Reply to Who thinks it is ridiculous when someone says his/her child is bored in school?

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[quote=Anonymous]I think so many parents are doing their children a great disservice with this insistence on "my child is so gifted and isn't challenged enough."

I know some truly gifted adults, and some of them haven't been very successful at holding down a job.  The reason is that no job is "challenging" enough and their belief in their own intellectual superiority has been a huge roadblock in making progress in their lives and being a functional adult in the world with all of the nongifted people.

Honestly, the people I know who made it through medical school, law school, or ph.d. programs and went on to successful careers aren't even necessarily the smartest people.  They are the ones with the most endurance.  A huge part of medical school in the beginning is actually rote memorization.  It serves as the foundation for all of the other stuff.  The same is true with law school.  And in all of those endeavors, there are times when it is tedious and repetitive.  There are hoops to jump through.  Any scientific researcher knows that truly groundbreaking research always comes from a foundation of really repetitive and tedious examination and experimentation.

My point is not that brilliant people can't succeed, but that I've seen brilliant people who are entirely too convinced of their brilliance fail in adult life because they were raised believe they were special, gifted, so far ahead of the other kids, that they didn't have to follow the normal rules or do what everyone else was doing.

It's great if your kid is reading early and doing well in school.  But I see all of these parents so convinced their children are so gifted and so far ahead of all of the other kids that I fear those children will grow into some really ego-centric, arrogant and possibly dysfunctional adults.

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