<p>Magnus, by the way, is not that unique. See below,</p>
<p>HONG KONG (AFP) - Britain’s Oxford University has accepted a 17-year-old from Hong Kong on one of its doctorate programmes, making him one of the famed university’s youngest such students, a report said Wednesday.
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<p>Yes, we know someone whose daughter went to MIT at 15 and got a PhD in physics by the time most people graduate college. But I doubt they touted her to the entire internet-reading, You-Tube watching universe as a genius. Another girl we know is a first year med student at age 18, having just graduated from Cal.</p>
<p>I certainly don’t condemn these parents for finding a way to nurture their son’s gifts. I just wonder why they need to advertise them. Our S is not a genius, and I always reminded him of that fact. He mentioned home-schooling as he entered middle school, but I didn’t feel equipped on the math front, and I didn’t think I could be both supportive mom and professional teacher. We did have the advantage of being able to find schools that worked for him and extra-curricular ways to stimulate him. It’s certainly possible Magnus’s parents have neither the means nor the opportunities where they live to take that route. I’m sure they are working in the service of their S. I just question whether or not it is a service to advertise his genius – which may or may not turn out to be real – to the world. As my grandmother used to ask: Whatever happened to all my genius grandchildren when they grew up?</p>
<p>Sac, the chess prodigy boy at the center of ‘searching for bobby fisher’ went into a whole other field altogether. He has a website about his accomplishments & philosophy, none of which includes chess. Chess was part of his life for a time, now he’s onto other interests. He doesn’t appear traumatized by the publicity he received from his father’s book. I suspect Magnus may well have a similar reaction when he reaches adulthood.</p>
<p>Sac:
Agree. I don’t like the publicity side of the story. But I think that an 8 year old taking BC-Calc or a 9year old getting into university must know he is considered a prodigy if not a genius, I was responding specifically to your musing about how it would affect them later on.</p>
<p><<Owlice and Zoos, is it really all that much more tasteless and intrusive than parents posting their child’s athletic accomplishments?</p>
<p>I’m not arguing. I’m asking: if this child were a top-ranked chess player or a prodigy gymnast, would listing their stats be also bad taste?>></p>
<p>In my opinion, yes.</p>
<p>You know, Owlice has a gifted kid, I have a gifted kid. (Although I certainly would not claim that mine is as gifted as Magnus LeDue.) Many of the people commenting on this have gifted kids. It’s not like you are talking to people who don’t appreciate intellectual accomplishment, for heaven’s sake.</p>
<p>katliamom – Yes, he seems like a great young man. But chess was not his only interest by any means. His father was a writer, and wrote about his son. It just doesn’t strike me as the same situation, though I certainly hope that Magnus does as well.</p>
<p>Marite – Perhaps I’m splitting hairs, but there seems to me to be a difference between realizing you are way ahead of your peers, even a prodigy, and having your parents announce through a bullhorn: We’ve produced a young genius. The mathematician Tao’s parents really sound as if they did a wonderful job nurturing their son’s mathematical genius while nuturing him as a whole person. And they seem to have done an equally wonderful job with his brother, who was smart but opted out of the prodigy track, a wish they respected.</p>
<p>lol, katliamom! I’m sure marite’s S can hold his own, and how!</p>
<p>And that’s just it: if one uses the generally accepted definition of a genius – IQ greater than, say, 136 or 140 or 145 (somewhere in that range) – there are a good number of geniuses represented at CC. They’re not common, but they aren’t so rare as a Mozart.</p>
<p>These parents are calling their son a genius…labeling him themselves. I am suprised that they haven’t spouted his IQ tests, which they most likely have had administered. There are some very smart people in math, but I wouldn’t call them geniuses.</p>
<p>Sac: No disagreement from me! I’ve said all along I did not like the publicity his parents have been seeking.</p>
<p>Katliamom: No, my S has been made to realize he is a mere mortal. Our refrain was : “there’s always someone better than you.” Amply demonstrated in college :(</p>
<p>Marite–we told our daughter the same thing also…little did we know that YOUR kid would be the one in college to demonstrate that to her! [smiley emoticon]</p>
<p>Ummm…would have been ecstatic with lots of A-! Shall we say that her grades were diverse…</p>
<p>And she graduated and has a job! Transcript was never provided nor grades discussed prior to her job offer. Classes taken were discussed. Projects in classes taken were discussed. Whew!</p>
<p>Yes it is katliamom–the best part was saying, “this will be the last time I will be paying for XXX for you.” </p>
<p>Plus, now parents are a fount of all knowledge–what shall I do about health insurance choices, what about the 401K, etc. It’s not so easy being an adult after all–we parents make it look so easy!</p>
<p>This conversation gives me great hope as I interact with my skinny 13 year old Aspie who thinks he knows it all … aargh … He knows many things but not all … hell will freeze over before he accepts that he might be wrong on occasion. Or lets just say he enjoys the verbal sparring in the effort to defend himself. I think he needs more to occupy his brain!</p>
<p>How do/did you keep your sanity through the teenage years???</p>
<p>You can tell Magnus is an only child, with all this bragging going on. When there are other smart kids in the family, all that attention is blessedly diluted.</p>
<p>It seems to me that the father wasn’t feeling too fulfilled in his own life, and so quit his job (isn’t that what happened?) and is going to shape his son into a math savant and then gloat over his son’s subsequent accomplishments. That’s a lot of pressure for his son. Hopefully, it will all work out well in the end, but this isn’t a promising start.</p>
<p>I would so prefer that this child had the math classes, but then had lots of social interaction with other kids his own age afterwards so that he can grow up normally. The dad should read about the life of Tesla, a true genius who hung out with the other boys in his town in his youth.</p>
<p>I have a little more sympathy for the parents. There aren’t any good roadmaps for parents of true prodigies (note: mine all have the school system label, NONE of them were doing calculus until junior year of high school. They are run of the mill “gifted” kids, NOT prodigies).</p>
<p>If Dad quit work to homeschool, is mom still working? Maybe somebody had to stay home and homeschool to meet the needs, and he won the coin toss. I’ll admit that the website is a bit much, but how different is it than some of standard internet-bragging we see on SOME websites? ;-)</p>
<p>I’ll bet you could find 100 mistakes I made with my kids without trying very hard, especially since hindsight is 20/20. I know I did my best at the time. If I had been faced with this kind of kid, I don’t really know what I would have done to meet his needs. But I would have done my best, and I’ll bet my best wouldn’t have been 100% right.</p>
He mentioned home-schooling as he entered middle school, but I didn’t feel equipped on the math front, and I didn’t think I could be both supportive mom and professional teacher. We did have the advantage of being able to find schools that worked for him and extra-curricular ways to stimulate him. It’s certainly possible Magnus’s parents have neither the means nor the opportunities where they live to take that route. I’m sure they are working in the service of their S. I just question whether or not it is a service to advertise his genius – which may or may not turn out to be real – to the world. As my grandmother used to ask: Whatever happened to all my genius grandchildren when they grew up?</p>