Reverting to average is a real danger that can happen to children that show beginning signs of real talent growth. What is the cause of this reversion to average? It is caused by putting a child into programs, educational or otherwise, that are already crowded with thousands of other participants, where the programs are designed to produce in them copycat skill sets. This can be done putting your pre-teen budding engineer into an after-school soccer team year after year or by putting your art-serious daughter through the same history classes as all the other top-heavy verbal children. End result after 2 to 3 years will be children who are just average in whatever they do. They will have lost that critical formation time over to human activities that will have no room for them in their future adult lives. Root cause: parental peer-pressure driving us to want so much to look like our neighbors that we can’t see our children being swallowed up into mediocrity.