Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion "I'm not good at anything."

It doesn't sound like he is being honest in judgement of himself. "It takes me forever to color something well, compared to most of my class" would be such a different statement from "I'm no good at anything". Getting him to state the truth about himself in a matter of fact way may be a first step towards having him be able to think about the fine motor skills in a more practical way, for example, (I will decide to be happy with my messy handwriting as it would take way too much time to do it nicer. But once in a while I would like to spend the extra time to make a really awesome looking art project).

To get to the point where he can be practical about it is the hard part. If you haven't tried it you could turn it around onto a parent's weakness (bad cook, bad driver, bad at getting places on time, whatever it is) and ask does that make them bad at everything, should the parent feel bad about themselves as a person or mope because of that thing. Humor may help using yourself as a reminder -- "out of the way, here I come, I'm late again, I'm a total failure". If he can eventually smile at you about a weakness of yours he may realize to try to smile at himself about his own.

Not sure what his reading level and interests are, but regarding your very rational point about not just giving up on things we do not immediately excel at: a while back I read the book Outliers which was a pretty fast read and had some commentary about some really talented people and how it may be as much practice as natural talent that made them shine -- a "10,000 hours of practice" rule. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)

Polly