Excellence is not a foreign concept to gifted children. They love to excel. They love to be seen as excellent. The desire is so strong in most gifted that sometimes they will almost kill themselves trying to be the most excellent. That is, of course, if they haven’t already decided someone else is the most excellent, at which point, they often won’t even try. What a tiring way to live!
As the parent of a gifted child, it is extremely important that you teach your child the “achievement” is the goal, not “overachievement.” This is an even more important lesson for your teen. You will save your teen many hours of overdoing projects, overplanning events, and overstressing about homework.
In my beginning years of teaching, I was such an overachiever. I organized district-wide bike rides, wrote and produced dinner theaters with my sixth graders, and made almost all of my lessons from scratch. It wasn’t until I had an at-risk pregnancy with my daughter that I backed off a bit. To my surprise, I received just as much praise as I had when I was working full-tilt. I learned then and there that it takes very little to be impressive nowadays! I’m desperately trying to teach my kids this lesson.
I remember assigning my eighth graders one year to make some models of items from Shakespeare’s time. Three of my boys chose to build a model of the Globe, the theater at which Shakespeare’s plays were performed. Two of the boys built the round theater with Legos. You can guess the obvious issues with that! The third boy went to Hobby Lobby and bought a wooden drum. He used popsicle sticks and balsam wood to build an extremely accurate model of the Globe. It was so good, I asked if I could keep it to teach kids with, and he agreed. All received A’s. The difference was that the Lego model was what I expected of kids that age. The fact that his mother had bought items closer to what it actually looked like was not part of the grading rubric. She spent all of that money, and he earned only nine more points than the other boys.
It is important that you, as parents, teach your child to only do what is expected. Think about how it works in adult life. When the IRS requires you to file tax returns in April, do they give extra points for neatness or embellishments? No, they want it just as they asked for it. Nothing extra. When you take your car in for an oil change, do you appreciate the full inspection and subsequent list of items that could use replacement? This could be seen as excellent service or an attempt to make more money while you are there.
We have got to teach our kids that achievement = excellence. His/Her employer wants achievement. Achievement at a sales job means excellent sales. Achievement in an advertising agency means acquired clients. Over achievement in the first scenario would be calling wealthy people personally to try to sell your product, and in the second, throwing giant personal parties for potential clients. Neither of these are required to attain or keep clients. Excellent products and excellent advertisements are what are required. In other words, excellence is doing the actual job and doing it well. So, today, begin encouraging your child to be an achiever. Excellence will come with the achievement.
- Michelle