Gifted Kid Burnout: a Sudden Slap from Reality

I was admitted into my district's GT program when I was 6 years old, and from kindergarten to about 5th grade, I flourished in school. I got straight A's, participated in every school competition, and never received any complaints from my teachers. Then, I got to middle school, and I slowly found myself working harder and harder to keep my grades in tip-top shape. I struggled with procrastinating on my work until the very last minute, and I stopped participating in other academic activities and extracurriculars.

I was so confused as to why I started struggling in school all of a sudden. After all, I'd never had trouble with anything school-related, so why was I suddenly so demotivated when it came to academics? It may be because of gifted kid burnout (or so I told myself).

Lately, a term coined "gifted kid burnout" has been circulating around social media. Essentially, it’s when a gifted kid who naturally aced everything as a child suddenly starts to struggle with their academics, ultimately failing at keeping their grades up and becoming unmotivated. Not all gifted kids end up in this state, but a majority do, which makes it important to address

Many gifted students do extraordinarily well in the early stages of their education. They do amazing in school, often winning the praise of their teachers and peers from a young age. Everything seems to come naturally for these students; they get good grades on all their assignments, turn in their work on time, and are attentive in class.

However, never having to put effort into anything may cause some gifted kids to have a fixed mindset about their intelligence. People with this mentality feel like being smart is a trait that's set in stone from the moment a person is born and that if someone is smart, they are automatically superior to their peers. Being in a gifted program, where they were constantly told how "special" and "naturally" smart they were, only served to reinforce this notion. Since they were always taught that grades = self-worth (and never had an instance where that principle was challenged), those gifted kids formed their sense of identity around it.

Not only that, but gifted kids also didn't learn how to work hard and recover from a tough situation. They just never found themselves in a place where something didn't come easily to them, so they never developed things like study skills or perseverance. So when these gifted kids eventually had to work harder and harder to achieve success, they realized that they weren't as capable as they were once told; the perfectionism they developed from never having to deal with a problem before suddenly disappeared during a difficult situation. This resulted in a fixed mentality about their intelligence and lack of work ethic, which paved the way for them to ultimately fail.

After being placed in GT, we were put on a pedestal, being told that we were "naturally gifted", and that work would always come easy to us. However, at one point, we struggled when we got to the point where just our smarts weren't enough, and since everything came naturally to us before, we didn't develop the skills to deal with not being able to do it. So, we end up failing because we didn't learn the tools we needed to get through the challenge.

Independent thinking, creativity, and hands-on learning are essential for gifted children. Many GT students will feel more at ease in class if these factors are heavily incorporated into their daily lives, and they may even begin to realize that independent thoughts and ideas are more important than the numbers on their report cards.

At the end, who's fault is it? The gifted student who associated their self-worth with their academic performance? Or was it the gifted program that did set us up to succeed? Regardless of which one, gifted students need to be taught that, despite what they've been told, they're only human.

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Whyman, Tom. “How Bad Should We Feel for Burnt-out Gifted Kids?” The Outline, The Outline, 20 Nov. 2018, theoutline.com/post/6617/gifted-kid-burnout-bullshit-or-wait-for-it-capitalism. Accessed 30 July 2021.

Yu, H. “Gifted Kid Burnout: Breaking Free of ‘Smartness’ - Mindsets - Medium.” Medium, Mindsets, 9 Aug. 2019, medium.com/mindsets/gifted-kid-burnout-breaking-free-of-smartness-

2c29e71a6cd0. Accessed 30 July 2021.