- Genetics
- Reading - we read to our kids a lot, but we also used books as rewards. Instead of a trip to the toy store, we would take a trip to the bookstore. We bought a lot of books, rarely used the library. I felt it was important to own them. Both kids read for pleasure and never see me reading for pleasure. I was never a good reader and still don't do it much. I wanted stop that cycle for my kids.
- School - Not every school is right for every kid. We have spent many school years with 2 kids at 2 different schools. My kids haven't been in the same school since 5th/3rd grades.
- Lots of free time - don't over schedule at a young age - spend quality and quantity of time with them. -Well - this might make "happy" kids - not necessarily "smart". Maybe this is for another tread. :)
First and foremost, good genetics (apparently mostly from my wife 
). Beside that, I think that @patertrium is on to something.
We picked our heroes mindfully. Richard Feynman was one, and the kids did notice that I read books about him. We also picked Mister Rogers over Sesame Street, at a time when VHS tapes were much less handy than today’s DVRs, for any number of reasons (not to slag Sesame Street, but Mr Rogers is a hero).
The kids didn’t see a commercial until they went on a playdate to friends’ houses, because we let them watch only on VHS. DS came home and reported: “it was strange; the show was going on and then another show started for a while and then they went back to the real show; what was that?”
We don’t, as a family, spend much time watching sports, and we don’t idolize sports figures. At meals, we are much more likely to discuss the incredible accomplishments of Elon Musk than some grandstanding baseball player. Full disclosure: the kids wanted to play hockey, and did well at it, so we naturally did watch some hockey on TV, often as a family. We emphasized that athletic skill doesn’t give you a bye in the character game; if anything, you have more responsibility to exhibit good character than someone without a skill that impresses others. For those who know hockey, Martin Saint Louis was someone to look up to and Alexander Ovechkin wasn’t.
All that aside, genetics is probably the single biggest influence.
Just curious: How do you define “a 5th percentile child” in academics? For the lack of a generally agreed-upon definition, could someone who becomes a NMF in high school be roughly considered as 5th percentile child?
As a child, DS would read everything he could have access to. When a book was not available, he would even read the tag on the clothe, or even the advertisement that came with the newspaper, basically anything that has printed words. He is likely a visual learner.
@IxnayBob We cut the cable cord when S1 was a baby. No commercial TV. Oddly one of my friends from college went on to graduate from a top-2 law school and later became responsible for kid programming at a one of largest companies providing such. He’s thinking of merchandising and making commercials that convert kids to consumers and what movie/tv show/game will get kids’ neurons buzzing for the excitement. Brilliant guy. Glad I cut off his access to my kids.
I laughed at your description of the surprise response to commercials from kids who’ve never or rarely seen them. We had that happen at a hotel on vacation.
Is there any research out there? From what I have observed, mother with high IQ and/or excellent academic credentials is strongly correlated to academically overachieving children. Fathers’ smarts and achievements are not as predictive. I’ve heard of the notion that “Intelligence genes” are from mother more than from father, but I also think because mothers are generally more hands on in bringing up the children, if they value education and have the know-how learned from their own experience, that gotta be very helpful to their children.
That’s where the silly state by state NMSF cutoffs become bothersome. I would say that a 201 (North Dakota) is not equal to a 224 (New Jersey), but those are the top 1% of scores in their respective state.
You could use SAT percentiles, 2050 or so, or ACT (30) for top 5th percentile, which are probably better indicators than NMF. It’s all somewhat arbitrary really.
One of the smartest people I know is my brother who can watch 4-5 football games at the same time and know what is going on at all times in all games. When he was young, like 10, and there weren’t 4-5 games on and we didn’t have remote control to flip between the games, he used to watch and keep statistics. He could do percentages, he could call the fouls, he could see the entire game like one sees a chess board.
My kids don’t really like to watch sports on TV, and they aren’t as good at knowing the strategies of the games. One plays hockey and doesn’t watch on tv. The other plays lacrosse and tries to watch it, but it isn’t often on tv.
I actually wish one of my children had watched more tv when she was little. She was learning English at age 2.5 but didn’t like TV at all. She didn’t learn all the sing-songy things from Sesame Street, colors were just words to her; if you asked her what color something was, she’d just tell you any color so she got the concept but didn’t realize there was a difference between green and blue.
I laugh when people say all you have to do is read to children. First child was a dream, loved to read, loved to listen. Second child loved books too. She liked to stack them up, arrange them, collect them, count them. She liked to do everything with them except actually read them or listen to them being read to her. When we sat down to read, she’d jump up, jump down, to the bathroom, back, close the book, put the book back on a shelf, walk away, come back and repeat it all. I tried for years and she just didn’t like books. Paid a tutor, and she still didn’t like to read. Got her glasses, she wouldn’t wear them (very light prescription). Books on tape helped a little, but not much. She just does not like to read. Coming from a family that would read anything and everything, several newspapers a day, the cereal box at breakfast, it is hard to understand why she doesn’t like reading. She just doesn’t.
We didn’t have cable TV either - although we could access PBS on-air and did watch it some. For that matter, my kids had very few toys from stores - mostly just legos and k’nex. At one point my D had a whole village of shoebox houses populated with sculpty clay people. I was a SAHM when the kids were little, so most days we went to the park playground and on rainy days the kids made toys.
I think it is more common to refer to the top 5th percentile as 95th percentile. I believe that NMSF is closer to the top 0.5% than to the top 1%. It is the top ~0.5% in each state, but very different in each state as IxnayBob said.
I believe the genetics of intelligence are very complicated and not yet well understood. I’ve read (and my husband likes to say) that the hypothalamus somehow is more strongly tied to the mother. Genetics more strongly tied to the mother could be on the X chromosome, mitochondrial DNA, a fair bit of epigenetics, and conditions in utero. So, there are a lot of opportunities for maternal genetics to play a bigger role than paternal. Add to that the typical role of the mother spending more time parenting (the nurture part).
Anecdotally, my son came home from school one day and said that almost all the kids in his AP Physics B class (most of them quite bright) had been big Blues Clues fans. Apparently they got into a big Steve vs. Joe discussion (Steve won).
We restricted early TV to channels without commercials (PBS and Nick Jr). We did not restrict computer screen time all that much so long as they got exercise. Both are quite advanced in computer-related things (creative, not just playing games).
@Ynotgo The cut off score for NMSF is different for each state, but the percentile is the same. Obvious, the percentile at each school for NMSF would vary a lot. Also, the cutoff is around the top 1% of each state, not 0.5%. Out of ~1.5 million students taking the test, 16,000 NMSF are selected.
http://www.nationalmerit.org/student_guide.pdf
It’s important that my kids get to play too. Toy store, sure but we go there when we have to get birthday gifts. TV cartoons on Sunday. Summer, they had the freedom to choose whatever they want as long as not watching TV all day. But honestly my husband and I had to go to work. I don’t know if we had the energy to direct very single thing.
S16 has the math gene, which skipped a generation. My wife isn’t bad at math, I’m beyond bad. His paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather are very good at math. S18 has his parents’ verbal skills. Neither is as unbalanced as I am.
I have no idea what makes kids what they are. I read an article once that said boys get their intelligence from their mothers, so I make sure to tell my sons that as often as possible. Their Dad is quite smart, too, but I think I will take all of the credit anyway. Maybe it was the fact that I gained 50 lbs while pregnant with each of them? Their brains had a lot of extra calories to work with while they were developing!
I think kids are just born with a certain level of intelligence. We weren’t the kind of family to discuss “heavy” topics at dinner, my kids did watch a fair amount of “useless” TV (Teletubbies, anyone?), we didn’t provide tons of “enrichment” opportunities, so who knows? I think genetics and a supportive home environment are huge factors, though. Plus, I think that being intelligent is nice, but there are many other qualities that go into having a successful life.
@billcsho NMSF is roughly the top 1% of test takers, but since the number of actual graduating seniors is closer to 3 million plus, I think one could extrapolate that the NMSF are the top 0.5% in the nation.
@3boystogo It only means ~0.5% students get the NMSF, not the top 0.5%. It is still the top 1% that will get the NMSF It is not the second 0.5% students who do not take the PSAT.
There are some early opportunities for dual language development before age 2 or 3.
Internal motivation is good (curiosity and keeping up with someone admired). DD’s kindergarten crush could read chapter books in K, so she would pretend to read chapter books - but she realized it was a valuable skill to be a good reader. She revealed this to me at age 19.
Intelligent enough to not be lazy. Sometimes demonstrating laziness by using the brain and being creative in cutting steps.
Being intelligent enough to understand what opportunities are in the env’t and learning enough social skills to navigate.
What mostly propels students into a level of “higher intelligence” is not genetics, not pre-determined statistics, nothing like that. It all comes down to a few simple components: motivation and inspiration, with most of this especially important in the early ages.
Now, I know I sound like one of those Disney characters who believes everything can be done if you just believe, but really it boils down to what influences the kid in his early stages of life. The definition of being smart (according to Merrian-Webster) is to display intelligence. So on a literal level, intelligence has little to do with being considered smart. Most of it revolves around what influences a child. For example, I remember back when I was an elementary school kid, I would watch cartoons such as Blues Clues or Clifford. It felt back then as if each show had a full universe that I could explore if I just put my imagination into it. I used this mindset throughout school, imagining how things worked out, believing everything had a deeper meaning. This accelerated me through school with flying colors, or at least colors. Motivation is also a key factor, because, let’s face it, the average kid isn’t going to put 5 hours of studying in each day just because “he’ll become successful” later in life. It is necessary for others to give the person encouragement.
^^ True. But, top x% in mesurable academic achievement is a set number. When everyone in a subset of the population put in their best effort, the “intelligence genes” will play a role or tip the scale one way or the other. Everyone cannot be a winner in a game with defined winning criteria. In that sense, it’s no different than getting qualified for Olympics. Only a set number of athletes can make it and they are those who are talented AND have trained the hardest.
Motivation & inspiration can only take a person so far. No matter how motivated & inspired I am, I’ll never be a world-class tennis player.
Definitely NOT homeschooling, as suggested in an early post. My gifted kid would have never succeeded- strong willed parents and child, stubborn… Needed outsiders to do the teaching. btw- my swimming instructor/teacher sister could teach other kids to swim, but not her own. Independent, thinking kids.
God has nothing to do with whether or not a premature child makes it- there is no reason a religious parent’s child does well versus an atheist’s. Most preemies catch up so that by the age of 4 you can’t tell. The hard part is figuring out if the kid is ahead of his age- gestational vs chronological- physician mother of a 34 weeker here whose kid was ahead/behind depending on how you looked at it. Modern medicine has been able to give so many preemies a chance at a normal life.
Being taught to read, do math at an early age does not mean success later. My son’s preschool did that but the math/arithmetic did not stick and kid learned to read because he was ready to- became a reader despite the curriculum (while others went through book 17 he only made it through the primer and book one, learning with other materials more readily). btw- he caught up with the math and went on to major in it in college- Honors.
Good public schools are helpful- especially with a gifted program that allows a child to go at their pace and go outside the box. But that did not make my son smart, it only helped him use his intelligence.
Do you mean smart or knowledgeable? Do you mean getting top grades or knowing the material and have good critical thinking skills and writing skills?
My son was born gifted. We nurtured his intelligence with plenty of books and expectations to do well. I suppose one needs a definition of gifted- some use hard math on tests to allocate resources. Read the literature- gifted kids are different and there is as much variation for that end of the Bell curves as for the low end.