Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Do our kids burn out?

Even if you are one of the very best, the rewards are still meager absent intrinsic enjoyment of the activity. The corollary is that, with intrinsic enjoyment, being "simply" very, very good and not the best can still be thoroughly enjoyable and rational, and create positive contributions to society to boot. Here, for example, I'm thinking of high quality PhD scientists who do not pursue tenure track for some reason and instead go into industry.

You need more than sleep and sustenance to avoid hypertrophy.

Perhaps it reveals my implicit assumption--and lifestyle preferences--that I read hypertrophy and immediately thought, "Now why would anyone want to avoid muscle gain?" Guess I'm showing my bias!

The "Pareto principle" which I know from engineering, manufacturing, and agile design where 80% of the results come from 20% effort. Nicely visualized by the power curve and the bend in the knee where effort becomes more palpable.

Though Pareto efficiency (based on my three minute Wikipedia expertise) could be relevant if one were to consider a person as an economic system and facets of life as players in the system; then you are allocating time and effort amongst varous life activities. It underlines Dude's and Jon's and others' points regarding balance and effort. But I don't know much about economics.

Er-- some of the very best in some fields are in industry. LOL!


The rest of it, ITA.

It's not that one necessarily couldn't (at least hypothetically) be "the best" and STILL find that the opportunity costs associated with some pursuit were excessive anyway, if the motivation to pursue it were non-intrinsic. It is also true that motivation is non-static-- so for example, I'm not highly motivated to do (anymore-- nearly 25 years later) what I earned my PhD in. My intrinsic interests have shifted. My DH is another example-- he makes a very nice income doing something that he is no longer intrinsically very motivated to do-- but he is certainly something of a rock star in the context of his employment in spite of that ambivalence, so one can be "that good" without being intrinsically motivated, but it's kind of soul-crushing. DH has compelling reasons to keep doing what he's doing, and the perspective that he controls his level of commitment, neither of which most children CAN have. Probably not what any good parent would like their child to recall as a part of childhood, anyway.

Thanks for the clarification; we're on the same page. I've heard of the 80-20 principle, but it never had a name ascribed to it when I encountered it. Glad to learn something from someone in a different domain.

Portia, I haven't had a chance to read all the replies, but re your OP - there are all kinds of possible reasons this particular student might have dropped out of math competitions and gone on to less-than-seemingly-stellar choices in school. Most of us here (I'm guessing) are motivated and driven personalities who typically have similar dreams of what we looked to as markers of success in our own lives as success for our children. Sometimes we dream bigger dreams for them And we're for the most part here sharing and asking questions in support of supporting those dreams. The thing is - as our kids get older, their lives become their own. No matter how high a child's IQ, at some point in time they are going to grow into their own skin and they might or might not follow along the path we've helped chart for them.

I suspect my sibling and I have very similar IQs, and I suspect that our parents IQs were in the same range. All of us are very different personalities and have gone in different directions in our lives.

The first thought that came to my mind (among the 18 million possible reasons) that a child who was extremely successful at math competitions in elementary school might not be a dazzling math superstar a few years later is that we as parents help make possible a lot of the directions our childrens' lives take in elementary school - no matter how able, how driven, how motivated, or how successful our children are - they are still, at that point in our lives, largely dependent on the situations we create for them. They need for us to pay fees, they need for us to drive them places, they often need us to make them aware of opportunities etc. This child might simply have enjoyed math competitions for a few years, then hit puberty or teens or middle school or whatever and realized he'd like to try something different. For instance, my 10 year old is a talented gymnast and she is part of a team that practices for a huge number of hours per week - that's the level of commitment required. She thrived on that schedule for a few years, and she still *mostly* thrives on it, but she's also interested in lots of other sports and other activities, and she's reached an age where she's very aware that her commitment to gymnastics is preventing her free time to pursue those other interests. I wouldn't be surprised at all if she doesn't give up competitive gymnastics at some point in the next few years - not because she doesn't love it, but because she wants to do other things, which is totally unrelated to burning out.

Another possibility is that something happened in this child's family life - what if he lost a parent through divorce, illness, etc? Suddenly the support that enabled him to participate might be gone (financial, parent to drive to competitions etc). Maybe he lost his emotional support with it too. I have *no* idea what happened to this child, just noting that there could have been a billion in one things other than simply burning out due to math competition overload.

So I wouldn't worry about burn out - or predict it. Continue to follow your child's lead wherever their interests are taking them, give them all the possibilities for fun, learning and challenge that you can, and then also freely let them go when they want to move on to something else. In the end, there are going to be so many things in their lives that we simply *can't* control.

Re the story your friend told you, the curious side of me is wondering if you asked her if she knew any details re what happened, or if this was someone she actually knew or just a story she was passing along?

Best wishes,

polarbear

True! The academy doesn't have a monopoly on top talent.

The academy also doesn't pay as well as industry… at least not in my STEM field

polarbear

This is not right. If you are talking about top 0.1%, then that's +3SD to +6SD (or a bit higher) which is a huge range. There's only so much ground that can be made up with effort.