To add to the discussion above regarding the influence of mothers versus father’s, research has show that mothers level of academic attainment is a strong predictor of academic success, more so than father’s.
My 32 weeker preemie is in medical school. Top of her class.
In my experience it’s a combination of genetics, motivation and some nurture. My father was a brilliant man who was one of 8 kids raised in abject poverty. There was barely enough food and the only book around was the bible. Any spare money was given to the local preacher. My dad was so motivated to learn that he worked in a bakery in the early morning hours before high school so he could afford clothes to attend. Fast forward several years and he had taught himself calculus and high level math with the help of a mentor and worked on top secret government projects for NASA.
Our kids didn’t read early, but we read to them. They watched only PBS and videos. We played a lot of board games and they completed endless workbooks because that’s what they enjoyed. The Spykids also spent most of their time just playing and roaming around the property being kids. Oh and they played lots of I Spy and Pajama Sam computer games. 
- Genes
- Support
- Parental expectation
That said, we din’t know D1 is an Ivy League material until maybe Sophomore in HS. We knew she’s ahead of almost everybody since Kindergarten, but we certainly didn’t expect her to be Val in HS and be accepted to elite schools.
And then she went to Cornell and found out that she’s just average.
My husband tells the story of how his class of Physics PhD grad students had some kind of career/life counselor come speak to them. The person was counseling them to find a spouse in a different field because it’s really difficult to land two postdocs or later two professorships in the same town. The speaker said that the IQ correlation between spouses is usually stronger than between siblings (and siblings is a pretty high correlation). Of course, sometimes opposites attract, and in past years when women didn’t go to college, dating was different.
I think DH and I are fairly close. He’s the one with the Physics PhD, and I don’t have more than a bachelors and a few other classes. I see the effects of nurture there, because he went to a good large public that prepared him well for college. I was sent to a small religious high school that had notably poor academics. I still made NMSF on the PSAT (which paid for college) and did well on the SAT (I think higher than DH), but those were much higher scores than the high school had ever seen, and to be honest I wasn’t well prepared for college math. We have complimentary strengths, and I think the kids got lucky with a good mix. For example, DH is good with the algebraic parts of math, while I’m better at logic and geometric problems. He’s good at engineering physical stuff, and computer programming comes more naturally to me.
Does anyone know a geneticist on CC that we could ping to learn about current research and related conclusions concerning a possible link between genetics and intelligence?
There have been numerous studies. Here’s one: http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/v20/n1/full/mp2014105a.html
Don’t know of a geneticist on CC. DH and I took the 23andme genetic test, and we were both surprisingly high for Neanderthal genes–95th percentile for me and 87th for him. I don’t think that means much of anything, however. Might explain the brow ridge – just kidding.
Thanks for the link, @Agentninetynine.
Reading, good parenting, and good brain from my parents.
Being born with good brain is very important…unfortunately.
It’s interesting that no one’s mentioned money. In an earlier thread on Asian performance over-achievement I had someone barking at me that the SAT was just related to family income. The theory being - I guess - that rich kids can pay for test prep. We did no test prep except for the standard book and the kid did about as well as one can. This is probably a whole other thread. Maybe we just don’t note money as an important factor when we have some basic level of it. And then there’s the issue of feeling safe and secure in one’s neighborhood and school etc etc.
Another tool that seems to have played a role but not mentioned so far was - the computer. When kiddo started feeling bored with middle school math we got him an online course (PM me if interested in which one) and he plowed through three years of math in six months. He loved being able to see the pie chart fill out with his progress - like a merit badge. And it was like a video game advancing to the next level. In some cases teachers are better. But in this case - leaving kiddo to do battle online with algebra and geometry where he could clearly see his progress was better.
Our story is kind of unusual. We had twin girls 15 weeks premature after several rounds of IVF. They both started off with several years of physical therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy. One of the twins struggles with ADHD and Epilepsy and is in special needs. One of the twins scored 36 on the ACT and completed 11 AP courses in high school finishing in the top 5% of a competitive public high school and going onto a top college this fall. Clearly they both had the same gene pool. The daughter that has been more successful in school has always had a passion for reading and she has a work ethic that is scary at times, staying up until 3:00 AM if that’s what it takes to finish all her AP homework. As parents we can read to our kids and take them to the library. We can also be good role models in terms of work ethic and focus and we can coach our kids and stay in touch with what they are working on in school. I think a big moment for my D was when we visited Harvard after freshman year of high school. Sort of an academic “scared straight” realizing just how competitive the applicant pool at places like Harvard really is
.There is certainly correlation between household income and SAT score. Part of that may be SAT coaching. Bigger parts may be genetics, household attitudes towards academics, and access to better K-12 schooling.
Gotta say that people are more likely to ask “how did your kid become so darn smart?” when it’s a bit of a surprise.
Re #129, it’s also interesting that no one (yet) has “barked” that those on this thread professing a strong correlation between genes and intelligence are Nazi eugenicists or supremacists of some sort. @Agentninetynine thanks for the link. I look forward to reading the paper.
@patertrium I think someone earlier mentioned that enough money, but not too much, was a factor. Certainly, enough money to be secure at home, be in a good school district, and have lots of books is a big advantage. Science-filled summer camps were important to my son, and the price of those adds up (though the same is true of surf camp or whatever).
We gave both kids more computer access early on that other parents we know. Many others seemed worried about computers corrupting their kids. My son took a liking to programming video games early on, first with graphical tools and starting on text-based programming around 5th grade. He did online courses in programming and took the AP CS test in junior high. I liked having him be advanced at programming, because it wasn’t really a thing the schools taught, so it wasn’t as likely to lead to him being bored in more classes.
Daughter does architecture things and fan fiction writing on the computer, so also not subjects covered by school classes.
Son did some online math for fun, but we didn’t encourage him to push ahead more than the one year subject acceleration that worked for his elementary school. Algebra I in 7th grade was good enough for him, and he met good friends in that class, because there was only one accelerated section at the school. He did do online precalc to skip that class, and Calc BC as a sophomore was probably his first time being challenged at math other than in math competitions.
Also, they are both widely read on the computer. Kind of like when I was a kid and would flip through the encyclopaedia set we had. However, that was a 20-year old encyclopaedia at the time I was reading it. Kids today have access to so much more.
When my daughter was little, she always had an obscure-for-a-little-kid cultural reference at the tip of her tongue. We had a house full of books, sure, but how did a six-year-old come up with “Sylvia Plath,” “Pablo Neruda,” “Gore Vidal,” or even “Rosebud”? Not to mention a whole arsenal of Borscht Belt gags …
Answer: she was obsessed with the Simpsons.
So, I don’t know how to make your kid ACTUALLY smart, but if you want your kids to SOUND smart, give 'em a boxed set of the Simpsons! ；-）
(To her credit, hearing the references on the Simpsons did make her want to actually read the referenced works. Kind of funny to see a kid get all excited about a real Pablo Neruda book!)
A surprising number of parents don’t “talk” to their children while changing their diapers. They don’t count the snaps as they dress the child. I’m not sure why.
Interesting–for us, although we let our kids watch lots of commercial TV, we didn’t let them watch the Simpsons (or South Park), because I thought they modeled too much cynicism.
Our nephew had a speech delay that was eventually traced mostly to the fact that his mom didn’t know how to do “mommy talk” where she talked to the kid and pointed out things, asked questions, etc. She speaks very rapidly and spent a lot of time on the phone talking rapidly with friends when he was a baby. I have trouble understanding her on the phone because of how fast she speaks (native Spanish speaker). When they figured out the reason for the speech delay, she seemed surprised about it, but she did take it to heart.
A good way to help a kid develop cultural literacy is to pay attention to what interests the kid and then build upon it.
Is your kid into the Percy Jackson books? Take her to antiquities exhibitions and get her to explain all the scenes on the urns. Something that would otherwise be torture for most kids – a day at the Malibu Getty, say --suddenly comes alive. Eventually, the kid will be picking up Ovid on her own.
My favorite way to get little kids to spend hours in art museums is to pay them 25 cents per dog. As they find dogs in pictures, ask them to explain what is going on and talk to them about the art. I know this sounds silly, but if you like to spend hours in art museums and it is torture for your kids, try this trick! I’ve continued this tradition with my little nieces and nephews and it really does help to foster an interest in art.
i think it’s a combo of inheritance & hard work. My bro barely made it through high school; had a very very low ACT. My sis graduated #1 from HS, college & Law School.
We all grew up in the same household with the same environment; one is adopted from birth; that’s why i think smartness is inherited. Now, my brother is very gifted in some ways that my sister and i will never accomplish; i think his gifts (humor/speech/verbal) are inherited.
BTW: i’ve heard the biggest predictor of a kid’s success is how much education his/her mother has; and i’ve also heard that bio kids tend to have IQ ranges within 10 points or so of each other.