In our American culture, when someone makes a mistake or error, they often face guilt, embarrassment, blame, or disappointment. For gifted children who blunder, their humiliation is even worse since their expectations and those of others are at a higher level. As a result, gifted children may learn to justify or rationalize their poor choices, faulty judgments, thinking errors, or misconceptions rather than admit a mistake and learn from it. Research studies on children from other cultures show that they do not experience negative feelings when they are incorrect and even welcome an error in order to learn accuracy.
As gifted children develop they show a number of characteristics that are obvious to parents and educators. Gifted children often learn quickly, reason abstractly, show artistic and creative talents, and/or have exceptional language skills. As a result, parents, educators, and others often praise or otherwise reinforce gifted children for their brilliance. This praise is felt to encourage confidence, achievement, productivity, and continued high performance. Unfortunately, this kind of praise actually may have a negative effect for gifted children.
According to Carol Dweck, “praising children’s intelligence harms their motivation and it harms their performance.” Messages about success such as, “You learned that so quickly! You are so smart!” may be interpreted as, “If I don’t learn something quickly, I’m not smart.” Praise for artistic talent or high grades in school without studying could be inferred as, “I shouldn’t try drawing anything hard or they’ll see I’m no Picasso,” or, “I’d better quit studying or they won’t thing I’m brilliant.” Shortly after praise children feel elated but, as soon as they have to struggle, they lose their confidence and motivation. The message becomes, if success means they’re smart, then failure means they’re dumb. Obviously, a child would want to avoid failure and, therefore, would not take on risks or challenges. Dweck states that parents should “teach children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning.”
Thus, Dweck found that praise for effort was more beneficial than praise for children’s ability and intelligence. Those praised for effort, even if not successful, eventually perform better and like what they are learning more than children praised for their natural abilities. Furthermore, when praised for effort, mistakes and criticism are more likely to be regarded as useful information that will help them improve. Conversely, those praised for natural ability think how competent they look to others rather than how they are learning. These children would become defensive about making mistakes so their goal would be to avoid failure rather than strive through effort for possible success. As adults, they would avoid taking responsibility for mistakes since that would be inferred as evidence they are not bright or competent.
Attitudes about making mistakes and learning can and should change. Achievement and mastery is a skill learned through hard work and practice rather than being fixed and innate. If gifted students accept hard work, their motivation should increase, they should enjoy their studies and learning, they should attain better grades, and they should not degrade themselves when they make mistakes. When an error is made, a person should say, “I made a mistake. I need to know what went wrong so I won’t make that same mistake again.” Therefore, all individuals can learn to see mistakes as inevitable aspects of life that help us mature rather than as terrible personal failings to be justified or denied.
Tavris and Aronson, 2007, “Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why we Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts”