Dr. Grauer's Column - Gardeners

Gardeners
Or: The Child Who Was Supposed to Be Something
By Stuart Grauer

Children are verbs before they are nouns.

Over the years, parents and consultants have presented their children to school officials and teachers in many ways. There was the Indigo Child, said to possess unusual spiritual gifts and sensitivities. There was the Highly Sensitive Child, the Old Soul (as tempting and relatable as this can be), the Future Genius, the Neurodivergent Child, the Beautiful or Handsome Child, the At-Risk Child, and even, believe it or not, the Loser.

To some extent, these labels have been efforts to replace other labels that have become worn out socially or politically. These days, in addition, there’s some serious bank to be made, maybe a bestseller, if you can coin a label.

Not so back in the day. My grandparents actually went to school with children labeled Feeble-minded, Morons, and Superior. Since then, labels have ascended and declined—Slow Learner, College-Bound, Problem Child, Crystal Child, Delinquent. No one would claim they invented those labels. Weirdly, one that keeps taking on new meaning and today seems accepted about as casually as my grandparents accepted the actual term Dull Normal: the Average Child.

I am a teacher and a parent and, to the best of my recollection, I have never intentionally called or labelled any child as "smart" or beautiful, though I have referred to many of their efforts and decisions that way. After you read these few words, you may not either. I hope so.

Most school leaders try to listen carefully whenever a parent or teacher arrives with a label. Usually, the label comes wrapped in concern, hope, or love. All too often, it comes wrapped in fear—normally subconscious fear. The world is filled with perceived risks for kids growing up. Skateboards, bad friends, drugs, and apparently any grade that’s not an A. It's true: you've got to have ice in your veins to be a parent, to learn and learn again the maxim: “It’s their life.”

Occasionally, the label comes wrapped in pride or even ego. But after meeting thousands of children, I have come to suspect that the label often tells us more about adults than it does about children.

A recent New York Magazine article, "The Mirage of the Gifted Child," challenges not just the way we identify gifted children, but whether "giftedness" is a meaningful category at all. The author traces a century of intelligence testing, gifted programs, and research, ultimately arguing that intelligence is far more fluid, contextual, and difficult to measure than most people imagine. Similarly, I have come to see intelligence and IQ much as I see grip strength: they respond to conditioning and effort. They grow.

The Problem With Labels

The problem is not that bright or talented children do not exist. They do. The problem is that children are not fixed categories—that's the whole point of schooling and loving them. A Zen saying reminds us that the dog howling at the moon is not the moon. In the same way, our labels are often our reactions to a child—not the child. There’s no gifted child, there’s only the child someone keeps calling gifted. The child remains far larger, stranger, and more full of possibility than any description we place upon them.

The child who reads at four may struggle socially at fourteen. Sometimes children who grasp complex academic concepts easily are cursed later on—they have become accustomed to things being easy and therefore never develop the perseverance and habits they will need later. There is a risk of character problems in these cases. In short:

Ease is a poor trainer.

There are few greater teacher delights than the child who seems average in elementary school discovering a passion in high school or college and becoming extraordinary—the classic slow burn. Research shows that childhood test scores often shift substantially over time and that many people who eventually reach the highest levels of achievement were not standout performers early in life. The age of fixed IQ scores is dead.

Schools often mess up their attribution to intelligence anyway. They are liable to equate a child's lifetime prospects in literature with enthusiasm for the Texas State Department of Education Book List... if you catch my drift. The future scientist may look like a daydreamer today—and I love allowing them to keep on dreaming, ensuring that the classroom has space for this, even given the march of curricular standards. The future artist may look like a mediocre student. The future leader may be the quiet child nobody notices. This is all an argument for small schools and classes, where children and their unique intelligences (and dreaming) are more likely to be seen and treated with patience.

Pancho Would Have Laughed

I have never asked whether a child was gifted. It feels like asking if they have big feet. I have wanted to know different things. Maybe: Can this young person pay attention? Can they persevere? Can they care for others? Are they warm? Have they learned well from mistakes? Are they even willing to take enough risks to make mistakes, or are they too worried about grades and pleasing people? Do they wear any innocence on their sleeve?

Around the Harkness tables, nobody receives special status because of an IQ score, a diagnosis, or a label. You earn your place by listening and appreciating others, helping out the conversation, and continuing to grow.

The Danger of Being "Special"

Some haunting stories come from adults who were labeled gifted as children. Many describe growing up with a fragile identity built around being "smart." When success came easily, they flourished. When they finally encountered difficulty, many felt their sense of self collapse.  Some (just some) end up going for the fast money, however they can get it. In short, we never talk much about the risk of giftedness, whatever it is.

Here's the real trouble: when your child is told repeatedly that they are gifted or smart it becomes easier for them to conclude that intelligence is something they possess rather than something they develop.

It follows that the greatest educational curse a parent can bestow upon a child might just be saying they should have done something better "because you're so smart.” The message is judgmental, and it can become a prison.

The greatest danger of labels like gifted, brilliant, or exceptional is that they teach children where to locate their worth. When we praise children primarily for being smart, they often learn that intelligence is something they possess rather than something they cultivate. They begin protecting an identity instead of developing a character.

A child recognized for effort, courage, kindness, curiosity, craftsmanship, perseverance, or integrity learns a different lesson: that who they become depends largely on the choices and efforts they make each day. On their values. Intelligence may open a door, but character determines what happens after one walks through it. Parents:  love your child’s struggle -- give them the ultimate support, of trusting and believing that they have what it takes to get through! They can open that door, you don’t need to! They are up to it, and they know when you believe that.

In the long run, you will find that effort compounds more reliably than talent, and values endure long after labels fade.

Let's praise values exercised and choices well made:

Not, "You are smart."
But: "You worked hard to solve that." Because perseverance is a value and a choice.
Not, "You are gifted."
But: "You showed remarkable curiosity." Because curiosity is a value and a choice.
Not even, "You are kind."
But: "That was a kind thing to think of and do." Because kindness is a value and a choice. It’s not your gift: it’s a gift for the one who receives it.

What If Every Child—Especially Your Child—Is a Mystery?

It is a terrible mistake to believe that a child's future can or should be predicted from a label assigned at age seven, much less their grades. And it happens constantly.

The natural world teaches a different lesson. Some trees grow quickly and stop. Others spend years putting down roots before rising toward the canopy. Some flowers bloom in spring, sometimes. Others wait until autumn. Our genes are like those natural patterns, and we never choose them—though we can amend their soil.

No master gardener stands over a seedling and declares with certainty what it will become. This is true: the most beautiful tree on our Grauer School quad is one the developers wanted to cut down. What a cool symbol! Good educators and parents are equally humble and patient.

This label-our-kids approach is not new. It seems to recycle every ten or fifteen years with slightly different jargon. Each generation brings a new batch of educational researchers speaking as though they have discovered either the next fashionable label or the newest reason not to label. Breaking titles include:  the 2e Child (twice exceptional), the Orchid Child, and there are a variety of other plants gaining ground. (Note to all: this is probably the 10th time I have covered this stubborn topic in a column.)

Through all those cycles, the great teachers are less interested in determining what "kind" of child stands before them and more interested in creating the conditions under which that child can discover who they are becoming, whatever that may be.

That might be less scientific, less efficient, and a whole lot closer to the kind of truth that the great gardeners and teachers have lived with all along.

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