Should we look for signs of genius in every child?
We're all special snowflakes until we see ourselves as part of the snowbank.
On Monday morning, I realized that I am not a genius.
Set aside your eyeroll that I ever thought I was a genius in the first place. Set aside your embarassment, on my behalf, that it took thirty-two years to realize this truth. I find, in my work in schools, that belief that “genius” and “exceptional” are terms we apply much too liberally to children. The consequence? Adults who believe, at least with some part of themselves, that they are, or should work to become, a genius.
I come to you with a message from the BabyGenius™ generation: It’s time to stop looking for signs that your child is exceptional.
So many people, especially women, in my generation were told they were exceptional as kids that several of us have written bestselling books on subject of burnout, both their own and others’. It starts like this: you learn to read early, you breeze through addition and subtraction, and you remember not just what’s told to you, but also what you overhear. Your parents perk up when the kindergarten teacher or the woman at the cash register tells you, a small child, how amazing it is that you can read a whole book to your mommy, out loud, while she is trying to find the Cheerios. Or maybe it’s your aunt – I’m guilty as charged – who exclaims that, because you religiously practice free throws on your Playmobil basketball hoop before the age of two, you are destined for a Division I basketball scholarship one day. Though they never intended to put pressure on their kids, your parents internalize these little messages.
They start to look for a gifted and talented program. Or maybe it’s an AAU basketball league, a more impressive piano teacher. Maybe, later, they look for a private school, encourage you through moments when you want to quit, buy math enrichment books that you crack out of guilt. None of these gestures come from a place of ill intention. It’s the ecosystem of conversation, not the individual actions, that fuel your need to set yourself apart. The other parents look on in amazement; the coaches point out your special skills; your teachers, most powerfully of all, note that you’re “one of the best ____ students they’ve ever seen.” By sixth or seventh grade, you are, in the words of your peers, the adults who see you ply your craft, and even the occasional stranger, a “genius.” “Exceptional.”
Not many people, in my view, are actually that exceptional. As I like to tell my students when they feel the whole world relies upon their excellence to continue spinning, “yes, you are a special snowflake, but when snow flakes land, it’s all just one big pile of snow.”
Like any overwhelmed teenager today, I asked ChatGPT what genius is. It reported back the following:
“A genius is often considered someone with exceptional intellectual or creative abilities that go
far beyond the ordinary. It's not just about being smart; it's about thinking in unique ways, solving problems others can’t, or producing groundbreaking work that shapes or changes a field. Some people see genius as a kind of natural gift or talent, while others argue that it’s a combination of hard work, creativity, and a deep passion for something. It can manifest in all kinds of areas, like science, music, art, or even social innovation. Do you think genius is something you're born with, or can anyone cultivate it?
In the words of my students when they want to fight over points on an assignment rubric, this definition is full of subjective language. What does it mean to be “unique”? What does it take to be “far beyond the ordinary”? I have conversations like this with students at least once per week. They drive me up a wall, though I am a little proud to have trained children to argue effectively. “What is the difference between ‘Accomplished’ and ‘Exemplary’?” Great question, Sally.
Sorry to my friends and colleagues and high school classmates, but I don’t think I know very many geniuses. Despite my inability to accept the fact that I, an unobjectionably smart but not genius woman, am not in fact a genius, I’ve long been aware that we tend to hyperbolize just how exceptional others’ achievements are, especially others in our circles. I wonder: why are we like this? Why do we want to know so many special people? More importantly, though, why do we nurse our fantasies that we are or one day will become them, even when those fantasies hurt us?
I was the child I described earlier. Though my parents did a remarkably good job not inflating my ego as a child, truly never lauding me as exceptional or genius even when I desperately wanted them to, plenty of other people in my life were willing to tell me that I was special. When I went off to a highly selective preparatory school in ninth grade, I was surrounded by other “exceptional” kids. All I could see were other geniuses (though nowadays, I can see that the school was populated with a lot fewer geniuses than it would care to admit). Instead of simply seeing that I was, in fact, not a genius – which is an acceptable fact – I responded in the way that many adolescents do: I fought the truth. I rejected it. I clawed desperately to prove to myself that I was as exceptional as I, in my mind… was. For it’s not like I was divorced from reality. I could sense that, by some comparisons, I didn’t stack up. But that reality just didn’t align with the alternative reality that was formed in my childhood. What did this misalignment get me? Suffice to say, kids, who turn into adults, suffer when the environment around them affirms that they should resist self-acceptance.
For a while, I thought that the solution to this problem would’ve been to do away with all the language of “genius,” “exceptional” achievers altogether. It’s important to remember, though, that abandoning this language would accomplish the same thing as did overapplying the terms to the BabyGenius generation: it would ignore the fact that there is meaningful genius out there, genius that comes from some impossible to engineer combination of biology, luck, circumstances, and training. Indeed, to overapply or erase such terminology is to answer ChatGPT’s closing question, in the definition above, with one firm answer: that genius is always possible, in any person, if you just find it and work to cultivate it. The terms, then, aren’t the problem, but their judicious application is monumentally important if we want, culturally, to accept that genius is rare, not something that any person can develop if they just try harder.
We don’t have to drop the idea that there are incredible minds and exceptional achievements in the world around us. We do need to evacuate ourselves of the idea that genius is all around us. We need to dissolve the paranoia that we need to discover and cultivate our genius. And we need to abandon the most pernicious subconscious belief – the one that holds so many of us back from realizing that the real fact of our normalcy isn’t so scary after all – that we matter less if we don’t have them.
“Crash out” is the new term for burnout, for Gen Z, and it’s happening earlier in life than it did for my generation. For all our talk about mental health in schools, our mixed signals to kids that we care about how they feel but expect just as much from them as ever if they’re going to find a spot in a university of which they (or their parents) are proud – that is, more than most people will ever achieve – just throws them off the deep end sooner. With my students (and colleagues! And friends!), I try to apply techniques that have been useful for me. Many of these techniques come from the cringily-named Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook that a friend gave to me a few years ago.
The concept of self-compassion requires a person to face the expectations that they place upon themselves, which are typically expectations rooted in the perceived need to be special, abnormally well-behaved, genius, exceptional, or some other form of “perfect.” The task is to find a way to be compassionate with ourselves when we don’t reach those impossible expectations. The most damning moment in the workbook, for me, was when I had to face down my narcissistic belief – the one I knew wasn’t true, but onto which I had held for dear life – that I’m not a genius. Shiver. Who could believe that they should be exceptional (or at least exceptional-adjacent)? Turns out: a lot of people.
Life doesn’t have to be this way, and I actually think there’s a pretty easy fix. I wish I could shout it to all the parents I know – especially the ones who, in this season, are trying to cope with their own emotions about their child’s rejection letters from the universities of their choice. These letters could be opportunities to gain self-acceptance, but too often, for children and the adults who guide them, they become yet another opportunity to fight against reality, insist on one’s excellence, beat down doors with angry words.
Stop looking for or expecting genius in children. As far as anyone can tell, parentage, privilege, identity, or even Michael Phelps’s genetically impossible physical proportions alone don’t assure that your kid will stand out from the crowd. Why should they? Most of us don’t. Though it might be tough for you to admit that there are at least fifty people (but probably more like thousands) on earth who could do your job, fill your role, or create what you create about as well as you, that’s probably the truth, and the more that you accept that fact, the more you’ll be able to accept the fact of your kids’ non-genius, still unique, selves, too.
Then, in place of that expectation for genius, whether you established it intentionally or fell into it somewhere along the way, cultivate compassion. You might have to have some for yourself, too, as horribly cheesy as it might sound. Compassion generally requires recognizing that others, even people who we admire or see as perfectly healthy (or well off or advantaged or happy), will not be excellent or even okay always. It’s a lot easier to accept that you’re not a genius if those around you don’t express shock and horror when the messages of the world tell you that you are, in fact, not a genius. If your child was not exceptional enough to stand out to an admissions committee, even one at a school that they or you or all of you deem “mediocre,” you need not come to their rescue by perpetuating the delusion that they are, in fact, exceptional and that other people are wrong about them.
“That’s life,” you might say.
“You’re smart and talented and kind,” you might say.
“You’re not a genius or anything – thank goodness” might even work.
Let’s love and respect kids enough to help them see and accept reality. Then, let’s help them find a way to live happily in it – genius or not.