THE DARK SIDE OF BIRTH PATH / LIFE PATH / GIFTEDNESS = HOW TO CONNECT GOD

THE DARK SIDE OF DIAKONIA

some of the most talented—those with IQs in the 140 to 150 range—their gifts can turn out to be a trap. Because these children are so insightful at such a young age, able to make sense of adult ideas, they are constantly aware of the potential risk of failure. This awareness can immobilize them to the point of emotional paralysis, a quiet demon that parents and teachers must watch for.

And yet so many are wounded so early. So quickly and easily crushed, discouraged, disappointed. (And not uncommonly, crushed by parents and educators, friends, careless and rushed despite best intentions.) While my heart wants to scream and protect and wrap in cotton all the children I know and knew from any pain - the pain of bullying, or abuse, of neglect, of illness, disease, distress, disability - children are 'wired for struggle', for challenge.  As humans we need it, crave it. In our world, we will never be free of it. It is thrown at us or we throw ourselves at it, one way or another. 

Perhaps gifted individuals, often so sensitive to injustice, with that extra capacity to feel and understand, are more quickly and deeply wounded than most. It seems so, in my experience with gifted students. They certainly often have incapacitating anxiety and the perfectionism they deal with can be like a sucking mud around their feet. But again, they are certainly not alone, not in their need of an intact heart and not in feeling the pain of growing up, the pain of living.