The short name for what @Waiting2exhale just described is “Teacher’s Pet.”
Isn’t “read between the lines,” sometimes even when the lines are not there, a valuable skill, not only in school, but also in life?
I somewhat possess this skill. When I was in college, I managed to take on average 20 units a semester, while working to support myself, and graduated with 3.85 in computer engineering. For some classes I managed to get A even though I didn’t enjoy nor fully absorb the materials, only by guessing what the professor wanted. This was possible thanks to that skill.
Later I worked in technical support in high tech (customers were hardware design engineers), I excelled there even though my technical abilities were behind some of the co-workers. It was also thanks to the ability to guess what actually happened at the customer’s site but the customer failed to mention (you know, customers never tell you the whole story, especially when they screw up).
My D, an aspie, though much smarter than I am, seems to lack this skill. She made up for this, at least in school, by studying every single details. That works and at least in some ways, is better than my way, but requires much more time and effort.
Mother- thank you for your post and so sorry to hear about this incredible tragedy.
But truth be told- in many instances, the child you describe would have seen a Nurse Practitioner first (likely diagnosis- stomach bug). The super-duper diagnostic pediatricians tend to work in large children’s hospitals, not a private group practice seeing coughs and colds/flu and sprains.
I do not disagree with your POV at all. But realistically- how many of us get a “scientific” level of diagnostic care right out of the gate? And the current trends do not bode well- with more and more non-physicians on the front lines of primary care. NP’s and PA’s are great- but the kind of training they get cannot possibly suss out a stage 4 neuroblastoma from a stomach ache.
Thank you for sharing. How sad for the family.
@blossom , not to get too off track here, but I wonder how many docs are trained to diagnose on such a high level? Is it part of all of their training? Is it a gift? One wonders.
I’ve been reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “David & Goliath” this week, and the part about the kids with leukemia in the 1960s just crushed me-they had no way to treat them, and it was awful. The doctor who invented the chemotherapy for them had to fight so hard against established ideals because the other doctors couldn’t see what he saw (mixing medicines to knock out the cancer cells).
Food for thought…
Abdominal pain is such a vague symptom. I don’t think many docs are going to go straight to neuroblastoma in a kid who shows up with “a stomach ache.” But a “stomach bug” definitely should clear up relatively quickly, so if the parents took the child back the next week or called to say it hadn’t resolved and no further testing was recommended, that’s a problem.
That’s a sad story.
Mother- very sobering profile in the recent New Yorker (maybe last week of December issue) about “pioneering” treatments vs. evidence based medicine. Sometimes the untested protocols kill more people than they save (hence the need for clinical trials, double blind, etc.) but of course desperate family members don’t care about statistical analysis and bias and random and standard deviations- they want their family member saved.
Re: diagnostic prowess- a young cardiology resident told me not long ago that the very revered head of cardiology at his hospital (major teaching hospital, world class cardiology department) is such a phenomenal diagnostician because after decades of practice he’s seen hundreds of cases of whatever bizarre ailment walks through the door.
And yet the new residents are being trained to use data-driven techniques- which means they benefit from someone’s analysis of hundreds of thousands of cases- not the number that a single physician can see in a lifetime.
More food for thought.
"Isn’t “read between the lines,” sometimes even when the lines are not there, a valuable skill, not only in school, but also in life?
Would you call “read between the lines” and intuiting the same thing? I don’t actually have an answer to the question , but my gut tells me there is something more to intuiting, and that is what you are talking about regarding your college career.
“It was also thanks to the ability to guess what actually happened at the customer’s site but the customer failed to mention (you know, customers never tell you the whole story, especially when they screw up).”
What about inductive reasoning being at work here? You’d done the job, may be a good listener, and were working on support-side, so you’d certainly been exposed to a range of other instances when symptom A,B and C were mentioned, but in the end diagnosing the best solution would have been aided along by the customer being forthcoming about symptom D.
I’ll give you inductive reasoning points here.
@intparent: I’ve gotta run the kids somewhere, but my short response to your post about your daughter’s ability to effectively meet with the teacher and act on the comments to her benefit: that is the student I think teachers would love to have, and the student who best demonstrates engagement and effort. Combined with work effort, and any natural capacity, that student will indeed thrive.
That is a skill set that my kids have not quite learned to understand can be a plus, but I’m working on it.
Understanding what teachers want is a good thing. I STILL remember a law school prof where (in two classes) I knew the info cold but never could articulate it in a way he found appealing enough for an A (and he gave plenty of A’s).
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Very late to the party and only skimmed some of the results but I am familiar with this phenomenon! I would say first, commiserate…because all kids want to be heard when they are having negative feelings. Offer some heartfelt. “yeah that stinks! Must frustrated you” type condolences and see if that spurs on a turn around in attitude. Chances are it won’t–he probably will just go down a whole victim thing, and I’d let him go for a while. Ask questions and listen like a friend…
Then, when he’s exhausted his complaining tell him “I hear you–it’s frustrating. But here is one thing I have learned–never compare your insides to someone else’s outsides. The truth is you have no idea what that other kid is experiencing nor what he or she is doing when they are out sight. For all you know they have tutors… Regardless what we should focus on is YOU and your struggle here.” Then you can get into a deeper conversation about his goals, resiliency etc but in the spirit of cooperation rather than lecturing.
I have done this with my kids–it has served to redirect them often. They are much younger than yours but certainly have a lot of competition. Hope this is helpful.
Redirect gets harder as they get older…