Does anyone have interest in discussing self-confidence in gifted girls as they reach the tween/teen years? My HG 12-year old is verbally and artistically oriented, and vacillates between pride because she has a lot of fans/readers on Wattpad and despondence because "When I look at other people's art, I feel really terrible about my own."

Hm - I have a 12yo as well; she's pretty confident in her writing but vacillates between "i'm bad at math!" despondency and "well, ok, actually I'm not bad at math, but it requires some concentration and I don't want to have to work at it."

Do you think they'd be interested in connecting? Mine is ~35 pages into a book she is writing (!); I don't think she knows about Wattpad so I'm looking forward to sharing it with her! If nothing else I'm sure she'd be up for giving yours a pep talk.

Is she looking at art on Wattpad? My question has nothing to do with your post - I'm just curious! My older dd and her friends used to be very into Wattpad about 3-4 years ago (when they were around 11-12 years old) and I thought it was just writing. OTOH, I never actually looked at it lol!

Re how your dd feels about her own artwork compared to others - this is jmo, but I feel strongly that the best way to grow self-confidence in a young artist (of any persuasion - painting, music, performing, whatever) - is to work with teachers/mentors/peers/friends in person, who are able to give you both suggestions and the natural self-confidence boosts that come when someone else looks at your work and admires it without prompting. It's easy to look at things that are posted online, hang in museums, or are pictured in books and think that they are unachievable because they are so amazing - but just like social media, books/museums/etc don't feature the messy part or learning process of art, just finished magnificent publishing-worthy pieces, which are wonderful to look at for ideas, but the real fun and learning in art takes place in actually creating, experimenting, learning from something that didn't turn out exactly as you'd envisioned it, sharing a moment with another person who also enjoys the process that you enjoy, sharing advice and tips, appreciating each other's work.

Just my 2+ cents

Best wishes,

polarbear

Yes- This is my dd12 as well. It drives me nuts. She is not bad at anything academically - but she will hold herself up to some completely impossible standard and then say - "wow - I really suck at this". I have absolutely no advice other than to say "I hear you". Logic does not work. I can pull out standardized test scores and show her percentile rankings... and say "see you don't suck - really- by any objective standard, you don't suck" - but logic does not seem effective.