Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Active Threads This Week

Nice to hear from you again, amateur!

Apologies in advance--I'm probably going to miss some of your questions in my response. If so, and if they are critical ones, please point them out to me.

What I hear from your post is a few big questions: does giftedness decline with age/has your personal giftedness declined with age? Is it too late to "fulfill your potential"? What should you do with your life now?

Obviously, no one here is going to be able to comprehensively answer these questions, especially the last one, but let me give the first two a try. But forewarning--the answer is going to be yes, no, and it depends!

1. Does giftedness decline with age?

Keeping in mind that these are group data, the data on measures of cognition pretty consistently have found that certain measures of cognition do decline after childhood, others increase, and still others fluctuate or remain relatively stable. Some of the cognitive skills that decline on objective measures include working memory and fluid reasoning, which both reach their peaks on objective measures (e.g., the WAIS and Standford-Binet cognitive measures) around age 23 or so. From there, they decline slowly until about age 30, slightly less slowly until age 40ish, go through a steeper decline shortly after that, and then settle into a slow decline into old age, with dropoffs from there on out associated mainly with specific disease processes. Research has also identified aspects of intelligence that continue to develop with age, mainly in the category of what is called crystallized intelligence, and what Sternberg identifies as wisdom, both of which describe types of cognition that utilize accumulated knowledge and experience, integration of those accumulations, and the ability to recognize and act on large-scale patterns that unfold over lengthier time periods and more diverse contexts. This type of cognition generally increases over the lifespan, with the steepness of incline flattening mainly secondary to other types of cognitive decline late in life.

The net result of curves for these two large classes of intelligence (fluid, generally declining throughout adulthood, and crystallized, generally increasing throughout adulthood), is that the most productive years of life intellectually are the middle years (not a revolutionary finding!), when both types of cognition are relatively strong.

I will also add that executive functions, which I think we have previously discussed, typically grow throughout the developmental period, reaching a stable plateau around the late 20s, or more like 30ish for learners with neuroatypicalities that affect frontal lobe development (such as ADHD). As a side note, one of the benefits of later frontal lobe maturation appears to be better retention of creative-divergent thinking skills into adulthood, which may explain the overrepresentation of neuroatypicalities among creatives, entrepreneurs and game-changers in various fields. Post-30s improvements in EF performance are likely more due to increasing crystallized intelligence (acquired compensatory skills).

2. Is it too late?

First, what are incredible things? I read an article recently (linked elsewhere in this forum) lambasting gifted education as a waste of time in part because "only" 12% of GT students had achieved what the author described as eminence (terminal degrees, patents, tenure, startups, etc.). I had two immediate thoughts: 12% is a whole lot better odds than the general population, so quoting this statistic as a measure of the failure of GT programming is hardly a convincing argument! But more importantly, why did she presuppose that there was no eminence in becoming an unknown but effective partner, parent, caregiver or friend? If we each think back to a key and transformational figure in our lives, on whom we reflect with gratitude, how often is that person conventionally "eminent"? Aren't most of the critical people in each of our lives relative unknowns to the rest of the world, but extraordinary to us?

A little personal anecdote: elsewhere I have shared that I too was a serial degree-collector into my young adulthood, as a result of which I finally found myself enrolled in an educational institution among my age-peers for the first time on my third round through graduate school--in the field in which I have ultimately remained professionally. Does this mean that I had wasted the previous years of education? After all, one might say that the years gained through radical acceleration were offset by meandering through a number of different fields for an equivalent number of years. I did not start developing expertise in my current field until I was comparable in age to persons (college-educated, granted, so not exactly normatively average) most would consider to be lower in cognition. I did not even begin foundational studies in my field until then (having previously had exactly one intro-level survey course). And now? I certainly won’t claim to be famous, but most people who know my work describe it in very positive terms. More importantly, I do something I love doing, which has meaning to me, and which I can see benefiting others. I have satisfying relationships of mutual respect and affection, professionally and personally. Have I achieved anything that would make the 24-hour news cycle? Nope. But I’m pretty sure that the people who benefit directly from my work experience it as more impactful than anything on the world stage.

Your journey will, naturally, be different. I give you this little snippet from my life simply to illustrate that there are many paths, schedules and approaches by which a multipotential individual such as yourself may grow, develop, and find a place in life rich in value, purpose and relationship. The narrative thrust on us by many elements of our society suggests that there are only a few entry points to “success”--but this is a narrow, rigid and limited view of both success and entry points--and clearly contradicted by the many persons, both well-known and little-known, who have started new and creative chapters at different stages of life. (google famous (musical instrumentalist of your choice) who started later in life) (consider any career military serviceperson who starts over with an entirely new career after 20 years in the military, or stay-at-home parent who starts a new vocation after the children are grown)

All the best.

I do feel like parents and educational institutions have responsibility to provide children opportunities. I was not afforded those opportunities.

And a smart person knows his limits. Try try again if you feel like the likelihood of a favorable outcome matches the effort you are putting in. Risk vs reward.

But it is not the same. Adult neuroplasticity is less than childhood neuroplasticity. Ergo, you have LESS talent than you used to have. You can choose to use those lesser talents towards whatever end you wish.

I think some amount of indignation may be warranted, though. I believe that everything that at first appears binary is a spectrum. Morality is a spectrum. The extent to which you have an identity of victimhood and resentment is a choice, and I don't think either extreme (zero resentment or utter resentment) is optimal.

My advice for PG adults may be in three parts:

This is useful. Having an internal locus of control and getting out into the world is important and these are all thoughts that have crossed my mind. I think in the egalitarian society we live in, there's this pervasive sentiment that it all evens out in the end once people reach adulthood.

Not exactly. It's important to know based on precedent. The prototypical example is Euclid's fifth postulate -- it would have been smart to not spend years of your life trying to prove it. Many people wasted their lives on such pursuits.

I am always fine with accomplishing short term goals that take less than a week or so, and have accomplished many such. (They feel meaningless to me because nothing worth doing happens all that quick.) The problem is with long term goals that takes years, which is virtually anything worth striving for, and the accompanying uncertainty and opportunity cost.

Wikipedia states he's a Christian apologist. In general, the whole heavily Christian-influenced framing of your response makes me unsure of your prior beliefs that are probably entering the suggestions you propose. (Not saying it's a bad thing since everyone has their own philosophy -- just something that I noted.)

and
Based on the contents of your post, it seems you may be struggling with the concept that as an adult, life is about internal locus of control. You own your life. There is an old saying, "Bloom where you are planted."

YIKES! While this sentence may just be a result of hurried writing, it seems to convey an air of superiority, lacking an interest in mutual benefit. Many people work hard to earn a tryout for an opportunity. When competing, many people with great talent and potential may not be chosen... yet... on that day... in that moment. If at first you don't succeed, try try again.

College is NOT late; many gifted and talented people did not have opportunities until they were in college. You may not be a "prodigy" but that does not mean that you cannot use your talents at your present age. Unless you prefer an identity of victimhood and resentment. The choice is yours.

My advice for PG adults may be in three parts:

1) Stop THINKing along the lines of:
1a) comparing yourself with others ("I still present very differently than most of my peers." "I seem to retain far more from conversations I've had with people and things I've seen and read and synthesize it all differently than anyone I know")
1b) defining yourself ("unusually curious, quite unfocused..." etc)
1c) overreliance on guidance as to what society expects ("what one can or can not do at a certain age..." "make the kind of living that people expect from you once you're out in the world")
1d) thinking about thinking about thinking

2) Start to emphasize DOing ("...I have no idea what is possible or not possible for me specifically...") It is up to YOU to find out. Apply yourself. Set goals. Accomplish them. Maybe start today: List your degrees. For each degree, list SEVERAL jobs you COULD do. Research the salary range(s) of each. Write down your findings, including sources used. Ferret out growth opportunities for each job. Which of the jobs provide a wage which YOU can support yourself on? Which of the jobs might provide more than a self-supporting wage, and might allow you to afford a bit of lifestyle YOU would enjoy? And/or to position yourself for greater opportunities? If being a novelist appeals to you, consider that a hobby pursued in your personal time outside of work, at least until you have completed a manuscript draft. Have you participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)? Although it closed in 2025, a few alternatives appear to be emerging, including Novel November (NovNov), by ProWritingAid.

3) Consider whether you typically add positive or negative to each interaction.
3a) Possibly of interest: Carol Dweck, "Mindset"... especially use of the word "...yet."
3b) Possibly of interest: the concept of presenting yourself as a positive asset in an "elevator pitch" (typically winnowed down to 11 seconds). Similar to this (but a longer exercise) is the concept of "rewrite your story for positivity and happiness."
3c) Possibly of interest, related to "I have had a religious childhood where I was forced to believe so many stupid things...": the factual and evidence-based investigative work of cold-case detective J. Warner Wallace.