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Ask HN: Talented kid: what to do?
I am looking for ideas on what to do with my cousin's 8 year old (clearly gifted) kid. Ideas for pathways, scholarships, online courses, etc.
When Simon comes back from school, he entertains himself with math problems, and also creates for himself math problems and solves them. He's been moved to 6th grade algebra in school. He is a good reader. His other idea of fun is to play classical music on piano and compose new pieces. He is not socially awkward either: he just gets bored with most kids of his age, but enjoys smart kids and plays with them well. They live in Chicago.
His IQ been tested at 148 (very superior). Here's photo of his IQ report:
https://2nznub4x5d61ra4q12fyu67t-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/IQ-1.jpg
Any ideas appreciated! Thanks.
- tmaly 10y agohow about putting him in touch with the real life Scorpion http://www.scorpioncomputerservices.com/ http://www.scorpioncomputerservices.com/ He sounds like the type of person they look for.
- PirateJack 10y agoHe should work for Snapchat and design the next app that makes the world a better place.
- belomoina 10y agoHe's determined to find a cure for cancer
- chris_va 10y agoI would recommend looking at these programs: http://cty.jhu.edu/ http://cty.jhu.edu/
- colanderman 10y agoYep I've taught at CTY. Might not be challenging for IQ 148 though. (I say this as estimated 140+.) Also $$$. (Was invited to attend when I was younger but parents couldn't afford it. Usually classes have 1 public school student to 13 private.)
- mswen 10y agoMath - Khan Academy has it mapped out all the way to calculus - Simon can go as fast and far as he wants if that approach interests him. Music - I assume he is taking lessons - keep doing that and maybe get him exposed to someone that teaches music theory and composition as well as piano. Or, just encourage him to continue on his own in music. Not everything has to be turned into 'school'. Make sure he has access to lots of good books. Take him on trips to a well stocked library and introduce him to various non-fiction sections. In pre-internet days, when I was a kid, I got to the point where my mom would take me to the public library once a week and I would come home with a stack of 5 to 10 books (majority fiction, but not all of them) and I would have read them all by the next week. My reading addiction was helped by the fact that my parents decided not to have television in the house until us kids moved away as young adults (oh the abuse we suffered! Maybe not.) Make sure he has his own computer and access to the internet. Introduce him to Wikipedia. If he has an interest in programming help him get over the starting gate by setting up his environment and walking him through some first lessons then take a more back seat and let him go. Academically - try to get him situated in a school that has some experience working with gifted children.
- ahazred8ta 10y agoMensa. The bigger the city, the better their youth resources are. http://chicago.us.mensa.org/kids/gifted_kids.php http://chicago.us.mensa.org/kids/gifted_kids.php
- Taylor_OD 10y agoIf he is in Chicago its worth targeting IMSA for junior and senior year of high school. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_Mathematics_and_Science_Academy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_Mathematics_and_Scien...
- colanderman 10y agoReference books for whatever he's interested in. With that age, intellect, and drive, he will eat them up. Also support his interests even if he moves on easily. Unlike others I don't think he will benefit from enrichment programs much. Even in talented-youth programs (e.g. CTY, where I've taught) teachers will find it difficult to challenge him, and it sounds like he is already self-motivated. ---- EDIT now that I have a keyboard, to expound on the teacher thing: I've been on both the giving and receiving sides of talented-youth education. The problem for students with such high IQs is not that teachers don't know things they don't (they certainly do), but that teachers often have no experience with correcting the mental models & processes such intelligent children develop. E.g. when I was young, I developed (incorrect) "folk" theories as to how capacitors worked, or the meaning of dividing one by zero, etc. In both cases I was wrong, and teachers told me I was wrong, but they couldn't explain why I was wrong (and hence correct my underlying misconceptions). It wasn't until college that I would encounter instructors who had such a profound grasp of the subject that they could deconstruct my folk theories. (Not that my theories were deep; just that my misunderstandings were deeply rooted.) On the flip side, during the years I was a teacher/tutor, I met maybe 2-3 students whom I could tell right away I couldn't help. I could have told them things they didn't know, sure, but not anything they couldn't have read from a book. There were no flaws in their reasoning skills that I was capable of understanding, let alone fixing. To be a truly effective teacher for a highly inquisitive mind, you have to be at least as intelligent, and more knowledgable than the student. For someone so smart as your second cousin, it will be a very tough find. ---- EDIT2: Academics aside, here is something cynical. If your family is not upper-class, and you are primarily concerned with the kid's success rather than straight-up smarts, find a friend who is upper-class and have the kid hang out with them. As someone with a middle-class upbringing, as I've entered my 30s I've come to realize how tangible class is in terms of networking and "getting ahead in life" (if that's what you're into). You can switch class with a lot of work by being very good at what you do, but it's a lot easier if you already "fit in" with the upper class because that stuff rubbed off on you when you were young. (Again, I recognize this is somewhat cynical and others probably have very different ideas.)
- lazyant 10y agoExpose him to new things, (including non-academic stuff or things he may not like initially such as sports) and get out of the way. Stress work and practice vs talent (see "the curse of the gifted").
- SmellTheGlove 10y agoLots of good suggestions here, but don't forget to offer up some challenges not related to the whole intelligence thing, at least not directly. Offer up some good fiction - maybe scifi is a good place to start. I was thinking Asimov, but there are many good authors in there. Throw on some Star Trek, SG-1, whatever. That's all good stuff for creativity, because it's nice to think about what's possible. Smart kids get taught a lot of stuff, but creativity is sometimes overlooked (although I don't suggest that in this case, given the music aspect).
- closed 10y agoThere have already been some good suggestions on programs / things to keep him busy, so I thought I'd throw in some things to consider when encouraging a smart kid. While it's often tempting to praise a kid when they do something right by telling them they're smart, it can detract from the critical notion that success comes from meaningful practice. Some psychologists have made an interesting case for focusing on praising the work that they have put in. Smart kids may be at risk for overestimating the role intelligence plays in learning, and thereby be more fragile when encountering failure. This article gives an overview: http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/06/the-s-word/397205/ http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/06/the-s-w...
- pmiller2 10y agoAll I have to say is that it will probably work best to encourage and support rather than push him too hard. I see down thread he's going to high school next year; I wouldn't automatically shove him off to college after graduation. It can be really lonely at a big school when one is 6+ years younger than everyone else. He might be a candidate for unschooling.
- zzzyyyxxx 10y ago"Governing a large country is like frying a small fish. You spoil it with too much poking." - http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/taote-v3.html http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/taote-v3.h...
- partycoder 10y agoAstronomy. Get a telescope, join a meetup. Programming. Make simple games in a language like Python. Electronics. Start off a kit like snap circuits, then try to visit your local makerspace. The game of Go. There is software for learning it, clubs (offline), as well as online teachers. The AGA keeps a list. Might also want to try Chess, but I prefer Go.
- babyrainbow 10y ago> what to do? Treat him/her as a normal kid.
- quizzas 10y agoSurround him with like minded kids, for example: 1. Well sorted family 2. Ambitious, hardworking 3. Creative, but not crazy self-destructive He's not going to be successful flying solo, the question is, who will be his peers? For example, if he's that gifted, get him ready to attend a school like Phillips-Exeter where his connections set him up for the future.