Math Whiz but no other subjects or friends?

LazyBum201 · July 29, 2008, 6:00pm

Yes, two out of 5 or 6 became eminent. Find me ANY school that has that sort of eminence rate, please. The highest I have seen anywhere is for Gerald Ford’s Yale Law School graduating class (8 of the 77 students became eminent, so slightly better than 10%).

I am guessing you are talking about William Sidis. I also think people give him a worse rap than he deserves,

So true. And worse, many WISH to see them fall, so that they will feel better about their own mediocrity (or even milder success).

cellardweller · July 29, 2008, 7:01pm

The question is whether the intense early training imposed on Mozart by his father was necessary to his later success as a composer. It was clearly necessary to the family’s financial success as as it depended nearly entirely from the income from all the performances by the young child all over Europe. The term “pushy parent” could have been coined after Mozart’s father. The heavy psychological toll exacted on musical child geniuses hardly seems worth it.

[Child</a> genius: The price of being a prodigy - Telegraph](<a href=“http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/11/29/bmprodigy129.xml]Child”>http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/11/29/bmprodigy129.xml)

Is robbing children of their childhood worth the price many pay later in life?

My main point is that there is no evidence that accelerated learning provides any benefits to a young child, while the downside is often substantial. For every Tiger Woods who makes it through from child prodigy to eventual superstar without obvious psychological damage, you have thousand of young athletes, musicians, mathematicians, chess players who suffer severe consequences and never make it to the big leagues.

Like a number of parents on these boards, we have a child who showed exceptional promise at a young age. She spoke in full sentences as most kids barely babbled, tested off the charts at age 5 and was admitted to a school for the gifted. In the end we decided to just send her to the regular local school. She was already a year younger than her peers and could easily have skipped several more years before finishing high school. We just felt that developing normal socializing skills was more important than cramming her mind with information at a young age. We supplemented her basic education with programs such as GATE, Odyssey of the Mind, Art of Problem Solving and anything else she enjoyed that would not overload her schedule. By keeping with peers of a similar age, she was also able to excel athletically and build self-confidence.

I don’t believe we compromised in the least by not homeschooling her or not sending her early to college. She is now at MIT where she is thriving studying neuroscience. She wants to go to medical school, even though nobody is a physician in the family. More than likely she will have to take a gap year or two after college as most medical schools want their matriculants to achieve an emotional maturity that 20 year olds simply do not have.

katliamom · July 29, 2008, 7:19pm

This thread is just like the thread of a couple of months ago, about a precocious, highly accomplished, homeschooled young woman entering Harvard this fall.

Parents on that forum raised the same objections & criticism to the way she was raised/educated, and exchanged similar and often contradictory ideas on giftedness as in this discussion.

Leads me to suspect CC parents tend to get particularly sore on the whole subject of gifted kids who gain recognition. There is just so much… envy… in these comments. I can’t put it any other way: parents in these discussions are way over-invested and overly competitive in the idea of gifted kids and their education.

rainbowwings11 · July 29, 2008, 7:21pm

I don’t know, I just find kids that aren’t born with these gifts, but really push and learn, to be more, well, “worthy” of all the accolades. If these are true prodigies, it means they were born a certain way, wired already, and that is why they just test into certain classes, and stuff comes “naturaly”

Is that to be bragged about?

To me its like super models, they are born a certain way, have certain features, genetics, quirk of fate, whatever. Sure they have to work at it, but their success is often chance- someone spotting them, or in some cases, parents “molding” them.

What is the difference between a math prodigy, someone born that way, and a six foot tall high cheek boned model? Or the person born with perfect pitch?

I just have more praise for the kid who had it rough, who beat the “birth” odds. Being born with certain gifts, it just isn’t impressive.

It is wonderful to nuture the gifted, but I don’t give them anymore applause or praise, then the kid who worked hard and isn’t a “genius” but shines in their way and adds to the world.

This boy is like that supermodel- twist of genetic fate when it comes to gifts. Lets say the genetic twist of fate went the other way, a kid was born colorblind. Or with a LD when it comes to math. Do we blame those children for that twist of fate or DNA “flaw”. No we don’t, so why all the praise when it is the other end of the same bell curve.

If we are to applaud the children who are born with certain gifts, then shouldn’t we boo the the children who aren’t born with them? Why the praise for how a person is born?

zoosermom · July 29, 2008, 7:29pm

^^ I don’t have a gifted child and I don’t have envy. I just am uncomfortable with what the parents have done. I do find the website insufferable, but more than that, I don’t think the boy is old enough to meaningfully consent to having his business put out there for all to see and comment upon. I think it is unseemly.

Pizzagirl · July 29, 2008, 8:04pm

“This thread is just like the thread of a couple of months ago, about a precocious, highly accomplished, homeschooled young woman entering Harvard this fall.
Parents on that forum raised the same objections & criticism to the way she was raised/educated, and exchanged similar and often contradictory ideas on giftedness as in this discussion.”

I disagree. It seemed quite evident that the family had given this obviously bright young lady unique opportunities to blossom and that the girl pursued her own interests doing creative things (such as creating the Shakespeare camp), which made her a compelling and interesting candidate for top universities. There was a qualitatively different feel to that discussion. At no time did one ever feel that these things were done to build a resume or to win awards or to rack up Brownie points, but to give a child who was interested in various areas the opportunity to gain interesting experiences related to those areas.

I do regret posting about his name (it was not meant to be a critique of the name, but a critique of the idea of talking about naming your son the word for “great” and how that can come across insufferably). I do apologize for that, and I second the notion that a mod might want to blank out specific identifying references.

rainbowwings11 · July 29, 2008, 8:08pm

This weekend I will be a judge in a scholarship competition. Long story. Anyway, I volunteered to do it, part for a lark and part because I want to have a positive impact.

The material for the pageant says - no makeup, or visible makeup on girls under 13, and it must be age appropriate for those over, same with the clothes. (K I was kind of hoping for the over the top pageant, but this is at least a step in the right direction- pageant wise).

But I know, when looking at those young ladies, I will be looking at some geneticly fortunate little girls, and I am hoping I will be able to see deeper than that, past the parents, the gloss, the sparkles, etc.

There may be the most amazing young lady out there, with the frizzy hair, what she thinks is a big nose, who wasn’t born with the genetic gifts of the others, who is far more worthy of that crown, but won’t ever enter one of these competitions. Does her not being born “lucky”, should she be blamed for that, while we praise those that are born “lucky”? No.

And don’t ask what pageant or why, favor to a friend of a friend kind of thing.

Being pretty is very much like being gifted, when you think about it. And being 'not so attractive" is like being gifted as well. Do we praise the tall? Should we set up a website for our kid if they have perfect teeth that the brush all the time? What about the girl with the amazing voice she was born with? Is she more deserving of accolades then the boy who was born without a voice at all?

We need to think about what we think is amazing or worthy of our applause.

What is the difference between this little boys gifts and what Brooke Shields was born with?

marite · July 29, 2008, 9:21pm

parentofbear:

I do not deny that the high tech world also has people who can work in teams. But it also has lots of people who are quirky and individualists and do not work well with others (read the MIT alum’s article I posted earlier on this thread about Asperger’s being described as “the engineer’s disorder” and being more common in areas with a lot of high tech.

How do you raise a child who is gifted in math? not just good at math but really fascinated by math,really loving math? You do not push. you follow his lead. Just like a child who loves ballet or gymnastic or baseball.

Not directed at you parentofbear:

When posters ask for suggestion on how to motivate their children to do their homework, prepare for SAT tests, etc…, we readily give tips and advice. We do not call these parents pushy. But if parents of children who love math and science even hint that they provided their children with math enrichment, they are often labeled pushy by people who don’t realize that it’s the children who are setting the pace. I have seen kids reluctantly attending math enrichment programs because their parents forced them to; but in most cases, the kids loved being in the programs and looked forward to the sessions all week long.

Pizzagirl · July 29, 2008, 9:27pm

I think there’s a qualitative difference between providing the math enrichment, and making sure that everyone knows that the child is gifted in math (beyond those who have a need to know, such as educational professionals you are working with).

cartera45 · July 29, 2008, 9:38pm

Well if the child in question is reading this, I would say to him to go to his parents, sit them down and tell them that although he is grateful for all they have done for him that he would like for them to take down that website. Tell them that it will likely be a source of embarrassment for him for years to come. He may or may not want to use the word “icky” but I think it describes it quite well. Tell Dad to go back to work and get a life. He may want to word that last piece of advice more delicately.

CountingDown · July 29, 2008, 10:27pm

S1’s 3rd grade teacher told us that if she gave him 5th grade math, I’d have to quit my job when he was in 10th to take him to the state U for math. Therefore, she wouldn’t give anything additional to him.

That was OK – he came home and did it on his own – no pushing here. We were dragged. The following year, he was at a different school, which gave math acceleration to kids who were ready. No parental advocacy needed.

And yes, he was taking calculus as a 13 yo.

marite · July 29, 2008, 10:34pm

pizzagirl: That was not the question I was answering.

Countingdown: A teacher who had had no problem giving S1 more advanced books to read refused to let S2 join kids a grade above (but still in the same class) for math because she did not believe in tracking (her words). The more math he learned outside school, the greater the gap between him and his classmates.

CountingDown · July 29, 2008, 11:01pm

Yup. S1 got a three-year subject acceleration in math the following year. S1 used to come home from school saying he had to “feed my brain.” This meant doing math or CS until he was full, and then he’d go do his HW. Watch out for those hungry kids! The gap got wider as he got older, too.

S2 got the benefit of S1’s experience – they put S2 straight into a 1/2 combo as a first grader and had him in self-study 5th grade math by 3rd. (This was probably not the greatest idea for this particular kid, who we learned needs direct instruction in math – but they were at least trying by that point.) Had they done this with S1 in 3rd grade, he would have taken it and run.

menloparkmom · July 29, 2008, 11:09pm

“you have thousand of young athletes, musicians, mathematicians, chess players who suffer severe consequences”
And where is the proof for yet another sweeping generality ?

“cramming her mind with information at a young age”
It is obvious that you don’t understand the exceptionally or profoundly gifted students. No one “crams” information into the mind of those students- they INHALE information- it is like the air to them, they can’t live without it. And no one crams information into the minds of the children at the school for the gifted where you used to live, as you seem to imply. Is this in order to justify your decision not to send your D there? Regardless, there is a wide a range of levels of “giftedness”, and the most gifted have very different educational needs, desires, and abilities from those who are less so.

rainbowwings11 · July 29, 2008, 11:12pm

But are they to be admired? I don’t think so. That is my beef. The admiration given to “gifted” students, who are born like that, that is what I don’t get.

MQD · July 29, 2008, 11:54pm

We are all ears menloparkmom. Help us learn. No need to denigrate.

LazyBum201 · July 29, 2008, 11:57pm

Owlice, not at all…I didn’t even know you knew me (or my kid or my parenting) when I posted and was merely trying to explain that it’s not the case that someone must attend a traditional school to learn the skills you describe.

Absolutely. And of various ages, races, intellectual levels, backgrounds, interests, etc.

Yes, he took a broad range of topics from a broad range of venues (physics from a U program open to the public, German from a parks and rec program (for ages 18 and up, but there was an exception made for him), Italian at the CC ( a program for high school kids that again, the director made an exception for our son to attend), stock market and business classes from the CC, Spanish from an elementary school after school program, tennis from parks and rec, creative writing from two authors doing a workshop in the area, manners classes at a local mansion, history lessons at a homeschool trip at Williamsburg, Mad Science classes at age 5, electricity class from a homeschool mom, geography sessions run by a homeschool dad, and so on. And once in college, he took more than the required coursework in every area (multiple foreign languages, bio and multiple chem and physics classes rather than just the physics required for his BS in math, and entrepreneurship class that didn’t meet any requirements for either degree but he just felt would be useful to take, etc.).

Yes, I think so. He went sledding, made snowmen, made sandcastles in the sand, had slumber parties with pillow fights, etc.

You’d win some money if you could get someone to take your bet.

And we agree there. I just got the impression (wrongly, I am now guessing) that you were under the impression that someone who is homeschooled can’t learn (or learn as well) the various “people skills” you described and that’s the reason for my earlier post. Sorry to have misread your meaning.

And socially, I again also think it’s the better way to go. What are the big “social” issues for people really? It’s not so much who opens the door for people and such, but things like teen pregnancy, criminal behavior, drug addiction, educational drop-outs, etc. and homeschooling has lower rates for all these areas (even in college - college students who were homeschooled have close to a zero dropout rate from what I have read, not that they graduate in far larger percentages than traditionally schooled people, but just that they know if they truly want a college education before starting and have the skills required to make it in college). Now most parents here are well-educated and their children don’t fall into the high risk areas for the above issues (and it’s not like all teen pregnancies are a problem, for that matter), and maybe this is also why homeschoolers have lower rates in these areas (parents who have a higher median level of education and are involved in their children’s education and lives in general like where they are overnight, though I know one homeschool family that is an exception in not knowing where their fairly young teen is over the weekend and such), but I tend to think homeschooling also creates a decent foundation of a child feeling well attended to such that teens are less likely to feel a desire to turn to drugs, crime, etc.

Yay indeed, as I am quite lazy and working hard would not have suited me.

rainbowwings11 · July 30, 2008, 12:03am

Lazy, are we to be impressed by what your gifted child has done? just wondering

And as far the plug for homeschooling, there are so many homeschoolers that never even attempt college, that those statistics are very skewed indeed, while there are probablly more “boderline” regular school kids who do attempt college.

So sure the homeschoolers that go are probablly very motivated, but they are by no means representative pool of a large portion of the home schooled population in this country.

LazyBum201 · July 30, 2008, 12:05am

I think people with a large group of friends are also more likely to live longer due to a larger support system in times of trouble (mentally or physically) in addition to the benefit of having more job opportunities, going farther in a career, etc. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t people who are plenty successful while not being social creatures particularly.

LazyBum201 · July 30, 2008, 12:10am

I agree with Wisteria on the request to delete posts that mention the child’s name, etc.

Math Whiz but no other subjects or friends?

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