facing challenges and persevering,raising gifted kids,gifted adults,gifted book

When she was a newly single mother and struggling to support her baby daughter in Edinburgh, J.K. Rowling chose to commit herself to her dream of becoming a novelist by writing “Harry Potter.”

“I was very low, and I had to achieve something,” she said. “Without the challenge, I would have gone stark raving mad.” [From article J.K. Rowling: A wizard of odds, Psychology Today]

> See more comments by Rowling in a High Ability post: Celebrating our unique qualities.

A Psychology Today article – Why Prodigies Fail – says that most childhood prodigies “never fulfill their promise. ‘Perseverance is a key part of it,’ says Robert Root-Bernstein of Michigan State University. ‘Many of them say that their expectations were warped by their early experiences.’ When success comes too easily, prodigies are ill prepared for what happens when the adoration goes away, their competitors start to catch up and the going gets rough.”

There can be a lesson here for any of us, not just prodigies. Indiana University psychologist Jonathan Plucker notes, “I don’t see anyone teaching these kids about task commitment, about perseverance in the face of social pressures, about how to handle criticism. We say, ‘Boy, you’re really talented.’ We don’t say, ‘Yeah, but you’re still going to have to put in those 60-hour work weeks before you can make major contributions to your field.’”

Giftedness researcher Ellen Winner [book: Gifted Children: Myths and Realities] said in the same article that to make a major contribution in the arts, and even the sciences “you need a rebellious spirit and the type of mind that can see new things.” Only prodigies who can reinvent themselves as innovators, she says, are likely to leave a lasting mark during adulthood.

05.16.06 |
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