
Lessons from a 45-year study of super-smart children - jseliger
http://www.nature.com/news/how-to-raise-a-genius-lessons-from-a-45-year-study-of-super-smart-children-1.20537
======
nils-m-holm
Didn't finish reading the article because, like so many articles, (1) it
equates achievement with intelligence (2) it does not actually seem to tell
you how to "raise a genius".

I have seen a lot of lives of highly intelligent people go wrong, and this is
the advice I would give: respect high-IQ children intellectually, prepare to
lose arguments, but still give them emotional support. It's easy to imagine
someone is an adult because they argue well, but in my experience intellectual
capacity is not related to emotional stability. Both aspects need to be
developed.

I'm the godfather of a _very_ intelligent young woman. She is at university
now, but regularly drops by to discuss all kinds of things. Achievement is
totally unimportant to her, but she is very curious about how the world works.
Talking to her is just amazing!

~~~
AstralStorm
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.

~~~
panic
IMO the whole idea of "potential" that can be "wasted" is toxic. As soon as
you feel yourself falling behind -- which you always will -- that idea that
you've wasted your potential shows up to make you feel bad.

This inevitably drives people toward easier kinds of achievement like awards,
promotions, and degrees. But a lot of real progress happens outside systems
like this! I think it's valuable to have smart people working on stuff for its
own sake, not chasing any kind of achievement.

~~~
cpkpad
It depends on where the pressure is places. If the pressure is placed on kids,
sure. If it's placed on schools, that's not toxic. The school system in most
of the US works under an attitude that the smart kids will do okay, and don't
need anything extra. Even gifted and talented programs are fading fast.

The truth is those school system are toxic, abusive torture to someone smart.
There were plenty of smart kids I knew -- some smarter than me -- who got
horrible grades going through one of these school. Many of them did not, in
any real sense, succeed.

Imagine being placed in a room, today, and forced to listen to lectures on
what you already know, and be given menial make-work tasks, like adding big
numbers and copying letters, and doing that for hours each day. Some people
are resilient enough to survive that. Others get pretty broken by it.

~~~
DanBC
> Even gifted and talented programs are fading fast.

What's the evidence that G&T programmes achieve better academic or life
outcomes?

~~~
nitrogen
Even if life outcomes are the same, if G&T programs make those kids happier
while in school, the programs are worth keeping.

------
NetStrikeForce
As a child I was considered to jump a whole academic year by doing two at the
same time.

I went through so many tests, visited so many experts and had to hear so many
people talk about me that when we soon after moved town I made efforts to not
show my real potential. I tried to be average and be just one more, which led
to eventual laziness and bad grades. So bad that I had shifty final grades in
high school and I never got to get a uni degree. Yet, most people that know me
would say I'm extremely intelligent.

Too bad life is about effort and not intelligence :-)

What I'm saying is, leave the kids alone. Let them grow up and help them
accomplish their intellectual needs. Just don't treat them as something
different or special, it would lead to either self-entitlement or sense of not
belonging and loneliness.

~~~
Declanomous
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.

~~~
TimesOldRoman
I skipped the 9th grade. My parents had the option of sending me from 8th
directly into college but decided to only skip 9th because they felt I needed
to mature socially.

In a way I resent them for it because am not satisfied with where I am in my
life (figure I could have been much farther along by now in career/academia),
even though I should be satisfied. On the other hand, I know they did what
they thought was best....either way, I'm still socially a mess inside although
I appear pretty charismatic when I try.

I guess I could have been a disaster without those high school formative
years....it's up to me now at 37, I suppose.

------
squigs25
As I said last time, I have one major qualm about this.

There seems to be a confirmatory bias among the academic community that a
measure of intellectual success can be found in the percentage of individuals
who earn a PhD. Sure, it's true that you need to be reasonably smart to earn a
PhD, but I think that someone can have a lot of intellectual success
(potentially just as much or maybe more) if they don't earn a PhD.

I think you could even argue that, depending on the field of study, a PhD is
the "easy" route for someone who is intellectually gifted - it's a simply a
continuation of what you have been doing. I would be more impressed by the
intellectual who not only realizes that they can conduct their own independent
research, but also has the creativity to come up with a use case that can
improve and contribute to the world (and presumably, make a living doing so).

My point here is that, given two gifted cohorts, one which has a 45% PhD
graduation rate and one which has a 50% PhD graduation rate, I don't know that
you can conclusively say that one is more gifted than the other without
looking at other metrics associated with intellectual accomplishment."

~~~
kayoone
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 ;)

------
nickpeterson
I was not a gifted child, but I remember the odd pressure of being told you
were smarter than other children. It's paralyzing. You're so afraid to finish
something because if that thing isn't amazing it ends up hurting your
perceived value.

~~~
AstralStorm
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.

------
FuNe
I understand why a parent would want to raise a super-smart children (which
makes the title a click-bait) but from where I stand I'd wish to see more
people being interested in raising socially responsible children. IMHO we are
abundant in (technical) smarts but very low on social/emotional ones.

~~~
wolfgke
> 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](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).

~~~
PieterH
Very accurate wrt the narcissism. So much of this attitude of "raising
children to rule the world" (literally, the claim of the article, which I
found ludicrous) is to flatter the parents and educators. Same for children
who are good at sports. Does anyone stop to wonder what it does to a child to
spend their whole lives training e.g. in a pool? How much pain does it cause
to people who have to live up to such expectations, when all they can do,
their entire lives, is fail?

I was one of those gifted children; both my parents are extraordinarily smart
and I was years ahead of my peers in reading and maths. I'm happy no-one paid
much attention and I was left to my own devices. Maybe I didn't become a
billionaire, or go to Stanford at sixteen, yet I was mostly happy, most of my
life, and every time I accomplished anything I was grateful and happily
surprised. And I don't think it was a wasted life at all.

Leading society? What an arrogance. Let kids be, give them open access to
knowledge and freedom to learn from others, and structure where they need it.
Leave the "raising geniuses" to totalitarian regimes.

~~~
AstralStorm
Leading society is best done by leaders, not by followers told to train to be
good. A leader trains because he wants to or perceives a need.

The whole trick is in instilling such motivation in gifted children instead of
the opposite message.

------
kriro
I'm very glad there's a solidly researched counterpoint to the 10k hours and
everything is possible stuff. Deliberate practice is still enough to get
really good at everything (imo) but I'd say it's sort of like compound
interest. If you start with more raw intelligence the learning will yield even
bigger dividends.

What troubles me a bit is the underlying assumption that supergifted children
are best steered towards becoming founders, scientists and whatnot. I don't
think it's self evident that some wouldn't enjoy being a nurse or firefighter.

~~~
AstralStorm
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.

------
microcolonel
Summary of decent complaints:

1\. Intelligence is mostly heritable anyway.

2\. Academic achievement doesn't have that much to do with intelligence.

3\. Different people have different priorities, you might find that after a
childhood and adolescence of you trying to make them _" super smart"_, they
will finally tell you that they don't give a damn and never will.

I think I'm probably fairly intelligent; but I honestly don't have enormous
ambitions, I just want to have a child in the next 5-7 years, and not fail him
or her.

------
merraksh
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12443629](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12443629)

------
DanBC
See also this article from a different source about the same study, posted
here with lots of comments:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12443629](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12443629)

------
kctess5
I'm a bit surprised that the SAT was such an important metric for them. In my
opinion it doesn't do that great of a job of characterizing intelligence.

~~~
paulpauper
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

------
BigJeffeRonaldo
I was in a "gifted" program but I got kicked out after I started skipping
school all the time to play guitar and chase girls. Eventually I dropped out
of high school and worked at Walmart. Now I have a math PhD and a 7 figure net
worth

------
desireco42
Unlike some other experiences here, I always had weird ideas in my head. As a
kid, I would question if I just have an overactive imagination or am I really
smart. I had no problem with a difficult subject like chemistry like my peers.
Still I thought I might be a little crazy.

Long story short, I got IQ test, scored really high. Never after I questioned
myself. I still think I am crazy, but I consider this a good thing. It helped
me great deal understand where I am in relation with others.

------
badpenny
Just posting to let everyone know what a genius I am and how I could have been
the next Bill Gates if somebody had done something different when I was a kid.

~~~
arjie
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.

~~~
AstralStorm
On the whole, ability is normally distributed, but when creating subgroups you
are bound to hit small sample problems.

Even if you pick the cream of the crop researchers all over the world, even in
niche field you will find hundreds.

~~~
arjie
Indeed, and that's what I mean. If you've never seen the world outside, you'd
happily conclude that you're awesome.

