My gifted kid burnout reached its zenith during college admissions season, specifically on Ivy Day, but it had been a long time coming. For a former gifted kid, the experience of losing their “gifted” identity could send them into mental turmoil, especially because this often happens during the formative years of one’s life. This makes the pain of receiving a bad grade or otherwise subverting the “smart kid” ideal feel intensely personal. Furthermore, many children who grew up under the burden of the “gifted” label are likely to define themselves by their exceptional intelligence or talent. Gifted kid burnout could be framed as the dark side of perfectionism after all, holding oneself to exceedingly high standards makes failure all the more probable. Indeed, it likely originated as a label to make light of a rather upsetting phenomenon: the perceived “fall from grace” when a child labeled as extraordinarily intelligent or talented does not live up to the lofty expectations placed upon them by their family, teachers, peers, and often themselves. It’s been coined and redefined over and over again in various media from TikToks to college news articles, cemented into our cultural lexicon, but always seems to carry an air of levity. Gifted kid burnout, or “gifted kid syndrome,” is not a new term. Yet when I encounter virtually any account of “gifted kid burnout” online, I can’t help but notice how accurately it describes my own experience. I was never submitted for IQ tests or told I must be some kind of genius. In fact, I was never whisked away from my classmates and placed in any kind of accelerated program without deliberately having to seek it out first (e.g. I was never in a “Gifted and Talented” program.

Gifted kid burnout list