On "Potential"

So often I hear teachers say that a child is not working up to their potential.  In fact some of the highly gifted kids I have worked with refer to this as the "p" word.  They feel like they have had this held against them their entire lives; once they did well on a test and everyone expects great things from them in all areas all the time.  Recently I have evaluated several children with similar problems. They scored high on tests that measure non-verbal reasoning, such as the Raven Progressive Matrices which are used in my local public school system to qualify for gifted programs.  However what was not known was that these children also had language based learning disabilities and ADHD which made most aspects of school learning difficult for them.  In the past I have tested children who were not working up to their potential who actually didn't have high potential.  This is a problem. The child grows up feeling inadequate; they feel like they are doing something wrong, yet they are often trying as hard as they can.  Parents become angry because they think the child is slacking off. For these children who can be very smart but have problems in learning (Twice or Mulitply Exceptional) it is often very difficult to see their strengths and weaknesses without a proper evaluation.  Blaming them for not working up to their potential doesn't help. Determining what their potential is accurately, in what subjects, is what is needed.
For reading on this subject please see Twice-Exceptional Gifted Children: Understanding, Teaching, and Counseling Gifted Students by Beverly Trail, Ed.D.