Was he a happy child? “No,” he says instantly. “Deep down I wasn't. There were all these congratulations and achievements and prizes, but I didn't have a good sense of who I was, and what I wanted to do.”
At the same time, he acknowledges, he got great pleasure from the praise, and the pressure was largely not from his family, but self-imposed. Which brings us to the question that, above all others, tortures the parents of gifted children: How much pressure is too much? Are they driving their little darlings to Juilliard, or off the edge of a cliff?
Here Dr. Freeman may be a bit of a heretic, because she believes that parents are wrongly labelled “pushy” when they're merely being encouraging. “You have to provide opportunities,” she says. “You can't play a violin without a violin, and without tuition.” Turning off the television to make your child practice isn't a breach of the Geneva Conventions. The problem comes, she says, when a child believes her parents' love is contingent on bringing home A's, or tennis trophies, or passing her piano exams. Then the pain and resentment start.
Which is exactly what happened with Suzanne Riley, another of Dr. Freeman's subjects. Ms. Riley is a pretty 41-year-old who is easily given to fits of laughter and lives in the English city of Lancaster with two cats she rescued off the streets. As a child, “everything came easily,” but accompanying that was a deep resentment of family and teachers who constantly expected more.
“There was a lot of pressure, and I didn't like it one bit,” she says. “I'd get A's, and the question would be, why aren't they A-pluses? No matter how well I did, my report cards said, ‘Suzanne could do better if she put more effort into it.' “
Although a talented pianist, she gave up music lessons because she hated the rigid structure. When a friend spent the entire holiday break studying for exams, “I thought she was mad. In the end, she got two more A's than me. Was it worth it?”
In Dr. Freeman's study, Ms. Riley was identified as not just intellectually gifted but “empathetically” as well. (Empathy, like creativity and imagination, is not something that intelligence tests are good at identifying.) With a degree in psychology, she used to work at a drop-in centre for people with mental-health issues, and now works for a housing charity. “I'm always hearing, ‘You should apply for management jobs,' but one of my biggest lessons is that I don't want what other people think of as success,” she says. “I'm very lucky. I love what I do.”
For Ms. Riley, the best thing about the “gifted” label was outgrowing it. That's a sentiment echoed again and again by Dr. Freeman's subjects. In her book she quotes Gail, who now makes desserts for a living, saying the tag was “the bane of my life.” Gary, the hedge-fund manager, found that when he left home he was “blissfully freed of the label of being gifted.” At 12, Kevin was an overweight couch potato, depressed at his failure to live up to his parents' expectations, but once he escaped, he blossomed as an adult to become a happy restaurant owner in Spain, surrounded by friends and family.
Dr. Sassoon and Ms. Riley have never met, although they're tied by the experience of exceptionalness. Neither has children, and yet, asked to imagine how they would treat a son or daughter who was gifted, they use the same word: holistically. That is, they would look at the child as a package, and love all the child's gifts and faults. “The concept of ‘gifted child' is a man-made phrase, an arbitrary line. It's not necessarily a holistic approach,” Dr. Sassoon says. “I'll tell you one thing,” Ms. Riley says, “I'd be the opposite of putting on pressure.”
Elizabeth Renzetti is a writer with The Globe and Mail.
