Long Term 45 year Study of Gifted Kids to Adults: Different Worlds and Lives

In our nation, we struggle with how to understand and manage gifted kids and adults to maximize their benefits to society. Early help and intervention are important to maximize their potential. There are substantial differences in their existence and their capacities that we ignore in ways that stifle their potential contributions to national development.

Different Quantitative and Qualitative Lives

The gifted have the gifted curse when they are in the wrong environment. Typically they have to stifle their natural abilities to fit in with the herd. The right environment can make a big difference in drawing out these talents. Advanced abilities that range from the physical to the intellectual lead to challenges in conformity environments designed to tear down performers.

A Few Examples?

Let us say that you can take in 1.5 x the amount of information from your environment, understand things faster, and can make more accurate connections when compared to others. You would see a different world that another might not understand. The richness of one can't be obtained by the other no matter how much they tried. 

It is the difference between understanding what a leaf looks like on a basic level versus understanding the leaf, its texture, smell, colors, trees, type of trees, root system, contour of different trees, the amount of sun needed, the right amount of water, how different leaves move in the wind, its environmental impact, leaf composting, and stats on declining forests. 

Would a person with rudimentary understanding and a 'better than you" chip on their shoulder be able to communicate effectively with a highly empathetic person who has a much much deeper understanding of the topic and life? The conversation is likely to be frustrating for both. 

The same could be said for moral sentiments. If one's morality is based on self-interest from their unexamined background and the other has layers of morality mixed with logic and self-reflection the conversation will keep circling back to confirming the distorted logic of the former. You can hear their self-interest in their language and their logic. 

Why Should the Nation Care?

Wasted resources are wasted resources. Gifted kids produce things, create things, lead things, and do amazing physical feats later in life that many others can't do. See Gardner's 7 Intelligences. Without the right environment, the vast majority will conform to the average and may only sporadically perform.

What is a Solution?

As with any problem, we must start with the right leadership that seeks to develop their nation and its resources. The lack of gifted support leads to serious loss including science, arts, and outcomes. Until we understand the purpose of education, we are likely to keep losing our gifted because the non-gifted make short-sighted decisions of self-interest.

A study has been following 'gifted' kids for 45 years. Here's what we've learned.