Gifted Children May Be Stressed Out. New research from this week’s meetings of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in New York suggests that teasing, social isolation, and other pressures take their toll on the gifted. The article appears to focus on the costs of subjecting children to “pull-out” programs as a means of providing educational enrichment. It appears to me to miss the most pervasive and insidious stress of being gifted, however. There is a great cost to “buying into” intellect or academic achievement as the sole basis of self-esteem, as most gifted children do in an “educational meritocracy” system. The effects on both identity formation and social relationships of such a stilted value system may take the better part of a lifetime to overcome, if ever.