The dangers of being a "smart kid"

[theoriginalblurker]

This article really resonated with me. In some ways I saw this in my own upbringing, but I also saw it with a LOT of other kids with whom I went to school.

It's a long article, but here are some highlights:

But as Thomas has progressed through school, this self-awareness that he’s smart hasn’t always translated into fearless confidence when attacking his schoolwork. In fact, Thomas’s father noticed just the opposite. “Thomas didn’t want to try things he wouldn’t be successful at,” his father says. “Some things came very quickly to him, but when they didn’t, he gave up almost immediately, concluding, ‘I’m not good at this.’” With no more than a glance, Thomas was dividing the world into two—things he was naturally good at and things he wasn’t.

But a growing body of research—and a new study from the trenches of the New York public-school system—strongly suggests it might be the other way around. Giving kids the label of “smart” does not prevent them from underperforming. It might actually be causing it.

“Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control,” she explains. “They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.”

Lots more at the article.

Comments

[la-directora.livejournal.com]

Man, do I relate to this. Add to that the fact that if your whole life you are told that you are "really smart" and "can do anything", it becomes absolutely PARALYZING when there is something that's actually really hard. For me, part of how that all got mixed up in my brain is that I think I've been really struggling with my weight for so many years because it made things EASIER to have one thing that I just couldn't do. If I could lose the weight, then the idea that I could "do anything" might be right. But if I couldn't lose the weight, I always had that to fall back on when something else wasn't going well. "See, I couldn't do THAT, so maybe I'm not so smart and capable."

Now that I am losing weight, I have to tell you that sometimes it's really scary. I think a lot of the problems I've been having lately of being so terrified of what might happen if I don't succeed as a director, and in some ways more terrified of what might happen if I DO, are all wrapped up in this, too.

Thanks for posting this. Really good food for thought.

[greeneyes-rpi.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I never thought of applying this to my weight issues. I'll have to think more on this.

[la-directora.livejournal.com]

For me, that thing where smart kids put roadblocks in their own way can manifest in different ways. And for me, I think it was this way.