Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Inappropriately placed in the work world

Thank you all for your thoughtful responses. They've given me still more to mull over. I also just saw Grinity's mention of "outer directed perfectionism" in another post and know that that's a big piece of the puzzle for me. Ultimately, I probably just expect too much of jobs and my supervisors (current boss has recently let me know that I'm too "conscientious"), which leaves me unfulfilled and frustrated. Guess I need to learn to ratchet things down a notch and find more satisfaction outside of work. I also realized recently how much inner-directed perfectionism has hampered my career. All of my dream jobs require foreign language skills, and although I minored in a second language and got straight A's, I could never seem to get through that part of learning a second language where you just have to open your mouth and say what you can, knowing that you're making mistakes and probably sound like a three year old. I didn't want to speak until I was fluent, so consequently, I never became fluent.

Anyway, this is more than enough about me, but as a parting thought, I just want to say that I am now convinced of the importance of alerting your child to the social and emotional characteristics of giftedness (good AND bad) as soon as you think they can handle it. I was identified as gifted in 1st grade (school wanted to skip me to 3rd--mom said no), but I never learned that that had any implications beyond getting straight As. It was only recently that I realized it seems to explain much of my personality, why I've made many of the decisions I have, and things like why I'm so miserable at work. It's a little overwhelming to have stumbled upon all of this as an adult, when bad habits are already firmly entrenched and bad decisions have been made. Although I'm glad to be figuring things out at long last, I'm also going to do whatever I can to make sure my perfectionst son "owns" the full range of his gifted characteristics much earlier.

I agree. I know it's controversial to let your kids know what it means to be GT, but I think that as long as it is used to EXPLAIN things, not to EXCUSE bad behavior--big difference!--then it is a healthy bit of self-knowledge for a child to have. I think it saves time and trouble later.

Dr. Amend gave me a good reminder last week: if a GT child has questions and doesn't get answers, her natural tendency is to come up with answers. If the question he has is "Why do I feel so different?" and there's no good answer given by parents, then he will come up with his own explanations, and they're usually wrong and unhealthy. Context is key, of course, but I think you're totally right that "owning" your GTness is really healthy and makes life a lot easier as time goes on.

Have you thought about ways to work on your perfectionism? I ask because it's something I'm working on myself. IDP and homeschooling do NOT go well together! So I'm trying to let things go more. And writing the book was the best therapy for my ODP that I could imagine--no one to judge my work but me for years. If every word had to be perfect, it would never get done. And in the end, I had to let it go and see what came of it.

I was just wondering if you'd thought yet about how to deal with it. I'd love to know what you're thinking!

MsFriz, I sent you a pm

I don't think I got it, but I'm also new to this!