
The Intelligence Myth – Why I cringe when someone tells me my child is smart - junwuwriter
https://medium.com/@junwu_46652/the-intelligence-myth-8b5722145180
======
nicolethenerd
There is a distinction between the pressure that comes from growing up in a
"tiger family" and the consequences of growing up with the "smart" label, and
I feel like the author is conflating the two. Personally, growing up with the
label (but not the parental pressure) was one of the best things that could
have happened for me and my education - the fact that others believed (whether
true or not) that I was lightyears ahead of the class afforded me numerous
opportunities - special classes, programs, etc. And more importantly, the fact
that _I_ believed it meant that I was able to operate free of insecurities or
imposter syndrome that so many of my peers faced. Did it inflate my ego a bit
as a kid? Sure - but I had good role models to look up to who helped me tamp
that down a bit, and I had plenty of time to figure out that I wasn't the
smartest kid in the world once I got to MIT (which I might not have gotten
into had I not so fervently believed I would!).

I can't comment on what it's like to grow up with the extreme parental
pressure the author describes - I didn't experience that, and I'm sorry she
had to go through that. But I think that's an entirely separate issue from
growing up with the "gifted" label.

~~~
XMPPwocky
> And more importantly, the fact that I believed it meant that I was able to
> operate free of insecurities or imposter syndrome that so many of my peers
> faced.

How the heck did you convince yourself to believe it? As a "gifted" kid, what
I learned very quickly was that adults will happily exaggerate minor talents
(which one acquires primarily through just spending time on them, a task made
markedly easier when everybody else hates you) to absurdity- at one point I
got an evaluation back from a summer program at Stanford telling me I might
grow up to be "one of the best programmers of our age". What did I do to earn
such acclaim? Got ahead of the rest of the class making a game, read the
documentation for Flash, and used the extra time to add "voice controls" to my
game (specifically, you'd shoot by yelling anything into your microphone, it
was just triggered by levels.)

Seriously- how can you take that sort of praise seriously, and not just as a
"look at the cute kid who knows more Adobe Flash than the rest of his age
group"?

~~~
pizza
It's nice to hear I'm not the only one as a kid whose reflex was to get
suspicious of/thought it was lazy when/ people would quickly decide "you're
smart". It seemed to me just like a way to score cheap points. It also made me
feel worse about not understanding things easily.. people were telling me I
was smart, after all! :P

My sister, on the other hand, gets annoyed at my perspective - she finds it
tiresome when people can't take the compliment. There's wisdom to both ways, I
guess.

~~~
striking
You can be nice about a well-meaning but ultimately misguided complement
without taking it seriously.

~~~
alexanderdmitri
Someone once pointed out to me I had a tendency to momentarily scowl when
complimented and then pretend I hadn't heard it.

Made sense because compliments made me feel weird, even though I freely gave
them out.

Since then I've trained myself to smile, make eye-contact and say "Thank you,
I accept your compliment with confidence," before returning to the matter at
hand.

------
danenania
Being a new dad, this is something I've begun thinking a lot about. Reading
about CBT (Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy) has shed some light on this issue for
me. I think the core problem is when a child is taught that their value to the
family and to society is based on extrinsic rather than intrinsic factors.

If you are made to believe that you are valuable as a human because you are x,
y, or z subjective determination (smart, beautiful, athletic, etc.) and not
simply because you are _you_ , then you're likely to be driven and motivated
to maximize this 'edge', but you'll also be mostly unhappy regardless of what
you achieve, because there will always be others who make your achievements
along that axis seem like nothing in comparison. And even if you _are_ the
absolute best in the world at something, you will always feel chased and
hunted, like the thing that makes your life worthwhile is constantly hanging
by a thread.

This doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive to do great things or encourage our
children to do the same if they're inspired to. But before that, we need to
learn to be satisfied with a simple life just existing in the world as
ourselves without any extraordinary achievements.

~~~
andrei_says_
You will resonate with Aktie Kohn’s Unconditional Parenting which cites a lot
of research confirming the long term futility and harm of extrinsic pressures
encoded in common parenting practices and educational institutions.

~~~
danenania
Thanks, I'll check it out!

------
amrx431
I have suffered from this personally. I was a "smart" kid. I was always top of
my class till 10th standard. Everybody called me smart and intelligent. The
schoolwork till 10th never challenged me. But when the complexity increase
with pre college courses and STEM I was lost because I never had tackled this
kind of difficulty before. I went into depression for couple of years. I was
saved by Hamming's "You and Your research" and Learning how to learn. I
restarted believing and learning again with growth mindset.

~~~
crooked-v
Same kind of thing here. I coasted almost all the way through high school, got
given endless slack in my last year of high school because everyone knew I was
'smart', and instantly ran into major trouble in college.

------
abootstrapper
I was called “smart” growing up. Looking back I believe it was a huge
disservice. School was generally easy for me, but I was afraid to ask
questions to risk appearing “not smart.” I learned a hard lesson in college.
Smart isn’t something you are, it’s something you can become, through
perseverance, dedication, and grit. Luckily I posses those qualities.

We don’t use the S word around our kids. And when strangers tell me our young
children are smart, while they are in earshot, I say, “Thank you. They work
hard and practice a lot.”

~~~
dkarl
I think that's a function of the school system. I had access to "honors"
classes and so forth, but they weren't that advanced or challenging, so there
was a pretty low ceiling on what you could accomplish in school. Since kids
couldn't distinguish themselves by accomplishing more or harder things, and
there was nothing glamorous about grinding out a 99 versus a 98, the
"smartest" kids were the ones who didn't have to work hard or answer
questions. I remember sometimes I would pull out a blank sheet when the
teacher started collecting assignments and try to finish it in before she got
to my desk, because there was no other way for it to be an accomplishment.
With the level of accomplishment fixed at a low level, the only way to prove
you were more capable was by being flamboyantly undisciplined.

~~~
abootstrapper
Reminds me of my high school experience. The kids in the top of the class
worked hard to appear as if they didn’t work hard. I among them. I was
relieved to find students at my university genuinely cared and worked hard on
their academics. And the ones who didn’t failed.

My kids future high school has a reputation for being academically difficult.
I’m thrilled by that. I don’t care if they’re C students, I just want them to
be challenged.

------
sam_goody
A camp I worked at had a 11 year old genius as a camper. The real kind, the
one that could list all of the elements on the periodic table from memory and
discuss them with a clear understanding of their properties.

I asked to have him in my bunk; I am not a genius and will readily admit to be
his inferior - so no need for competition there (I might even learn from
him!). On the other hand, he had clear social deficiencies and was not very
sportive, so there are plenty of things he could learn from me. He needed to
be grown and changed from an egotistical insecure kid to a insightful
intelligent young adult.

Instead the camp gave him to the charge of a counselor who was also a genius,
and as expected they spent the whole summer each trying to prove they were
smarter than the other. The kid usually won, but I can't imagine the summer
contributed to a growing experience.

Remember that genius doesn't make a person. Don't let it blindside your
treatment of them if you are charged with raising them. They need adults to
teach them about life, even if the adults can't do math as fast as they could.

~~~
hi5eyes
>Remember that genius doesn't make a person

adding to that. my friend is a straight up genius, can do calculations in his
head faster than you can type them into wolfram alpha. people in my highschool
used to ask him to do questions like a monkey

the only friends he had were people that talked to him like a normal person,
shot the shit and went to parties together instead of asking him for homework
help

------
dmitrybrant
In principle I agree that "it is up to the child to choose his or her destiny.
It is never up to the parent." However, the following thought comes to mind:

The best musicians in the world, as well as the best figure skaters, the best
gymnasts, the best tennis players, etc. seem to have been "pushed" into it by
their parents, or at the very least heavily influenced.

If parents didn't push their kids in this way, would we have the same caliber
of performers/champions/etc that dominate their respective disciplines?

~~~
pimmen
Yes, I think we actually would because I don’t see much evidence that the
number of talented kids who were pushed into it because of their obvious
talents is greater than the number of kids who were talented but lacked the
opportunities or support to actually do it.

My baby brother was a very good soccer player and was able to go to a
selective high school in Sweden which uses very competitive try outs. Some of
his classmates played in the highest league in Sweden and made more money than
their own parents. My brother was a hopeful for the top league, until he broke
his knee. He recovered and invested months of training to get back into shape,
better shape than he ever was, to make the top teams see beyond his past
injury and be so good they can’t ignore him. Then he broke the other knee and
was damaged goods. The third highest league was as far as he could get and
soccer stayed a hobby until he had to work and study at the same time at 20.

On the other hand, my brother had classmates who really wanted to postpone
college and go all in playing on the elite level, and their parents refused.
These parents were often highly educated themselves and just couldn’t see how
such a high risk career as athletics could be a sound investment of one’s
time.

I think if youths got to make their own career choices we would still have the
same caliber of artists, athletes and what not because even the children who
were pushed into it had to find some meaning behind what they did. Training
for five hours straight is one thing, actually being receptive to what you
need to learn while training for five hours is hard for anyone who doesn’t
really care.

------
zebraflask
The "show pony" remark in the article, I think, has a large grain of truth.
There is something cringeworthy about being singled out in that manner.

------
shripadk
Reminds me of what I wrote sometime back here on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20131518](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20131518)

I can understand what she means when she talks about expectations. This is too
common in China and India. It is difficult to explain to those who have never
gone through what she is describing. Luckily I have parents who do not
pressure me to do the stuff she talks about. But I have seen my fair share to
know what it is like.

------
akhilcacharya
An underrated part of this is the impact it has if they _dont_ end up being
accomplished. I was in an AG program K-8 but ended up getting mediocre SATs
and living a pretty average life.

I’m personally very skeptical of the utility of similar programs now. I’m
beginning to think keeping consistent expectations for everyone and letting
those with differing interests or aptitudes enrich themselves is more
egalitarian, especially for people who aren’t intellectually gifted (like me).

------
frankbreetz
I struggle with this. On one hand I want my children to be who they want and
not be burnt out when they are 20,on the other hand too many children are
never challenged and give up too easy. I went to a college prep high school
and graduated in the middle of the pack, but it was quite challenging and I
didn't enjoy it. But, in college there were quite a few valedictorians who
clearly just coasted through high school, they mostly went to under funded
public high schools. I feel these children were done a disservice. Does anyone
have any advice on how to teach self discipline without having your child
resent it?

~~~
DoreenMichele
I homeschooled. My oldest was accepted to college at age 13, but didn't attend
(long story omitted). I was briefly Director of Community Life for The TAG
project, a gifted support organization I was involved in to support my
homeschooling efforts.

Chores serve the same function as homework in terms of teaching kids
responsibility. They have the added benefit of being a real world task, not
"make work."

When my kids couldn't focus on their schoolwork because of video games, I
locked up the controllers until school work was done. It wasn't punishment.
They got them back as soon as their work was done.

When I got tired of one son blowing off household chores because he wanted to
see his TV show, so he would ask if it could wait for a commercial, but then
he never remembered during the commercial, I began telling him "No, this needs
to be done when I ask because I'm spending hours begging you to do it and it's
an unreasonable burden on me." After a few times of having his TV shows
interrupted, he began taking out the trash voluntarily _before_ his shows
started and asking if there were any other chores he needed to do so he could
block out uninterrupted TV viewing time.

------
craftoman
There's NOT a single parent on earth that doesn't comfort and encourage it's
kid unless he/she is some kind of a toxic psycho. Every parent think the best
of their kid, either it's beauty or smartness.

------
kareninoverseas
I notice that I intentionally try to avoid portraying myself as "smart" these
days because it frees me from having to work to prove it externally. I've also
started working on hobbies that others don't consider meaningful, but which I
notice challenge me as much as anything else I've been called smart for.

The upshot is that a lot of people in the workplace /do/ judge you anyways,
and people seem to assume that you (like them) are doing your darnedest to
appear as impressive as possible. Then again, I am working in high finance.

------
ozzmotik
i somewhat had this problem when I was younger. i would hear it from basically
everyone and it always sorta confused me because i certainly have never really
felt intelligent per se, more just passionate about trying to understand why
things work the way they do. if anything i more identify as ignorant in most
regards, because by assuming that i absolutely know something, i think im
doing myself a disservice and potentially blinding myself from seeing other
aspects of it that I haven't yet considered. i did the whole advanced
placement thing for a little while but I never really stayed in those classes,
mostly because i just didn't have any interest in doing the work in them. i
never really struggled with any of them, i can't think of any reason why
anyone should given that there's a textbook with everything in it and an
internets for everything else, but I suppose i understand that some people
learn differently than others, and even more people tend to disparage their
own ability to learn (unknowingly often to their detriment as it causes them
to reject valid conclusions that they might come to because of a lack of
confidence in said ability).

------
hailhash
Intelligence/smart is the default condition of all children at the time of
birth. It’s the non-intelligent parents who drive the intelligence out of them
by their own behavior and ignorance

~~~
tomp
There’s only so much parents can do (post-birth)...

This is one of my favourite articles ever:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4739500/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4739500/)

 _> linearly increasing heritability of intelligence from infancy (20%)
through adulthood (60%)._

------
candiodari
This author seems to be believing in the myth that there is such a thing as
intrinsic smartness (being smart without effort). She perpetuates the
misconception, without realizing the point she herself is making. Nobody is
smart. It just doesn't exist. You just missed all the effort that went into
becoming smart.

You have the same myth in fighting sports. "Some people are just faster"
sooner or later becomes someone's argument why they're not as good as others.
They have the same nerves you do, and the ion cascade in their nerves is the
exact same speed in theirs as it is in yours. It's just effort (in training,
beforehand, not in the actual fight). Nothing more (aside from one thing:
smaller people are in fact faster. Not because they think faster but because
they have less torque to fight. A point that will be made in any karate
tournament)

Doesn't it seem a bit convenient ? The "truly smart" examples she gives:

* a schizophrenic
    
    
      One sign of schizophrenia is doing the same thing unceasingly for absurd periods of times - sometimes decades. How much effort did this guy put in ? Not for good reasons, perhaps, but ...
    

* a "female technology manager" ...
    
    
      .. dedicated her whole life to work. Then, one day, her husband asked her for a divorce because she barely came home. After 18 years, her children realized that she wasn’t the one who raised them ...
    

* just truly "gifted" people
    
    
      They often have no balance in their own mental well being. Once they have identified an intellectual need, they try to fulfill that need single-mindedly at all cost. These are the people who are truly “gifted”.
    

* Herself
    
    
      My intellect was in fact much more average than anyone realized. It was my “work ethic” that made me seem like an “intellectually gifted” person.
    

I feel like it is very important to give kids (yes, through forcing them) the
ability to focus and expend effort to achieve a goal. This is of course not to
be pushed at the expense of everything else, but it very important.

------
redis_mlc
For those readers who don't have kids ...

It's very important to not say three things to kids:

\- "You're my favorite" \- this is incredibly corrosive to relationships
between siblings, and lasts forever.

\- "You're so smart"\- when you say this, you're telling the child that they
have an intrinsic gift that replaces having to work hard. Just say, "Good
job." or "How can you improve it next time?"

\- "You's so pretty." \- when you say this, you're telling the child that they
have an intrinsic gift, and are above working hard on relationships or a
career.

~~~
detaro
Acknowledging someone has an intrinsic gift is not the same as telling them
it's a replacement for work. (By all means, make sure they know it's not!)

It's also fairly silly to assume if you don't tell your kid it won't notice it
has these gifts, rather it will notice that you never acknowledge this.

~~~
em-bee
but they don't have an intrinsic gift. every child is capable of being smart,
and every child is beautiful.

using these labels has to be done with care foe the desired effect. if a child
thinks they are dumb, then calling them smart, and showing them hat makes them
smart may be helpful to raise their self-esteem. but otherwise it may
backfire.

same goes for beauty. it can have a positive effect, but it can also make the
child care more about outward appearances.

------
fortran77
"Why I cringe when someone tells me my child is smart" just sounds like a
parent's humblebrag to me.

------
torstenvl
It's hard to identify the thesis here. Is the thesis that intelligence is a
myth? If so, the post provides precious little evidence in support.

Is it that smart children are overburdened by expectations and anxiety? If so,
the "evidence" is a set of personal anecdotes and hyperbolic generalizations.
It is, quite simply, not factual that teenagers are made to study 24 hours per
day, 7 days per week. If that occurred, the teenager would die.

> _by junwuwriter 28 minutes ago_

> _WRITTEN BY Jun Wu Single Mom Writer, Technologist, Poet: Tech, AI, Data
> Science, Psych, Parenting, Edu, Life, Work,Poetry etc. Find
> Me:[https://junwuwriter.com](https://junwuwriter.com) _

Ah. Got it.

~~~
xiphias2
She's a single mom who has a son.

It doesn't seem to me that she has an understanding of how much more picky
females are than males when it comes to sexual selection. Her son needs to
compete hard in his life, whether she likes it or not.

~~~
smt88
Whatever biological concept you're thinking of here, you're incorrect to
generalize it to humans.

Our complex brains, societies, and medicine (like birth control) significantly
change our mate selection. We are not antelopes.

~~~
emsy
Societal factors do exist, but are often overstated or don’t bear a scientific
foundation. A lot of social sciences have done real harm to scientific
progress and the field of evolutionary psychology.

~~~
smt88
Birth control and women's rights, and marrying for love[1] are fairly new
(within the last 20-100 yrs) and limited to a handful of countries.

We just don't have data on how humans behave when such huge reprodutive
variables change. Seeing how a single generation responds isn't a long enough
time period, because children accumulate the social norms of their parents.

1\. [https://www.livescience.com/37777-history-of-
marriage.html](https://www.livescience.com/37777-history-of-marriage.html)

~~~
barry-cotter
We do have data on this. In the modern educated industrialised environment
intelligence reduces fertility.

[https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/twin-research-and-
hu...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/twin-research-and-human-
genetics/article/how-intelligence-affects-fertility-30-years-on-retherford-
and-sewell-revisited-with-polygenic-scores-and-numbers-of-
grandchildren/AB8EF68EE05C8DFD0A1C424B4FF7BC1F)

> How Intelligence Affects Fertility 30 Years On: Retherford and Sewell
> Revisited — With Polygenic Scores and Numbers of Grandchildren

> Using newly available polygenic scores for educational attainment and
> cognitive ability, this paper investigates the possible presence and causes
> of a negative association between IQ and fertility in the Wisconsin
> Longitudinal Study sample, an issue that Retherford and Sewell first
> addressed 30 years ago. The effect of the polygenic score on the sample’s
> reproductive characteristics was indirect: a latent cognitive ability
> measure, comprised of both educational attainment and IQ, wholly mediated
> the relationship. Age at first birth mediated the negative effect of
> cognitive ability on sample fertility, which had a direct (positive) effect
> on the number of grandchildren. Significantly greater impacts of cognitive
> ability on the sample’s fertility characteristics were found among the
> female subsample. This indicates that, in this sample, having a genetic
> disposition toward higher cognitive ability does not directly reduce number
> of offspring; instead, higher cognitive ability is a risk factor for
> prolonging reproductive debut, which, especially for women, reduces the
> fertility window and, thus, the number of children and grandchildren that
> can be produced. By estimating the effect of the sample’s reproductive
> characteristics on the strength of polygenic selection, it was found that
> the genetic variance component of IQ should be declining at a rate between
> −.208 (95% CI [−.020, −.383]) and −.424 (95% CI [−.041, −.766]) points per
> decade, depending on whether GCTA-GREML or classical behavior genetic
> estimates of IQ heritability are used to correct for ‘missing’ heritability.

~~~
smt88
This whole thread is about mate selection, not child production

