Lessons from a 45-year study of super-smart children

It does not equate anything. It describes the correlation and steps to not waste huge talents. In fact it does say they do not know exactly why some highly intelligent people do not achieve much.

It is surprisingly easy to waste talent. For example, get a gifted person through standard school and they will likely never extend enough to achieve full potential, often by growing lazy and coasting. Or push them into a wrong field, they will do good but not exceptional.

See, if your niece was challenged enough, she would probably place more value on achievement and thus achieve more. It is a positive feedback loop. The correct approach is to give them as much challenge as they can take. Evaluating where this point is takes some major interpersonal skills and experience.

Emotional support is a necessary ingredient as well so that failures do not break them and they remain human.

Tell me about it. I was one of those "precocious" children - I consistently tested years ahead of my peers, did state exams several years early, went to university several years younger than my peers.

Pressure. So much damn pressure. "Madaxe, don't you think it's disappointing that you didn't come first in all of your exams? Blankety blank is a stupid boy. He shouldn't have beaten you in blank. Are you stupid too?"

I never cared about achievement - just about knowing more, understanding why everything was as it was, how everything works - I ended up studying physics, because "because atoms" didn't cut it. All my parents and my schools cared about was achievement. Stop asking questions, study the material we gave you. "But it's wrong." "We know. Doesn't matter. Learn it anyway.".

The bit at the end of TFA about emotional intelligence vs academic intelligence is very true - my parents and the boarding schools which raised me put emphasis only on academic achievement. The fact that I was setting fire to things and torturing other kids apparently wasn't too important, and just warranted more beatings, and more pressure.

As an adult, I have the emotional intelligence of a cucumber and am conflict avoidant in the extreme. Whatever benefit having a superior intellect might have granted me I am hell-bent upon squandering, as I learned long ago to be ashamed of and resent my intelligence. People hate you if you are academically gifted. It's much easier to pretend to be a dullard.

(1) it equates achievement with intelligence

The two are positively correlated, as the article mentions . The super-intelligent are more likely to achieve success as measured by creative output ,wages, educational attainment, publishing paper, and social status

(2) it does not actually seem to tell you how to "raise a genius"

The article is about how to not waste talent once it has been identified

The US appears to be the norm in this, which is why they focus on bringing in well developed intelligent people from other nations despite having boasted a program for intelligent kids, which in large part was an enormous failure to develop these kids into productive adults utilizing their capabilities. Quite a few of the people that move here are already considering moving back to raise their kids in an environment more conducive to their intellectual capability, rather than deal with the US' bully/violence and abnormally extremely aggressive culture.

Edit: I can't tell you how many "gifted" and highly intelligent people struggled as adults, with a significant amount of them have already committed suicide... it is a significant amount. The way the US' so called program for intelligent kids left many of them utterly defenseless and pariahs, was abominable.

A few of the smartest people I've known committed suicide, and a few others died from drug overdoses. It's a fucked up place, there's something wrong with the US' progrms, something severely wrong. Its level of "disturbing" is reminiscent of the CIA programs that targeted highly intelligent people for experimentation.

Well from what I can tell, it basically said that it's good to let "genius" children skip grades if they're really bored in school. Also that it's important to give them chances to learn more even if they don't skip ahead in their regular class. So it kind of did tell you how. More to the point, it did not equate high achievement with intelligence all that much, it just pointed out that if you have someone who is intelligent and you want them to achieve alot in their future, you want to give them as many chances they can to keep learning.

That being said, if you want the child to grow up and be a well rounded and happy person, it's probably also good to give them the chance to do what they want to do even if that isn't the traditional definition of a high achiever. Although, being a complete slacker in everything isn't that great either.

I didn't skip any grades because my dad wouldn't allow it. He had skipped two grades and hated it.

I know a few people who skipped grades, and they were always kind of outsiders. I say this from the standpoint of being part of a very nerdy clique in high school -- those who skipped grades were outsiders compared to us.

I think adults neglect the fact that education is more than just book learning. Youth need to learn social and emotional skills as well. There is more to learn at school that just academic skills, and this goes for all levels. For instance, you can spend 100% of your time on academics in college, but soft skills are at least as important as academic skills in the workplace.

Skipping grades isn't the only way to cripple children socially, and I'm not saying it's a social death sentence. Most of the kids I know who skipped grades are fine now, but some never really recovered, and some bear emotional scars from the experience.

On a similar note, a weird thing I noticed that is kind of similar, is that only children tend to be fairly poor at handling conflict. My theory is that if you are not an only child, you often get in fights with a sibling who you were then forced to be around. (For instance, sitting next to them in a long car ride.) Only children generally can leave situations when they get heated, so they never are forced to work though a conflict.

I might be totally wrong on that point, but I think there is something to the theory. My mom was an only child, and she could never understand how my brother and I could come to blows over one thing, and then be playing a game together ten minutes later. I didn't think much of it till I dated a girl who was raised an only child, and I noticed the same aversion to conflict. Every disagreement had to be resolved, any time we disagreed about something it was considered an argument.

Meanwhile, some of the calmest people I know during disagreements have like 7 siblings.

I just had a really weird deja-vu when reading this as i wasn't sure if i hadn't read exactly this before, but yes, this article has been on HN just a week ago. But now i see you even mentioned it in the first sentence ;)

So someone didn't tell you that it is OK to fail sometimes, as long as a lesson is learned.

That is hard to convey but priceless if done right.

> I understand why a parent would want to raise a super-smart children

I openly don't (and I can't stand the narcissism that is involved in the reason). If you look at the parenting most parents do, they do it as if the child should be like them, just smarter or achieve more - but otherwise similar (as I said: narcissism).

On the other, here is an article (that has been brought up on HN some times in the past) about the life of a super-smart - it is easy to imagine how the life of the parents would be:

> http://www.worlddreambank.org/O/OUTSIDRS.HTM

(BTW: If you look in the German Google News about "Höchstbegabung" (the German word meaning that your talent (in this case IQ) is at least 3 sigma above the average; FYI: "Hochbegabung" means 2 sigma above average) you will find more news about soccer than about "Höchstbegabung" in the sense of intelligence. This says a lot about the society, IMHO).

Probably the best nurse or firefighter. But it would still be better to be a researcher working on third world medical problems or designer of efficient fire fighting systems.

the SAT is useful because it is strongly correlated with IQ and is administered for millions of children, creating a very large sample to work with

I wonder if this is actually just some sort of statistical effect. Suppose intelligence is normally distributed in a high intelligence population and also in a low intelligence population but with two different medians. The guy at +2 sigma in the latter may be at 0 in the former. He may then reasonably conclude that he is extremely intelligent. If, on top of this, he doesn't then get the chance to mix with where the HI population resides (can't get into university, chooses to live outside of HI population centres), he's never going to be disabused of the fact that he's not really incredibly smart.

It's like being the best basketball player in your school. If you never go to the summer training classes, you'll never discover that there are thousands like you, and that the guys who didn't make the cut at a different school are way better than you are.