If you have an extraordinarily or profoundly gifted kid . . .
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Anonymous
| Davidson Institute has a lot of great resources and runs summer program for college credits for profoundly gifted kids. It’s a good experience for these kids to hang out with similar kids (and all of their quirks!). |
Anonymous
I wasn’t at the “profoundly” level with a mere 140.  But summer programs for gifted kids were life changing for me. The one I attended from 6th-10th grade no longer exists, but it was sort of a smaller version of the TIP summer programs. It was a residential camp at a college. The classes we could take ranged from entomology to Shakespeare and were mainly taught by the college professors. There was also plenty of typical summer camp kid stuff.
I agree that social skills are important, but a lot of it ends up feeling like “don’t act like yourself. Hide the level of passion you have for your interests. Don’t talk about books other people might not have read or use words they might not know.” It was so freeing to be with a bunch of nerdy kids letting our geek flags fly for a few weeks. The relationships I formed there were important for me into adulthood— two of my camp friends were in my wedding, and I remain in touch with several of them. Many have gone on to do some super cool things in life, but I don’t feel like that’s the measure of success for kids like this— if you have a happy stable person who is comfortable in their skin and can function reasonably well with different social environments, that’s a win. |
Anonymous
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^^^ This.
I have a few profoundly gifted people in my family and they need to be around people like them, just like the super sporty people in my family needed to play travel sports to be with people who played at the same level. Offer lots, push nothing. |
Anonymous
| Lives of kids like yours usually don’t turn out right. So many sad stories but not sure if your kid is at the same level. Just continue as normal until school becomes waste of time |
Anonymous
|
That level of gifted needs to not be attending regular school. Way too boring for him. Most privates would be inappropriate too.
I happen to have been involved when they had a program for true geniuses (for clarity I was involved in the program no was most definitely not in the program). They created a specialized engineering program (where they rank as #19 in the country) to try to woo they from ivys. Full rides and then some. It was in the 1990s. Minimum qualifiers were 1500 SAT scores and basically everyone knowing that you were a genius. Fascinating group of students. But frankly, most were socially inept, but happy people. Most went into research. Academics, Theoretical mathematicians, scientists or government work (because it is way more intellectually stimulating than private sector). Most do perfectly fine as adults. They typically married someone similar to them and live upper middle class lives. Their children are equally brilliant. But there were some they were not socially inept and their brains functioned well in science and non science areas. Those are the truly gifted ones. Think multiple degrees in four years, typically without ever attending class in diverse subjects. One I know graduated in 4 years with under grad and masters degrees in computer science and additional full bachelors in history, math and Japanese (no Asian ancestry, he just found it interesting). Jobs offers from everyone upon graduating. Currently Works for Google in a 7 figure salary job running some team. Super well socialized. Could have married anybody. My point is that you know who your child is. Those skills are rare. You need to ensure that he is being appropriately educated for his talents and life path. |
Anonymous
| Don’t tell your kid. Let him be normal. |
Anonymous
|
OP - I was tested to have roughly the same IQ as your son. Whatever advantages it may have given me were blunted by behavioral and attention issues throughout my school years. I barely got into a 4 year college and then barely graduated from there.
In the workplace, I've thrived and am, even by DCUM standards, pretty successful - though I'm no captain of industry. Ultimately, your son's IQ is a single data point taken at a moment in time. Like everybody else in this world, he's a complicated, multi-faceted person living in a complicated, multi-faceted world. His brain may help him excel or it may hinder him, leaving him bored and restless in a world that doesn't run at his pace. Time will tell. But avoid placing any expectations on him as a result of this test. It would be unreasonable and unfair. As other posters have suggested, raise him like any other kid. Expose him to various things, see what resonates, and support his interests. There's nothing special you need to do other than be a good parent. He's a person, not a project. |
Anonymous
I should add that people in this thread seem to be conflating IQ and brilliance/talent/skills. They're not the same. I tested into Thomas Jefferson when I was a kid, but I would have failed spectacularly had I gone there. Look at your kid holistically and raise them accordingly - don't make decisions based on this one bit of information. |
Anonymous
I'm not sure if you're asking me (OP) or the PP. I have a friend who is a neuropsychologist and she was looking for someone for a new staff member to practice on. I had mentioned that I was curious about how he'd do so she offered. I didn't come in with concerns, and they didn't find anything problematic. Just lots of high scores. I knew it would be higher than average going in. That's why I was curious. He's good at school. He's a very busy kid who is always doing something. But I had heard that profoundly gifted kids always struggle, and they need radically different things than their same age peers, and they are so much harder to parent than "typical" kids and since none of those things seem to apply to him, I sort of assumed he'd come in at the bottom of the gifted range. But now, I'm worried that maybe he does need something different and I'm doing him a disservice? |
Anonymous
That ship has sailed. Do you think the kid doesn’t know he is different? I was just having a chat with my kid (gifted but not profoundly - IQ above 140 when tested some years ago but he was only 9 so that may or may not be accurate). Earlier this year, he was speaking of his math table group and how there is this one kid who tried so hard but just doesn’t seem to do well on the tests. Kid comes to him and the teacher for help but it doesn’t seem to be working. Made my child very upset which I was glad to see. He doesn’t often express empathy. We talked about how everyone has stuff that comes easy for them and how he should try to figure out how to explain things so it would make sense to the kid. He and the kid worked on it all year and hopefully it was useful to his table-mate. Part of dealing with a kid who just gets things faster than others is to feed their interests. Usually not a problem for parents. The more important part is to teach them how to become good people. With compassion for others. Understanding that they have one set of skills but not others. In short, remember to parent your gifted child. |
Anonymous
OP here, He's in private but not one of the top privates, or one that people talk about as being particularly good for gifted kids. He followed an older sibling, because two different drop offs and pick ups seemed like it would be a pain. He likes school, and never says "I was bored" about school, but he comes home from school with lots of pictures he's drawn and no homework and tells me "Oh we had free time in X class if we finished our work, so I did my homework there". |
Anonymous
We never tested for IQ, never realized how wildly off the chart our first child was until we had our second child 7 years later and second child started school. First child always did well in any testing and in school and competitions. Child liked competitions of several kinds and wanted to do well in them. Initial local level and regional competitions child used to get the top prize without much effort. When going to state level, I used to tell that they need to put in effort to make it to the top which child wanted. It is ok not to aim for the top, but to get it they need to put in the effort. Spends very little effort and gets the top prize in all the 3 categories. This has been the story for pretty much all this time. I tell that competition is at a different level in state and national level, and need more effort. Hardly puts in the effort, gets the top or close to the top. Similarly child's school is supposed to be tough and the courses the child took were supposed to be some of the hardest at their school. Hardly puts more than 30 minutes and still ends up with A. I just gave up asking the child to put in effort. Then seeing our second child who is pretty sharp but the difference is pretty big. When my first child took NNAT, CoGAT, etc. I thought everyone gets like a full score and left it at that. Same with teacher comments, grades, etc. Second child has to put in some effort and would not get the scores our first child did. That is when I started looking at other friends kids, how much effort they are putting in and what scores they are getting. We are used to getting glowing letters from almost every teacher for our first kid. We thought that is what teachers do for all kids. With our second child that notion was squashed. Our realization came at this point. But I am really glad I did not know about it as I might have messed it up otherwise. We might have treated him differently even after trying not to. Child had normal childhood, lots of time with friends and family. If we had thought of him as really gifted and did "gifted" stuff, child would have been less social, more introverted, too academic, etc. Sure child would have won a few more "prizes" and probably would more likely be in better position college wise, but I would rather have a happy child. Just sharing my experience. |
Anonymous
| My IQ is 150+. I was in the gifted program in school, didnt do very well in school and went to GMU and then another local school for grad school. I cared a lot more about my social life than school. Have a good career now but Im not a rocket scientist or brain surgeon. I can do work more quickly than others and catch onto things easier than others, but otherwise, Im prob not the poster child for High IQ kids. |
Anonymous
OP here, Are you happy? I don’t need some specific outcome other than happy. |
Anonymous
| Put them in some sort of activity where they have to work hard and have delayed gratification. Maybe martial arts or a community garden or 4h club. Lots of gifted kids have trouble with these things as they don't have to learn them until later in life. Ask me how I know ;P |