I saw a note on a social media group the other night while I couldn’t sleep asking how to determine if a child is gifted if they are not academically high achieving. Thankfully, many responses, including my own, indicated that the two are not the same thing, and it is much more complicated.

Linda Silverman says that gifted is who you are, not what you produce.

And trying to explain that to people is also complicated because often, so much of who we are as adults is, in fact, what we produce. That’s all we know.

We are the boxes we check off, the items on the to-do list with a line through them.

We are the accomplishments we achieve, the plaques on the wall.

We are the recognition of a job well done, a raise or a promotion.

Our worth is tied to what we get done in a day, in the 40-80 hours in a workweek that we throw ourselves headlong into every Monday morning.

Our worth, as adults, is inherently tied to what we produce.

How many of us go home at night bemoaning the long to-do list that only grew longer that day, all the tasks left not finished because other things, not on the list, had to happen.

*raises hand* I know I do. There is great satisfaction in checking a box (or adding to the list so you can check off that box too). And a greater frustration when the list is longer at the end of the day than when you started.

The thing is that what we DO get done in a day is often what illustrates our values and isn’t always easily measured.

You chose to support a colleague through a difficult situation instead of respond to the neverending stream of incoming emails.

You chose one meeting over another because the topic was interesting to you, and you felt you could contribute more.

You chose to go home, leaving your computer at work, so you could play tabletop games with your kids before bed or watch their cross-country race.

You chose to have a conversation about what could be…or problem-solve so that perhaps tomorrow might be better.

You chose to cover a colleague’s class for a little while so someone else didn’t have to rearrange things…and you got to read aloud and be with kids for a bit, reveling in the complexity and beauty that is third-grade cursive practice and the well-crafted capital S…or q…because neither of those are easy.

If your choices in a day reflect the values you hold, then you’re still doing important work. The list will be there tomorrow.

It’s the same for gifted kids. What’s their important work?

For some, it’s the care-taking of others. For some, it’s learning something not remotely close to the syllabus because it’s interesting. For some, it’s an adventure or creating something no one has thought of yet just to see if they can.

Gifted kids are more than the boxes on a record sheet with scores in them that align to a label. They are more than a to-do list of assignments with lots of “complete” checkboxes.

Gifted is who they are. And it is complicated.