Revisiting the Gifted Child in England: Emotional Memory, Recognition, and Healing in Adult Testimonies

Buse Demirkan is a PhD researcher in Human Geography at the University of Bristol, supervised by Dr Jennifer Crane and Professor Richard Harris. Her research examines how childhood giftedness is remembered in adulthood, utilising retrospective life story interviews to explore the emotional and spatial dimensions of the gifted label in England. She holds an MA in Inclusion and Disability from the University of Birmingham.

Being called “gifted” in childhood is rarely just about ability.

It is also about how one is seen by others — recognised, celebrated, overlooked, or misunderstood. For many of the adults I speak with, the "gifted" label lingers not as a neutral descriptor, but as a memory of how they were perceived in school, family, and community spaces. These emotional traces do not simply fade with time; instead, they shape how people come to understand themselves, their relationships, and their sense of belonging in the world.

To date, I have conducted 19 interviews with adults who were formally or informally identified as “gifted” in childhood. These conversations form the basis of an ongoing qualitative project exploring how giftedness is remembered, reinterpreted, and emotionally carried into adulthood.

If you are interested in learning more about the study or in taking part, further information is available here: https://linktr.ee/busedemirkan

In England, where there has never been a consistent national framework for identifying or supporting “gifted” children, these experiences are often uneven and deeply dependent on place. Some participants recalled structured programmes, such as enrichment groups, specialist classes, or access to cultural or creative opportunities. Others described the opposite: silence, uncertainty, or being “known” as clever without that ever translating into support or recognition. The gifted label, when it appeared, could feel official or informal, celebrated or quietly implied — something spoken aloud, or something sensed. What mattered most was not the label itself, but where it landed, and with whom.

Interviewing adults about their experiences of being labelled as “gifted” in childhood helps us understand not only what happened but also how it felt and how those feelings developed over time. These memories are often closely connected to specific places – such as classrooms, hallways, dining halls, or family homes – and to relationships with teachers, peers, and caregivers. In this project, participants describe not only the events of childhood but the atmospheres, silences, expectations, and emotional textures that shaped those events. While it is sometimes assumed that childhood emotions cannot be reliably accessed in adulthood, the narratives shared in my research demonstrate that these emotional and spatial memories are both vivid and significant, reflecting what scholars have described as emotional geographies (see Bondi 2016). Through retrospective life story interviews, we can trace how the gifted label continues to influence an individual's sense of belonging, identity, and recognition long after their formal education has concluded.

This methodological approach treats memory not as a perfect record, but as a meaningful and interpretive practice. The point is not to recover childhood exactly as it was, but to understand how childhood is carried, retold, and given shape in the present. These narratives demonstrate how people continue to live with, revise, defend, or rework the meanings associated with being labelled “gifted.” Memory here is not a limitation – it is the evidence.

From these 19 interviews, several recurring emotional themes have begun to emerge. I focus on two of them briefly here.

Recognition

“I try to avoid the term ‘gifted,’ because people hear it as ‘you think you’re better than them.”

Being recognised as “gifted” often carried a complex social weight. The label could offer affirmation, but it could just as easily create distance. Rather than being experienced as a simple statement of ability, it was something negotiated in relation to others – to classmates, siblings, teachers, and family expectations. The meaning of giftedness did not reside solely within the child; it was shaped in the spaces where they were seen, misunderstood, encouraged, or compared.

Some participants recalled the label as a doorway – a sense of possibility, access, or encouragement. Others described it as a spotlight they did not ask for, or a comparison that set them apart from their peers. In some cases, being “the clever one” became a family identity; in others, it was contested, resisted, or quietly ignored. Recognition, in this sense, was never just about being noticed – it was about how one was positioned, and what that positioning felt like (Honneth, 1995). The emotional work of managing how others understood the label often became as significant as schoolwork itself.

Reframing and Healing

“Just that relief — like it all makes sense now… not that I wasn’t good enough… it just wasn’t the right environment.”

For some, looking back brought a shift in how the 'gifted' label was understood and perceived. Instead of seeing past difficulties as personal shortcomings, participants often reframed them as mismatches between their needs and the environments in which they were placed. This process of reinterpretation did not erase the emotional intensity of childhood, but it allowed people to relocate the source of pressure, moving it from the self to the environment – echoing Sara Ahmed’s argument that emotions move between bodies and spaces rather than staying “inside” the individual (Ahmed, 2014).

Healing, in this sense, was not about undoing the past, but about finding new language and new grounding for experiences that once felt confusing or isolating. Many participants spoke about developing greater compassion for their younger selves, or recognising the structural, cultural, and spatial forces that shaped their educational pathways – from selective schools to rural/urban divides to family histories of migration, class mobility, or disability. The gifted label, when revisited, became something that could be softened, questioned, or reclaimed.

The reflections shared in these interviews show that childhood is not sealed off in the past; it continues to shape how people understand themselves in the present. Emotional memories are carried through places, relationships, and the narratives we inherit about who we are meant to be. By listening to adults speak about being labelled “gifted,” it becomes possible to trace how recognition and misunderstanding unfolded across specific school environments, homes, and social worlds. This approach offers a bridge for children’s geographies, demonstrating that childhood can be studied through adulthood, not as something lost, but as something lived and remembered. I aim to further develop this work into an academic article, examining how emotional memory, giftedness, and recognition unfold across time and space.

If these reflections resonate, I welcome continued conversations about how childhood experiences are carried into adulthood in subtle and emotional ways. I look forward to sharing more as it develops.

Further Reading

These works address the emotional, spatial, and relational aspects of memory, identity, and educational experience:

Ahmed, S. (2014). The Cultural Politics of Emotion (NED-New edition, 2). Edinburgh University Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1g09x4q

Bondi, L. (2005). Making connections and thinking through emotions: Between geography and psychotherapy. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 30(4), 433–448. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2005.00183.x

Bondi, L. (2016). Emotional Geographies. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315579245

Honneth, A. (1995). The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Polity.

Reay, D. (2017). Miseducation: Inequality, education and the working classes (1st edn). Bristol University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt22p7k7m