Nothing's quite as destructive as being told over and over that you're a natural at something so it'll be easy for you. It's a shame that well-meaning parents and mentors will sometimes undermine someone's potential by discouraging them from learning necessary skills.
Except assuming that if you did a bad job at something, it's because you were lazy.
The message I got growing up was that "you're so smart, but so lazy". This was principally because of my terrible fine motor coordination combined with my intellect.
So I'd try to do some sort of "posterboard" or "project" and it'd look like a slapped together mess no matter how hard I tried. My handwriting was often illegible to me, even when I tried to write very slow.
ADHD was also an issue, but the fact that every project I poured so much effort into was derided as lazy... yet I could ace every test... told me that effort wasn't, well, worth putting in.
No, actually. But I suffered nearly as badly as most. I think it almost took legal intervention to stop them trying to force cursive on me.
Being allowed to type assignments - in the early 90s - was one of the greatest things that ever happened to me.
Then again, I met other problems caused by my terrible organizational skills in creative ways. For instance, I ran a webserver that had had a folder that pointed to where I did all my assignments. When I inevitably forgot to print something... there it was.
Still. My experience, especially prior to high school (and prior to ADHD medication, now that I think about it) was completely dominated by working my ass off and being told that I wasn't trying at all.
