Were you classed as 'gifted' at school and are you gifted now?

[ofwarren]

I'm hyperlexic, I taught myself to read at 2 years old. One of my earliest memories is me reading stories to the whole class in nursery while the teacher stood there watching and smiling.

Once in primary school is was streamed to two classes above my age because I was so far ahead and then was put into set 1 for everything in secondary school.

Secondary school was a whole other ball game and I crashed an burned, gaining 6 GCSES that were B and C.

I'm now 42 year old woman with no career, no particular gift and at times I actually feel like I'm a bit stupid. I can't accomplish anything and even reading something can't keep mu attention for long these days.

I've read so many similar accounts online.
What happens to autistic people between school and being an adult?
Do we just 'peak' or does life just become too hard?
It's depressing really

At school achievement is about ability - if you’re intelligent you do well. But in the workplace achievement is about social skills - if you’re likeable you do well. So an intelligent autistic person will do well at school but not in the workplace. Employers don’t hire or promote the brightest and most capable people, they hire and promote people who they feel rapport with. A hiring decision is often based on who the employer wants to eat lunch with for the next five years, not who can do the job best. This means autistic people are often completely excluded from the workplace, because despite their skill and qualifications nobody will hire them because they don’t fancy having them as a colleague.

I'm not sure its particularly an autistic thing but potentially a 'gifted and talented' thing. There was some research on this, I'm sure a decade or so ago and schools weren't supposed to label children in this way because its not helpful. The theory being that we are all very capable in particular areas of life and for some it happens to be (usually an aspect of) academia. If a child is labelled 'gifted' it can lead them to believe (either consciously or unconsciously) that they are better than everyone else and so don't have to try (the inverse is also true for people who don't naturally succeed academically). Gifted children often don't learn skills in resilience, and as they get older it becomes harder and harder to fail, and when they do fail they don't have the skills to try again. Think of a baby learning to walk......they always fall down lots (and lots) of time but they learn resilience to keep trying and achieve their goal. If they just stood up and walked everywhere it would be such a shock when they do fall down (at a later date) and they haven't learnt the skill to get up and try again so instead are left with embarrassment, pain and a sense of failure.

That makes a lot of sense. In workplaces I never got promotion and I've even been disciplined for speaking in an aggressive tone when I didn't even know I was. This was pre diagnosis.

I think it's burnout. High expectations, from ourselves and others, coupled with the energy taken to mask all the time is exhausting. Or that's my experience.

I've had to make a huge effort to cut free a lot of expectations about being good at stuff. For example, I had stopped drawing and painting as a teenager as I "wasn't good enough". I have managed to get past that and start again, but I do have to fight with my tendency to get in a strop when I can't do it "right".

Yes, and "yes, but"

I had a similar primary experience but I maintained that trajectory through to university, got my BA at 20 and MA at 21.

I crashed and burned in the workplace for exactly the reason @Obira identifies. Looking back, it was like someone had put a really clever 13 year old in a suit and sent her off to work. I was unpopular and either ignored or bullied in the workplace. I had a major burnout in my 20s after losing a number of jobs, recalibrated things a bit, and I'm now considered a reasonably high achiever in my very niche field, albeit not quite in line with the expectations of me from when I was tiny! I'm sadly aware that I am the exception not the norm though, and if I couldn't do what I currently do I would be unemployable.

@hoorayandupsherises

I think it's burnout. High expectations, from ourselves and others, coupled with the energy taken to mask all the time is exhausting. Or that's my experience.

I've had to make a huge effort to cut free a lot of expectations about being good at stuff. For example, I had stopped drawing and painting as a teenager as I "wasn't good enough". I have managed to get past that and start again, but I do have to fight with my tendency to get in a strop when I can't do it "right".

At school I got a B in English even though I hardly went to school in my last year and didn't revise at all.
I attempted to do an English degree and really really struggled. It wasn't the work as such, it was the noise at uni and then the stress of trying to do coursework now I have children. I can't even read unless it's silent.
It's as though my brain can't cope with anything extra than my children.

I have a theory that pregnancy interferes with our ability to hyperfocus - mine vanished in pregnancy and has never really come back to the extent I had it before.

@RocketAndAFuckingMelon

I have a theory that pregnancy interferes with our ability to hyperfocus - mine vanished in pregnancy and has never really come back to the extent I had it before.

Interesting! Definitely true for me

Yes I was. And now it depends on context. If people can understand my spiky profile, yes my abilities are respected.
In a traditional workplace, no - I'm an awkward annoyance and unreasonable for asking for adjustments to do my work well.

I have adhd as well as being autistic, if that's relevant so I feel like I have to work v hard to be able to focus.

The years when I had children, I was only really able to focus on children. I got a degree and a counselling diploma but couldn't really work until my children were primary age or above.

I wonder whether puberty might affect it too - mine wobbled at secondary but didn't disappear until pregnancy.

I think if you unconsciously set up strategies at primary where you compensate for executive dysfunction and slower processing with periods of intense hyperfocus, and then that hyperfocus is no longer available but you still have the executive dysfunction and slower processing, that could explain the sudden burnouts at secondary age or after. (This is based on absolutely nothing but a bit of a hunch from my own and others' experiences so hardly scientific!)

I was in primary school, particularly in maths and science, doing classes with older year groups in primary. I sailed through primary and secondary school and got straight A's at GCSE, then did 4 science A-levels. My A-level grades were ok but nothing exciting although they were enough to get me onto a good uni course but I struggled at uni. Because I'd always picked things up very easily I never learnt how to learn/study so when things started to get harder I didn't have the skills to handle it. I was lucky in that I scraped through my degree and an MSc and now have a good job and a career I love. I work in a sector full of people with PhD's etc so I don't stand out like I did when I was a kid but I do at least feel like I can hold my own.

My DH had similar issues but got the straight A's at A'level and didn't crash til uni. He ended up with a minimum wage job after uni but was lucky it was with a company who spotted his potential and they nurtured him and he developed an excellent career.

It's all too easy to look at kids doing well at school and think they don't need help, but at some stage it will stop being easy and then they don't have the skillset to cope with it. It can also be too easy to focus on the one thing a child is very talented at to the detriment of becoming more well rounded.

I also agree with Rocket that I've lost my edge since I had my DD - I don't know quite why but I'm definitely not the same!

The other issue is ‘learning to learn’.

I wasn’t ‘gifted’ but bright enough that I passed with really good GCSEs - having joined the school halfway through year 10 and not knowing any English. I also had worked my way from the bottom sets I was placed in - up to the top ones in Maths and Science so I was actually able to get an A on the exam. I didn’t really study much.

At A level I was suddenly expected to work and study - which I didn’t know how to do. Until then I just ‘remembered’ things from class and that was enough.

I failed most of my initial exams and only got good grades at Biology and Psychology after re-takes.

Yes, and I began to burn out in my final school year, and only scraped through Uni. Having to self-structure and really learn, after coasting through school, was not easy. I kind of pulled it together enough to pass. Got some strategies now which have helped a lot with work and study.

I was classed as well above average at school, but I wasn't interested in academic learning - find it boring due to my adhd. I much prefer learning practical skills and problem solving so nursing was a good choice in spite of the 'peopley' factor.

If I'm interested in something, I can research it to death, but not for long enough to be able to sit exams about it. I'm a kind of fast and hard learner, whereas academic courses go on and on and you're expected to learn a lot. Nurse education was varied enough for me not to become bored and it could be applied to real life scenarios, which I can relate more to as well.

Yes - as long as I was left alone to teach myself. I had no interest in group work or projects.

To be honest, I didn't really go to school much in fifth year - I just studied at home. However, this was a small school in Scotland in the 1990s and they mostly just let me get on with it, on the basis that I showed face every now and again and turned in my work on time (the past is a different country... ).

I couldn't understand the way that maths was taught at Standard Grade (it wasn't the subject, it was the method that baffled me), so I had an exceptional tutor (who I now suspect was probably ND himself) who schooled me through SG and Higher.

I have an exceptionally good memory, so I have always been good at traditional exam formats - I also have an undergraduate degree and an MSc - but in many ways, I'm glad I'm not in education now, as I think I would struggle with the emphasis on group work and projects.

One of the major problems for me was that in a local school with a 15 minute bus ride I excelled. But university meant travelling into the city centre, which was a 4hr round trip and was too big and noisy and stressful. Lots of people, lots of roads to cross, voices and traffic and beeping noises everywhere. It made me physically ill having to go there every day, I developed anxiety and migraines. It severely hampered my performance and I barely scraped through my degree.

I did try living in halls of residence to avoid the 4hr bus trip but I found it too stressful. Strangers around all the time making a noise, not knowing who would be in the shared kitchen or bathroom when I went in there, and even when I became vaguely familiar with the other residents they would still bring in other strangers like their friends or boyfriends. It was just too much to handle. Also I’m incapable of making friends due to my autism so I was totally isolated. So I moved back home, where at least I had the company of my family and the security of not having strangers waltzing into the house, but then the 4hr bus trip killed me.

Later on my parents moved house and I completed a Masters at the out of town campus of a nearby university. I passed with flying colours because it was quiet and I could get there in less than half an hour.

This whole problem came back to bite me again when I applied for jobs. I just couldn’t handle the city centre every day, and avoiding the city meant there were very few job opportunities.

Was i regarded as gifted in primary school? Yes.
Am I gifted now? No
I do not have a glittering career but I am in great demand on quiz teams!

I was gifted at school. I did exams early and got A*/As.. I got into vet school and I'm about to enter my final year but I feel like the stupidest person there.

I've never had a job, only vet related placements and volunteering.

Yes, this is me exactly. I was always at the top of the class in Primary. Went to Grammar school and did okay. Went to Uni and got a degree but wasn't outstanding.

I have always worked very hard at work but have always struggled. My face just never really fits. I am always the person to be left out or forgotten. If somebody's Birthday is forgotten it will be mine.

I used to try very hard to fit in with varying results. Now I just pretty much assume that I'm not going to be included. I do try to get on with everyone but don't go over and above.

I have no idea how to rectify it. I hazard a guess that I am very direct and people don't really like it.

If I died tomorrow I doubt many people would come to my funeral.

Yep this is painfully familiar. Graduated top of my school but have dropped out of uni so many times I have lost count. I seem to find actual life much harder than my peers. I don’t think this is just about resilience in the face of failure as someone upthread suggested. I have “tried again” a lot of times!! I think burnout, social problems and coping with the complexity of adult life is more it.

I had an immensely high reading age as a young child - I pretty much learned to read fluently overnight (and I can remember the first book I read to myself, sitting up in bed feeling pure pleasure as the words were just there on the page) but apart from that I was a grafter, rather than 'gifted' - did very well in exams, went to a good university etc. I was the sort of person who knew about a handful of things to 'expert' level at a precocious age.

At infant school we used to get a choice of 'reading cards' or colouring sheets - they were those cards in different colours, rose, green, violet etc. Of course 29 people in the class chose to colour in - I always chose the cards and pretty much finished them off in a year whereas most people were still on the first colour.

I don't have any gifts as an adult or at least nothing that translates into a high-flying career.

I have always worked very hard at work but have always struggled. My face just never really fits. I am always the person to be left out or forgotten. If somebody's Birthday is forgotten it will be mine.

This is exactly me, too.

I'm also very good at exams in the pure technique sense. Whatever the exam format I seem to have an instinct to work through it in a way that will get me the best results, and my brain responds to the pressure and 'flushes out' information from my subconscious.

@ShiftingSands21

Yep this is painfully familiar. Graduated top of my school but have dropped out of uni so many times I have lost count. I seem to find actual life much harder than my peers. I don’t think this is just about resilience in the face of failure as someone upthread suggested. I have “tried again” a lot of times!! I think burnout, social problems and coping with the complexity of adult life is more it.

Yes, me too.

I almost wish I had chosen a career where it is acceptable to be socially challenged like engineering or IT as I would have fitted right in!

I’d have been classified as gifted if it was a label then, straight A student though i would say with the benefit of hindsight I wasn’t the intellectual superstar “gifted” of which I came across a few at uni.

I still pick things up easily but I’m not outstanding in any particular field now. Quite good at juggling lots of priorities, which I feel was honed during juggling 5 A levels worth of work, but nothing other people don’t do too.