[tippytippytango]

He needs to learn grit and how to ask for help. He needs to learn some things are hard and that he can’t always lean on his intelligence.

The best way to guarantee a gifted kid wastes a lot of their potential is to be in an environment that is too easy. It creates a devastating mental habit that won’t trigger until later in life, like college. Whenever they try to do something that doesn’t come easy, their brain will try to shut down out of a kind of frustration. They won’t know how to overpower it. It will cause depression, anxiety, shame and low self worth later on. Because the gifted kid will know they are wasting their potential, but blame themself for not being good enough to deal with it. It feels like being broken.

All of this is created by being rewarded for maxing out the rewards of a trivial environment. Someone needs to patiently and compassionately teach them to value overcoming appropriately sized challenges. To find and operate on the edge of their potential and ask for help to operate beyond those limits.

So yeah, grit and asking for help. Intelligence is mostly wasted without it.

[GardenLetter27]

It's just like exercise - if you just stay lifting weights you can manage easily, you never really progress, even though it still feels easy.

[theodric]

Hey, stop describing me accurately, that's mean.