The Phenomenon of 'Gifted Kid Burnout' | Alena Qin | TEDxYouth@RHHS

TEDxYouth@RHHS Ignite is an officially licensed TEDx event meant to symbolize a means of reintegration into post-pandemic life, one that brings forth new ventures and ideas as well as a re-ignition of one's passions and aspirations. What is 'Gifted Kid Burnout'? This internet term, which has amassed over 152 million views on TikTok, describes someone once labelled as intelligent in their youth but now struggles with underachievement. While it is usually joked around in a self-deprecating Generation Z sense of humour, it encapsulates society's failure to nurture gifted students. The rising popularity of 'Gifted Kid Burnouts' begs the question: why are gifted children - society's supposedly brightest minds - prone to burning out? As someone who grew up in both a gifted and non-gifted environment, I will be sharing my insight with the program and the causes of gifted burnout. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx

[@srphm_]

Gifted kids must be taught by gifted professors. I strongly believe that those who are alike has a better understanding of one another thus result in a healthier system for developing their special needs to cope and adjust to the world's systems

[@jt_rooster3228]

HAHAHAHA. Being taught by brokies on how to become a millionaire? No wonder why y’all are dumbasses.

[@legalfictionnaturalfact3969]

Thank you for saying this. It's a point of contention. But it doesn't need to be. You are correct. The gifted should teach the gifted. Other people just don't get it and start getting pissy and weird about all kinds of things they don't understand when it comes to teaching the gifted.

[@vladimirandreevich]

It's also worth noting that it's difficult for a gifted kid to respect a not-so-gifted teacher, wich leads to hostility. I remeber getting into a lot of trouble for correcting my teachers' mistakes at school and later on in the university

[@AsmitaSethi2308]

All my life, I've always got straight A's after only studying during exam days. But now, I seem to have been going through this thing... I failed 3/4 of my mid-term exams. I have anxiety, depression, chronic allergy and eczema causing me to isolate myself for last 4 months. And by isolation, I mean that I haven't attended school, tuition classes and avoided basically all human interactions. I feel too much until numb....

[@YuukiuuYik]

Hang in there friend, youre not alone ❤️ check if your school has free (online) counselling, this happily was an option for me and it worked wonders, even though it takes a bit of courage to reach out at first. I failed some of my exams last year and need to retake them too. It sucks and progressing in life seems very hard when everyone else seems to be used to it by now, but its gonna be okay, somehow. Dont let school define your self worth, we re much more than that, thats something useful to remember. Even if it doesnt feel like its true sometimes, it couldnt be more true. I hope your health problems go away soon too. Fingers crossed for you!

[@AsmitaSethi2308]

@@YuukiuuYik Thank you sm for your support. I'm trying but things get hard when even your family doesn't acknowledge your existence much less your problems. But yeah ... 😕

[@YuukiuuYik]

@@AsmitaSethi2308 im sorry to hear that. It must really hurt :( i hope you get through ❤️ sometimes when family fails, support of friends is more valuable, so i hope you have or can find friends who will support you on your journey at least ❤️

[@AsmitaSethi2308]

@@YuukiuuYik🌹💝

[@samridhisethi9175]

I can't believe I'm going through ALL the same problems. And what sucks is i know i can fix it, but somehow, i just can't. It really sucks.

[@dnbnme]

I managed to avoid this before finishing school, but the weight of expectations doesn’t just go away after graduation unfortunately

[@adara9l]

Just had a breakdown/attack over my peer critique partners having better papers than me. Because I couldn’t bring myself to write the paper due to everything not being perfectly formed in my head.

[@thefull9746]

I feel you

[@victoriab7148]

We didn't have a gifted kid program in our country. But still, I very much relate to the burnt out gifted kid stories. I've always been one of the top students, getting straight A's without even trying, going to all kinds of academic competitions, etc. Biology used to be one of my favourite subjects, so I decided I want to do something in the medical field. Now I'm a third year student in university, studying to become a dentist. But things aren't going well at all. Ever since I started private lessons to prepare myself for the entrance exams, I started feeling unmotivated and overwhelmed. It has only gotten worse over the course of the last few years. Now I'm one of the worst performing students, having failed 3 exams and struggling with my practice tasks. I'm so far behind in one of my classes that it is likely I won't even be let to attend the final exam. I dread going to those classes because of my fear of failure. I have nearly no motivation to study or get things better, I just do the bare minimum. If I don't pass all my exams I will have to repeat the year. I'm seriously thinking about quitting. On top of that I've struggled with anxiety, both general and social, ever since I was little. And it only makes everything harder. I don't know what to do with my life at this point. I hope I can figure things out, but at this point I'm feeling extremely stressed and confused. At the very least, I can be grateful to have very understanding and supportive parents.

[@SamirCCat]

I've always been intelligent and have very easy to learn. We don't have gifted programmes in my country, but I believe I am gifted. When I was 16 I had a lot of burnout symptoms from school, due to extreme pressure from myself. "If I can get the highest marks, anything less is a failure". I locked myself in the bathroom in school and had my first panic attack when I got the second highest mark. At 16 I started a new school, but I was too ill at that point. I had developed anorexia and had to stop school. 20 years later and I'm stuck with many chronic mental disorders, unable to study, work or live a normal life. Still I feel like I chickened out. Took the easy way. To develop anorexia and severe self-harm was EASIER than to live up to my own expectations. I embraced the label of mentally ill to have an excuse to not be perfect and achieving everything. If I was to write a book it had to be the level of a Noble Prize winner. Speaking English? It had to sound like a native, 0% foreign accent. I had so many plans/prisons I installed for my future, and I couldn't live up to it. My "dream" had become a tortyre, and for me it was easier to starve myself to the point of hospitalisation and tube-feeding, or to cut so deep into my leg I damaged my muscle and could hardly walk. It was still easier and better than trying and FAILING the unrealistically high expectations I had for myself. My "inner critic" is something my therapists often have talked about. They don't understand it at all. It's not just me having high expectations, it's the fact that I have high POTENTIAL. If I CAN achieve miracles, why would I NOT? I feel I owe it to the world to share my talents, I have so many great things to contribute with. If I knew I sucked at creative writing it would've been much easier to write a book. Because then it CAN'T be a good book. But with my talents I have the potential of writing something extraordinary, so I can't write a single page. I'm blocking and judging myself so much because the text in my head is the best in the world, and what comes out is not. I honestly wish I was less talented. It's not a diagnosis to be "gifted", but it sure feels like a very big burden. I handle my ADD better, I've learnt to treat myself kind for that. But my giftedness makes anything that's less than sheer perfection such an embarrassing failure I don't even know if I want to live through it. If I end up killing myself in the future it would be because I never published a book and therefore didn't deserve to live. My life would have been nothing but unfulfilled potential and a waste of space.

[@redtangerine2404]

I feel the same in some aspects. Everybody been saying that success isnt the only thing that matter in life, but it matter so much to me that it affects everythings else in my life.

[@SamirCCat]

@@redtangerine2404 I think it's easy to say success doesn't matter when you yourself have a decent amount of it. Like richer people saying money doesn't matter, while to poor people money REALLY does matter. It's easy to not focus on it if you already have it to some extent.

[@bub0nic_gutzz118]

i decided early on to (instead of letting my mindset settle to a fixed one) decided to rush growth in the places i was excelling even more than my class of gifted kids already was, which in my case was math and arts. i ended up pushing myself too hard and now im taking algebra 1 in the seventh grade and i feel like i have rammed my head into a wall seventy two times and then walked out of the room all smiling and happy though wanting to continue to hit my head into the wall because thats the only thing that gives me comfort- so f*cking great huh. Now my grades and self image are suffering and im slowly drowning in overdue assignments

[@user-fc1dn6wo3d]

It was so helpful now i figured out the what's wrong with me is actually my fixed mindset& its not my ability that are useless tysm

[@bealaurangela]

Currently watching this from the PH. As a teacher, I'm doing a future study on Gifted Students and Academic Burnout in our campus. I'm using this Tedx speech as a reference. Thank you for sharing your story with us, Alena :)

[@olygarcia9553]

A nuestro hijo único dictaminado con un IQ de 145 a los 8 años, nunca quisimos etiquetarlo como genio. Consiguió entrar a uno de los mejores colegios privados del país. Sufrió de bulling en el colegio a pesar de que nadie sabía de su IQ pero nunca quiso retirarse de esa escuela pues era la mejor del país y consideraba un honor graduarse de allí a pesar de todo. Nunca tuvo ningún problema académico pero sufrió con la parte social pues sabía que era diferente a sus compañeros , no compartía ningún interés con ellos y le aburrían . La lectura de libros en inglés( su segunda lengua) era su forma de escapar de la realidad en las clases y me decía que dormía en las clase para abstraerse. La lectura, los deportes , ( esgrima, bicicross,ajedrez, monopatín ) , la música ( violín y guitarra) y los videojuegos fueron excelentes para su desarrollo. Fue un año de intercambio a Canadá y eso fue maravilloso pues tenía que hacer su penúltimo año de bachillerato en un idioma ( francés) que no conocía y eso fue interesante para el. En ese colegio tampoco dijimos nada sobre su IQ. Se graduó con uno de los mejores resultados en las pruebas académicas nacionales y fue aceptado en todas las universidades a las que se presentó pero no se veía seguro a la hora de elegir que estudiar . Se graduó de Derecho sin estudiar mucho y con buenas calificaciones, pero decidió no trabajar en ese campo. Terminó su carrera porque ya estaba muy adelantado y decidió terminarla aunque su último año fue una tortura porque sabía que eso no era lo que quería hacer. Durante sus años de universidad se dedicó a ser montañista, escalador y la meditación , el gimnasio y la música fueron sus grandes compañeras pues nuevamente nunca encajó con el grupo. En la universidad Trabajaba de guía turístico dado que era trilingüe y una vez terminó la carrera decidió dedicarse a su pasión que era la música ( guitarra) . Aprendió a tocar guitarra y todo sobre la música de forma autodidacta y se convirtió en compositor, arreglista y guitarrista de su propia banda . Hoy lo veo feliz haciendo lo que hace y eso es lo más importante. Las persona con altas capacidades tienen infinitas posibilidades pero deben amar lo que hacen y generalmente les gusta aprender sólo sobre lo que les interesa . Son muy sensibles y vulnerables pues sus capacidades sociales no son comprendidas y a veces son inversamente proporcionales a su inteligencia. Hoy veo claro que lo mejor que hicimos fue no etiquetarlo de “genio” y darle muchas herramientas y posibilidades cuando era muy joven para que él mismo con su empeño y pasión pudiera definir su camino. Sigue siendo un lector empedernido , un trabajador obsesivo, sigue amando la montaña y el ejercicio y nunca dejará de ser alguien especial con una inteligencia poderosa.

[@ashleyching5786]

Thank you, Alena! You are so worthy no matter what!!!

[@putinsgaytwin4272]

Literally went from straight A's, highest IQ in schools history represented my country in numerous maths competitions to failing high school maths. I dont know what went wrong. I feel like im still trying rly hard but I just lost all of my intelligence.

[@rebelliouslogic2705]

Same here.. I placed 3rd in my state with reading and comprehension. Now I'm 45 and for the last 10 years I can't even remember anything. As a child I may have started dumbing myself down so that I would not be exposed as a fraud and to be "normal"😢

[@debmalya6144]

Thank you

[@MilkIsTheDrink]

I used to be the top of my class for 10 years (all of elementary school, 8 years in my country, and the first 2 years of high school). Then I got teachers I hated and my grades dropped severely. I lost all my motivation to do anything. I find myself average in everything, I don't excell in anything anymore. My whole world came crushing down where my final exam grades were so bad, I didn’t get l accepted in the uni I wanted to go to so I chose another. I quite like this one too, but I just find myself skipping classes and not caring about nothing anymore. I just can't get it together. I feel like I'll fail even my first semester.

[@redtangerine2404]

I somewhat feel that. Failure only make me lose my motivation while it is supposed to make me want to work harder

[@iamnotsadiamdeadinside]

Dude happened to me, you need to seek therapy and get some medication that may help.

[@bartlebyscotch]

This was me too. I actually did fail my first semester, not to bring the mood down. Luckily I have great parents and after doing a year at a local state college I went back and eventually graduated from my original college. I’ve held down a good job, but I’ve always felt like I should be doing better. My emotional coping skills aren’t great either, but I’ve been in therapy for a couple years and I’m trying to work on better emotional management.

[@MathSciMadeSimple]

Beautifully said 👏👏👏

[@chim3230]

idk until 5th grade, i was the best at everything. i had friends, helped people in studies, overall likeable and super active as a child but i had one of the most important pass away the same year. my grandad. ive never been the same. my grades went downhill, i was diagnosed with depression and anxiety and ive been suffering academically and emotionally ever since so im not really sure if this is considered as a gifted kid burnout but yeah

[@kawaii_princess_castle]

To mask your intensity or pace is exhausting! You have to go superslow when you are with neurotipicals!

[@A350Airways]

And it's even more painful when one has a form of autism... and I experienced gifted kid burnout in a PhD program, at a later stage of education than a lot of people who experience it. So while I didn't necessarily feel the need to perform perfectly all the time, I still had a lot of expectations placed on me. However, before I actually got to the burnout, I was thrown into increasingly concentrated academic environments (first, a magnet program in high school, then studying physics as an undergraduate, and as an upperclassman, I was made to feel like a lot of people around me were just as good as I). At one point, I was made to feel like the only way I could get better in a certain academic area that I didn't already try would have required me to date someone better in that one area than I myself was, especially knowing where that area fit into my future in the field, and then I viewed what girlfriend I could have as some sort of dual-purpose lifeline: she would have filled my romantic void as well as an academic one. Yes, growth mindsets can help, but growth mindsets have their limits; you must be mindful of what your own limits are as well. This is where knowing when to give up will help you most.

[@MikeFuller-ok6ok]

I have a supervised Mensa IQ in the 'High Average' range but I just couldn't cope with Secondary School education so I was put in remedial sets.

[@TiffanyNg100]

Tbh, we need an entire year google calendar and learn how to plan 😅

[@pedroba76]

I relate to this, but how do I know if I am really gited or not, despite everyone calling me smart? Is there a minimum IQ or something? Also, is gifted the equivalent to "superdotado" in my country(Brazil)?

[@lizrdspice]

There is, but an IQ test could be unreliable if you sustained repeated (micro)trauma which can impact cognition. Or even just anxiety, fear of failure or experience learning disabilities. If you relate I suggest diving deeper into the subject and also look into "twice exceptional". It might be worthwhile to check out more people's lived experience as well

[@pedroba76]

I did the online Mensa IQ test once, and I only got 110, that's why I asked if there is a minimum IQ.

[@Jana-kx4fv]

What you describe is not being a gifted child, but a child with too high expectations on its shoulders. The difference is that gifted children excel at almost everything without any struggle. You describe children that are pressured to excel and they do so, but it doesn't come natural to them and they have to work a lot for their success, nature didn't ,,gift" them the ability excel without work.

[@tinwingeorgiee]

Actually, in my opinion, it can be both ways. When you say gifted children excel at almost everything without any struggle, it comes with a price, too. It's normal for gifted children to achieve high(est) results in everything without having to do a lot of work, so getting something lower (even though by slightly) would be unusual and devastating. Other people would be confused because they were supposed to be "smart". Burnt-out gifted children could also deal with the limitations for them when studying at school because they naturally like to learn; sometimes about some things that are unconventional, which is why gifted programs help them a lot because it gives them more space to learn rather to study systematically. The experiences might overlap in some ways in the aspect of external pressure.

[@CreampuffieO_o]

We are not THAT gifted after all, just dont give a f* and compare with others and start having fun learning at your own pace. Simple

[@artsmashhh]

What I don't understand is that you "need" to have a high IQ and good grades, that makes no sense to me. You can still be gifted at things and have a low IQ.

[@legalfictionnaturalfact3969]

We are talking about having an overall aptitude score of about 130 or greater. No one said people of average intelligence can't have a gift for one thing or another. We are just talking about an overall ability for cognition.