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I'm not quite a "child prodigy", but I did skip two grades in math in school. It made me feel very special when it was a kid but as a thirty-something software

by tombert 9mo ago

I'm not quite a "child prodigy", but I did skip two grades in math in school. It made me feel very special when it was a kid but as a thirty-something software person I don't think I'm smarter than most of my coworkers now. I think I was better than most kids at math, particularly algebra, but those kids grew up and caught up and I suspect many of them are as good or better at math than I am. I know nothing about child psychology or anything adjacent, but I honestly think a lot of "advanced child" stuff is just maturity.

FeteCommuniste 9mo ago
> I know nothing about child psychology or anything adjacent, but I honestly think a lot of "advanced child" stuff is just maturity. That makes me think back to my elementary school, where a lot of the kids who got into the "gifted" program just happened to be, surprise surprise, some of the oldest kids in their grade. At that age the better part of a year in brain development can be exactly the "edge" one needs to excel. And then it can become self-reinforcing when kids gravitate toward the areas in which they dominate their peers.
- aidenn0 9mo ago
  FWIW, the test for the gifted program at my elementary school normalized their entrytest results for age.
- ithkuil 9mo ago
  This doesn't match my experience with that term. My son is diagnosed with ADHD and high IQ and labeled "gifted". He's very immature, has absolutely no method, is very impulsive and can't maintain focus for more than 20 minutes. He seems very much less mature than his peers in anything. Yet, he just understands and remembers every single thing at school much better and faster than his peers. So I guess technically that makes him "gifted" but it's not a very useful gift. It just creates problems at school because he gets bored quickly but cannot be given more work to do because he gets exhausted quickly too! I read recently a title of an article that said "gifted children are special needs children" and that marched my experience.
  - blindriver 9mo ago
    You should consider medication. I used to be against medication, but after talking with a few of my friends who have gifted children, things like ADHD are extremely common. Avoiding medication and letting them spin in the wind is not a good strategy and it destroys their self esteem. Get as small a dose as possible and then wean him off as he gets older and hopefully his prefrontal cortex will catch up and help regulate him.
    - Balgair 9mo ago
      Piggybacking here: also consider alternative forms of education. Montessori, Waldorf, home schooling, etc. Many are more expensive in time and money, but you may find fairly cheap alternatives. Worth a shot at least.
  - whamlastxmas 9mo ago
    I think he meant physically mature. Like the brain is more well developed. As a former gifted child who was emotionally immature and gifted, I hope your kid gets the guidance I never did both to understand his adhd and how it impacts him, but also emotional compassion for himself and from parents about how hard adhd can be
    - ithkuil 9mo ago
      It's a complicated journey but we're getting there. It's not like you immediately figure out the diagnosis and understand what's the best way to treat it. And every child is different because it's often not just ADHD but also other things. But we're in a much better position now to help him. My main point is that from my experience "gifted children" very often come with all other sorts of problems that put them in the category of special needs children and it's not just that they are mentally one step ahead of their peers.
- alex43578 9mo ago
  Thinking back to my experiences in the program, there was a huge, readily apparent difference in the IQ of kids in the program versus "gen pop". In a regular class, the teacher would need to spend hours drilling the same concept, and still most kids would hardly grasp it. This wasn't a difference in maturity that could be explained by an 11 month age gap, but a literal IQ diff that persisted for the many years where I saw these peers.
WalterBright 9mo ago
To be fair, in my journey through public school, there was no difference in the math level from one grade to the next. Ok, there was a little, but the teacher was still going through the times tables in grade 7.
- tombert 9mo ago
  I was actually bumped to ninth grade math from seventh grade, so I would have been twelve. ETA: Should add that this carried on through high school, and since I finished my math two years early, I took college-level courses for math the last two years.
  - WalterBright 9mo ago
    I missed 3 months of 4th grade. When I came back, the teacher told my mom that I could not continue, because I'd missed 3 months of education. I'd have to finish out the year in 3rd grade. My mom would have none of that, and demanded I be put back in 4th grade. And so I was, and it was like I wasn't gone for a single day. The class had not advanced at all. This was quite unlike university, where I didn't dare miss a single lecture.
    - tombert 9mo ago
      I think there’s a significant difference between fourth grade and high school level math, especially the more advanced courses. I got the flu in 9th grade and missed a week of trigonometry. I was able to catch up and it wasn’t the end of the world, but it wasn’t trivial, there absolutely was a “catch up” period. Agreed university is much harder though.
      - WalterBright 9mo ago
        You were fortunate in attending a better school. I was an air force brat, and so attended many diverse public schools. I took 2 years of honors physics in high school. College freshman physics blew through that in 2 weeks. And then I was in deep doo-doo. I am eternally grateful to Prof Ricardo Gomez, who kindly took the time to coach me one on one. I never thanked him for that, one of my many regrets.
blindriver 9mo ago
No. My friend's child is profoundly gifted (160+ IQ). He is 12 years old and finishing Calculus and next year will be taking college math courses. His friends are a year younger than him and have qualified for AIME since they were 8 years old. Giftedness is very real, and it's not just "maturity". Their brains are different. Seeing them squabble over math problems, it's like watching people talk a different language.
- drivebyhooting 9mo ago
  What do you see as their edge? Is it how easily they memorize things?
  - blindriver 9mo ago
    They understand things the first time. I remember taking calculus in university and hitting my head against the wall because I couldn't understand the concepts. This kid and his cohorts, they hear a concept for the first time, and they just get it. Then when it comes to doing the problems, he might struggle a little but then he gets it. He is getting 95% in calculus and the only reason he lost marks is because he made sloppy mistakes.
- tombert 9mo ago
  I took an IQ test about twelve years ago and I also got 160 on the Stanford–Binet [1], so if we are going to use that as the metric I was a “prodigy” as well (though no one ever called me that). I didn’t take calc when I was twelve though, that would have been cool. I had to wait until I was fifteen. Anyway, if that’s the scale, it still can fit with the “doesn’t lead to exceptional outcomes”. I am a perfectly competent software person, and maybe I even understand some of the mathematics behind it better than the average programmer, but I am still basically just an “adequate” worker, and honestly I am afraid that I have more or less peaked career-wise. I am sure that some prodigies do great but the article seems to indicate that they’re rarely exceptional at adulthood. [1] honestly I think that IQ is stupid and that it’s dumb to try and distill something as complicated and multi-faceted as intelligence to a single dimension or even a couple dimensions is pretty reductive.
pibaker 9mo ago
Or perhaps you moved to a professional environment where people are on average much better at math than the average person. It is not uncommon to hear objectively bright and hard working young people wonder if they have become dumber or if they have been a fraud the entire time, after they leave their high school where they enjoyed being a star student and move to a nice university where they compete with the brightest mind of the entire world. They are not dumb, just not mentally adjusted to an environment where they don't get to be the number one no matter how hard they try.
hackeraccount 9mo ago
I have a friend who was a grade school teacher and she said grades K-2 kids are all over the map but somehow by grade 3 they're mostly all at the same level. Nothing to do with prodigies of course.

by tombert 9mo ago

FeteCommuniste 9mo ago

> I know nothing about child psychology or anything adjacent, but I honestly think a lot of "advanced child" stuff is just maturity. That makes me think back to my elementary school, where a lot of the kids who got into the "gifted" program just happened to be, surprise surprise, some of the oldest kids in their grade. At that age the better part of a year in brain development can be exactly the "edge" one needs to excel. And then it can become self-reinforcing when kids gravitate toward the areas in which they dominate their peers.

aidenn0 9mo ago
FWIW, the test for the gifted program at my elementary school normalized their entrytest results for age.
ithkuil 9mo ago
This doesn't match my experience with that term. My son is diagnosed with ADHD and high IQ and labeled "gifted". He's very immature, has absolutely no method, is very impulsive and can't maintain focus for more than 20 minutes. He seems very much less mature than his peers in anything. Yet, he just understands and remembers every single thing at school much better and faster than his peers. So I guess technically that makes him "gifted" but it's not a very useful gift. It just creates problems at school because he gets bored quickly but cannot be given more work to do because he gets exhausted quickly too! I read recently a title of an article that said "gifted children are special needs children" and that marched my experience.
- blindriver 9mo ago
  You should consider medication. I used to be against medication, but after talking with a few of my friends who have gifted children, things like ADHD are extremely common. Avoiding medication and letting them spin in the wind is not a good strategy and it destroys their self esteem. Get as small a dose as possible and then wean him off as he gets older and hopefully his prefrontal cortex will catch up and help regulate him.
  - Balgair 9mo ago
    Piggybacking here: also consider alternative forms of education. Montessori, Waldorf, home schooling, etc. Many are more expensive in time and money, but you may find fairly cheap alternatives. Worth a shot at least.
- whamlastxmas 9mo ago
  I think he meant physically mature. Like the brain is more well developed. As a former gifted child who was emotionally immature and gifted, I hope your kid gets the guidance I never did both to understand his adhd and how it impacts him, but also emotional compassion for himself and from parents about how hard adhd can be
  - ithkuil 9mo ago
    It's a complicated journey but we're getting there. It's not like you immediately figure out the diagnosis and understand what's the best way to treat it. And every child is different because it's often not just ADHD but also other things. But we're in a much better position now to help him. My main point is that from my experience "gifted children" very often come with all other sorts of problems that put them in the category of special needs children and it's not just that they are mentally one step ahead of their peers.
alex43578 9mo ago
Thinking back to my experiences in the program, there was a huge, readily apparent difference in the IQ of kids in the program versus "gen pop". In a regular class, the teacher would need to spend hours drilling the same concept, and still most kids would hardly grasp it. This wasn't a difference in maturity that could be explained by an 11 month age gap, but a literal IQ diff that persisted for the many years where I saw these peers.

WalterBright 9mo ago

To be fair, in my journey through public school, there was no difference in the math level from one grade to the next. Ok, there was a little, but the teacher was still going through the times tables in grade 7.

tombert 9mo ago
I was actually bumped to ninth grade math from seventh grade, so I would have been twelve. ETA: Should add that this carried on through high school, and since I finished my math two years early, I took college-level courses for math the last two years.
- WalterBright 9mo ago
  I missed 3 months of 4th grade. When I came back, the teacher told my mom that I could not continue, because I'd missed 3 months of education. I'd have to finish out the year in 3rd grade. My mom would have none of that, and demanded I be put back in 4th grade. And so I was, and it was like I wasn't gone for a single day. The class had not advanced at all. This was quite unlike university, where I didn't dare miss a single lecture.
  - tombert 9mo ago
    I think there’s a significant difference between fourth grade and high school level math, especially the more advanced courses. I got the flu in 9th grade and missed a week of trigonometry. I was able to catch up and it wasn’t the end of the world, but it wasn’t trivial, there absolutely was a “catch up” period. Agreed university is much harder though.
    - WalterBright 9mo ago
      You were fortunate in attending a better school. I was an air force brat, and so attended many diverse public schools. I took 2 years of honors physics in high school. College freshman physics blew through that in 2 weeks. And then I was in deep doo-doo. I am eternally grateful to Prof Ricardo Gomez, who kindly took the time to coach me one on one. I never thanked him for that, one of my many regrets.

blindriver 9mo ago

No. My friend's child is profoundly gifted (160+ IQ). He is 12 years old and finishing Calculus and next year will be taking college math courses. His friends are a year younger than him and have qualified for AIME since they were 8 years old. Giftedness is very real, and it's not just "maturity". Their brains are different. Seeing them squabble over math problems, it's like watching people talk a different language.

drivebyhooting 9mo ago
What do you see as their edge? Is it how easily they memorize things?
- blindriver 9mo ago
  They understand things the first time. I remember taking calculus in university and hitting my head against the wall because I couldn't understand the concepts. This kid and his cohorts, they hear a concept for the first time, and they just get it. Then when it comes to doing the problems, he might struggle a little but then he gets it. He is getting 95% in calculus and the only reason he lost marks is because he made sloppy mistakes.
tombert 9mo ago
I took an IQ test about twelve years ago and I also got 160 on the Stanford–Binet [1], so if we are going to use that as the metric I was a “prodigy” as well (though no one ever called me that). I didn’t take calc when I was twelve though, that would have been cool. I had to wait until I was fifteen. Anyway, if that’s the scale, it still can fit with the “doesn’t lead to exceptional outcomes”. I am a perfectly competent software person, and maybe I even understand some of the mathematics behind it better than the average programmer, but I am still basically just an “adequate” worker, and honestly I am afraid that I have more or less peaked career-wise. I am sure that some prodigies do great but the article seems to indicate that they’re rarely exceptional at adulthood. [1] honestly I think that IQ is stupid and that it’s dumb to try and distill something as complicated and multi-faceted as intelligence to a single dimension or even a couple dimensions is pretty reductive.

pibaker 9mo ago

Or perhaps you moved to a professional environment where people are on average much better at math than the average person. It is not uncommon to hear objectively bright and hard working young people wonder if they have become dumber or if they have been a fraud the entire time, after they leave their high school where they enjoyed being a star student and move to a nice university where they compete with the brightest mind of the entire world. They are not dumb, just not mentally adjusted to an environment where they don't get to be the number one no matter how hard they try.

hackeraccount 9mo ago

I have a friend who was a grade school teacher and she said grades K-2 kids are all over the map but somehow by grade 3 they're mostly all at the same level. Nothing to do with prodigies of course.