Emotional, behavioral and social difficulties among high-IQ children [pdf]

And it is just this 5-6 year groups that has been studied here -- nothing about older children.

Given the size of the study was any other outcome expected.

But you are special. Maybe not special in the sense that you are guaranteed a certain fame or fortune, but you have the same amount of responsibility as anyone else. This is why people have mid-life crises, they wake up to the fact that they do have a unique self with unique needs, gifts, and values. With limited time remaining, it's crucial to find your gifts and use them to maximum capacity.

For my own mid-life crisis I learned about my personality type and found that I had a bunch of gifts in analysis, measurement, and framework building of which I wasn't aware. So I put them to work and lost 100 pounds. Now I'm trying to FIRE and think it might happen.

If you're interested I recommend Dario Nardi's book, 8 Keys to Self- leadership. It's incredibly dense and the exercises within can't really be completed, or rather, the psychological development opportunities within probably won't be reachable for anybody in their totality. The author says he's still working on the various facets himself. But it'll give you a sense of where your gifts are, and that makes life a lot more bearable.

> remind myself of the fact that I was never special

I have a tee shirt that reads "PERFECT HUMAN". I love it when people react to it because it says so much about them. I'm not even well groomed. I'm clearly not perfect. But whatever great thing they say, I respond with my favorite line.

"We're all perfect, no?"

"Perfect" is the perfect example because it's so specific, yet ambiguous. It's so imaginable, yet impossible. But that's only if perfect is the goal, and a fact. These are factual issues.

When perfect is made the start line however, it's a philosophy. "Everyone is perfect" isn't a fact but an assertion. And when such an assertion yields positive results, it becomes an axiom, for when you desire those results.

What would the world look like if everyone were perfect? I'm looking at it right now. "We're all sinners, let's behave" becomes "if we're all perfect, why are we sinning?" Sins don't make us imperfect. Perfect people sin. By altering assumptions, the game changes. Reality changes. I prefer this reality, so I enact this axiom. I deal with the imperfect actions of perfect people instead of wasting time ruining reputations or perfecting my own.

With regards to "special" or "genius", we can do the same thing.

Everyone is special. Everything we do is special. Things not working out is just things not working out. It isn't special that needs to get fixed. We just need to make things work.

Everyone is a genius. I can google anything and store everything. I have infinite knowledge and infinite memory and I prefer spreadsheets over any mental arithmetic.

Honestly, the capacity for fluent intellectual literacy may be the greatest cognitive accomplishment by any species, and we (on HN at least) have it. Regardless of whether anyone agrees, the mere fact that anyone who can read can understand what I am writing here and be tickled by it is a testament to the genius of the modern intellectually curious.

When was the last time not being special or not being a genius stopped you?

The only time is when you thought you weren't good enough so you didn't even try. That's it. So I say get over it, do away with it, and just focus on exactly what you want to accomplish. Words have never stopped anybody. It's always "you".

My sister is an engineer, but she also does biking and alpinism. As in, from Paris to Patagonia kind of biking, and 7,000m-summit climbing. And she says, no matter how high and how far you go, how dangerous it gets and how many people admire you, when you do that, you always end up in a group where most people kick ass more than you do.

As for me, at one point I realized happiness is about friends and family. And honesty, having a kid is something I admire as much as climbing summits.

So don't worry that people don't seem to recognize your genius anymore, because people are still quitely admirative of most things that seem usual to you.

I had a similar experience. I was raised as a curious child, with encyclopedias and stuff around, my mom says the first thing I ever said was "what's this?". In elementary school my teacher realised my interest in science and specifically physics and astronomy, gave me a comprehensive set of books on various scientific topics, for children, fifty-sixty books. I read them all, and learned a fair bit of stuff about astronomy, electronics, chemistry, and history of science. Add to that a 120-130 IQ test result, my friends called me the "professor", and in third grade my parents and my elementary school theacher decided that it was better to move me to a private school with "better" education. I took tests at some of the most pricy colleges of the country, and was accepted by a very famous school with full scholarship. This school was the fifth most expensive school in my country and a lot of the richest families had their children study there. During 4th grade I went to both my normal school which was public, and to this other school to catch up on English. And in fifth I switched full-time to the private school. I, as a son of a low-income family, in fact was getting on very well with the other kids there, but a couple years later, I was losing my interest in science and school in general, so my exam grades went down and down. On my way to adolescence, I wanted more friends and fun. So at the end in 7th grade I was moved back to a public school, and this was my big disaster, because, raised among the children of the richest and best families of the country, and with minimal exposure to random kids before that (not many kids in my neighbourhood), I couldn't integrate, and this resulted in me a depression and solitude that dured until my 20ies. As a 23-yrs-old guy, I still live the effects of the experience, though I've overcome the depression.

During high school I was obsessed with becoming normal, like other kids, pretended being an ordinary stupid boy, because I was always marginalised as I never experienced the vulgar street life and basically didn't know how to act in such a setting. I don't want to come off as a snob, but truly my social life was limited to my parents, my brother, three-four well-behaved kids from my street and a bunch of Richie Riches until I was about 14, so go figure. I still am a bit the odd kid but as the years went by I learned to embrace my abnormalities as my distinct personal traits and found out that I wasn't all that unique, but I was without contact to people like me. Seems obvious now, but not so much to a depressed adolescent which I was.

So my recomandation to parents of high-IQ kids would be: make them feel that they're smart, but make them know that this is not that big of a deal, and don't treat them specially or move them to weird schools. I've ended up losing all my interest in becoming a scientist and spending my best years in solitude and depression.

Why not move the child up to the grade level to which he/she performs?

They do this at my children's charter school. My son is in 3rd grade doing 4/5th grade math (accelerated charter school) and he has a 7 year old in his class. My son reports that its all good.

I firmly reject forcing a teacher to cater to all the "special flowers" in his/her classroom. Here is the standard for the grade level. If child are above standard, move up... if child are below... move down. If child has a learning disability, here is a specialist or a class with similar children and more teacher aids.

Edit to add: My daughter has several special needs children in her class (1st grade) and all she talks about is how disruptive they are. The teacher places some of them near her because she is well behaved and will help the teacher "police" the disruptive children. She hates it and we have a meeting with Principal about it next week.

I don't care that these children may be the next Einstein's and are disruptive because they may be bored and smart. The fact is they are disrupting EVERYONE in the class. Who should take responsibility for that? I think it is the PARENT.

The article shows no difference between average and gifted children in emotional and social behaviors. But we must not be deceived by such results because obviously enough no one is "average" in all or even any particular respects.

Having practiced medicine for a long time and working with thousands of people with behavioral/emotional disorders of many kinds, I can assure you that there is no necessary correlation between cognitive capability and "success" measured by any number of criteria.

When life difficulty seems out of phase with ability, it's wise to seek consultation or evaluation to find out if there is a correctable problem. As I've observed countless times, even geniuses (seriously) can have learning disorders, depression, anxiety and attentional disorders. These can be surprisingly disabling, and in many cases appropriate treatment can make a world of difference. I've seen that occur in many instances too.

BTW it is known that conditions of the kind I mention have moderate or strong heritability, so your description of a family characteristic of less success than would be expected may point to traits that "run in the family". All the more reason to check it out. I strongly believe it's never too late to make improvements in one's life, and we always have the obligation to take good care of ourselves.

This. I was in GATE from 4th grade - 8th. Separate classes, separate field trips, produced a daily school news tv show. Most of my gifted classmates became highly involved with drugs in highschool. Few graduated high school, let alone college.

Same story throughout family and friends who went to gifted class. I think gifted people seem to have extreme outcomes: more drug addicts, more suicide, more success, more power. Developmental orchids compared to the staggering ruggedness of the developmental dandelions out there who keep on trucking no matter what.

That's also my impression of a good chunk of the adults in my limited exposure to Mensa, so I don't think it's just a kid thing.

It's uncommon, there are diminishing returns to IQ, and it is more striking when high IQ people do poorly, but in general the more you have the better off you are.

Not all kids. At age 5, I was perfectly happy to sit in a quiet corner with an interesting book.

My kids both went to CTY in the summers. Both loved it. But my older son literally experienced it as life-altering. He'd been kind of isolated in school, but the wonderful rapport he had with like-minded kids at CTY, and the support they all gave each other, helped him develop social skills and confidence that he was able to use when he returned to school. He ended up having very close friends at his school, as well as keeping in touch with friends he'd made at CTY. I was very impressed when, later, out-of-the-blue, he said that it was CTY that had been the turning point for him.

So, parents, if you have gifted kids who are struggling a bit socially, I can't recommend CTY highly enough. Also, they will probably simply have a great time with the academic programs. (And/or can use them to get prerequisites for more advanced classes at their schools, as both my kids did.)

Can you share more about your positive experiences, especially with CTY?

I hadn't heard of it before now and your anecdote would help shed light on what I'm reading about. I teach and I'm interested in all things learning.

agreed a thousand times! as a CTY alumni, my fond memories of being at CTY are of the first time in my life where i was surrounded by equals! it was such a positive experience for me.

The size of N tells very little alone. N=23 can be enough.

For example, N = 1 is enough if the rat can solve crossword puzzles. Effect size is so large that probability that you could guess which rat is in the control group and which is not is close to 1.0.

The people who claim that high-IQ types are doomed and will be 'The Outsiders' and will be discriminated against to the point that 90%+ of them will not get appropriate higher education (I won't link to the pseudo-statistics that supposedly 'proves' this) are claiming very large effect sizes (and blaming that for why they need shelter in high-IQ societies).

In this case, such large effects can be rejected pretty soundly; with the sample sizes given, 23 vs 1058, you have 80% power to detect `pwr.t2n.test(n1=1058, n2=23, power=0.80, alternative="greater")` ~> d=0.52 (which is, for example, about half the size of the black-white IQ gap, and considered a 'medium' effect size).

In addition, the longitudinal cohort studies of the gifted like Terman, Hunter, TIP, or SMPY, do not find any signs of severe emotional/behavioral/social difficulties, the genetic correlations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_correlation#Intelligen...) are all in the wrong direction, adults are more able than kids to self-select into stimulating environments (possibly why heritability of intelligence increases with age), and so on. A new review paper which is relevant: "From Terman to Today: A Century of Findings on Intellectual Precocity" http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/From-Terman-t... , Lubinski 2016.

From a statistical perspective, this result doesn't tell us much about gifted adults not because the sample size is far too small, but because IQ scores at age 5-6 inherently don't predict adult IQ sufficiently well. This subsample of 23 kids with mean IQ of 134.6, selected because they are past the 130 threshold, are going to regress to the mean as they grow up. With the usual r=0.5 of 5yo/adult scores, their adult mean IQ will be more like 117 - which is above average but not 'gifted' by anyone's criterion. To try to study gifted adults by starting with them as kids, you would need to start another standard deviation up, around 150 IQ, which would be extremely difficult. (The correlation rapidly increases up to middle school, which is why TIP/SMPY don't suffer from this issue as much: much higher threshold and also much more reliable tests.)

Yes, like in most social and behavioural science, unfortunately.