[This post is excerpted from Why Smart Teens Hurt. To learn more, please take a look!]
Let’s say that you’re seventeen, love literature, and read Crime and Punishment. Then you write your first novel. Will it read like Crime and Punishment? Will it have its impact? Not a chance.
No great writer, Dostoevsky included, has written a great novel at seventeen. But that literature-loving, excellence-loving seventeen-year-old, who may know intellectually that she is not supposed to be capable of writing Crime and Punishment at seventeen, is nevertheless going to feel disappointed by her first efforts—and worse than disappointed. Maybe much worse.
Such inevitable outcomes, like not being able to write Crime and Punishment at seventeen or not being able to compose a symphony like Beethoven’s Ninth at seventeen, do not feel inevitable. That seventeen-year-old feels like she has some greatness in her, and when her efforts prove only mediocre, as they almost certainly will, she is likely, verging on a certainty, to blast herself, doubt herself, and maybe give up on herself.
During those many growing years, a smart child will take his failures to heart—and there will be failures. He will botch “who” for “whom” and “which” for “that” and feel like a grammatical idiot, even if in a corner of his mind he knows how trivial such a failing is. Those countless “who” for “whom” pratfalls, materializing as missed notes at the piano recital, forgotten dates on the history exam, forgotten formulas on the chemistry exam, gloriously ugly craft projects in shop class, and a million billion other small and large missteps, gaffs, and disappointments—none of them important and all of them painful—are like glass shards on the path to competency, inflicting countless painful cuts.
Parents see these shortfalls—and are likely to react either critically or fearfully. They may demand that their child work harder or warn their child that his or her whole future depends on doing better. Rarely will a vigilant parent laugh these shortfalls off, fearing that freely pardoning mistakes, messes, and failures will “send the wrong message.” Ah, but they aren’t praising a mistake if and when they say to their teen, “You have great work ahead of you.” No; rather, they are healing a wound and securing their teen a better future.
By opting for this sort of response to shortfalls, parents aren’t implying that mistakes are unimportant, that bad work is as good as good work, that not applying oneself is the road to success, or that giving up is admirable. Rather, they are saying, over and over again in as many heartfelt ways as they can muster, “Don’t trash yourself over this misstep.” They are saying, “Don’t level some charge against yourself.” They are inviting their teen to see the bigger picture, that true picture in which Crime and Punishment never gets written at seventeen and in which “that” for “which” gets forgiven.
Smart teens are peculiarly prone to self-indictment because they appreciate and revere excellence, crave that excellence, want that excellence from their own efforts, know when they have missed the mark, and will give themselves demerits for those shortfalls. They may brush off that 60% on a French quiz (“Well, I didn’t study!”), that C+ on a history paper (“The Napoleonic Wars? Are you kidding me?”), and opt for studied nonchalance and irony. But you can bet that those demerits are internally accumulating.
This strange road to self-indictment is made stranger by a smart teen’s need to assert her individuality. On the one hand, she wouldn’t mind a good grade. On the other hand, she wants to write her history paper “her way,” maybe writing it as poetry rather than prose. Well, she knows that gambit will negatively affect her grade; she does it anyway; she gets her C+ (“Interesting effort, but not the assignment!”), and then she indicts herself for that C+–even though she made her bed herself.
How odd that she should indict herself! It’s as if seeing that demoralizing grade made her forget why she wrote her history paper in iambic pentameter in the first place. She not only chalks this up as a demerit but likely also as a warning about what will happen in life when she asserts her individuality. What are the two messages she receives from this escapade? First, “I screwed this up.” Second, “Being myself isn’t going to play very well.”
There are many variations on this theme. A smart teen heading down the road to unhealthy narcissism may turn all these demerits into charges against the world and come away with a giant chip on his shoulder. A smart teen plagued by anxiety may end up with migraines and stomachaches. The self-indictment that flows from countless natural, predictable, and even necessary shortfalls can play itself out as everything from despair to grandiosity, from giving up to throwing up, from withdrawal into the shadows to a lifetime of irony.
For Parents
Remind your smart teen that he is not his products, outputs, or results. Great geniuses got poor grades. The early efforts of the greats are routinely not great. Say to your teen, “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the thing you’re working on is. It really doesn’t matter! Great work is ahead of you!” See if not only you can say this but mean it. You can temper this kindness with certain careful admonitions, so as to ward off grandiosity, unhealthy narcissism, and the false idea that work isn’t required for greatness. But start with the kindness. Every smart teen is on a slippery slope to self-indictment unless he comes to understand in a deep, visceral way that the quality of his early efforts does not matter. What matters is that he doesn’t indict himself!
For Teens
I implore you not to get wrapped up in worries about the goodness or badness of your output. If the song you just wrote doesn’t sound very original, maybe it isn’t. So be it! The original songs are coming. If your history paper didn’t sparkle, so be it! Your mature work will sparkle. If you came in only third in a national spelling bee, who cares? Your mature work will not revolve around spelling! If you have some natural talent for chess but also sometimes commit the most amazing blunders—so do world champions! If you can’t quite grasp special relativity, well, one day you will; and if you never can, leave theoretical physics to someone else with “that sort” of mind and be brilliant in your own way.
Be gentle with yourself. Do not indict yourself. Unjustified indictments of that sort aren’t fair, aren’t nice, and aren’t helpful.
[This post is excerpted from Why Smart Teens Hurt. To learn more, please take a look!]
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