Like quite a few on this site, I'm one of those kids.
I have a kid now, he's not going to be sent to a regular school. I wasted about 30 years trying to work out what/how other people were thinking. School wasn't a challenge, everyone in it was - so I initially focused on that.
They'll spend time trying not to offend people. (I really like people, and want them to like me). It's really tiring and difficult to maintain a persona that's compatible with the crowd. Is it even right to do that?
The smarter you are, the less people listen to the 'true' you (boring, being annoying etc). My guess is being around 30% smarter than average is the sweet spot.
They need a framework to cope with the entire inefficiency of everything in society, and the apparent willingness of everyone around them to perpetuate it.
They need to learn to let people they love be, even if it appears they are walking off a cliff. That sucks.
Being smart is wonderful but it's not everything. It means things are easily understandable to you. It doesn't mean you know everything, but it means you can learn almost anything quickly.
If you want a PHD you can get one easily, it's like when you're really rich - things have a different meaning. Many smart people I know don't care about things like 'PHDs' - infact, quite the opposite. Friends and family matter, not PHDs.
TL;DR; IQ is one over-sold metric; teach your kids to be happy first.
I read this and thought: spot on. Smart enough to do well in life but not be isolated through rarefied levels of intelligence, or excessively burdened by awareness of the world's troubles, probably makes for a happy individual.
My issue is with the phrasing. There's no such concept as "30% smarter than average", because there are no (known) intelligence units that could increase by 30%. Intelligence is measured relative to other people; we don't have any cardinal numbers for it. As such, saying "30% smarter than average" makes exactly as much sense as saying "fg wnthmsz ijwklwe uagp whajqlx".
My apologies. I conveyed the meaning as best as I could, those who 'felt' the concept where able to forgive the obvious inaccuracies inherent in any statement such as that.
Also there is an average IQ (though a poor metric). The average is 100, a 30% increase would be approximately 133 points.
"Intelligence tests are one of the most popular types of psychological tests in use today. On the majority of modern IQ tests, the average (or mean) score is set at 100 with a standard deviation of 15 so that scores conform to a normal distribution curve. This means that 68 percent of scores fall within one standard deviation of the mean (that is, between 85 and 115), and 95 percent of scores fall within two standard deviations (between 70 and 130)."
Therefore, roughly speaking - what I proposed is that being in the top 5% can be either a blessing or (more easily) a serious impediment to a happy life.
And to this point, the parents must learn to be happy themselves. This is a great challenge for most people, who are often torn between social norms and their own internal forces, and never fully resolve these tensions. A parent with a clear understanding of their own nature can do a lot for a kid.
The great barrier to happiness for a parent of a gifted child is ego and vanity. Some parents become afflicted with inordinate pride in their progeny. "Look at how smart my son is!" they exclaim. The parents' peers, friends, teachers, family, tire of hearing about it. This can alienate the kid from these adults, and even worse the kid's ego can also become inflated. In the end, the parents' pride amplifies what is already a terrible alienating, lonely, and depressing existence when no-one really seems to "get" you.
A corollary to this sin of pride is focusing too much on academic performance and ignoring entirely the importance of social learning. Parents in general, and smart kids in particular, might make the mistake of believing that kids are in school to absorb academic knowledge alone. Yes, it is good to encourage native curiosity and satisfy the demands of a budding intellect. But even more important, I think, is for the child to understand his relationship to his peers. He must discover, essentially, what he wants from other kids and what they want from him, and (importantly) what they want from each other. This process of discovery, I think, should be done quietly, deliberately, and consciously. There is nothing more harmful than telling a kid, "You shouldn't care what other people think." Humans are born caring what other people think, and to deny that is just crazy. A smart kid starting with the right premise will be able to accomplish quite a lot - a smart kid given the wrong initial conditions will end up dejected, miserable, and a failure, all because he got bum information from parents who were just plain wrong.
It may seem counter-intuitive, but I believe that a critical element for happiness in intelligent kids is silence. Silence serves (at least) two purposes - first, and most importantly, it can better connect them to what they really enjoy. Sports, for example, can be enjoyed without words. So can music, and art, and even just the simple act of being around other kids. It frees up the kid to just be, and not to think, to not have to try and justify their value, often agonizingly, to a social group. In a similar way, it shows them that even without a brain, they are an intrinsically important, valuable human being - which not only takes a lot of pressure off, but helps them empathize with those that aren't as smart.
Anyway, just some random thoughts. Thanks for the post. :)
A lot of parents are intimidated by their 'smart' kids, there's absolutely no reason for that. Even the smartest child can learn a wealth of wisdom from the most 'ordinary' (obviously I'm just relating that to IQ) parents. Genius child means high IQ - fast learning ability, not knowledge or wisdom - so school is much less important than loving family values or the wisdom of elders.
"I believe that a critical element for happiness in intelligent kids is silence"
That's just perfect. I never thought of it that way, I'll take this and apply it to the mix! That blew me away, it had never occurred to me and is completely accurate in both an intellectual and emotional context.
I have a kid now, he's not going to be sent to a regular school. I wasted about 30 years trying to work out what/how other people were thinking. School wasn't a challenge, everyone in it was - so I initially focused on that.
They'll spend time trying not to offend people. (I really like people, and want them to like me). It's really tiring and difficult to maintain a persona that's compatible with the crowd. Is it even right to do that?
The smarter you are, the less people listen to the 'true' you (boring, being annoying etc). My guess is being around 30% smarter than average is the sweet spot.
They need a framework to cope with the entire inefficiency of everything in society, and the apparent willingness of everyone around them to perpetuate it.
They need to learn to let people they love be, even if it appears they are walking off a cliff. That sucks.
Being smart is wonderful but it's not everything. It means things are easily understandable to you. It doesn't mean you know everything, but it means you can learn almost anything quickly.
If you want a PHD you can get one easily, it's like when you're really rich - things have a different meaning. Many smart people I know don't care about things like 'PHDs' - infact, quite the opposite. Friends and family matter, not PHDs.
TL;DR; IQ is one over-sold metric; teach your kids to be happy first.