I'm totally sympathetic. I wasn't necessarily teased for being smart but I was always "The smart girl" or "The art girl" and felt self-conscious. Sometimes the pressures of being smart as a kid come from feeling and/or being told that you're different (and bad). Also, a lot of these advice columns about parenting are…

Narcissism is more than just pride in your abilities and accomplishments; it comes with a host of repellent characteristics including lack of empathy for others and unreasonable rage over criticism.

Whatever. My parents told me I was special all the time and I turned out fine. More than fine, in fact: I turned out to be a national treasure and God's gift to the motherfucking Earth!

This beautiful gif sums up 98% of my feelings about the comments on this article. I'll always love Jeremy Brett - I don't know how I would have got through my PhD at the age of six without his Sherlock to cheer me up!

My brilliant older brother was told from age 2 + that he was a genius by everyone. His life has been one fuck up after another and he's been a mental mess since his teens. I'd always wondered if there was a correlation between mental illness and high intelligence. Now I wonder if the expectations screwed him up.

This is all that growth mindset stuff: praise the work and effort, not just the person. If you tell a person they are smart, they start to believe that there is something wrong with themy when they fail or fall short. If you praise the work, then it's all part of the process when things don't go well.

"Poor and minority kids are rarely seen as gifted, so they are rarely put through these programs."

Oh THERE it is! I didn't mention literally any of that shit. You have an agenda. You`just hate women in general! You think we wronged you somehow. I see. NM. I get it. Fuck you.

There is literally no way in fucking hell I am going to debate anything with an asshole who comes here with this shit as their first line:

The problem with overly focusing on how intelligent a kid is is that, as someone pointed out on a different thread, while being able to read at a college level is really impressive for a 10-year-old, it's just not that impressive once you're in college. Barring a few real exceptions of astonishing intelligence, the…

The goal here is to make a clear distinction with kids is that they are great, but not greater than anyone else.

The first piece of pie is missing a small bit of crust near the edge. The second image of the pie, the crust is back. It's a crust conspiracy!

That isn't stating that girls are more empathetic or that boys lack empathy. It's stating that we encourage it more in girls. It's not at odds with the study you cite.

Nah.

I feel this article is a little bit to vague and ignores that children are not a high mind and don't act and behave the same way. I was told I was special when it came to film making which has helped me in achieving my goal of becoming a screen writer and I would hardly be called egotistical (I usually get told I'm to…

I have met many women who realized, in their thirties, that their parents set them up to fail at work and interpersonally because they engendered a false sense of 'specialness'; and yes they were middle class. There is value in praising real accomplishment and effort but to lavish unwarranted merit on your children…

(Worth noting: Other theories about narcissism credit parental coldness or neglect as the culprit, but a recent study looking at Bushman's data drew the conclusion that it's more likely to be the overpraise.)

Where's the mansplaining bingo card when you need it?