On January 20, 2026, The Advance ran my article, “How to prevent “gifted kid burnout” and help every student at the same time.” I have a deep respect for editors and strive to incorporate their notes. We have the same goal: To make my work as strong as possible. However, editorial feedback often serves to make all the pieces they publish sound similar, in order to achieve a unified voice for the site. I am happy to go along with their changes on their site. But this is my site.
Editing has a tendency to remove some of the, shall we say, “whim and whimsy” from my writing. I can be very whimsical. Which is why, three months after the original ran in The Advance, I offer you my first draft… whimsy intact. See which you like better….
Because I write about education, the social media algorithm feels compelled to keep throwing “Gifted Kid Burnout” memes into my feed like:
When you were once considered the smart kid everyone believed in but now you’re too depressed to work so everyone is disappointed in you….
When you do really well in your early years of education and now people are disappointed in you and say you’ve wasted your talents….
Being academically gifted in elementary school means that now you are depressed and don’t know how to study….
No former gifted program child has all five: 1) Serotonin 2) Healthy coping mechanism 3) Self-esteem 4) At least two brain cells 5) Functional liver
Oh, boy, I sure do love being perceived as a gifted child. I hope I don’t end up being a perfectionist burnout with depression, anxiety, unfulfilled expectations, and no real interests or goals.
If the internet is to be believed – and, truly, who wouldn’t believe everything they read on the internet, especially on reddit? – all children once classified as gifted are now anxiety-ridden and depressed with low self-esteem due to growing up and not achieving anything of note as they are just so gosh-darn brilliant that they can’t decide which of their multiple talents they should concentrate on and/or stick to any one project for long, quitting as soon as they get bored.
These “formerly gifted kids” blame the gifted and talented system for every one of their perceived failures and all subsequent consequences.
While there is nothing I can do for my fellow once gifted children who now enjoy believing the above and incessantly sharing it with the world, boy, do I have a solution to nip this ongoing vicious cycle in the bud!
Because here’s the dirty secret for why the majority of those labeled “gifted” in elementary school fail to “fulfil their potential” in adulthood. It’s not the outside pressure, it’s not the multiple potentiality. It’s not the imposter syndrome. It’s that they were never “gifted” in the first place.
The real problem, boys and girls, is that the bar for achievement in our American school system is set so painfully, tragically, ridiculously low compared to what kids of the same age are learning in the rest of the world, that those capable of doing anything above said pitiful level are erroneously labeled “gifted.”
They are not gifted. You are not gifted. We are not gifted. We are perfectly normal kids – each with quirks and peculiarities like any other human being – who will, more than likely, grow up to be perfectly normal adults – complete with further quirks, peculiarities, et. al. This mediocrity will seem like “not living up to your potential.” Don’t worry. We are living up to our potential. We are the net result of rock bottom expectations.
My family and I immigrated from the Soviet Union, where the politics and the government were awful. But the schools? The schools were good. Very, very good. Without needing to separate out the “gifted” kids. Because of my start in life, (once I learned English), I qualified to attend Lowell, San Francisco’s “gifted” high school.
“Ah,” my mother said, “in America, the gifted children are the ones who can read and count.”
She was not wrong. And the same goes for all those “gifted” schools across the country, be they Stuyvesant in NYC, where my husband and two sons went (and the one my younger son dropped out from due to boredom), Thomas Jefferson in Virginia, Boston Latin in Massachusetts, Walnut Hills in Cincinnati, and so on.
So now that we’ve identified the problem and its cause, the solution is obvious:
If we unilaterally raise the academic bar in Kindergarten through 12th grade, many, many, many fewer children will be shockingly discovered capable of doing a higher level of work than what’s being offered and suffer the curse of being dubbed “gifted” as a result. They will then have a more realistic sense of their true abilities and where they stand as compared to others. They won’t feel singled out. They will be happily “average.” They will be contentedly “normal.”
Previously, I’ve written about raising the bar in American education because it will benefit the vast majority, especially those who currently graduate from public schools functionally illiterate and innumerate. In my adopted home city of NYC, about half the students leave high public high schools not college-ready. I foolishly saw them as the true victims of our dumbed down system.
It has only recently been brought to my attention that those actually suffering are the burnedout gifted. Humanitarian that I am, I am here to help.
Let’s make the gifted average by demonstrating that most kids can do the same level of work – they just haven’t been presented with the opportunity up to this point. And if, as a side benefit, we help all of America’s children, that’ll just be proverbial icing on the proverbial cake.
Now, obviously, even under this new system, there will still be some children who are ahead of the game. As I noted, “gifted” schools were enough for me, my husband, and one of our sons, while another still wanted more and eventually ended up homeschooling himself to get the education he truly craved.
All kids – all humans – will perennially and perpetually fall on a spectrum of achievement. Whether that’s due to inherent aptitude (though some would argue there is no such thing), an enhanced drive and/or work ethic (which some would like to separate from aptitude), or an enriched home environment (which, believe it or not, some would like abolished, as well), there will always be some subset of students which requires more than what a given teacher can provide in a single, heterogeneous classroom. Just because we’ll have raised the bar for all children doesn’t mean we should give up on accommodating those who require yet another level of challenge.
Luckily, with a more rigorous curriculum for all, there will be fewer true academic outliers and, unlike those posting sad memes now, odds are these kids will be genuinely exceptional (i.e. 1 percent of the population, not 86 percent like those who qualify for G&T in NYC), and thus not suffer the fate of “failing to live up to their potential” – as long as they receive an education fit for them. (I’ve also previously written about how Free and Appropriate Public Education standards should be extended to those who require more rigorous academics, in addition to those in need of extra support.)
(Yes, I am aware of the studies about how those with the highest IQ’s can also be drop outs – see my own kid, above – but I still think the overall “gifted” numbers will drop significantly once curriculum becomes more challenging across the board.)
(And yes, yes, I am aware that an excessive love of using parentheses is a “widely recognized writing habit among people with ADHD. This tendency is often described as the “ADHD urge” to include “bonus content” or “director’s commentary” within a sentence.” Many with ADHD feel a strong compulsion to over-explain or provide exhaustive context to ensure they are not misunderstood. This can stem from a desire to address every potential nuance of a topic.” Rest assured, this is exactly what I am doing. No need to email and let me know.)
By removing the “gifted” label and demonstrating that they were normal all along, we will prevent thousands of cases of “gifted kid burn-out” among those who, in the end, could simply “read and count.”