My kid is bored...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I tested at 160+ IQ as a kid and was put into a special magnet school and summer programs like CTY.

I think the sweet spot for "professional success" is around 130. 150+ and you have lots of existential depression. It's hard to conform to mainstream society when you can't relate to 99 out of 100 people you interact with on a daily basis.

Giftedness often manifests as boredom (and bad grades). Prior to my getting tested I had failed out of 2 schools because I was so bored I refused to do any work. That was a pretty typical background story for most of my peers in the magnet programs as well.

i love when people give their IQs. it's the best when i get people to tell me what they believe theirs are. fascinatingly, i have yet to meet anyone with under a mensa-level iq. my favorite is when people actually talk about being members of mensa.

and it's always "im a failure bc im so brilliant. just so, so brilliant."

thank you for sharing this. it's brightened my evening right up.

[Anonymous]

it's so fun to be walking around in a world where somehow everyone is in the 99.997th percentile. isn't math amazing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I tested at 160+ IQ as a kid and was put into a special magnet school and summer programs like CTY.

I think the sweet spot for "professional success" is around 130. 150+ and you have lots of existential depression. It's hard to conform to mainstream society when you can't relate to 99 out of 100 people you interact with on a daily basis.

Giftedness often manifests as boredom (and bad grades). Prior to my getting tested I had failed out of 2 schools because I was so bored I refused to do any work. That was a pretty typical background story for most of my peers in the magnet programs as well.

I'm a high 140s/CTY person and totally agree that the sweet spot is 130. They are smarter than most people so they feel that confidence, but school isn't effortless so they learn how to work hard. They also come off as very normal, just bright, so they get along with most people. (There is also this "communication range" of 30 IQ points, beyond which you cant understand each other, and people in th 130s can this get along with both average people and 170 people. I feel like most doctors, law partners etc I know are in the 130s and just killing it at life.

I similarly didn't learn how to work hard until well into my 20s. I do feel like I've been lucky in friendship and love and have found people at a similar range and treasure them.

oh wow we should have a lil mensa party here

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I tested at 160+ IQ as a kid and was put into a special magnet school and summer programs like CTY.

I think the sweet spot for "professional success" is around 130. 150+ and you have lots of existential depression. It's hard to conform to mainstream society when you can't relate to 99 out of 100 people you interact with on a daily basis.

Giftedness often manifests as boredom (and bad grades). Prior to my getting tested I had failed out of 2 schools because I was so bored I refused to do any work. That was a pretty typical background story for most of my peers in the magnet programs as well.

Jesus, Jan. Leave some existential depression for the left of us.

[Anonymous]

Not DMV so idk how it works there, but when I was in grad school (older than most of them) one of my fellow older grad students (older than me) had 2 sons who did public school in a rural town, except she had arranged for them to take university math classes, idk what the logistivs were because online was barely a thing then and they lived 100 miles from the university they were taking the classes through. Her 17 year old son gave a talk on compression algorithms to one of our seminars once. Very nice kid and well socialized as well. There was also an undergrad (sophomore during my first year of grad) who was happily making his way through grad level math courses at our own university, also very nice and well socialized kid--had hippy parents and was a bit hippy himself, with tons of friends both within and outside of his areas of study. He ended up with a research assistantship in the UC system the rest of us could only dream of and was teaching at Yale by the time he was 26.

Idk what my IQ was (although when I started grad school--state lang grant university--the dean commented I had the highest GRE scores he'd ever seen, I know those were like 99th percentile, but never felt I was super super smart), but I kept myself busy in h.s. with a book under the desk or playing with math or drawing. I did have to be sneaky about it.

If the problems in his physics course are too easy, fine--have him work ahead and if he can finish the text (if they have textbooks these days!) push for him to advance to whatever is next.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I tested at 160+ IQ as a kid and was put into a special magnet school and summer programs like CTY.

I think the sweet spot for "professional success" is around 130. 150+ and you have lots of existential depression. It's hard to conform to mainstream society when you can't relate to 99 out of 100 people you interact with on a daily basis.

Giftedness often manifests as boredom (and bad grades). Prior to my getting tested I had failed out of 2 schools because I was so bored I refused to do any work. That was a pretty typical background story for most of my peers in the magnet programs as well.

i love when people give their IQs. it's the best when i get people to tell me what they believe theirs are. fascinatingly, i have yet to meet anyone with under a mensa-level iq. my favorite is when people actually talk about being members of mensa.

and it's always "im a failure bc im so brilliant. just so, so brilliant."

thank you for sharing this. it's brightened my evening right up.

Np: You are a jerk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I tested at 160+ IQ as a kid and was put into a special magnet school and summer programs like CTY.

I think the sweet spot for "professional success" is around 130. 150+ and you have lots of existential depression. It's hard to conform to mainstream society when you can't relate to 99 out of 100 people you interact with on a daily basis.

Giftedness often manifests as boredom (and bad grades). Prior to my getting tested I had failed out of 2 schools because I was so bored I refused to do any work. That was a pretty typical background story for most of my peers in the magnet programs as well.

I'm a high 140s/CTY person and totally agree that the sweet spot is 130. They are smarter than most people so they feel that confidence, but school isn't effortless so they learn how to work hard. They also come off as very normal, just bright, so they get along with most people. (There is also this "communication range" of 30 IQ points, beyond which you cant understand each other, and people in th 130s can this get along with both average people and 170 people. I feel like most doctors, law partners etc I know are in the 130s and just killing it at life.

I similarly didn't learn how to work hard until well into my 20s. I do feel like I've been lucky in friendship and love and have found people at a similar range and treasure them.

oh wow we should have a lil mensa party here

This is why the solution to the bored kid isn’t extra academic work, but work on socialization and how not to be bored. How much work does this kid do around the house? What kind of life skills has he mastered? What kind of leadership has he shown? What kind of initiative has he shown? How is he contributing to his local community? There’s so much to do in this world I really can’t fathom how he is bored.

[Anonymous]

Wow! There is so much hate for the mentally gifted. Jealous? I am a teacher and believe ALL students deserve a quality education. It is very sad that some of our brightest students are let down by the education system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow! There is so much hate for the mentally gifted. Jealous? I am a teacher and believe ALL students deserve a quality education. It is very sad that some of our brightest students are let down by the education system.

No one cares.

[Anonymous]

As a human who has a slightly above average IQ I wonder what boredom someone with a high IQ would intellectually suffer from? Even if I converse with someone who has a lower IQ than myself we can still find things in common, things to laugh about, etc.
To me not every conversation needs to be of an academic sort.

So what is the purpose of having a high IQ? And in school if you already understand the content why wouldn’t you just go ahead? And wouldn’t the only classes that child be bored in be math and science? That’s just 2/7-8 subjects…


Is that really a big deal to OP?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow! There is so much hate for the mentally gifted. Jealous? I am a teacher and believe ALL students deserve a quality education. It is very sad that some of our brightest students are let down by the education system.

No one cares.

You are a jerk and probably the one who responded negatively to the high IQ post. You sound like you have some major insecurity issues or an ax to grind.

I’m not in the gifted range nor is my child. But I appreciate the posts from the people with high IQ. It’s honest and what they post is common among those in the gifted range.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a human who has a slightly above average IQ I wonder what boredom someone with a high IQ would intellectually suffer from? Even if I converse with someone who has a lower IQ than myself we can still find things in common, things to laugh about, etc.
To me not every conversation needs to be of an academic sort.

So what is the purpose of having a high IQ? And in school if you already understand the content why wouldn’t you just go ahead? And wouldn’t the only classes that child be bored in be math and science? That’s just 2/7-8 subjects…


Is that really a big deal to OP?

Huh? Do you think students can just socialize at will?

They are bored when having classes and worksheets to learn to spell words they have known for years, they are bored when they listen to yet another lesson on how to use “their, they’re, and there,” they are bored when they listen to and then do worksheets on yet another lesson on using tape diagrams to show addition and subtraction. They are bored when they read the social studies lesson and answer the questions in 1/3 the time allotted.

They don’t have textbooks, so they can’t just read a different lesson, they usually aren’t allowed to read something on their own when they are supposed to be listening to the teacher present a lesson.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow! There is so much hate for the mentally gifted. Jealous? I am a teacher and believe ALL students deserve a quality education. It is very sad that some of our brightest students are let down by the education system.

none of those people are actually gifted. the probability that there's even one person with a 160+ IQ on this board is negligible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow! There is so much hate for the mentally gifted. Jealous? I am a teacher and believe ALL students deserve a quality education. It is very sad that some of our brightest students are let down by the education system.

No one cares.

You are a jerk and probably the one who responded negatively to the high IQ post. You sound like you have some major insecurity issues or an ax to grind.

I’m not in the gifted range nor is my child. But I appreciate the posts from the people with high IQ. It’s honest and what they post is common among those in the gifted range.

that was actually a totally different person. i'm the jerk who loves to laugh at people who claim to have off the chart IQ scores. the people who take them seriously are extremely gullible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I tested at 160+ IQ as a kid and was put into a special magnet school and summer programs like CTY.

I think the sweet spot for "professional success" is around 130. 150+ and you have lots of existential depression. It's hard to conform to mainstream society when you can't relate to 99 out of 100 people you interact with on a daily basis.

Giftedness often manifests as boredom (and bad grades). Prior to my getting tested I had failed out of 2 schools because I was so bored I refused to do any work. That was a pretty typical background story for most of my peers in the magnet programs as well.

I'm a high 140s/CTY person and totally agree that the sweet spot is 130. They are smarter than most people so they feel that confidence, but school isn't effortless so they learn how to work hard. They also come off as very normal, just bright, so they get along with most people. (There is also this "communication range" of 30 IQ points, beyond which you cant understand each other, and people in th 130s can this get along with both average people and 170 people. I feel like most doctors, law partners etc I know are in the 130s and just killing it at life.

I similarly didn't learn how to work hard until well into my 20s. I do feel like I've been lucky in friendship and love and have found people at a similar range and treasure them.

Yes, the communication range is totally a very real thing, and this is the reason that the professionals who work with people who have IQs in the 50s themselves have IQs in the 80s. 170 is also a very real IQ score that people are given on Wechsler and Stanford-Binet tests, and yeah so you totally know what you're talking about. I always find it amazing that people can somehow score above the ceilings on these tests.