leaf was considered “a sure thing” as the number-two pick in the 1998 draft by the San Diego Chargers and yet he was a flop from the start and is now out of professional football. To more recent names that fall under this category include Jamarcus Russell and Johnny Manziel.
I recommend that you erase the word potential from your vocabulary as well. Instead, I use the phrase “fully realize their ability.” This means that whatever ability your children were born with—and no one knows how much ability any child has—the goal is to help them do everything they can fully realize that ability.
It’s about Hard Work
Contrary to what many parents think, giftedness is actually overrated as a contributor to success. Dr. Anders Ericcson, a professor at Florida State University, has studied expert performance in sports, music, mathematics, and other activities. He found that so-called innate ability was unnecessary to predict who would become most successful. The single greatest predictor of who would be become successful was how many hours they devoted to the activity. In a nutshell, the more they practiced, the better they were. Focusing on hard work will teach your children essential life skills—persistence, patience, perseverance, discipline, time management, and how to overcome obstacles, setbacks, frustration, and failure—that will enable them to fully realize their ability.
Side Bar: Successful, But Not Gifted
I used to work with a junior sports program in Colorado. There was one athlete on the team, I’ll call him Rick, who was really terrible. Everyone knew it, including Rick himself. Yet Rick was my poster child for the value of hard work. He was the first one at training in the morning and the last one to leave at the end of the day. Rick put in more time in the weight room, took care of his equipment better, and watched videos, read about, and talked to coaches about his sport more than any other athlete on the team. At competitions, Rick was consistently one of the worst finishers on the team. He was never going to be a good performer in the sport. Most people would call him a loser. “What a waste of time for Rick,” they would say, “Why do something that you stink at?” Can you imagine working so hard and never seeing tangible results from your efforts? Thankfully, Rick was raised with a different perspective on his sports participation. He didn’t care about results. He just loved his sport.
Though Rick would never have athletic success, he was learning essential life skills that would serve him well later in life. Sooner or later, Rick was going to find something for which he had an aptitude and, combined with these life skills, he was going to be incredibly successful. After high school, Rick went to a good college, applied everything he learned from his sport to his academics, did extremely well, earned a medical degree, and is now an orthopedic surgeon specializing in sports injuries. Rick, who was the antithesis of gifted in his sport, is what I call a success in every sense of the word.
