I guess genes dominate all other factors. I pretty much took a hands-off approach when it comes to my children’s education, and they turned out to be fine.
There’s an interesting question here-how much smarter/dumber are you than your spouse? Is there a large disparity? Generally I see people that are fairly close together in IQ, even if it’s a different “kind” of IQ (verbal on one side, math on the other).
Occasionally I will see people who are really disparate-my grandparents are one example. He was absolutely brilliant and had one of the quickest minds I’ve ever seen. She was a lovely, incredibly kind and loving, nincompoop. I could beat her at UNO by the time I was 5. They were together for 60+ years and generally seemed to get along together, but rarely was there a meeting of the minds, and I don’t remember them having a lot of intellectual discussions with each other.
They seemed to be the exception rather than the rule, though. Watching any reality dating show on TV seems to bear it out-there has to be some sort of intellectual equivalency going on or people don’t connect and make more kids generally like them.
91 and #95 I also agree that saying that genetics play a bigger part than it's PC to believe is something I wouldn't say in a non-anonymous forum.
My son has been taught about “mindset theory,” which says that by exercising your brain you can become smarter. (Also applies to us older folks–Sudoku, etc.) He believes it more than I do, I think, or at least is PC enough to believe it more. I think that the brain is malleable enough to allow for a bigger amount of growth in intelligence than previously thought.
Certainly quality nurture in the early years makes a big difference. However, I don’t think nurture or determination is ever going to make 1 or 2 standard deviations of difference. That’s mostly because I was there when my son was a baby, and I know that he made connections at an early age that startled me and that were unlike the stories that other new moms told.
Parents at our school complain about the hours spent on homework and the difficulty of AP classes, and I think parents of the more gifted kids just keep their mouth shut. Because how can you say to other parents that AP Physics B just seemed to come naturally to my son when he was a freshman? (OK, he’s taking APUSH this year, so I’m sure that taking all those notes won’t be that much faster for him than for other kids. But, the memorizing for that and AP Biology will be less effort for him.)
Speaking of effort, praising kids when they put in a lot of effort rather than just for good outcomes is emphasized in current thinking about the growth mindset. I do this with my kids, because different things take more effort for them than for other kids.
1.Choose your mate carefully. Yes, I teach my kids this.
2.Read to them every night.
3. No Xbox in the home until reading and writing are well demonstrated.
@Burgermeister I tell my boys the same thing. Anyone can be “made beautiful” if they want that. But you can’t “fix” lack of intelligence or ambition (as weaknesses in these two will often make up for the other).
Oh, hilarious. Reminds me of the first time someone I really liked and respected, my son’s pediatrician, turned to me during his examination of my then 4-year old, who had been discussing hydraulic systems and prosthetics with the doctor. The doctor stood up, turned to me, and asked with great interest, “what does his father do?” (Thanks, Doc.)
The smartest kids do not always have the best grades. Getting all A’s does require some brains but does not mean a person is extra smart- ie gifted. Some kids know more than is being taught before they ever start a class and some are so bored they don’t bother jumping through the hoops to get the grades.
It is too bad there are states where parents need to rely on private schools to get the best education- shame on those states (Florida is one of them, I am appalled at this state- raise my taxes!).
Hours spent/difficulty of AP classes- depends on the kid’s ability. btw- getting an A in son’s HS APUSH depended on concise essays as well as knowing the material, son tried to write a book instead of a page or a short chapter- he wouldn’t heed his teacher’s advice and only got a 4 on the exam. Same kid got a C in AP Chemistry after taking the exam to get a score of 5 his final HS semester- didn’t like how the teacher taught, knew where he was going to college, obviously didn’t do the work although he obviously learned the material.
People cringe at the word gifted. Perhaps that is why this thread is titled “smart”- or is it because most people think of the top 10% , not the top 1 %?
Here’s something I’ve been curious about. We all know that people with Down’s Syndrome have an extra chromosome and are retarded (horrors- use whatever PC euphemism you choose). However, the intelligence range among Downs people varies greatly. I wonder if the rest of the genetics overridden by the extra chromosome reflects higher IQs in the smartest ones.
Combination of potential and making use of it. My kid was born smart- milestones prove that. Opportunities presented allowed him to capitalize on his abilities to a certain extent. I’ll never know how much further he could have gone with a super enriched environment. We’re “lazy” (to use H’s term) high achievers (high relative to society but not our peer group). There are people who worked a lot harder to get to the same place H did.
It is easiest being very smart but not super smart. Hard to find a peer group when too (two?) many standard deviations above the norm.
Even without a lot of education, or not doing one’s highly educated job, you can tell the intelligence difference. The smartest people just get it so much faster/easier, can solve problems more easily etc.
Final thought for this post. WHO is deciding how smart a kid is? The typically smart, say with an IQ around 120, or the much smaller population of the gifted? I’m not as impressed as most because I have spent time with the upper echelons- feel slow in comparison even though I was a stellar student et al.
We were genuinely interested in his early musings and inquiries, and engaged him. The house is stocked with books, and we do enjoy hearty discourse and a contemplative film or television show. As I recall, his earliest friends were a kindly older gentleman who favored zippered sweaters, and this big yellow bird.
I always thought having more-or-less adult conversations with kids from an early age helps them at least seem smarter.
Historically, extreme intelligence sometimes appears in siblings. The Bernoulli (Jacob & Johann) and James (William & Henry) families spring to mind.
@hzhao2004 #100 I think there’s something to be said for hands-off. “Do no harm” philosophy is probably better than most - given the damage that the parent can potentially do.
Or it can make the parents into neighborhood pariahs.
I never shielded my daughter from the conversations I had with her brother, who was three years older.
As a result, she told the other kindergartners the truth about both Santa Claus and sex.
The other families were astute enough to blame me, not her. I think I only lived it down by moving 200 miles away a few years later.
My D is a top 1% kid intellectually and, swear to God, it had nothing to do with nurture. We did not demand she get As, we did not teach her to read early, she did not start music lessons (piano) until middle of 4th grade. She was born a strong, happy, inquisitive baby and we did our best to stay out of her way, let her develop naturally and not to muck it up. She graduated around 40% from HS. Plenty of kids were coached and prodded into having higher grades.
This summer she took O Chem 1 and 2 in a class with 59 others, finishing with the highest grade, 99.4%, in a course where the average was in the 60s… She had to petition to be allowed in because she had not taken general chemistry in college, only AP Chem junior year of HS. All of them did their homework, most are pre-meds and really mindful of maintaining GPA. Some people have minds capable of processing more detail more quickly, visualizing problems from more angles.
Our much closer to average first-born is likely to be the more “successful” career-wise. He is taller, attractive, charming, and male, all better career predictors for US born kids than mental agility.
The jury’s still out on S2, a HS junior this year, somewhere between the two in standardized testing but with better grades. We’re really just living a middle class life, no special secrets other than hitting the genetic lottery pretty well.
@patertrium If you want my completely politically incorrect answer, here you go. 
My kids have never done preschool. Early childhood is spent in hours of self-regulated imaginative play. Primary grades focus on just the basics and lots of outdoor time in nature just playing. They learn to observe and make connections through their own activity. As they get older, they spend hours on projects developing their own ideas.
My kids have passionate interests, are self-directed, and are internally motivated. They also happen to be very bright and inquisitive. Their educations do not resemble traditional classroom educations, but our approach has successful outcomes. My personal educational goals for my children are focused around developing critical thinking skills and moving through the higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy.
Like many others:
- Good genes and a family tradition of academic achievement -- among his parents and his grandparents (all four of whom were immigrants or the children of immigrants): 3 Harvard degrees, 2 Yale, and 3 Columbia/Barnard (among others), despite his grandparents all being back in the quota days, with one grandfather having the highest test scores in New Jersey in 1931 and the other the second highest test scores in New York State in 1936 (no pressure, right?);
- Reading to him every day, having a houseful of books, and seeing his parents read all the time;
- Talking to him constantly, from the day he was born.
- Shameless amounts of TV, just like his parents (I might as well go against the grain here!)
A variation on this question was asked by a friend at a social function the other day, to which both of my children attended.
My first answer was luck. My 12 year old chimed in “genetics.” My colleague commented that genetics falls under luck.
Second, I support them to pursue activities that interest them, within the time and resources we can afford.
I don’t try to push them into activities that interest me personally; my ego is not invested in producing little clones.
We don’t watch commercial TV (the other day, I had to figure out how to turn on the news, it’s been so long!) We do watch TV series (Star Trek, Dr. Who, for example) and movies on DVD. But nothing with a laugh track.
My husband and I both teach so they see us reading, writing, and grading all of the time. We read to them when they were small and they are both avid readers and writers. But not graders.
Both kids are good students and intelligent but have very different styles. Maybe birth order plays a part. The older is very focused, disciplined, and deep, works hard and methodically, is perfectionistic and introverted, and pursues time-demanding ECs in the performing arts. The younger prefers to be less scheduled and is more eclectic, is responsible but less diligent, is a terrific public speaker, and geared towards athleticism (but not team sports).
Our only requirement for school is that they put in their best effort.
They are both smarter than my husband and I put together. So I’m voting for magic.
I just want to add to this thread the fact that you often cannot predict success- academic, career, artistic or personal- during the high school years. For those who posted about a seemingly unmotivated teen, he or she may surprise you in the coming years, and I don’t just mean college. I know people who weren’t achievers in high school (or even college), or who followed their own drummer, and they have done wonderfully, sometimes much better than the apparently overachieving peers.
I like the ideas of Howard Gardner, with his seven intelligences. If we value the intelligences of our kids, whatever they are, it can help, but as others have said, perhaps the main thing is to stay out of their way, and one way to avoid being in their way is to avoid pegging one child as an achiever and another as not motivated. In fact, social skills (one of Gardner’s intelligences) can be really helpful in life.
^^ Who doesn’t talk to their kid every day?
Although I talk to my dog constantly, and it doesn’t appear to be helping him at all.
Eeks - My own father used to tell people who asked why his children were all brilliant that this was because he was smart enough to marry an even smarter woman, but as the parent of an adult child with profound MR, I sure hope frazzled H didn’t marry me solely because he thought that since I was smart, my children would surely be smart as well! (If he did, he has coped very well with any disappointment.)
@Marian - LOL, when my kids tried to tell the other kids the truth about Santa Claus, they said the other kids didn’t believe them!
“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”
Well, I very much disagree with this, @wis75. A 34 weeker may catch up by age 4 so you “can’t tell” but what about a 24 weeker? To look at my daughter at age 4 you might not be able to tell she was a micropreemie (except she was extremely small), but even if she LOOKED ‘normal’, she was still catching up in mental and physical development, still taking OT/PT. She could barely hold a pencil, hated anything involving small motor, couldn’t read despite being read to since birth. She never caught up. She was always ‘behind’ her chronological age and her gestational age, it’s just that there is a huge difference between a baby acting 4 months old and one acting/being 10-12 months old, and hardly any difference between an 18 year old and a 19 year old. Difference is still there, just not as obvious. Even though her birthday is midway through the range in her grade, she always seemed like the youngest in the class.
DD was probably the most ‘normal’ of the preemie kids we knew, and has the least physical problems. Most of those kids were in the 23 weeker to 30 weeker group, since those were the kids we ran into at therapy, at hospital appointments, at social events (if you didn’t stay in the NICU for at least 15 days, you don’t get invited to the picnic). These kids were dealing with not only mental development and learning ABCs and colors, but asthma, feeding issues, vision issues, speech therapy. If you miss 2 weeks of First Grade with medical issues, it’s hard to be number one in the class.
I have to remember to keep it in perspective with my daughter because you “can’t tell” by looking at her. I’m very proud of her, but she had a long way to go to just pull even with the pack.