"You can tell your child that he has been given the label 'gifted' as long as he also knows that it doesn't mean he is smarter or better than anyone, just that he performs well on a certain kind of test."
Ah, the irony of seeing (in this morning's paper) a family movie review for X-Men: First Class right next to a parenthood advice column containing the two approaches to take with a 'gifted' child noted above. Can you tell which one came from an 'expert' and which one came from another parent? I bet you can't.
The entire plot of X-Men: First Class revolves around how two groups of equally 'gifted' young adults end up on diverging paths with respect to how they perceive their relationship with those who are not similarly 'gifted'. A recurring desire expressed by mutants on both sides in the movie is the desire to feel normal, or to feel accepted for one's true self. To not have to hide. To not feel like a 'freak'. "They tend to feel different from their peers." (q) This sentiment is eloquently highlighted in the following trailer...
There's an obvious, though not overtly compared, difference between Charles and Erik with respect to their upbringings. Charles grew up with security and privilege, while Erik grew up in the shadow of someone who used torture to motivate. Erik could not escape being a target as a result of his 'gift', and consequently believed that the only safety was in being more powerful than those who would target or oppress you. Charles, perhaps because of his wealth/security, did not acquire the same set of learned perceptions of and responses to that which Erik perceived as a threat. X-Men: First Class has a lot to say about the contribution of nurture to the makings of a hero or a monster.
The only characters we are supposed to sympathize with in X-Men: First Class are mutants. There are simply no non-mutant characters of note. This works because there is some part in all of us that can identify with feeling like an outcast. Yet who but those who have felt truly isolated by an apparently unbridgeable gap between themselves and others can understand what it means to be with others who were like them? For the exceptionally smart - the ones who are typically labeled 'gifted' by schools - being with others like them may mean not having to deliberately downplay one's intellect. It may mean being able to exercise the full range of one's abilities without having to worry about the social consequences.
There is inherent suffering in having to hide any portion of one's true self. Yet we all make concessions of one sort or another to the social environments in which we live. The more extreme the concessions, the more extreme the suffering. Perhaps the most painful concessions are those which are predicated on the belief that something about our genetic makeup is unacceptable. The fact that you were born this way, and know no other way to be with respect to these traits, makes denying them especially painful.
If there is something to be learned from X-Men: First Class, perhaps it is that the message to parents of a gifted child (or of any child who struggles with being different in a significant way) should be: Find your child a social environment where s/he feels accepted and safe, and where s/he is encouraged to express his/her full range of abilities and true nature.
