The Weight of Expectations

One of the things our survey respondents told us was most difficult to balance was the weight of expectations - those of the adults in their lives and their own internalized expectations. Expectations can be a heavy, heavy load.

Parents and teachers sometimes look at kids' IQ test scores or early ACT/SAT test scores and think, "well obviously this child is headed for the Ivy League," which is a lot to put on an eleven or twelve-year-old. We frequently think we have to push, pull, or prod a child in the direction of what we term as success. One of the problems with this is that what we think of as success might not be what the child thinks - either it's not the path they want to take in life, or not the speed they want to go down the path, or they want to stop and take a left turn. Too many of us look at those scores and assume a child wants to be a doctor or a lawyer or an astronaut, when maybe they want to be a teacher, or a police officer, or an electrician. We want highly intelligent and thoughtful people in those fields as well; they are not careers we want to steer kids away from. Students should be encouraged to find paths that fit their strengths and interests, not those that fit our dreams of what they might achieve.

It was also very clear that some of the expectations came from students' peers. Once other kids become aware of a student's reputation as smart or high-achieving, the expressed belief is that the child will ALWAYS win, will ALWAYS be successful. The truth is everyone comes in second sometimes, everyone makes mistakes, and most of us fail brilliantly at one point or another. If other children express the expectation that a student will never do those things, it makes it difficult for authentic and mutually supportive relationships to form and be one of the reasons gifted children sometimes struggle to make friends. Even gifted kids know that at some point they are not going to win, and they don't need to surround themselves with those who are secretly hoping they lose.

These kinds of expectations can help drive students to unhealthy perfectionism. Adaptive perfectionism can be good for kids, it helps them to do their best and can certainly help students to achieve. But unhealthy perfectionism frequently means that students can't start (or finish) schoolwork, leads to anxiety, and cause students to underachieve. If a child is receiving the message that the expectation is that they will be perfect, we need to step back and rethink either what we are saying...or what they are hearing. No one is perfect, no adult and certainly no child. The message they have to hear is that we love them no matter what. Full stop.

Many of our kids, of course, have their own very clear ideas of what they want to accomplish, and what they should be able to accomplish. They sometimes push themselves to the brink of exhaustion because of their own expectations. While this can lead many students to be what others would consider "success," it sometimes comes at a very high cost. Our students discussed at length the stress, anxiety, and feelings of never being enough that came with their own internalized beliefs are about their abilities and goals. Please take a minute to hug your gifted child and let them know that they are always enough, and that your hope is that they are happy being themselves, with no expectation that they be anything else.