The pressure to excel
For those with exceptional abilities, there are often multiple pressures - from family, the culture, oneself - to continuously achieve.
Alissa Quart is the author of Hothouse Kids: The Dilemma of the Gifted Child. A recent newspaper article [Prodigies and the push to excel, by Debora Vrana, Los Angeles Times Sept 30 2006] noted Quart is “the only child of two academics who prized education and intelligence. She read at age 3 and wrote her first novel when she was 7, and writes about pressures put on children, especially gifted children and prodigies, that encourage perfectionism, performance anxiety and lifelong feelings of not being able to keep up.
“Her father especially was ‘hell-bent on bettering my lot — and by extension our family’s lot — and keep me from languishing in what he considered the Blank Generation.’ To achieve this, he drilled her on the names of B-movie actresses, revolutionary movements and vocabulary.”
“Some parents see gifted children as some sort of insurance as they try to navigate the middle class without a safety net, Quart said. With so much competition for everything from the best summer camps to permanent jobs, children are working harder than ever to achieve and so are their parents, as they use their gifted child to attain class mobility or to ensure the family’s place in the social strata, she writes.
“Quart names this pressure to achieve the ‘Icarus Effect,’ after the story of Icarus.. who flew too high, the wings melted and he fell to the sea. While Quart never fell into the sea, she said she struggled with a ‘distinct feeling of failure’ as she grew older, in part because of the high expectations placed on her.”
I have not read Hothouse Kids, but it seems from the above article that the author is raising important issues that can and do affect highly talented people throughout their lives - issues such as perfectionism, self-limiting, anxiety, self concept and mental health.
The image above is from the novel ”The Icarus Girl” by Helen Oyeyemi, written when she was 18.
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