Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion What were you like as a child?

Kikiandkyle, I am exactly the same - as is my dd. I finally found my 'thing' fortunately, but only by chance and not till I was 30. It might not have been the case for you, but what that meant for me was that I had extraordinarily unsatisfying jobs for a long time, working with people I had nothing in common with. Recently I twigged that this could be my reason to ride dd a bit (I was finding it really hard to ride her when I couldn't see the point either). So now what I say to dd about learning the pointless stuff is that doing well with the pointless stuff gives you more options in life and ultimately reduces the amount of time you have to do pointless stuff later on. I'm honest about feeling the same way as her, but I explain my experience and why I wished I had bothered with study earlier.

No idea if that's relevant to your situation, but thought I'd mention it in case it's useful.

Sounds familiar. I enlisted in the Navy in order to pay for college. I came back from a Navy career in computers and enrolled in a couple of IT classes... and quickly discovered they were a giant waste of my time. I knew enough about the field to know that what they were covering had no value in the real world, so why would I bother spending my valuable time and money, just to get a useless piece of paper that said I knew it?

That's when I discovered the power of "or equivalent experience."

My childhood was pretty good and relatively happy.

In elementary school, I didn't have any problem being "gifted" and it really didn't have any impact on my academic achievement, since tests were easy, fun, and I generally got higher grades than my peers. I got to go to another school periodically and spend the day with the other gifted kids, so it was like a weekly field trip. I was annoyed that I didn't get to skip a grade, which was what I wanted to do. I don't remember why I wanted to do that.

In middle school, I was finally in the same school as the kids in the gifted program, so I could spend more time with the people I enjoyed being with. I kept my good elementary school friends. So, this was one of the high points of my life.

I got to move for high school, which was somewhat traumatic for me, although since my father was superintendent (which was why I had to move) it made things both worse and bettter. Took me about two years to really feel comfortable and then I was fine.

Although with respect to high school, my overall purpose was simply to "win" with respect to grades, meaning that my only goal was to get better grades than anyone else. This was only an issue in high school because my parent (particularly my father) were convinced that those grades were all that mattered, because those were the grades that determined class rank. I had lots of fun with friends, activities, such as band, school plays, travel, debate, etc. Unfortunately, I got overloaded and basically burnt out.

I also went through my "life has no purpose or meaning" period during late high school, so I kind of remember that period as some sort of existential despair period.

I really didn't have an interested in being in college, but I figured that the last thing that I wanted to do was to have to work in a job. However, I was pretty much exhausted from high school, so I went from doing everything (including playing computer games and reading fiction) to doing nothing except playing computer games and reading fiction. Since my parents essentially provided all of the underlying structure in my life, I pretty much did nothing because no one was making me do anything. I had a full scholarship, which I had to keep a 3.2 (?) to maintain, which I did. It was difficult for me to form friendships, socialize, and get involved in college activities because looking back on it, I was very immature for my age and lacked fundamental social skills.

I never really ended up with a "thing" that I have an interest in doing with myself. Went to law school to avoid work for another three years and to try to get some sort of "elite" degree that would serve as a ticket to wealth. At the time, I figured that you needed several million dollars in the bank to accomplish anything of value. Got a job and realized that I was no longer in a position to play computer games and read fiction all the time. By that time, my work ethic and whatever time management and organizational skills I had were long gone, being that I had spent the last 8 years doing what amounted to "nothing". It's quite overwhelming to go from doing nothing to being expected to perform at a relatively high level.

At the same time, I got married and immediately started having kids, which adds it's own stress.

This was all colored by the fact that my mother died of cancer and my father had a stroke and I got fired from my family for a bit when I was in college/law school. So this has something to do with my situation, but it's more my lack of psychological resilience and poor coping skills than anything else.

At this point, with respect to my kids, I'm not sure that putting in effort or doing well in school means much of anything because you kind of end up in the dull, gray world of adulthood, where you simply endure life. Childhood was fun. Anything past age 17 was not so fun. I think that's mostly because I never developed any idea of what I wanted to go do with myself, durable social or career networks. I often have approximately zero interest in your career or your day to day life.

My life is functional, but I have no interests, friends outside of my family, real underlying purpose, or any direction. I spend much of my time bored. Being that I practice law, I also spend much of my time angry.

One moral of the story is that college and professional degrees don't really accomplish anything on their own.

Another moral of the story is that you should not let your kids play computer games and read 100% of the time when they should be out actually living life, even if they are in college.

Interesting thread.

We moved a lot and I always associated any difficulty "fitting in" with being the new kid -- not with being gifted. Although the frequent moves were traumatic at the time, I credit them with making me more adaptable and strengthening my social skills. Like Annette, I am sure I "dumbed myself down" to a degree.

I taught myself to read before I was three and was an avid reader of anything and everything throughout childhood, including the cereal box. But I didn't take it upon myself to learn other things on my own. I was happy to just go above and beyond with the class assignments and was an obedient "A" student.

By my teens, I really got into theater and hung out with the theater kids in junior high and high school. The junior high years were the worst. That was the one time I was labeled as a "geek" and treated like an outcast, but even then I had one or two close friends (who were not gifted). In high school, I was generally socially accepted. I was voted "most likely to succeed" which translated to "smart kid that isn't despised" at my school. And I dated guys in college -- don't know why my parents let me get away with that, in retrospect.

I went to a challenging college and was surprised that classes seemed to come easier to me than to others. Later, I graduated at the top of my class in law school and eventually became a successful partner in a large law firm. After a dozen years, I tossed that career aside to become a stay-at-home mom. I sort of felt like there was nowhere else for me to go with the job and my "mom" job felt more important and fulfilling to me.

My DH was also gifted, but also athletic. He very much dumbed himself down, identified with the jocks, and still would rather throw a ball than engage in intellectual pursuits. Which makes it even more irritating when he beats me at Scrabble, but I digress...

Our DD is like my DH in that she enjoys sports and is not the bookworm that I was. For that reason, I don't fear her not fitting in so much as I worry about her dumbing herself down (and underestimating her own potential). So many potential pitfalls!

Dude I was always able to get by with 'equivalent experience' in Europe, here it doesn't work. But that might be because I'm in Finance & Accounting and CPAs are a dime a dozen.

JonLaw I think it's interesting that we had completely opposite experiences in our childhoods, education and career and still ended up feeling the same about life as adults. I wonder if either of us would feel the same if our lives were swapped.

We moved around so much when I was in primary school that I didn't have the chance to assess myself against a constant peer group. I enjoyed the moving. I always made friends easily, and never had any difficulties doing well with the academic side. I started reading early. The first passion I remember was international folk/fairy stories, but by 11/12 I was desperately keen on biographies, science fiction, and massive romance novels (Anna Karenina, Gone with the Wind). I was always good at maths. I had a silly and sometimes irreverent sense of humour, and was never in a *nerdy* clique.

The family settled down, deliberately, for the high school years. I had a small, steady group of friends, and didn't stand out in any way. I was bored witless. I skipped class whenever I could, didn't study, didn't hand in anything I could avoid. And so my marks were bad. Not interested in school + bad marks clearly meant that I wasn't very bright. At the same time, I was increasingly aware that the things I was interested in were not the same things that other kids were interested in, though I did my best to keep this covered up. So not very bright + strange and boring. Which left me in a bad place. Back in the days when I'd never heard of depression, let alone that it could be helped.

University was a revelation - challenging questions, independent study. Somehow I didn't have any issues learning study skills, as some have mentioned - apparently motivation was enough and I did very well. I didn't socialise much though - depression had changed me from social to extremely shy. But I got past it eventually, and came out armed with the knowledge that I'm great at studying and even have to tone down workaholic tendencies.

(Unfortunately the discovery came too late. Because I didn't have the high school marks to get into one of the sought-after degrees, and had never thought I was *that* kind of person, I ended up doing literature and philosophy. These days I am in a frustrating job working, for the most part, with rather thick people who think I'm strange and boring.)

very interesting thread.

I was a middle child in a group of 7 where really everyone was very smart though we varied widely in how well we did in school, socially, etc. I was always 99th percentile on all the standardized testing, however I think folks saw my work in reading/writing as more obviously 'gifted'. I did the tag classes, got to take french in 7th grade and so on, really wonderful classes actually. I was labeled as very verbal, when in fact I am most comfortable and interested when I have a logic problem to ponder. Conduct was never ever an issue. I just did whatever would keep my overwrought parents from stressing out even more than they already had to, for the other 6 kids.

We went to a good elementary and a very good high school for girls, however even this was a breeze. College was harder and I did shift around a lot, finally deciding to get a degree in art because the work was fun and the people were very interesting. I met my husband in college, also an art major.

I have ended up in the computer field, well paid, and almost every day a new logic problem comes my way, as well as an opportunity to polish my people skills (apparently no one else at the office has time to polish theirs!). This confidence in my abilities has been a long time in coming, due to early labels that others applied which took a long time to fall off.

My husband's story is very different, he is smarter in a lot of ways but lack of people-savvy has been an issue for him more than once. After a very long time in technical theater (set building, etc.), he changed careers and has been in the computer tech field for a while. With the dawn of all sorts of technical courses online and the chance to interact with professors he chooses, he is dipping his toe back into studying and school, and so far is enjoying himself. He is excited to have a job with some interesting prospects. He seems to be coming more into his own after quite a meandering path.

For our kids, we are excited to be finally homeschooling our 11 year old and think about doing the same with our younger child. She is far more capable in the social skills department than almost any of us, but much more of a handful than our oldest; school is a much better fit for her than it ever was for our sensitive and fair-minded boy. We want both of them to be more comfortable with themselves than we were able to be as kids.

For me, school was always too easy. I never studied and yet aced tests. I was identified as GT in first grade and started with a GT program for my school district. In third grade I'd go twice a week by bus to a GT center in the basement of one of the schools. I was in heaven! Games like Risk, Stratego, and chess, computers (including access to the town's mainframes, oops!), other kids just like me. Still I rarely worked but it was fun. In those days (70s) we had open classrooms and contracts, so generally I'd do a pile of work in my workbooks and keep going. I was teased and thought I must be horribly ugly and unpopular. I was talented (not extraordinarily so but good) in music, playing cello, piano, and singing.

In junior high, no more GT program and honors classes bored me. My parents sent me to a top prep school (hated it) and even though I took whatever classes I wanted, I was challenged only in writing, where my teachers actually gave me dings for not being as good as I could be. I finished AP Calc as a junior and took Calc 2 at a local university at night after school my senior fall.

I did my undergrad at Cornell, where I quickly found that I was not nearly as bright as the mostly geniuses around me, but could hold my own. For once I felt normal and no one cared what grades I got or classes I took.

I still have a weird knack for remembering random bits of information, like what cardiac tamponade is. I have two masters degrees and my CPA, but grad school was a grind, like a marathon, and not very fun nor challenging. I'd rather do crosswords and math games all day.

I wish I wasn't so lazy, that I could really do something. I always feel that I'm not living up to my potential, but I suppose that part of that was my parents. I just want my kids to feel how amazing it is to let go and really soar. I've had some moments like that in my life and they were incredible.

I love reading all of these posts! I really identify with a lot of it.

I too was reading before K and was bored by the reading speed of my class. I would always be the first one done a reading assignment and would always read ahead. I didn't find out until much later that my reading speed was 1k+.

Great posts!

Wow. There a people like me out there. I was the kid who teased for being too smart and never did fit in. I never had more than one friend at a time. On the plus side, I never tried to dumb down my abilities. Being an extremely smart girl in the 70s & 80s was very uncool. I dropped out of high school at 15. I took community college classes, boring, got in a little trouble and then headed off the university at 17. The best thing about that was meeting my husband - the only man I'd ever met who was smarter than I was and not at all intimidated by my intelligence. I still think so after 28 years of marriage.

I did not do well at college. My physics professor tried to fail me, and nearly everyone at the private college I was at said women couldn't be engineers. The point of this is that it took me until my 30s to find out what I really wanted to be when I grew up, especially since I am good at many things, and at 46, just 2 months ago, I graduated with my bachelor's degree. I was already successful in the eyes of the outside world, owning a pair of weekly newspapers, but I needed to finish and I desperately needed the mental stimulation. The classes were not challenging, but they were interesting.

My EG and PG children did better than I did, but still struggled. Two of them are in their mid 20s and finally succeeding in college. They were motivated enough to learn how to study and to "suffer fools gladly" (even when they are the professor.) I found this site to help my grandson who lives with me. Our whole family of happy, gifted misfits has decided we need to do more to help him succeed than we did.

Great topic. Brings back a lot of memories - good and bad.