<p>Recent experience prompts two new downsides:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>the child's mere existence as a top achiever can serve as an invalidation of the rationalizations and excuses lower performers hold dear. This can produce resentment toward the achiever. Ex. some of the girls on my D's track team were complaining about the coach's training practices that they feel are not appropriate. They blame those practices for their poor race times recently. While there may be truth to what they say, the fact remains that D still performed well despite being subject to those same practices. This makes the girls annoyed. D's performance must therefore be rationalized away somehow. There are many ways of doing that, but see below for one of them:</p></li>
<li><p>Other people make dire predictions about the students' future based on the flawed assumption that such kids are unnaturally driven or are being pressured by parents. The high level of performance can't last, they say. D commented this morning that kids are saying she will burn out. Is this warranted by any evidence? No. It's not like D's one of those kids who ran half-marathons at age 8 and competed with track clubs for years before HS. She just started running competitively, in fact. It's unsettling to have people around you forecasting your decline.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Stuff that is purely individual, like who got the highest grades/scores, who got a superior or all-state invitation, who got the highest batting average/best ERA, etc... In general, people are very supportive and complimentary. No one faults anyone else for their achievement. </p>
<p>WHEN THE CLAWS COME OUT (at our HS)- Decisions regarding Leadership appointments, admittance into honorary groups, honor council/honor court, who gets selected to be on math team, JKB, Rotary, Boys/Girls State. In other words, the more "subjective" stuff. </p>
<p>I've seen parents actually go to a coach and spread rumors about other players on a team who were vying for the same position (he does drugs, he is a bully to younger players, he is a bad influence). I've seen parents who are 'in' with administration/faculty do the same for students competing with their kids for leadership roles. There is nothing you can do to protect your kid against rumors started and spread by other parents.</p>
<p>I think the amount of clawing could be reduced if we didn't keep on building these mega-high schools. Our town, for one, probably should have 2 high schools. This is one way in which it seems that smaller, private schools have an edge, as well as non-regional smaller public high schools. At private schools in our area, children are required to play at least one sport, so everyone can make the team. Now, not everyone will play the same amount, but they can be on the team. Also, there are fewer people competing for the leadership positions. The graduation class of private schools can be as small as 50-75 kids. At our mega-school, on the other hand, a kid has to be pretty special (or hot) to become an officer in one of the serious clubs, like FBLA or JSA. Of course, you can start a stuffed animal collecting club and make yourself president, but do colleges care about those clubs? In the sports realm, being the best on the team here in the densely populated NE requires a much higher level of performance than being the best somewhere in Oklahoma. The message kids get from GC's and college prep. info. is that everyone has to be a leader, everyone has to be a star in something. The pressure to distinguish oneself can be intense and not everyone handles it well.</p>
<p>GFG - As a parent in an area with a mega-school (in the NE), I agree with all that you say. It's SO hard to shine in this type of school. Kids need to choose one sport since making the teams is so competitive that you need to practice all year. Even those who do are not guaranteed a spot. Some participate on JV teams (if they're lucky) in freshman and soph years and then drop out (it's not cool to be JV from junior year on). Academics are similar. Lots of NMFs. Kids taking 15 APs. Leadership positions are very tough to get. Then we get to admissions - and it gets even worse.
Pluses of this pressure cooker? Teachers were outstanding. Classes challenging. My son learned how to write well and can do advanced math in his sleep. Also learned good study habits (all those AP tests at the end of the year). He did well in his chosen sport but had to work very hard to get there - ended up being good for his confidence. So I guess he did fine overall...
Funny, he chose another mega-school for college - he seems to like all that hustle and bustle. I loved the smaller LACs - but what do I know?</p>
<p>Yes, toneranger, there are definitely benefits to the pressure cooker. As I've posted other places, my S used to say that college couldn't possibly be harder than HS. And for him it isn't! The competitive hs environment prepared him well. So I do need to focus more on the positives. But D and I are more sociable and sensitive souls than S and find ourselves rather busy at the moment fending off enemy darts. I myself am not "at the top" in anything, but I still feel the loneliness in school environments which is a social consequence of having a higher-profile kid.</p>
<p>gfg - Yeah, the experience you're having with the track team is pretty nasty. My son competed in tennis and the #1 player on the team was given a lot of respect. He was so far above everyone else that there really was no competition. Now, just below him, there was a group of several players (including my s), all roughly similar in skill, competing for singles and doubles spots. This is where it got tough. Challenge matches brought out the worst in these kids (and the parents). These are all top players who could easily play top singles in almost all the other schools in the area. One match determines the pecking order. We got an egg thrown at our house the day after my son got a singles spot, won his match and was featured in the newspaper. Ouch. Now that he's in college, I miss watching him play (he just does club) but I don't miss those "enemy darts" as you call them.</p>
<p>Thanks for sharing that anecdote, toneranger. And I'm sure your son did not gloat or brag or do anything to deserve the egging, which is what people who haven't personally experienced this type of thing might assume.</p>
<p>GFG - yes, there was no gloating...he felt bad for some of the other players since he knows they're all close in skill level. One of the other (nice) parents called in the press coverage so we had nothing to do with that either. We actually don't know who did the egging but we have some guesses...
I guess this is an example of the ugly side of competition....</p>
<p>GFG--too bad about the gossip & claws; I had no idea it was that cutthroat. But I wouldn't discount the serious attitude about sports out here in "flyover" country. More serious about sports than about academics, sometimes.</p>
<p>And in Texas every so often cheerleaders & their moms get into it pretty badly.</p>
<p>Thanks, everyone. One of the goals of this thread was to help people see that kids who excel in something don't "have it made." I wanted folks to understand that with success comes plenty of responsibility and unwanted problems like backstabbing and resentment. Therefore, if your goal is for you or your child to "be the best" at something, remember that there's baggage that accompanies that position. Depending on the personalities involved, it may or may not end up being as desirable as you had hoped.</p>
<p>Furthermore, a talented kid doesn't have it made for life. He isn't exempt from life's problems. After a big accomplishment, he can't just stop and relax and coast through subsequent years doing that special thing he's good at. There will always be someone younger and better. He can't breeze right through high school into a college scholarship or something. He will have to work just as hard or harder than the average kid and people will be waiting for him to fail. When he does fail, there will be those who will rejoice. And if he succeeds, his accomplishment will be chalked up to genetics (hard work being irrelevant), or attributed to overzealous parents, or to town politics. If not, they will find some reason he doesn't deserve his success. Besides that, people will assume he is conceited whether there is any evidence of that or not.</p>
<p>I'm not bitter because I'm working on not letting this stuff in, but at the same time I wanted to tell it like it is to help people understand what kids go through.</p>
<p>I'll be honest with you, GFG...I have a kid for whom absolutely everything comes easily, and I work with kids for whom nothing comes easily. I'll take life as the former, over the latter, any day of the week.</p>
<p>"What these kids go through" is absolutely nothing like what kids who struggle go through. A little backstabbing? Jealousy? Baggage? Pffft. They'll survive, and perhaps even have to flex a mental muscle or two in college (I hope my kid does at least). </p>
<p>Maybe it's all relative, but having seen both sides of the coin, I am not weeping too much for the kids who do excel.</p>
<p>Allmusic, I'll be honest with you too. I have a younger child who is a special education student (has PDD). She will struggle a lot in life, to be sure, but what I see in her younger years is this: she threatens no one. Consequently, there are always people who will look out for her. Everyone is happy for her if she does something well (relatively speaking, of course). And if she fails, she is given a pass and usually encouragement. Of course, things will be much harder socially as she grows up. She will be teased and taunted. But, success at too high of a social cost just isn't worth it. Both of my older kids have said "I wish I were average." Now they didn't say "I wish I were special ed." Still, I can see that some kids will chose not to excel to avoid the social cost. Just like some girls stop being "smart" (or good at math) when they enter adolescence. They have the advantage of being able to make the choice.</p>
<p>dstark, you're right. Most of this is middle school and high school stuff. It won't matter a few years from now. This is why people say the later year high school and college reunions are more fun because people are past the age to compare or to care who has done what!</p>
<p>But for now, I'm finding this a little difficult to cope with. I never know when I'll be accosted by some bitter person, like at the snack shack. A few weeks after that incident, an irate parent began to yell at me during a meet about how unfair it was that the newspaper photographer was taking a picture of my D and not other kids. There have been days when my D has considered quitting or just running slow from now on to get people off her back.</p>
<p>I AM grateful for all the wonderful benefits of talent, but as I've said several times, I started this thread to let people to know that success isn't free.</p>
<p>True talents are rare and according to C.G.Jung “they are the fairest fruit on the tree of humanity but they also hang on its weakest branch”. To find support for them, to find friendship, and to find peers who understand their sensitivity and vulnerability are the most challenging task.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Both of my older kids have said "I wish I were average."
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</p>
<p>and I hope you smacked them both 'aside the head! ;) </p>
<p>Kidding, of course, but this is the lament of immaturity. The high school social scene may be hard, and the middle school even more so, but once they reach college they will be in their element surrounded by others who's abilities and achievements are equal to, and surpass, their own. </p>
<p>Take the long view. You (your kids) have been blessed. Handling jealously from others is a skill one can learn, and is just a fact of life, given the human condition, and something that we all come up against at some time or another - we don't have to be superstars to experience the green monster. </p>
<p>Both of my kids have been given gifts far beyond what they have any reason to expect or deserve, and they also have friends with different, but equally impressive talents. Support has been generous, and friendships true. </p>
<p>Except for the excessive pressures that they sometimes put on themselves, I see the "downside" being much ado about very little.</p>