I'm looking at somebody like Ms. Sou there talking down her smarts and I'm realizing that I apparently have an excessive amount of self-esteem when it comes to my brain. I'm not saying I'm the smartest chickadee on the block, certainly NASA employs a number of people that blow me out of the water - but I'm smart. I know it. It's basically an unshakeable part of my self image. I'm smart just like I have brown eyes and the fact that I'm not the smartest at EVERYTHING doesn't change that.
So I'm not sure if that means my mom failed or succeeded?
i agree with this. I often feel like I think/function on a different level than others. I do acknowlege that my "book smarts" came at the cost of some social savvy though
I know as a very high achiever that i def. have problems when I make a mistake or don't success- I beat myself up & really have a hard time accepting that "everybody makes mistakes" or I just did something dumb. Usually it's in a social realm, but I occasionally do make life/banking/work errors that I probably dwell on longer than I should.
I remember reading about this a while back, but I think it had more to do with encouraging kids about their behaviors (you're working so hard, you're being very creative, you are very kind, you are to thoughful, you have a great imagination, you have wonderful style, etc) vs. encouraging their achievements/physical traits (you won, you are so pretty, you have great hair...)
I didn't read this article, but I've read this before in my many years in child development. I'm another "smart" kid, and skated through school, even grad school, relatively easily. It's just how my brain works. I'm also a terrible procrastinator, and have always generally only pursued things that came relatively easily to me. DH, on the other hand, is also objectively incredibly "smart," but is also the hardest worker I've ever met. We've been working hard to impress on our DD (who also looks to be following in our genetic/academic footsteps) that WORKING HARD is more important than anything else. DH is a HS teacher in an incredibly intellectually gifted area (one of the highest concentrations of PhDs in the country, he teaches their kids), and sees the downfall of kids who hit that wall when their "smarts" no longer get them where they think they should go. It probably said this in the article (others talk about this too), but you cannot control how smart you are, but you CAN control how hard you work, which makes a huge difference in how you attack things.
I hate the whole "Parenting: UR doing it wrong" no matter what, but I think there are some things we can learn from this research (even if it's hard to actually implement).
ETA: I also want to add that it's been challenging/scary to think about how my cognition has been changing with all of my health stuff BECAUSE my identity is so tied up in it. My mom talked about this too, because our family's whole identity is shaped by value of intellect too (it's crazy how many advanced degrees we have, and this is a really valued thing for my family. I know my dad was probably disappointed I won't be able to get my PhD too).