I don't mean to de-emphasize effort, it's still important to try hard, but I've seen a lot of cases where effort was focused on as the only thing that counts. F

I don't mean to de-emphasize effort, it's still important to try hard, but I've seen a lot of cases where effort was focused on as the only thing that counts. For the smartest kids, that's not usually where the parental emphasis lies. It depends on how you emphasize being smart. If you emphasize overall smartness, the kid will be more self-conscious about their weak points, which is what I wanted to convey. If you emphasize particular moments where they are good, they will be encouraged to repeat that specifically. It's a difference between emphasizing being good at [subset like shooting hoops] vs being good at [basketball as a whole]. Academically, the emphasis should be on the grades instead of on being good at taking tests. Or if you're more high-level, the emphasis should be on learning what's going to be most useful to you later in life as opposed to specifically effort or grades. As for procrastination, in my experience the smarter kids procrastinate substantially more. But for the most part this doesn't come back and bite them. They leave exactly as much time as they need to pull off the good grade and most of the time it works out.