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The Myth of Giftedness
Do You Want a Gifted or Hardworking Child?
By Jim Taylor, Ph.D.
I used to work with a junior sports program in Colorado. There was one athlete on the team, I'll call him Rick, who was really terrible. Everyone knew it, including Rick himself. Yet Rick was my poster child for the value of hard work. He was the first one at training in the morning and the last one to leave at the end of the day. Rick put in more time in the weight room, took care of his equipment better and watched videos, read about and talked to coaches about his sport more than any other athlete on the team.
At competitions, Rick was consistently one of the worst finishers on the team. He was never going to be a good performer in the sport. Most people would call him a loser. "What a waste of time for Rick," they would say. "Why do something that you stink at?" Can you imagine working so hard and never seeing tangible results from your efforts?
Thankfully, Rick was raised with a different perspective on his sports participation. He didn't care about results. He just loved his sport.
Though Rick would never have athletic success, he was learning essential life skills that would serve him well later in life. Sooner or later, Rick was going to find something for which he had an aptitude and, combined with these life skills, he was going to be incredibly successful.
After high school, Rick went to a good college, applied everything he learned from his sport to his academics, did extremely well, and is currently finishing medical school with an eye on a career in sports medicine. Rick, who was the antithesis of gifted in his sport, is what I call a success in every sense of the word.
