》》 Whereas if he wasn’t pushed so far ahead, presumably he would still eventually get to a class that he had to study in - at which point maybe he’d be more equipped to deal with it…《《
Uh… exactly how does one learn to study without doing it?
We can’t know how this will work out. Perhaps we should just suspend judgement for now. I’m rooting for the young man.
No, I assure you I am not remotely jealous of a parent who has to cope with the kid so off the charts gifted that he has to enter college as a child or can’t get along with peers. It sounds like a burden in its own way. If anything, I feel sorry for them and wish them Godspeed.
"Anyways, those jealous parents here who are talking nonsense about “social skills”. Lets be honest, the “social skills” in college is largly about having sex and partying. "
Per your other posts, isn’t that exactly what you are jealous of? Guys who have girlfriends/female companionship?
Anecdotal to be sure, but my younger sister started at the community college in Calc 2. I was taking it as well, so we went together. We actually made a friend in the class, another dual enrolled high school student the same age as me (17). After the semester was over, she stayed in contact with both of us as she and I went off to college and my sister stayed home and continued classes. It’s not impossible for the younger students to make some friends, though not the exact same as the ones some make while living on campus at 18.
But that’s not always guaranteed either. How many posts do you see on CC saying “been at X college for a year, no friends, should I transfer?” And usually it’s not 13 year olds, it’s 18-19 year old, fairly typical freshman.
@albert69 - what I was trying to say is that these gifted kids could certainly learn how to study - but it would probably be more of an emotional / maturity issue for them to accept that they needed to do it. I thought that if they were older, they might be more willing to accept that they needed to learn to study.
But this is just my opinion / a guess… Not based on anything…
Killing animals has nothing to do with intelligence.
Sounds like those kids need a lot of help with social skills and empathy. That and the fact that being able to tell a joke that your audience gets is not “dumbing down”, but in fact being able to connect with your audience, which, in my opinion, is a pretty darn useful skill.
Just because you’re super smart does not give you an excuse not to learn how to relate to people. And don’t give me the blah blah you don’t understand because you’re not super smart, because I am, my husband really is, and both kids are.
And any time they use the excuse that people are too stupid to understand them, I say, who’s the smart one here that’s failing to connect? If you can’t make regular people understand you and connect to you, that’s on you, my brainy friends…
Ever been to a professional development session at which you were “taught” to do something you already knew how to do? Frustrating isn’t it? Now imagine doing that day in and day out for the the next 10 years of your career. It’s no wonder PG kids often become behavior problems in regular classrooms. They’re bored out of their minds! Lots of us were high IQ kids who were easily accommodated with a year of grade skipping or some enrichment. That’s not what we’re talking about here.
I suggest anyone who doubts PG children might need a little something different reread the Hoagies link in post #91. I don’t know if sending this kid to Cornell early is the right option but I trust Cornell admissions, this child’s family and the child himself to have a better handle on that than I do.
edited to fix typo
I suggest that everyone on this thread thinks profoundly gifted children need a different approach to schooling. The opinions begin to differ when the question of socializing the kid at his age level or with intellectual peers is asked.
MotherOfDragons, I’d like to pose a couple of awkward real-life scenarios, and ask for your opinion about them:
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Someone remarks that he/she is glad that the SAT has eliminated the words nobody ever encounters. You think that the SAT was already simplified before the most recent simplification, and in fact you commonly use the “rare” words in conversations, to say nothing of writing.
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A colleague remarks that he spent an entire afternoon on a Sudoku puzzle . . . that was in the newspaper.
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Someone posts his/her score on one of those vocabulary tests on Facebook, and asks friends to take it and post their scores.
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Free Rice level. Enough said?
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Do you have a Lumosity subscription?
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Why are you so quiet?
There could be potential for awkwardness either way (although not the same kind of awkwardness).
However, the options may be constrained by whether the options in question offer suitable academics for the student.
- Someone remarks that he/she is glad that the SAT has eliminated the words nobody ever encounters. You think that the SAT was already simplified before the most recent simplification, and in fact you commonly use the “rare” words in conversations, to say nothing of writing.
I would say “it’s going to be interesting to see how the changes affect the scores going forward.” I wouldn’t feel the need to comment on the fact that I have a prodigious vocabulary and that I enjoyed the challenge of the obscure words. Obviously the speaker doesn’t like big words, and shoving my knowledge and use of big words down their throat would do nothing to steer the conversation in a way that I would find entertaining, AND it would make them feel bad about themselves, and resent me for making them feel inferior. There’s no need to do that.
- A colleague remarks that he spent an entire afternoon on a Sudoku puzzle . . . that was in the newspaper.
I’d ask them what the most difficult part of it was, and did it feel great to get it done? There are things I super suck at, and I appreciate when people give me kudos for being able to simply complete them. I give those kudos back as often as I can, for whoever needs them.
- Someone posts his/her score on one of those vocabulary tests on Facebook, and asks friends to take it and post their scores.
Again, I rarely feel the need to throw down intellectually. No good can come of it.
- Free Rice level. Enough said?
If people enjoy playing it, and it’s doing good for the world, why on earth would you have an issue with it. It’s a good thing people are doing. Would you rather they go out and pillage and burn villages?
- Do you have a Lumosity subscription?
My answer to this is that my brain’s already working hard enough. I don’t get why you’d ding on people making an effort to do a good thing?
- Why are you so quiet?
Ok, nobody has EVER asked me this because I talk. A lot. But I never ask my very quiet husband this question. Not everybody needs to talk all the time, and he’s comfortable with me filling the airspace with chatter, and I’m comfortable with him going long periods of time without talking.
I suppose if I were someone who was quiet and someone asked me this question I’d say “I like quiet”.
There are ways to be kind and connect that have nothing to do with IQ. Probably a lot to do with EQ, though.
@ucbalumnus wrote
I think an optimal situation is one where the social interaction isn’t always enmeshed with the intellectual interaction-in other words, the kid can’t be good at everything so find something he’s average at (like soccer, drawing, anything) where his age-peers are also his skills-peers.
The kids that end up being so insufferable are always the ones that couldn’t take getting their butts kicked in soccer or out-drawn in art 101 when they could run intellectual rings around those same kids. They’d discount the value of earning their place on the field and on the team, and (in my parental opinion) being able to function in a situation where soft skills are required and the humility of sucking at something (anything!) and becoming competent at it is AS important as doing quadratic equations when you’re 4.
I think the Cornell kid will be fine, because it looks like the parents are appropriately addressing his intellectual needs, while still parenting him age-appropriately by having him not live like a college kid. I’m guessing they’re probably the kind of parents that have him in a karate class or a soccer class, as well, purely based on their behavior so far.
Mother of Dragons, here are my actual answers:
- Smile and say nothing. I do like your suggestion on this one, though.
Wish I had thought of it in “real time.” - Smile and say nothing. Or possibly I said something noncommittal like “Yeah.” I could not do as you suggested without sounding really phony–I’m not sure how to get past that.
- Take the online test, but post nothing.
- Say nothing about level reached in Free Rice. Spouse makes a remark about my level. Plan to look crossly at spouse when we are alone.
- Say, “Yes.”
- Say, “Um.”
@QuantMech I think it’s all about answering the question you want to answer, not necessarily the one they asked you. If you can do it with a smile and show genuine interest in their answers, most people are pretty happy with what you give back. Most people like to talk about themselves-just nicely toss the ball back in their court and let them run with it.
So here’s another one, that also really happened: My daughter and a number of other students in her school took the SAT as part of the Talent Search in 7th grade. After the results were back, a young man in her class wanted to know what her SAT scores were. She said that the information was private–in a way that was matter-of-fact, and not taunting or tantalizing, to the best of my belief. He insisted. She would not tell. He hit her face.
A few weeks later, he again wanted to know what her scores were. His mother had access to county-wide data, for those whose scores had been forwarded to the county as part of the SAT sign-up–but not my daughter’s because we had not sent the scores to the county, for privacy reasons. She would not say. He hit her again.
She did not hit him back either time.
What I did about this was nothing–expect to console my daughter. I am not sure whether any teacher observed the altercation, or if one did, whether the teacher had any idea of its cause. There were probably advantages to doing nothing, but I am not sure that it was right.
In another incident, involving two different students, a disagreement in the gifted and talented pull out program resulted in a boy’s breaking a girl’s front tooth when he slugged her.
I have a few friends who had to rearrange their lives to raise a special needs child. In most cases it was a child with a medical issue or learning issue, and even if the child could go to school, the parent needed to be available for medical appointments, therapy appointments, and even social services appointments for finances. Some found homeschooling to be the only option. Most of these kids are not gifted, but some are and their parents had to make sure they were getting the education they needed too. I found the gifted children harder to deal with (and their parents) because they’d argue about everything. I was told the ‘gifted’ soccer team should be allowed to argue with the referees during the game because they KNOW the game better than the refs and, basically, rules don’t apply to them. Right.
I think at 12 he’ll actually have an easier time at college than a 16 or 17 year old will. He won’t be able to do a lot of things, and he knows it. He’s not expecting to be a ‘regular’ college kid while a 16 year old might be, and yet the 16 year old may not be accepted by the older students.
“The kids that end up being so insufferable are always the ones that couldn’t take getting their butts kicked in soccer or out-drawn in art 101 when they could run intellectual rings around those same kids. They’d discount the value of earning their place on the field and on the team, and (in my parental opinion) being able to function in a situation where soft skills are required and the humility of sucking at something (anything!) and becoming competent at it is AS important as doing quadratic equations when you’re 4.”
I won’t go all the way to insufferable but this is what I was referring to. It was not an attractive trait in myself that I was so convinced I was so much smarter than everyone else that I could scoff when they bested me in soccer because “big deal, I can run rings around them in math class.” Well, true, but in point of fact everyone has something to teach everybody else about something. Luckily my parents tamped that trait down.
What some of you are describing is EMPHASIZING that trait, not tamping it down. What I hear from some of you is “It’s true you needn’t interact with those people, dear; why, that would be like hanging around people with mental disabilities. Better you stay in your intellectual cocoon.”
These comments are directed at the issue of social adjustment, and (implicitly) the effects of going to college early. That is how it is related to the thread topic. I think the comparison needs to be made, not between the student going to college early and not having a suitable social group vs. having idealized, great social interactions with age peers, but rather between not having a suitable social group in college, vs. having the actual range of social interactions with age peers.
Re #116
Seems like the other kid should have been arrested for battery.