Moratorium on "gifted" and "brilliant"

mercymom · May 8, 2008, 11:50am

Where I worked was a private school, and I was a volunteer recruited by the guidance counselor to help several children who, for a variety of reasons were not going to get professional outside help. I do have a degree in psychology. And I am familiar with what you are talking about as my own kids were in public school for 5 years and went through the screening process for both gifted services and speech therapy, so we have done both the testing and the IEPs - two sets for each kid.

At the school where I worked both the principal and several of the teachers were originally from the public school system and so they constructed their own “system” to help children who were struggling and who in some cases had flunked twice, but who for reasons ranging from divorce to poverty to denial either would not or could not get outside help. In some cases when the family was finally convinced to seek outside professional help the mother would tell me what had happened. I never saw anyone’s file. In one child’s case, the mom was a friend of mine. Two of the teachers would talk to me to compare what was happening in the tutoring sessions with classroom performance. The principal periodically sat in on my sessions to observe. The guidance counselor also checked in from time to time. All the children I worked with were in the room only if their parents asked for the help after it was offered by the school. We were doing our best to help severely struggling students within the framework of the school setting where they were located.

fwiw - back when my kids were in speech therapy, there was a parent organization specifically designed for educating the parents on all the various rules and regulations of the special education system. a good friend of mine at the time was the director of that group. also, my very best friend is a special ed teacher and was for many years a supervisor in a different public school district. she was a great help in also giving me a lot of information about the various processes.

3xcharmed · May 8, 2008, 1:36pm

mercymom, are you a certified resource teacher, or ed psyc professional, or a parent volunteering in a class? I’m not asking to be rude, but a substancial amount of testing is involved before a child is mandated with a learning disablity (which is a general term used to cover a variety of specific disorders that impede a childs ability to learn in the classroom, and I’m talking about children who should be able to learn). In fact, it would be highly inappropriate, perhaps illegal, for a parental volunteer to have priviy to a childs testing, information about their IQ, or any other medical diagnosis. When a child is mandated to receive services, what the classroom teacher receives is a individual education plan which detail accommodations that child might need (Often the accommodations a child receives are transparent to the general class). And, in my state, once mandated, children are re-tested every three years. These professionals are college graduates, many with masters and doctorate degress.

3xcharmed · May 8, 2008, 2:14pm

Sorry, didn’t mean to repost #122,

Thank-you for the clarification, it is my understanding as well that testing and services at private schools in general are minimal to non-existent. Its good that your administration is proactive in helping kids who need a little extra attention (LD or not).

anon94785555 · May 8, 2008, 2:37pm

The low end of the Bell curve does not include children with normal IQ but with learning disabilities. Think of the thousands of dollars spent for those whose cognitive ability is less than your pet- the public schools need to have multiple full time staff per pupil so they can be taken care of at school, the major benefit is for the parents not having to care for them those hours. As a physician I have taken care of some who function on a brainstem level. Years ago parents got laws passed to get funds for those children, diverting limited funds from others. Fewer dollars could have much greater benefits to society if spent on similarily appropriate education for gifted children.

Traditionally the attitude towards gifted students was that they can easily learn the regular curriculum and that is sufficient. There have been prison studies that show the results of failing to meet the needs of some gifted students. I think realizing what it means to be gifted is beyond the comprehension of some of the nastier posters on this thread. The best IQ for fitting in our society is probably 120- smart enough to do well in school, including college, able to outthink most of the people and rise to the top professionally, smarter than most of the population and yet not so smart as to be bored by them or to be in such small numbers one can’t find an intellectual peer group. Also consider this- most school teachers are smarter than most pupils, as well as having the knowledge that comes with life experience, they are used to being a jump ahead of their students. But, unless they are trained they will not realize how different the gifted child is from themselves at that age, they can’t comprehend what it is like for that child to be stuck in a ■■■■■■■■ world (substitute the currently correct word if you need to). It is not easy to be different. Remember the gifted child has asynchronous development- their mental age does not correlate with their physical or other developmental age- they do not fit in with any group. There is never a perfect fit for anyone, there should be as good a fit as we can make it.

Our society often seems to try to fit everyone into the same box- enormous efforts are made to expand to fit and excess bits/chunks are chopped off. The majority are a pretty good fit and oblivious to the parts outside the box.

3xcharmed · May 8, 2008, 3:18pm

wis75, thankfully the world isn’t filled with just one type of person, what an truely ugly place it would be.

katliamom · May 8, 2008, 4:06pm

yea – 'cos you know that even if there was just one type of person someone would still be more gifted than your kid…

Mr_Payne · May 8, 2008, 5:46pm

Oh yeah? The benefits of the world population of having an IQ of 130 versus 92 could be pretty lengthy. There is a reason we are not apes who live in caves.

LazyBum201 · May 9, 2008, 10:46am

I agree that 9 out of 10 times, the respectable characteristics of hard work, preparation, perspiration, etc. will win out over raw talent, but issues hit when someone is able to be a high-achiever and “underachiever” at the same time.

I have a child who started college at 9 (he applied and was accepted at 8, but we parents weren’t ready even if he was and insisted he wait till he was 9 and even then, only let him take one course his first semester). He graduated at age 13 with a bunch of honors (including Phi Beta Kappa and Outstanding Achievement in Computer Science) two bachelor’s degrees and around 170 credits rather than the 120 needed for a single degree or 150 for a dual degree and did this with rather little hard work, preparation, perspiration, etc. He felt he learned better when not taking notes but rather just listening and playing with lecture material in his head in class, so didn’t take notes. He felt studying was “cheating” (as he felt the tests then only show what you crammed in to pass a test rather than really “got”, not understanding how some people do retain things they study for more than tests) and so just relaxed or read books on non-college topics or whatever before tests in general, and for some classes, he never even cracked the textbooks (in CS, it was mostly because he had self-taught himself most topics before having to take them for college, and for math, he was time and again noted by professors for his “elegant” math proofs and doing things like solving a problem in mere seconds and a few lines when it took the prof over 70 minutes to solve it and he felt he was able to solve things in different ways from others due to his not being trained by textbooks on how to come up with solutions and thus having to think for himself).

He also shined in job after job (he started working for tech companies at age 9), and was told by one CEO that he should charge well over the average rate for computer consultants as he felt that our son did twice the quality of work in half the time the average programmer did and thus even twice the normal rate was a bargain for employers, and sure enough, right out of college, our son was earning $200+/hour on some projects and able to get double his pay just weeks after starting with a company (as that CEO also told him to agree to work a few weeks at a regular rate and then see if they didn’t think he was worth more). He was also given bonuses that he never asked for.

The problems really hit a year after graduating college, when he switched from running his own consulting business (and photography and fractal art business as he had been selling his art at fairs and festivals and off restaurant walls and such since age 12 and again with very little time or effort exerted, had sold over $8000 worth of his art; no art on the MET, mind you, but one of his good friends has an exhibit at MOMA currently and thinks his work is fantastic, so it’s also not like he is exactly average here) to graduate school at the top school in the nation (and world according to some lists) for his four areas of study (as being an eclectic sort, he found himself a lab where he can mix fields). He turns in his thesis for the M.S. today and has coasted through (again not taking notes nor studying, but much worse still, handing in things late and STILL getting an A+ as some people seem to think him just that good where even a grade down for being a day late is still at the A+ level!) and it has annoyed me greatly (it would be nice to be happy about your child earning an A+ in a class with an eminent scientist, but I felt like it was just “teaching” him all the wrong things about proper responsibility, accountability for being tardy, etc. and let him know this; I feel a C that came with effort is something to be happier about than a A that came after turning in things late).

So I have wondered and wondered how to teach responsibility/timeliness when working against it seems everyone else outside of myself and my husband. Even his friends don’t to hold his antics against him; indeed, a friend of his about to start Harvard Law School heard of our son typing slides for a presentation as he was giving the presentation, so much the procrastinator he has become, and the friend said, “He’s legendary. The people at (son’s school) will be talking about him long after he’s left there.” I didn’t let our son know of this comment, but it doesn’t matter as our son gets tons of compliments about his presentations (from big name scientists yet) and people note that they are outstanding and especially impressive being how he is creating them on the spot, so he has a reputation for a procrastinator now and it’s a reward for him in terms of ego stroking by others and this again isn’t helping my efforts to have him prepare things in advance.

No, this isn’t performing at Carnegie Hall or signing with the Rangers at age 19, but it’s also not exactly run of the mill smart teen stuff in my view. Most teens who don’t prepare have “natural consequences” and my son’s consequences seem rather unnatural to me. And I am debating such resigning myself to the notion that he will continue through life being tardy and still respected and loved by many (certainly not all, as plenty of people can’t stand slackers let alone slackers who still succeed), especially as he is nice guy (and this is also one reason people cut this slacker such slack, I am rather sure; I know one guy even blogged about having read about our son and having been jealous and wanting to hate him, but once he met him, our son was just too nice and he couldn’t not like him).

And ironically, I bought a book at the university bookstore a couple of days ago titled “The Underachiever’s Manifesto” and it pretty much has every motto I have ever used, though sometime slightly different. For example, since our son was 2, I have said, “Good enough is good enough by definition” as I truly am not someone who feels being best is worth the trouble in general, and the book just uses “Good enough is good enough”. The book talks about not trying to time the market or buy hot stocks but just invest in index funds as people who don’t seek the bragging rights of having hot stocks usually are actually worth more in the long haul, and I have tried to teach our son to invest in index funds (as I have) rather than go with individual stocks first as he did (he opened at Roth IRA at age 12 and has contributed the full amount he is allowed by law every year, even while on a grad student stipend). It also talks about how walking (the slacker form of exercise I have been using the past year and lost 11 pounds from it) is better in the long run than running (what more ambitious people tend to do) as there are less injuries and one is more likely to keep it up over a lifetime (as my elderly father has done). It talks about how being a perfectionist isn’t fun for those you live with (everything always having to be just so, for example), though being one to procrastinate is no fun for family members either. And certainly I am a slacker myself who is one of the happiest people I know, and so I have likely modeled slacking to our son, but not to the extreme of letting people down (promising to have something done by a certain time and being late, not that our son does this all the time or with all people, but in happens and more than I am comfortable with) and it’s the extreme he’s taken this to that troubles me.

But I had a boss once who taught me there are no problems in the world. There are situations with have solutions, and so that’s all they are - not problems, and then there are things which have no solution and should simply be accepted rather than seen as a problem. I am starting to think my son’s situation might fall into the latter category and after years of fighting his ways, I should just accept them.

LazyBum201 · May 9, 2008, 10:59am

“That’s because the smart, but not gifted students, are more likely to be motivated by grades, not the stimulation that the course offers. They also are more likely to give teachers what they want. Because gifted people think differently, they may have such a different perspective that they get lower than deserved grades on their assignments even though they worked hard on them and what they wrote was accurate.”

I don’t doubt that many higher IQ people have no interest in “playing the game” compared to many with somewhat lower intellects, but I also think there are those who have high intellect and see where playing the game can help them to meet their future goals. Our son isn’t that into grades other than to be able to get into programs he wants to attend (like for college, it was the Ph.D. program he wanted since age 8 and now in grad school, he’s interested in getting A’s in case he opts to later apply to law school and/or business school as he feels an education in those areas could also benefit him in running a company with EEs and that is one of his main goals).

Similarly, a lot of high IQ people have trouble connecting with others/being liked by others. But our son has always had friends of all ages (including his own age, younger, somewhat older, and all the way up to retirement home residents) and a cousin of mine said he suspects it’s because our son is past the level of IQ where it is tough to socialize with others and into a level where he can also “get” how to socialize with little kids on up despite having a mind that thinks differently than most. So one should be sure not to conclude that just because someone gets along well with people in general (or is voted to student government, as our son was in undergrad and grad school, despite what Hollingworth would think likely) or gets high grades that they aren’t as smart as people who whine, “I’m bored”, “School is stupid”, or whatever.

LazyBum201 · May 9, 2008, 11:08am

Only to me, asking for someone to do their best makes no sense as:

1) How can one really know what their best IS as no matter how hard they work, they potentially could have worked a little harder.

2) It sets people up for perfectionism and not being happy no matter what they do as they realize 1) in time.

3) A “best” effort is often not best in a larger picture. For example, our son pointed out that he could study something and get a 100% rather than a 95% on a test, say, but in the time he spent studying for an extra 5%, he could have been doing something else far more enjoyable and/or useful than getting an A+ rather than A. I agree; “best” is often not really best in the larger life image.

I feel it better to ask, “Are you comfortable with the level of effort you exerted? Does it feel right to you?” Our son feels he is only exerting 1% effort in recent years and this does NOT feel right to him, and this is one reason I still try to retain some hope of his becoming a bit more diligent of a worker, no matter his “achievements” as they will feel unearned/empty if little was done to attain them.

LazyBum201 · May 9, 2008, 11:15am

Consolation, our son was homeschooled before starting college at 9, and he got to start an M.S./Ph.D. program at 14 at the top university in his areas of study, so I am not sure how much more could have been done to offer him an appropriate challenge. Perhaps he is lacking in drive (for who he is, anyway, not for the average human as most people don’t have the drive to earn degrees as he does, especially having parents who feel he likely doesn’t need them and might be better off without formal education, but also feel if he is going to accept a job, he ought to hand in things on time, the job of student included) for an “unusual” reason (like slacker parents is my guess). At times I feel guilty for passing along to him slacker genes/environment and other times, I feel, “Who cares? He’s happy and doing just fine overall, and THAT is what is far more important.” I am hoping someday to only feel the latter.

icantfindaname · May 9, 2008, 12:04pm

“Think of the thousands of dollars spent for those whose cognitive ability is less than your pet-”

Very cruel comment, classless, and of course wrong unless you have a primate for a pet. (There should be a fine for all those idiots that have bumper stickers that say my dog is smarter than your honor student). Society doesn’t really care about IQ. There is no fourth branch of government called smart people, as in let’s go ask the smart people what they think. You have that racist Hillary bragging that her base is uneducated white people, not normally the people you want making major decisions, but they get one vote just like a smart person. The Constitution contains not a single word about education. It was not viewed as a task of the federal government. Even Brown v Board simply says if the states choose to provide an education, and that is up to them, it has to be “equal”. Public education is designed to provide a basic education, a C grade. If you can do better fine but that’s all they are obligated to provide under state guidelines and legal interpretations.

alh · May 9, 2008, 12:30pm

“Perhaps he is lacking in drive (for who he is, anyway, not for the average human as most people don’t have the drive to earn degrees as he does, especially having parents who feel he likely doesn’t need them and might be better off without formal education, but also feel if he is going to accept a job, he ought to hand in things on time, the job of student included)”

Interesting to think of in the context of someone who did have either the intellect or maturity (I’m assuming both) to decide grades can be useful for long-term goals and still come up with an approach to test taking based on a personal moral code.

Does your son have any reason to follow the rules? There seem to be no negative consequences to him. Has he ever caused negative consequences to another with his tardy/slacker behaviour? Is that your concern? Do you have a concern he will not fullfill his potential? What is your biggest worry here?

LazyBum201 · May 9, 2008, 12:38pm

This reminds me of when our son was a tiny tot and taking a group music class that went from 30 minutes to 40 minutes but simply added 10 minutes of coloring stuff that wasn’t teaching music at all. My son complained on the way home that he wasn’t going to music class to learn how to use crayons - he already knew how to do that - but to learn music.

I thought I was being wise when I responded, “Dissatisfaction is a good thing as without it, there would be no progress.”

But then he snapped back from his car seat, “You can’t use that argument as if everyone were content, there would be no need for progress, now would there be?”

Now not everyone is content, and thus people like others attempts to make people more content, but who is truly more reasonable - those who are simply happy with life as it is or those who focus on the negatives and seek to improve the world when the world will always have problems no matter how much progress is made?

My brother is brilliant by the standards of anyone I’ve ever known - he’s been on Scientific American’s top 50 most influential people in science and business list, got degrees in physics and EE in four years with a high GPA and earned his M.D. in 3.5 years and then landed his first pick neurosurgery residency. He’s been published at least 25 times and has numerous patents and an Inventor of the Year award and a fancy custom house and so on, but guess what? He isn’t happy. He is unhappy with his job, upset with his kids a lot, and has a marriage that has many surprised it even still is…so he is brilliant, but is he wise?

Meanwhile, I am lazy bum. I decided at age 27 to exit the rat race (and was lucky to be able to do so; I realize many can’t, but my brother has been wealthy enough for years to retire and still just talks about it and plots his retirement over and over) and have had an incredibly happy marriage, have a kid who invites me to his graduate dorm parties and social events at a fraternity he is involved in and is taking me to a social event with his teen friends tomorrow night (it’s mostly homeschool kids at it and they welcome parents, he tells me). My husband and I go out most every night and enjoy traveling and friends and family and while it would be nice to say write a best-seller and help the world in some way (even if just by entertainment), I don’t feel compelled there and wouldn’t trade my lack of being ambitious for a lower level of happiness. This isn’t to say some people can’t be ambitious and happily married, etc. but I think it’s harder for ambitious people to feel at peace and just happy with what they have/who they are, and all the time spent on achieving often cuts into time with friends and family and causes less strong relationships to boot. So with regards to parenting, I have tried to teach our child to put family and friends before work in priority of doing right by people, but also to teach a sense of balance (so as not to give work no respect at all until he is financially independent of needing earned income,at which time, unlike Bill Gates, I would be happy if our son just rested on his laurels and enjoyed life as to me he would have earned the right to do that by giving enough to society as to have accumulated that wealth, saying it’s not from inheritance or a lottery win).

alh · May 9, 2008, 1:01pm

So with regards to parenting, I have tried to teach our child to put family and friends before work in priority of doing right by people, but also to teach a sense of balance (so as not to give work no respect at all until he is financially independent of needing earned income,at which time, unlike Bill Gates, I would be happy if our son just rested on his laurels and enjoyed life as to me he would have earned the right to do that by giving enough to society as to have accumulated that wealth, saying it’s not from inheritance or a lottery win).

Most super-achievers I know would do their “work” even if they weren’t paid and they had to get a day job to support their interests.

CC_Admin · May 9, 2008, 1:14pm

Our school district tattoos our kids in elementary as “gifted”. Once gifted, always gifted. 6000 kids in district with 1000+ identified as gifted. We do, however have another term that is used quite often: GMA which stands for, Gifted, My Ass!! what makes me laugh is when you talk to a parent who is insistent that her child be advanced a grade, I ask if the child has GMA certification and 98% of the time the parents say something like, “yes, we’ve had that for a few years now!!”

LazyBum201 · May 9, 2008, 3:12pm

Perhaps only to please some others, like his parents, and he does seem to want to make others (including parents) happy, but just can’t get himself to work unless under the wire. A handwriting specialist (as in the trial expert version, not boardwalk fun version) friend of mine has a husband who could only write grants the day before they were due (actually, the night - as in ALL NIGHT - before they were due) and days he wasn’t procrastinating so much as needing pressure to work as well as he did and so it could be this kid is the same. And the same carefree attitude that has him feeling no need to study or get things done well in advance of deadlines could be what allows him to perform well under stress, be creative, etc.

Other than upset relatives, this seems accurate. He even submitted a paper for a conference after the online submissions had been shut down and a simple email to the conference organizer with his paper attached and dropping a few names (as it turns out a friend of the man’s plus the keynote speaker for the conference both urged our son to submit a paper) in the note got him a spot to present at the conference and published in some book. And it seems that it is common for people in his field (and maybe in science and math in general) around the globe to be late on things and getting extensions granted left and right, so it’s not like he is doing anything that his own mentor professors don’t seem to do, which could be why they also cut their students so much slack.

At times, he has caused people concern (like his advisor wondered if he was okay when our son overslept a meeting one time), embarrassment (when he and a post doc and a guy with several master’s degrees all were busy chatting physics at an airport gate and completely missed that their plane left without them till minutes after it was departed and if not getting to the lab they were visiting the morning they were to be there wasn’t bad enough, they topped it by working at that lab till 5 AM that first day knowing full well they had an 8:30 AM meeting with people from around the country the next morning and all three of them overslept it and had to be called by their advisor to ask where the heck they were), and frustration (on the part of his parents and some others here and there).

Is that your concern?

One of my concerns is that it can upset others when he is tardy, but another is that it just isn’t right to be late with things even if people don’t get upset. Someone said, “He’s doing well and people there seem not to mind really, so what is the big deal?”

To which I responded, “Well, robbing a bank and never getting caught could make a person rich and happy too, and insurance might cover those who were robbed so it might appear on some level that nobody is getting hurt, but it doesn’t make it right.” Of course, the bank robbery does have people getting hurt, if not just those who have to pay for insurance coverage having higher rates and paper pushers needing to push more paper, but my point is whether someone is caught/held accountable doesn’t make something okay or not okay. I always taught my son that it doesn’t matter if he gets caught or not for something so much as that he does what he feels is right (which at times might be against the law, mind you, like Rosa Parks did) and has a strong conscience. And he does to this day appear to be an honest person who thinks about others and tries not to hurt them, and I am happy about that.

No, fulfilling potential is very similar to the “do your best” stuff that I’ve never felt made any sense. How can anyone know someone’s potential in life, or when it’s been reached? What I would like is that he gives what he is paid to give…for example, not that he slaves in his lab over 40 hours a week, but just that he at least puts in the hours that his lab administrator and faculty advisor would expect graduate students to put in, which I have to think is more than he has been even though his work seems to be good enough that they are keeping him on for the doctorate (as in his program, all students have to reapply for the doctorate in the last semester of the master’s and not all are allowed to continue on).

I’m not sure about biggest, but some of the concerns are that:

1) He’ll lose the respect of others (myself included, as my love for him exists no matter his slacker behaviors, but my respect for him deteriorates when I feel he isn’t giving the time he should to his job), and I can’t say if my son feels as I do, but for me, I have always valued respect from others more than love from others (is this odd? Not sure, but if our son is also this way, if he does lose the respect of many people, he could become depressed, which needless to say would be bad)

2) He might come to not have good feelings about what he accomplishes as he felt they weren’t work (other than in a bare minimum sense) for and thus earned in the way many need to earn them to feel good about them

3) He could lose his job (which could also result in depression)

4) As already noted, that he could let other people down and I don’t like seeing a child doing that if the other people had reasonable expectations

LazyBum201 · May 9, 2008, 3:22pm

True, and our son feels he will always want to run his own company or have some other form of work (be it playing keyboard in a subway station or whatever), but on his own terms and those super-achievers are also doing things on their own terms - it is far easier to love your job if you dictate your job by owning the company…don’t like doing taxes, hire an accountant; don’t like dealing with email, have a secretary handle it; etc. Indeed, part of our son’s motivation in becoming self-employed again is to be able to do things more on his own terms again.

I realize I can paint our son is a dismal light, and to be honest, it’s not like he does nothing - he volunteers to do a bunch of things - he did the art that went on his dorm’s alumni dinner concert program and on the mugs that each alumni got as a gift a couple of weeks ago and does tons of other volunteer work for his dorm such that he won an award for giving the most to the dorm the first year he was eligible for that award and he’s only gotten still more active since; he teaches high school kids about his research and the math behind it every Saturday and is co-directing a summer program for high school kids to take college level academics (the current teaching is volunteer; the summer work will actually be with pay, but he would do it even if it weren’t); he entertains people at various functions by playing all sorts of instruments (sometimes three simultaneously, which got the most applause at a recent concert; he also plays somewhat unusual instruments for people to play like the bowed psaltry, and instrument he bought himself, and the slide whistle); he creates rather nice birthday cards for friends, and so on. It’s more that someone suggesting or instructing him to do things doesn’t motivate him like following through on his own ideas does.

3xcharmed · May 9, 2008, 3:35pm

How old is your kid? from your first post I thought he was twelve.

alh · May 9, 2008, 3:40pm

Lazy: sounds like your kid is a lot of fun and that being his mom has been an exciting adventure!

Moratorium on "gifted" and "brilliant"

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