Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Laziness

I think this is something we all have to teach early on and stay with it. Like dieting.

I spend time with DD on piano practice and telling her that she cannot quit because it teaches her discipline and she has to work to do things well, not just good because it comes easily to her.

She said, about a week ago, that she didn't want to go to Harvard. I said that was OK, she didn't have to have nice things, she didn't have to travel and she didn't have to have choices on what she ate. She turns 6 tomorrow but I want her (since she is so spoiled) to start making connections about having what she has and what it takes to get them. I repeat the message at least once a week during piano practice.

I focus that she has to learn to work at things and strive to be as good as she can possibly be. I said no one is great without practice. A lot of people can have talent and be good easily but no one is great without the practice. She was skipping rope and getting frustrated that she couldn't do it fast. Everywhere I see the attitude of "why isn't this coming easily?" that too many gifted kids fall into.

I hope my strategy works. It is so, so trying. When she goes off to college, I am off for a 2 week stay at a spa.

Ren

Please tell me you aren't telling a 5yo that unless she goes to Harvard, she's not going to be able to have nice things or travel?

I do tell mine that she needs to either pick a career path that supports her in the lifestyle to which she wishes to be accustomed, or a spouse who will do the same. But there's nothing magical about Harvard for getting you there. My Ivy degree got me a space in my parents' un-airconditioned attic, and an $7.50/hr job through a temp agency.

Not to mention that a kid with a stellar application still has no guarantees when it comes to the Ivies. Harvard had an 8% acceptance rate last year, and the vast majority of the 92% they didn't take were both highly qualified and completely capable of doing the work.

Okay, so having read the article CFK linked, I am still at a loss as to what to do other than what I have already been doing. I am familiar with the Learned Helplessness model (studied it in grad school). I haven't done anything differently w/ dd9 than I did with dd12 and dd12 is very internally motivated and believes that she can control the outcomes.

Dd9 epitomizes someone who believes she is helpless. For that matter, dh does too. He's a huge pessimist who thinks that the world is out to get him, but dd is my focus at this point, not him.

I have spent years telling her that effort is more important than ability assuming that there is no major intellectual disability involved -- which there isn't in her case. We've tried getting her into classes in which she has to exert some effort but have not thrown her in over her head as far as I can tell.

She has had some very bad schooling experiences, but there is nothing I can do about things that happened in the past at this point. I really do believe that her 3rd grade teacher spending much of the year telling dd that she was just a good guesser and not that able did a lot of damage to her self image. She's really never been the same child since that year, but again it's in the past.

She has had some non-academic successes in the past year in terms of lead roles in musicals through the theatre group she's involved with and placing in the top 10 in the state in a pageant she somehow talked us into letting her enter last summer (I'm really not a pageant person!). She attributes the musical roles to all of the other kids being really bad singers, not to her effort. Honestly, I can't say that she is doing anything to get these roles other than having a good voice and acting ability, though, without any serious practice.

Any ideas other than continuing to harp on the kid that effort and desire to learn is what matters here?

Well, this is just my opinion, but it seems to be a bit early to be planning her college choices. Did you mean that if she doesn't want to go Harvard , you'll withhold vacations and other things? Or were you saying that only people who go to Harvard can choose their foods and take a vacation? (Added) By this, I mean, that only Harvard grads will earn enough to do these things?


Maybe she doesn't want to be great.

Val

When my kids do something they thought they'd never do, I make a reasonably big deal out of it. The speech always goes something like, "Wow! You thought you'd never be able to do that and you did! See what can happen when you don't give up?!?"

Then, the next time they're feeling defeat before they've really tried, I remind them of the time(s) that.... It seems to help.

Val

It could be, as others are saying, that she's dumbing down to fit in, but putting this together with other things I recall you saying about her, I wonder if this may be more about home? Maybe she's feeling something like that she's expected to be brilliant but that she isn't good enough? It's clear from your word choice that you're feeling pretty frustrated with her, and your highly sensitive DD is obviously aware of that. Clearly you have to do something about the acute situation in this class, but I think I might be trying to deal with that in as low-key a way as possible, while giving her lots of lots of reassurance that she's loved and valued for herself, in ways that are not praise for anything and don't have anything to do with her being good at anything. I'm sure you're sending that message anyway, but it seems possible to me that she isn't receiving it.

Other people have commented on other aspects of what you wrote here, Ren, but I can't let this one pass. Please, please, don't teach your daughter dieting. Teach her healthy eating, teach her about the obesogenic society and how to counteract it, by all means, but don't set her up for anorexia any more than she's inevitably already set up for it by circumstance.

Since my kids were small, I have taught them how important it is that we don't squander a gift we've been given, but I have also made sure they know that how they choose to use their gift has to be in a way that brings them fulfillment. The only advice I can add is to be very careful to separate out your own dreams and beliefs about what it would mean for your daughter to succeed and what she actually wants to do to be successful.

Disrupting class, not turning in homework - those should be dealt with as behavior issues with whatever punishment any of your children would receive for not behaving appropriately in class, in my opinion. But the lack of motivation - that can often be a sign that a child is showing passive resistance to being pushed in a direction they didn't want to go.

I'll give more thought to whether we are pressuring her. The problem is that she isn't happy in the non-accelerated classes. When we don't push for her to be placed in accelerated classes with the school or tell her that we expect her to work hard, she doesn't do much and winds up in the average groupings.

If she were feeling fulfilled there and had friends that would be one thing. However, she's spent the past two years asking me to take her out of this school and being very lonely b/c she has no friends. She doesn't learn much in the way of work ethic in non-accelerated classes and the kids she meets there are people with whom she hasn't seemed to develop a real connection.

This year is the first time in years I can remember her really being happy with school. She has friends and the way she presents herself is evidently different. She just seems more confident and happier. It is hard to explain.

I really feel that having her in this math class has made a lot of the difference for her. As I said, I really think that she wants to be viewed as intelligent by her peers and to be accepted by the other kids who fall into that group. I wish that she wasn't so worried with what everyone else thought.

We're in a tough spot where we either risk pressuring her b/c we believe she is better off emotionally as much as academically when in the GT programming or we remove all pressure and watch her self image wilt b/c she feels like the stupid sibling b/c everyone at school knows that her older sister skipped a grade and she isn't doing anything like that. This seems like the first time where she hasn't felt like she is in her sister's shadow.

I really don't compare the kids at home. I think that the comparison is coming from dd herself and from her perception of things that other kids say.

Just one thought that others haven't touched on, but how did you handle the lying? I was wondering if you have included consequences for that behavior, or if you feel it was because she didn't want you to know for some reason (not sure if the lying was about homework being done, grades, etc?).