How Being A Gifted Kid Affects You As An Adult

This is an interesting one, and it's disputed. Kids designated as gifted have long been thought to be more at risk of emotional issues, and to carry some of them into adult life, because of various factors: the National Association for Gifted Children, for instance, identifies "heightened awareness, anxiety, perfectionism, stress, issues with peer relationships, and concerns with identity and fit" as potential serious issues. Being told you're carrying around a brainload of excellence, and the attendant performance and social issues, logically may leave people more open to concerning problems.

But Dr. Joan Freeman, one of the world's leading experts on gifted children, raises a few reasons why this might happen: teachers and parents pay more attention to gifted kids and their potential for "emotional disturbance," and "poor emotional balance" is often part of the way we assess how gifted kids might be. She calls the idea that gifted kids might be less emotionally well-adjusted than others a "dangerous stereotype." While a few issues, like hypersensitivity and a pervasive belief in perfectionism, may cause worries into later life, they don't dictate the majority of experience in gifted kids.

Dr. James Webb, writing on the disagreement for the National Register Of Health Service Psychologists, does point out that various studies have found links between childhood giftedness and adult depression, anxiety, relationship issues, and eating disorders. But he also highlights research about what characteristics might mean gifted kids grow up to be troubled adults: a high level of internal drive, serious emotional intensity and moral concern, and a mismatch between physical and emotional development are among them.

Gifted adults may become frustrated with slower peers, ask too many questions, get annoyed when they're bored, find the ignorance of others irritating, and have too many interests (we'll get to that one in a minute). Whether or not you grew from a gifted kid into a troubled adult, then, is a matter of a bunch of factors, from your home life to the precise calibration of your talents.

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