10 ms·

Emotional, behavioral and social difficulties among high-IQ children [pdf]

115 points by lainon 10y ago

Animats 10y ago
Summary: negative result. "In conclusion, the data from the EDEN mother-child cohort do not support the hypothesis that 5–6 year-old children with high IQ experience more emotional, behavioral and social difficulties than children with normal IQ. If they do, then these difficulties must be very subtle and therefore went undetected in the present study."
- dasmoth 10y ago
  And it is just this 5-6 year groups that has been studied here -- nothing about older children.
  - gkya 10y ago
    I guess if they studied the 13-16 band they'd get positive results. Especially those who got special treatment as a child prodigy.
    - tdb7893 10y ago
      In my middle school and high school I don't remember the smart kids being bullied any more than anyone else so I would be interested in a study on that age group. This is purely anecdotal and sample size of one but my experience with a smart kid who got bullied he thought that people bullied him because he was smart but in reality he was condescending and followed too many rules.
  - taurath 10y ago
    I.e. Before bullying becomes commonplace.
    - robbiep 10y ago
      Because only 'high iq' children get bullied? Confirmation bias much?
      - haser_au 10y ago
        All children are susceptible to bullying when they don't fit in. This applies to children of all IQ levels. This study minimises this factor to reduce the impact on results.
        robbiep 10y ago
        Correct, although I would say that all children are bullied at some point (ie one step further). So I feel my parent was saying that this is something particular to high IQ children
        taurath 10y ago
        I honestly think it's more likely, given my own experience. I don't have any studies to back that up of course. But in the 90s computer/intellectual kids where I grew up were the most bullied relentlessly.
        usmeteora 10y ago
        yeh. I grew up a nerdy shy geek making straight A's in advanced classes tested with high IQ and went on to get a STEM Degreee, and I was a girl, so being that as a girl was a super outlier. I didnt wear abercrombie and fitch and I didn't understand why talking poorly of other girls made you cool. I was relentlessly bullied and just ignored in general by people who did not bully me. At the time I did not really think of it that way because I was in my own head alot and focused in class but in retrospect I would say yeh the way I was treated definitely qualifies as bullying and I think if I participated in mean behavior towards other outcasts and gossiped with the girls I would have been treated better or had a better chance of fitting in.
        10y ago
- danieltillett 10y ago
  Given the size of the study was any other outcome expected.
ap22213 10y ago
IQ has always been a difficult thing for me. I was born into a 3-sigma family to 4-sigma parents. And, on average, we all have lived below average lives. My parents can barely manage their lives, and I'm the only child (of 4) who was able to finish college. So, I always find the fascination with IQ to be odd. At 3rd grade, my siblings and I were separated from the rest of the kids and given the gifted label. (Someone once explained that 'gifted' was a cold war program to beat the soviets - idk). We were then given special treatment: small classes, lots of logic puzzles, access to technology and science, lots of field trips etc. By the end of high school, approximately 25% of my class had already dropped out. But, for some odd reason (probably because obedience - i.e. 'conscientiousness') I succeeded. Over all of those years, I came to realize that there were kids with high IQ who were smart but even more who were very stupid. Even of the smart ones, many of them seemed to completely lack creativity, intuition, or lateral thinking. And, many were also stricken with major behavioral and learning disabilities. I realize that there are correlations with IQ to 'success'. But, the IQ club, for me, was really a circle jerk. And, I don't believe that they're somehow more re 'fit'. So, this analysis seems spot on. Edit: oops, if I had actually read the link, instead of just the headline, I would have seen that it's not 'spot on'. Sorry :-)
- thrownblown 10y ago
  This. I was in GATE from 4th grade - 8th. Separate classes, separate field trips, produced a daily school news tv show. Most of my gifted classmates became highly involved with drugs in highschool. Few graduated high school, let alone college.
  - grahamburger 10y ago
    I was in a program like this in 5th and 6th grade. I believe I was among the lowest achievers in the class, both by grades and extra curriculars. Of those I still keep in touch with, I believe I'm still among the lowest achievers - I never finished college, among other things, although I'm certainly doing fine for myself professionally. The class fed to two different high schools so I lost touch with roughly half of my classmates, but as far as I know they all finished high school and all that I know of finished college or university. Just another perspective.
skrap 10y ago
"N = 23; Full Scale IQ" Enough for me to pretty much stop reading right there. Isn't 23 far too small? If there is signal there, you probably need more samples to draw it out.
- nabla9 10y ago
  The size of N tells very little alone. N=23 can be enough. For example, N = 1 is enough if the rat can solve crossword puzzles. Effect size is so large that probability that you could guess which rat is in the control group and which is not is close to 1.0.
- gwern 10y ago
  The people who claim that high-IQ types are doomed and will be 'The Outsiders' and will be discriminated against to the point that 90%+ of them will not get appropriate higher education (I won't link to the pseudo-statistics that supposedly 'proves' this) are claiming very large effect sizes (and blaming that for why they need shelter in high-IQ societies). In this case, such large effects can be rejected pretty soundly; with the sample sizes given, 23 vs 1058, you have 80% power to detect `pwr.t2n.test(n1=1058, n2=23, power=0.80, alternative="greater")` ~> d=0.52 (which is, for example, about half the size of the black-white IQ gap, and considered a 'medium' effect size). In addition, the longitudinal cohort studies of the gifted like Terman, Hunter, TIP, or SMPY, do not find any signs of severe emotional/behavioral/social difficulties, the genetic correlations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_correlation#Intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_correlation#Intelligen...) are all in the wrong direction, adults are more able than kids to self-select into stimulating environments (possibly why heritability of intelligence increases with age), and so on. A new review paper which is relevant: "From Terman to Today: A Century of Findings on Intellectual Precocity" http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/From-Terman-to-Today-A-Century-of-Findings-on-Intellectual-Precocity.pdf http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/From-Terman-t... , Lubinski 2016. From a statistical perspective, this result doesn't tell us much about gifted adults not because the sample size is far too small, but because IQ scores at age 5-6 inherently don't predict adult IQ sufficiently well. This subsample of 23 kids with mean IQ of 134.6, selected because they are past the 130 threshold, are going to regress to the mean as they grow up. With the usual r=0.5 of 5yo/adult scores, their adult mean IQ will be more like 117 - which is above average but not 'gifted' by anyone's criterion. To try to study gifted adults by starting with them as kids, you would need to start another standard deviation up, around 150 IQ, which would be extremely difficult. (The correlation rapidly increases up to middle school, which is why TIP/SMPY don't suffer from this issue as much: much higher threshold and also much more reliable tests.)
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
kpil 10y ago
The mothers of highly intelligent children where at a much higher risk of postnatal depression. The sample size was small, but it could indicate that there is a connection in older ages. I am not sure how much of the measured intelligence in small children is related to their adult intelligence, and how much is variation in development that might even out.
bitwize 10y ago
At age 5-6, kids are just glad to have other kids around. It's in the older elementary, middle, and high school years that kids start segregating into in- and outgroups and vigorously policing social boundaries.
- kofejnik 10y ago
  Not all kids. At age 5, I was perfectly happy to sit in a quiet corner with an interesting book.
nugget 10y ago
Anyone with high IQ kids should check out the Johns Hopkins CTY program. I felt bored, uncomfortable and out of place pretty much my entire pre-college educational life, with only a small handful of positive experiences, CTY being the best.
- cryoshon 10y ago
  agreed a thousand times! as a CTY alumni, my fond memories of being at CTY are of the first time in my life where i was surrounded by equals! it was such a positive experience for me.
  - heymijo 10y ago
    I asked the parent comment as well, but would you mind sharing more about your experience(s) at CTY? Thanks!
    - hirsin 10y ago
      I wasn't terribly active in CTY - but the times I was involved it was excellent. I met other kids that could "keep up with me" (with perspective, that actually means "could fill in the blanks since I was bad at explaining"), and had an environment that celebrated success, even if it meant you colored out of the lines. That is to say, if I skipped ahead in programming class and made stuff into functions, I was both congratulated and saw that a couple other kids had done so too. I only recall taking two classes with CTY - a class on fractals and tessellation, and an intro to programming class. They were both excellent, and I made friends and learned in both. Would highly recommend.
- heymijo 10y ago
  Can you share more about your positive experiences, especially with CTY? I hadn't heard of it before now and your anecdote would help shed light on what I'm reading about. I teach and I'm interested in all things learning.
  - laxatives 10y ago
gokhan 10y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if the same group of kids in the study end up being the trouble makers or socially awkward ones with the beginning of primary school. Learning as a whole, waiting others to catch up and other methods of "modern" education does negative wonders on gifted children. I have a profoundly gifted child, and witnessed this cycle (normal in preschool, problem child in primary) not only on my child but on many other gifted children. And almost all the parents of gifted children around me tries to find a remedy to boredom in school. School system actually leaves gifted ones behind by forcing them to slow down. The teacher makes a lot of difference but it's not enough if the child is still in the same curriculum. Families of normal children don't help either. They totally reject the idea that gifted children needs some special attention, thinking that these kids can do well on their own because of stereotypical image of giftedness in society. Edit: Some terms.
- monkmartinez 10y ago
  Why not move the child up to the grade level to which he/she performs? They do this at my children's charter school. My son is in 3rd grade doing 4/5th grade math (accelerated charter school) and he has a 7 year old in his class. My son reports that its all good. I firmly reject forcing a teacher to cater to all the "special flowers" in his/her classroom. Here is the standard for the grade level. If child are above standard, move up... if child are below... move down. If child has a learning disability, here is a specialist or a class with similar children and more teacher aids. Edit to add: My daughter has several special needs children in her class (1st grade) and all she talks about is how disruptive they are. The teacher places some of them near her because she is well behaved and will help the teacher "police" the disruptive children. She hates it and we have a meeting with Principal about it next week. I don't care that these children may be the next Einstein's and are disruptive because they may be bored and smart. The fact is they are disrupting EVERYONE in the class. Who should take responsibility for that? I think it is the PARENT.
  - brianwawok 10y ago
    Parents can only do so much. Legit special needs is special needs. From what I have read blended classes with special needs helps those with special needs, at the expense of the gifted or well behaved. Is the trade worth it? To you likely not. To the special needs families? I think so.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jplasmeier 10y ago
When I was in elementary school I was singled out as "a genius" because I could add numbers in my head faster than anyone else. I was pretty good at consuming and regurgitating all of the information thrown at us, and I spent a lot of time reading/doing educationally valuable things thanks to my parents (of "ordinary" intelligence, whatever that even means). Naturally, this went straight to my head, and left me with a lot of latent narcissism around my intelligence. Around middle school I lost interest in my education and being smart and was no longer the best at school, though I still got A's without much effort. I struggled socially, but I don't think that this was caused by my intelligence; rather an inability to find the right people to do the things I enjoyed with. By the end of high school I was fairly popular, once I started finding those people and others stopped being so socially nepotistic. By the time I got to college, my smarts were running out and I feel like I've hit an "abstraction ceiling" [0]. Compared to most STEM students towards the "top" of the board, I'm about average or below and very far from "a genius". It's really difficult for me to continually remind myself of the fact that I was never special, and that there are a lot of people above me who are, because that was such a core part of my identity at a very formative age. That's been the biggest difficulty for me. [0] - https://anchoragechambermusicfestival.org/new-music-premieres/douglas-hofstadter/ https://anchoragechambermusicfestival.org/new-music-premiere...
- themodelplumber 10y ago
  But you are special. Maybe not special in the sense that you are guaranteed a certain fame or fortune, but you have the same amount of responsibility as anyone else. This is why people have mid-life crises, they wake up to the fact that they do have a unique self with unique needs, gifts, and values. With limited time remaining, it's crucial to find your gifts and use them to maximum capacity. For my own mid-life crisis I learned about my personality type and found that I had a bunch of gifts in analysis, measurement, and framework building of which I wasn't aware. So I put them to work and lost 100 pounds. Now I'm trying to FIRE and think it might happen. If you're interested I recommend Dario Nardi's book, 8 Keys to Self- leadership. It's incredibly dense and the exercises within can't really be completed, or rather, the psychological development opportunities within probably won't be reachable for anybody in their totality. The author says he's still working on the various facets himself. But it'll give you a sense of where your gifts are, and that makes life a lot more bearable.
zizzles 10y ago
I laugh every time I see mention of "gifted" children on HackerNews; not because these threads are always ripe with nerds stroking their penis, but because "gifted" is a conceited buzzword to describe kids with autistic behavior traits. It falls into the same realm as fat-acceptance movements and motto's such as "accepting yourself for who you are"; gifted being the feel-good motto house mothers coined to describe her little awkward Billy playing Dungeons and Dragons in the basement instead of playing sports outside with the kids in the neighborhood. There are no gifted humans. We are all unexceptional primitive monkeys.
nom 10y ago
I always felt that the human brain has some kind of maximum capacity and you can trade one skill for another (even across major domains like logic and social skills) and that brain structure / skills are mostly defined by your actions early in life. Genetics sure play a huge role here and there are countless abnormalities that are known to change the brain and mind, but I think that the development is what defines your strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately we can't proof if the brain structure you end up with was mostly caused by your actions, or if your development progressed the way it did because your brain is just built that way.
strictnein 10y ago
An anecdote: Our kid is about to be moved to a program that is for kids who have emotional and behavioral issues. He would likely be considered high-IQ (tests in the 99% percentile, reads at level several grades above their own, etc), but has basically been unable to focus and learn in a normal classroom setting. Last year, when he was 6, he had some issues as well, but was mostly able to stay in the classroom. This year, at age 7, the issues skyrocketed. I'd be very interested in a study like this conducted on 7-8 year olds, because it wouldn't surprise me if they found some very different results. A 5 year old kid is so much different than a 7 year old.
URSpider94 10y ago
I would be much more interested to see a study of profoundly gifted children, IQ of 150+. My intuition, from interacting with kids in this range in a regular basis, is that the result would be different.
garyrob 10y ago
Anyone interested in this subject will probably want to see Grady Tower's essay, "The Outsiders". http://www.worlddreambank.org/O/OUTSIDRS.HTM http://www.worlddreambank.org/O/OUTSIDRS.HTM. My IQ is just on the cusp of the level where these effects become a risk in Grady's view, and I think I did suffer from them rather badly--by the time I got to college I had extreme social anxiety that made me almost non-functional, which lasted through most of my 20's. (And still affects me a little bit now even at age 60!) I think it was rooted in the fact that my relatively high IQ made me interested in things other than what my peers are interested in (science, etc.), and to generally take an unusually cerebral approach to life, so I was different. So I was a bit bullied and isolated, which me feel more different, which made me more self-conscious and therefore less social functional, which made me more bullied and isolated, which made me feel more different, in a spiral that eventually led to deep despair for years and years. But most high-IQ people don't have those problems. There usually have to be other factors at play than IQ, which are exacerbated by IQ. In my case I think it was because I was also unusually sensitive pretty much from birth (as described by my nursery school teacher in a report I still have!), so I really felt any rejection unusually strongly, and other factors including parents who shared none of my interests, and no siblings until I was already pretty far down the spiral. Elsewhere in these comments, Johns Hopkins' CTY program is mentioned, where smart kids spend a few years each summer studying and hanging out. Kids who attend it generally love it because they finally get to be with like-minded kids. I feel that if I had had that opportunity it might have broken the spiral. So when I had my own kids I looked for an opportunity like that, and when I came across CTY I made sure my kids had that opportunity. One of them feels like it was the turning point of his life.

115 points by lainon 10y ago

Summary: negative result. "In conclusion, the data from the EDEN mother-child cohort do not support the hypothesis that 5–6 year-old children with high IQ experience more emotional, behavioral and social difficulties than children with normal IQ. If they do, then these difficulties must be very subtle and therefore went undetected in the present study."

dasmoth 10y ago
And it is just this 5-6 year groups that has been studied here -- nothing about older children.
- gkya 10y ago
  I guess if they studied the 13-16 band they'd get positive results. Especially those who got special treatment as a child prodigy.
  - tdb7893 10y ago
    In my middle school and high school I don't remember the smart kids being bullied any more than anyone else so I would be interested in a study on that age group. This is purely anecdotal and sample size of one but my experience with a smart kid who got bullied he thought that people bullied him because he was smart but in reality he was condescending and followed too many rules.
- taurath 10y ago
  I.e. Before bullying becomes commonplace.
  - robbiep 10y ago
    Because only 'high iq' children get bullied? Confirmation bias much?
    - haser_au 10y ago
      All children are susceptible to bullying when they don't fit in. This applies to children of all IQ levels. This study minimises this factor to reduce the impact on results.
      - robbiep 10y ago
        Correct, although I would say that all children are bullied at some point (ie one step further). So I feel my parent was saying that this is something particular to high IQ children
        taurath 10y ago
        I honestly think it's more likely, given my own experience. I don't have any studies to back that up of course. But in the 90s computer/intellectual kids where I grew up were the most bullied relentlessly.
        usmeteora 10y ago
        yeh. I grew up a nerdy shy geek making straight A's in advanced classes tested with high IQ and went on to get a STEM Degreee, and I was a girl, so being that as a girl was a super outlier. I didnt wear abercrombie and fitch and I didn't understand why talking poorly of other girls made you cool. I was relentlessly bullied and just ignored in general by people who did not bully me. At the time I did not really think of it that way because I was in my own head alot and focused in class but in retrospect I would say yeh the way I was treated definitely qualifies as bullying and I think if I participated in mean behavior towards other outcasts and gossiped with the girls I would have been treated better or had a better chance of fitting in.
        10y ago
danieltillett 10y ago
Given the size of the study was any other outcome expected.

ap22213 10y ago

IQ has always been a difficult thing for me. I was born into a 3-sigma family to 4-sigma parents. And, on average, we all have lived below average lives. My parents can barely manage their lives, and I'm the only child (of 4) who was able to finish college. So, I always find the fascination with IQ to be odd. At 3rd grade, my siblings and I were separated from the rest of the kids and given the gifted label. (Someone once explained that 'gifted' was a cold war program to beat the soviets - idk). We were then given special treatment: small classes, lots of logic puzzles, access to technology and science, lots of field trips etc. By the end of high school, approximately 25% of my class had already dropped out. But, for some odd reason (probably because obedience - i.e. 'conscientiousness') I succeeded. Over all of those years, I came to realize that there were kids with high IQ who were smart but even more who were very stupid. Even of the smart ones, many of them seemed to completely lack creativity, intuition, or lateral thinking. And, many were also stricken with major behavioral and learning disabilities. I realize that there are correlations with IQ to 'success'. But, the IQ club, for me, was really a circle jerk. And, I don't believe that they're somehow more re 'fit'. So, this analysis seems spot on. Edit: oops, if I had actually read the link, instead of just the headline, I would have seen that it's not 'spot on'. Sorry :-)

thrownblown 10y ago
This. I was in GATE from 4th grade - 8th. Separate classes, separate field trips, produced a daily school news tv show. Most of my gifted classmates became highly involved with drugs in highschool. Few graduated high school, let alone college.
- grahamburger 10y ago
  I was in a program like this in 5th and 6th grade. I believe I was among the lowest achievers in the class, both by grades and extra curriculars. Of those I still keep in touch with, I believe I'm still among the lowest achievers - I never finished college, among other things, although I'm certainly doing fine for myself professionally. The class fed to two different high schools so I lost touch with roughly half of my classmates, but as far as I know they all finished high school and all that I know of finished college or university. Just another perspective.

skrap 10y ago

"N = 23; Full Scale IQ" Enough for me to pretty much stop reading right there. Isn't 23 far too small? If there is signal there, you probably need more samples to draw it out.

nabla9 10y ago
The size of N tells very little alone. N=23 can be enough. For example, N = 1 is enough if the rat can solve crossword puzzles. Effect size is so large that probability that you could guess which rat is in the control group and which is not is close to 1.0.
gwern 10y ago
The people who claim that high-IQ types are doomed and will be 'The Outsiders' and will be discriminated against to the point that 90%+ of them will not get appropriate higher education (I won't link to the pseudo-statistics that supposedly 'proves' this) are claiming very large effect sizes (and blaming that for why they need shelter in high-IQ societies). In this case, such large effects can be rejected pretty soundly; with the sample sizes given, 23 vs 1058, you have 80% power to detect `pwr.t2n.test(n1=1058, n2=23, power=0.80, alternative="greater")` ~> d=0.52 (which is, for example, about half the size of the black-white IQ gap, and considered a 'medium' effect size). In addition, the longitudinal cohort studies of the gifted like Terman, Hunter, TIP, or SMPY, do not find any signs of severe emotional/behavioral/social difficulties, the genetic correlations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_correlation#Intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_correlation#Intelligen...) are all in the wrong direction, adults are more able than kids to self-select into stimulating environments (possibly why heritability of intelligence increases with age), and so on. A new review paper which is relevant: "From Terman to Today: A Century of Findings on Intellectual Precocity" http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/From-Terman-to-Today-A-Century-of-Findings-on-Intellectual-Precocity.pdf http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/From-Terman-t... , Lubinski 2016. From a statistical perspective, this result doesn't tell us much about gifted adults not because the sample size is far too small, but because IQ scores at age 5-6 inherently don't predict adult IQ sufficiently well. This subsample of 23 kids with mean IQ of 134.6, selected because they are past the 130 threshold, are going to regress to the mean as they grow up. With the usual r=0.5 of 5yo/adult scores, their adult mean IQ will be more like 117 - which is above average but not 'gifted' by anyone's criterion. To try to study gifted adults by starting with them as kids, you would need to start another standard deviation up, around 150 IQ, which would be extremely difficult. (The correlation rapidly increases up to middle school, which is why TIP/SMPY don't suffer from this issue as much: much higher threshold and also much more reliable tests.)

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

kpil 10y ago

The mothers of highly intelligent children where at a much higher risk of postnatal depression. The sample size was small, but it could indicate that there is a connection in older ages. I am not sure how much of the measured intelligence in small children is related to their adult intelligence, and how much is variation in development that might even out.

bitwize 10y ago

At age 5-6, kids are just glad to have other kids around. It's in the older elementary, middle, and high school years that kids start segregating into in- and outgroups and vigorously policing social boundaries.

kofejnik 10y ago
Not all kids. At age 5, I was perfectly happy to sit in a quiet corner with an interesting book.

nugget 10y ago

Anyone with high IQ kids should check out the Johns Hopkins CTY program. I felt bored, uncomfortable and out of place pretty much my entire pre-college educational life, with only a small handful of positive experiences, CTY being the best.

cryoshon 10y ago
agreed a thousand times! as a CTY alumni, my fond memories of being at CTY are of the first time in my life where i was surrounded by equals! it was such a positive experience for me.
- heymijo 10y ago
  I asked the parent comment as well, but would you mind sharing more about your experience(s) at CTY? Thanks!
  - hirsin 10y ago
    I wasn't terribly active in CTY - but the times I was involved it was excellent. I met other kids that could "keep up with me" (with perspective, that actually means "could fill in the blanks since I was bad at explaining"), and had an environment that celebrated success, even if it meant you colored out of the lines. That is to say, if I skipped ahead in programming class and made stuff into functions, I was both congratulated and saw that a couple other kids had done so too. I only recall taking two classes with CTY - a class on fractals and tessellation, and an intro to programming class. They were both excellent, and I made friends and learned in both. Would highly recommend.
heymijo 10y ago
Can you share more about your positive experiences, especially with CTY? I hadn't heard of it before now and your anecdote would help shed light on what I'm reading about. I teach and I'm interested in all things learning.
- laxatives 10y ago

gokhan 10y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if the same group of kids in the study end up being the trouble makers or socially awkward ones with the beginning of primary school. Learning as a whole, waiting others to catch up and other methods of "modern" education does negative wonders on gifted children. I have a profoundly gifted child, and witnessed this cycle (normal in preschool, problem child in primary) not only on my child but on many other gifted children. And almost all the parents of gifted children around me tries to find a remedy to boredom in school. School system actually leaves gifted ones behind by forcing them to slow down. The teacher makes a lot of difference but it's not enough if the child is still in the same curriculum. Families of normal children don't help either. They totally reject the idea that gifted children needs some special attention, thinking that these kids can do well on their own because of stereotypical image of giftedness in society. Edit: Some terms.

monkmartinez 10y ago
Why not move the child up to the grade level to which he/she performs? They do this at my children's charter school. My son is in 3rd grade doing 4/5th grade math (accelerated charter school) and he has a 7 year old in his class. My son reports that its all good. I firmly reject forcing a teacher to cater to all the "special flowers" in his/her classroom. Here is the standard for the grade level. If child are above standard, move up... if child are below... move down. If child has a learning disability, here is a specialist or a class with similar children and more teacher aids. Edit to add: My daughter has several special needs children in her class (1st grade) and all she talks about is how disruptive they are. The teacher places some of them near her because she is well behaved and will help the teacher "police" the disruptive children. She hates it and we have a meeting with Principal about it next week. I don't care that these children may be the next Einstein's and are disruptive because they may be bored and smart. The fact is they are disrupting EVERYONE in the class. Who should take responsibility for that? I think it is the PARENT.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  Parents can only do so much. Legit special needs is special needs. From what I have read blended classes with special needs helps those with special needs, at the expense of the gifted or well behaved. Is the trade worth it? To you likely not. To the special needs families? I think so.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

jplasmeier 10y ago

When I was in elementary school I was singled out as "a genius" because I could add numbers in my head faster than anyone else. I was pretty good at consuming and regurgitating all of the information thrown at us, and I spent a lot of time reading/doing educationally valuable things thanks to my parents (of "ordinary" intelligence, whatever that even means). Naturally, this went straight to my head, and left me with a lot of latent narcissism around my intelligence. Around middle school I lost interest in my education and being smart and was no longer the best at school, though I still got A's without much effort. I struggled socially, but I don't think that this was caused by my intelligence; rather an inability to find the right people to do the things I enjoyed with. By the end of high school I was fairly popular, once I started finding those people and others stopped being so socially nepotistic. By the time I got to college, my smarts were running out and I feel like I've hit an "abstraction ceiling" [0]. Compared to most STEM students towards the "top" of the board, I'm about average or below and very far from "a genius". It's really difficult for me to continually remind myself of the fact that I was never special, and that there are a lot of people above me who are, because that was such a core part of my identity at a very formative age. That's been the biggest difficulty for me. [0] - https://anchoragechambermusicfestival.org/new-music-premieres/douglas-hofstadter/ https://anchoragechambermusicfestival.org/new-music-premiere...

themodelplumber 10y ago
But you are special. Maybe not special in the sense that you are guaranteed a certain fame or fortune, but you have the same amount of responsibility as anyone else. This is why people have mid-life crises, they wake up to the fact that they do have a unique self with unique needs, gifts, and values. With limited time remaining, it's crucial to find your gifts and use them to maximum capacity. For my own mid-life crisis I learned about my personality type and found that I had a bunch of gifts in analysis, measurement, and framework building of which I wasn't aware. So I put them to work and lost 100 pounds. Now I'm trying to FIRE and think it might happen. If you're interested I recommend Dario Nardi's book, 8 Keys to Self- leadership. It's incredibly dense and the exercises within can't really be completed, or rather, the psychological development opportunities within probably won't be reachable for anybody in their totality. The author says he's still working on the various facets himself. But it'll give you a sense of where your gifts are, and that makes life a lot more bearable.

zizzles 10y ago

I laugh every time I see mention of "gifted" children on HackerNews; not because these threads are always ripe with nerds stroking their penis, but because "gifted" is a conceited buzzword to describe kids with autistic behavior traits. It falls into the same realm as fat-acceptance movements and motto's such as "accepting yourself for who you are"; gifted being the feel-good motto house mothers coined to describe her little awkward Billy playing Dungeons and Dragons in the basement instead of playing sports outside with the kids in the neighborhood. There are no gifted humans. We are all unexceptional primitive monkeys.

nom 10y ago

I always felt that the human brain has some kind of maximum capacity and you can trade one skill for another (even across major domains like logic and social skills) and that brain structure / skills are mostly defined by your actions early in life. Genetics sure play a huge role here and there are countless abnormalities that are known to change the brain and mind, but I think that the development is what defines your strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately we can't proof if the brain structure you end up with was mostly caused by your actions, or if your development progressed the way it did because your brain is just built that way.

strictnein 10y ago

An anecdote: Our kid is about to be moved to a program that is for kids who have emotional and behavioral issues. He would likely be considered high-IQ (tests in the 99% percentile, reads at level several grades above their own, etc), but has basically been unable to focus and learn in a normal classroom setting. Last year, when he was 6, he had some issues as well, but was mostly able to stay in the classroom. This year, at age 7, the issues skyrocketed. I'd be very interested in a study like this conducted on 7-8 year olds, because it wouldn't surprise me if they found some very different results. A 5 year old kid is so much different than a 7 year old.

URSpider94 10y ago

I would be much more interested to see a study of profoundly gifted children, IQ of 150+. My intuition, from interacting with kids in this range in a regular basis, is that the result would be different.

garyrob 10y ago

Anyone interested in this subject will probably want to see Grady Tower's essay, "The Outsiders". http://www.worlddreambank.org/O/OUTSIDRS.HTM http://www.worlddreambank.org/O/OUTSIDRS.HTM. My IQ is just on the cusp of the level where these effects become a risk in Grady's view, and I think I did suffer from them rather badly--by the time I got to college I had extreme social anxiety that made me almost non-functional, which lasted through most of my 20's. (And still affects me a little bit now even at age 60!) I think it was rooted in the fact that my relatively high IQ made me interested in things other than what my peers are interested in (science, etc.), and to generally take an unusually cerebral approach to life, so I was different. So I was a bit bullied and isolated, which me feel more different, which made me more self-conscious and therefore less social functional, which made me more bullied and isolated, which made me feel more different, in a spiral that eventually led to deep despair for years and years. But most high-IQ people don't have those problems. There usually have to be other factors at play than IQ, which are exacerbated by IQ. In my case I think it was because I was also unusually sensitive pretty much from birth (as described by my nursery school teacher in a report I still have!), so I really felt any rejection unusually strongly, and other factors including parents who shared none of my interests, and no siblings until I was already pretty far down the spiral. Elsewhere in these comments, Johns Hopkins' CTY program is mentioned, where smart kids spend a few years each summer studying and hanging out. Kids who attend it generally love it because they finally get to be with like-minded kids. I feel that if I had had that opportunity it might have broken the spiral. So when I had my own kids I looked for an opportunity like that, and when I came across CTY I made sure my kids had that opportunity. One of them feels like it was the turning point of his life.