Many students on Instagram and Tiktok are uniting over the shared experience of “Gifted Child Burnout”, with #giftedchildburnout having 24.3 thousand posts.
“Gifted Child Burnout” refers to a child who was deemed gifted in elementary school, but has struggled as they transitioned into high school and beyond. The need to continue to represent themselves as “gifted” causes them to bear incredible real life and emotional loads.
While the phrase is relatively unknown otherwise, many experts say it’s very real, with the Mayo Clinic and other psychology experts recognizing this type of burnout and its effects on high school students.
Burnout is defined by Mayo Clinic as “a state of physical or emotional exhaustion that also involves a sense of reduced accomplishment and loss of personal identity.”
Many students are praised from a young age for their success. They adopt this identity that who they are is a “gifted child.” Whether it’s internal or external pressure that pushes them to do it they get attached to perfection and to the idea that things come easily.
However, there’s eventually a point in every childhood where they won’t match the expectations they set for themselves and where learning isn’t easy.
Student Ayva Kemper ’25 gave her personal experience saying, “I think kids experience this because as children, things naturally come to you and it results in praise from teachers and parents. This creates a need for academic validation, and it causes you to work to a breaking point as school becomes more taxing.”
Monika Roots, MD, a child psychiatrist and co-founder of Bend Health describes “Gifted Child Burnout” as sometimes feeling like you are in a race without a finish line, “Because of the child or teen’s giftedness, they are often driven by perfectionism and societal pressure, always pushing the goal further away.”
Kemper ’25 talked about when she first began to experience this burnout.
“I began to have self doubts and struggle with the idea that I was dumb.” She also adds that there’s the pressure to keep up with peers.
Student Lexi Engel ’25 agreed saying, “I experienced burnout mainly my sophomore year. It’s caused by the pressure of having to keep up.”
With students seeing increasingly more of people’s lives online there becomes an added pressure to perform. Engel attributes some of the pressure adding to burnout is social media.
“I think it’s very common, especially today, with all the pressure and trying to be the best and highest ranked and social media doesn’t help a lot of it,” said Engel ’25.
The key to overcoming this is a shift in mindset, according to experts. Putting emphasis on trying instead of perfection, and understanding that failure is a part of the learning process.
