Can a label given to someone at 5 years old control their relationship with failure and success for the rest of their life?

In Kentucky, Early Gifted and Talented (GT) identification starts in 4th grade, conducted through a series of tests, observations, and reviews that identify students as high performing in one or more categories: general intellect, specific academic aptitude, creativity, leadership, or visual/performing arts. This identification can help provide students with resources for their success, but it can also tether a student’s identity and value to their performance. This can lead to mounting pressure for students to remain high performing throughout school, oftentimes leading to feelings of stress and burnout as they age. 

Gifted Child Burnout is a behavioral syndrome defined as a state of exhaustion that occurs when a child faces continual stress from pressure to succeed, usually resulting from high expectations placed on them by themselves or others.

According to the Davidson Institute, a non-profit supporting the development of gifted young people, gifted child burnout is “the result of long-term stress The phenomenon is “often characterized by physical exhaustion, mental fatigue, and emotional detachment.”

Burnout is happening amongst high-achieving students and individuals in Kentucky and across the country due to academic pressure, limited emotional support, and perfectionism. This must be addressed if we want Kentucky's future leaders to succeed.  

In the 2022-2023 school year, approximately 64,390​ grade 4-12 students qualified for Gifted and Talented services out of the 634,424 total students in the state, as reported by the Kentucky Department of Education. Some students identified for the program reported feelings of stress and extreme pressure and weakening extracurricular, academic, and social performance.

“[Burnout] contributed to my severe mental health issues,” said Caroline Segebarth, a sophomore at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School. Segebarth shared that constant overworking of herself across school and extracurriculars caused her to feel guilt due to getting stressed over things that she used to manage with ease. This cycle of guilt and stress inflicted a serious toll on her mental health. 

This perfectly embodies the root cause of why this burnout is happening: External pressures from parents, society and schools constantly reinforce the idea that you need to excel in everything. This fuels the internal monologue in students that tells them that they must always strive to be the best and that nothing less is acceptable. Instead of constantly striving for perfection, students need to be comfortable with the idea that it isn’t always attainable.

Jayley Carroll, a sophomore from Elizabethtown High School, argues that “so much importance is put on being gifted and achieving that category when … it's really not the most important thing in the world.” She continued, “It’s okay to be average.”

Elizabethtown Independent Schools GT Coordinator Tonda Mullins believes that to combat burnout, students need to find a balance between school and personal life, along with an outlet for creative expression. According to UC Davis Health, “People who spend at least 20% of their time working on projects or ideas that they're personally interested in are protected from higher rates of burnout.”  We as humans naturally need a way to get messy and creatively express ourselves, but current standards don’t always provide easy accessibility to creative programming for students. 

Along with this, students engaging with creative outlets can help build community, and the people you surround yourself with play a major role in the reduction of burnout. “When you have other people that you're being creative with, you're going to feel connected,” said Mullins.  Human connection is especially important in a digital society. In a time where people are becoming increasingly distant from each other, it is imperative to take time to reconnect with others. 

As well as expression through creative outlets, controlled breathing and meditation can be another strategy to alleviate acute feelings of stress in the moment. Methods such as Tai Chi breathing, Yogi breathing, and box breathing are all great methods for destressing, especially due to their effectiveness and accessibility. According to The National Library of Medicine, “effective breathing interventions support greater parasympathetic tone,” which activates the body’s relaxation state. When we take the time to breathe and slow down, we can reset our mind and body, calming nerves and creating feelings of relaxation.

While these modes of destressing may work in the short-term, they may not be effective for long-term mental health and may not be applicable to all students. Because of this, a new perspective on achievement among high-achieving students must happen. Students must stop constantly striving for perfection, instead understanding and embracing the fact that perfection is not attainable. 

To redirect this, new classroom approaches are needed. Practices such as separating out tasks, giving students 5-10 minute breaks, and focusing on the learning process rather than the end goal can help combat heavy stress in the classroom. In a 2021 study published by the American Educational Research Association, it was noted that when students were placed in productive failure situations, where students are forced to problem solve and don’t initially succeed, it can have a positive effect on students’ mindsets. This practice could be especially effective for high-achieving, perfectionist students, as it allows them room to problem-solve and fail without the pressure of receiving a bad grade. This changes the narrative and shows that the intended results won’t always work out, and it is okay to experience that failure. 

Ultimately, fighting burnout amongst gifted students isn't something we can just fix overnight, and it isn’t about “fixing” gifted students. It is about embracing a new approach to achievement and success. We must remove mentalities that put success first and introduce new classroom strategies to see a reduction in burnout. By fostering compassion, creativity, and learning, we can prevent the quiet crisis that is burnout across gifted students in Kentucky, ensuring that our students develop into well-rounded and mentally healthy individuals, not just high achievers.