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A lot of damage is done by parents telling their kids that they are special and gifted.
I know they mean to be kind. It's just that reality always turns up like the Kool-aid man.
the "smart and gifted" to "burnout" to "neurodivergence diagnosis" pipeline
it frustrates me to no end that society still hasn't realized we need to identify diagnoses earlier, it fucking SUCKS to figure it out after puberty and having to spend years internalizing that you're not a failure, you just need to do things differently.
Good thing my mom balanced it out by also calling me a worthless piece of shit.
You might be a worthless piece of shit, but you're our worthless piece of shit 🫂
I made the best grades in my year for nearly every year of my schooling from 1st grade up through junior year of high school. My dad would tell me that I was smart and gifted, and he would expect straight A's on my report card. If I ever brought home less than a perfect score I'd be punished for it.
My mom, though, always told me that gap was an illusion. Sure, I was a smart kid, but I wasn't doing anything anyone else couldn't. If I could do it so could they, and vice versa. If I wanted to keep that lead I needed to work for it - but more importantly that taught me not to feel superior to the other kids. I wasn't that special, I just learned new info easily.
I think that was really important for my developing empathy and maybe more smart kids need to hear that.
Growth mindset vs fixed mindset. If you tell a kid they're smart when they succeed and they don't get an A, they think "oh, this means I'm actually not smart and I never will be. If some people can be naturally smart, I guess I just naturally suck as a person". If you tell a kid that hard work gets As and they get a B, they think "oh, I just need to work harder and try again next time".
Would be great if we weren't constantly stack ranking kids. Humans perform better as a team than as a bunch of atomized at-each-others-throats individuals.
"Gifted" often just means "received enough calories, stimulation, and affection growing up that you developed to your full human capacity".
It can't be understated how many people are on the spectrum from neglected to abused, in a way that drastically inhibits development. But we rephrase this immiseration as "normal", then treat the kids of wealthier parents as "special" because they hit basic human milestones, possibly while cultivating an unusual talent or hobby with abundant free time.
The gulf is real, but manufactured. And once you exit primary school, you get rebucketted into Normals and Specials again... and again and again and again.
That's what drives people insane, more than anything. The constant fear of being outside the next wall. The fear of abuse and neglect that comes with it.