Parents in denial

budgiemom
Sun, 04 Jul 2010 14:12:02 +0000

I’m really sorry to read about this; he seems to be another overpraised, underchallenged child (yes, child still) who might have done better and felt happier with himself and his circumstances if he hadn’t been convinced since he spoke his first words that he was the smartest kid in the world. “Smarter than all his teachers”? Possibly, in potential, but not nearly as knowledgable since he is so much younger. And an IQ of 115 - 118, while very good, is just not spectacular by any measure. It makes him above average, and that’s a very crowded room; it isn’t near-genius by a long shot. No one succeeds at anything without persistence and hard work, and the willingness to fail and learn from failure. I don’t know how you’ll convince him of this, but there have been some very good suggestions made on this site. It seems to me that he has so much invested in feeling intellectually superior (and so do his parents) that he has become terrified of actually doing anything because he might not succeed at it.