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unrelatedly, here’s how to do that undergrad psych major without causing yourself too much damage: http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2013/07/yes-she-can-thessalonika-arzu-embry-about-to-earn-bachelors-degree-at-14/
start at age 11!
The phrase I use is “character AND competence.” Seems like I am always nudging my kids along both of those paths, encouraging them to be productive, interesting people that others actually want to be around.
Don’t give in to the ferrets! I’m the same way except with cats, I refuse to have cats and litter box smell everywhere. My kids want cats, and I don’t want cats. I take them to other people’s houses that have cats and litter box smell so they can pet the cats and chase the cats. Then we go back home to a nice smelling house with no cats.
With the I.Q. stuff I totally can relate. We come from the same background minus the aspie part. Seriously high IQ brother, like Einstein high, in and out of jail and drug addict, it’s like things come so easy to them and yet they turn to a druggie homeless lifestyle. Seriously, I just don’t get it.
Even though I know they are high I.Q. (from *gulp* testing) I’d rather teach my kids how to be good people than be something that society wants them to be, or put some sort of pressure on them that totally isn’t fair or even realistic.
-Elizabeth
I’m not going to say you should get a cat if you don’t want one. But I will say that if the people you know with cats can’t control the litter box smell, they’re doing it wrong. Yes I am grossed out by most cat owners inability (or refusal?) to keep it clean, but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible.
Crystal, I think I just have a very strong sense of smell… I am overly sensitive to smells and I have always been able to smell cats no matter what lengths owners go to hide or mask them. My husband though never smells things that I can. It makes for interesting conversations, usually they start with me saying “Can you smell that?” …
Hey Penelope, I’ve had numerous friends suggest I take an AQ test and I did recently and it came back as definitely aspergers…not sure where to go from here but my husband says it makes sense to him…I feel uncomfortable finding this out at 34….
This post is provokes more thinking for me.
A helpful metaphor: IQ is like the hardware specs (RAM, running speed, hard drive space, graphics card, etc.) on a computer, but all the software is what actually makes the computer useful.
An amazing computer with no, little, or poor software is useless compared to a “poor” computer with intuitive, efficient software.
A scientist with an IQ of 110 with an amazing education and work ethic can school a lazy punk with an IQ of 160 any day in practical applications of scientific knowledge.
We talk in similar terms in cello lessons. Being born with a gift for music doesn’t matter if you don’t practice very hard. Nothing that matters gets handed to us all neat and tidy on a silver platter. We have to earn stuff that matters – that’s why it matters.
Penelope
Everybody is a genius but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. –Albert Einstein
Reminded me of one of Robert Kiyosaki’s book: “Rich Kid, Smart Kid: Giving Your Child a Financial Head Start”. In it he talks about 12 different “IQ”s, only one of which public schools address.
You can see a review of the book here: http://www.squidoo.com/RichKidSmartKid (“He talks a lot about homeschooling in this book, although he has no children of his own. He talks about it because he talks about all the different types of learning styles and how the public school only caters to one learning style. He also states how the public school system does not give children a financial education. Children end up being label learning disabled even though they aren’t…they just have a different learning style. Some are born to be text book learners and do excellent in school. Some are born hands on learners, and don’t. Those are just 2 examples.”
There’s a summary of the book here (PDF): http://www.irgworld.in/docs/investing/richkidsmartkid.pdf
all those scientist comments reminded me of this NYT story http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/magazine/the-professor-the-bikini-model-and-the-suitcase-full-of-trouble.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
I
you honestly think that this story is a typical example of a real life scientist? No, a high IQ does not mean that you become a narcistic person with no regard for others or no comprehension of the world around you.
My kids want a dog, but we don’t have a yard for one right now. That’s what I tell them. But it’s really that I don’t like dogs.
I haven’t had my kids tested. Probably will not, but I’ve learned to never say never.
Best way to handle that question is to tell everybody they are in the third standard deviation from the mean. Follow up with: “And that’s why I want you to take on this new challenge. I think you’re ready for it, and I know you’ve got the brainpower.”
I also handle setbacks with, “Practice Makes Permanent. Keep working on it.” But not always. Sometimes I handle setbacks with, “You need a break. Let’s go swimming.” And then, just to be ornery, sometimes I handle setbacks with, “You need a break. How about you take out the garbage for me?”
Because any amount of frustration at the piano is preferable to taking out the garbage, right?
But anyway, the human brain is pure potential. It’s not a cliche to say that everyone has an inner core of genius. There’s a book called “Talent is Overrated” by Jeffrey Colvin (maybe I spelled that wrong) that emphasizes smart practice techniques to boost performance.
Also, yuck. Ferrets. Don’t they spray their urine all over the place? My youngest is trying to talk me into Uncle Miltie’s Ant Farm (with connectors and accessories)… but we spray for ants around here. Importing them on purpose seems like wretched stupidity.
Good heavens. Do all my comments seem this abrupt?
Yikes.
Note to self: chocolate makes you a nicer person.
At my house, the press is on for a teacup pig. I laughed out loud when i read about the ferrets.
I’ve never been officially IQ tested, but I always scored at the top on all the various other tests. I wish now that I never knew about any of that stuff- even grades. I coasted on being smart and not working hard most of my life. Without the grades, maybe I would have done real things to feel more self-worth instead of just thinking I was so smart.
I had chickens once, get anything but chickens! They’re smelly, messy AND not smart!
I just remembered that you’re married to a farmer, so maybe you have chickens already and plenty of them! lol
Read Carol Dweck’s “Mindset” for why #1 is problematic. Praise effort, not supposed innate intelligence. My kids get sick of hearing me tell them that their brain is like a muscle & the harder they work, the more they’ll build it.
I didn’t catch this until most people have probably finished reading that were going to read it, but your 6th point is marked as another 5th point.
I see where you are coming from and as far as giving IQ tests as a standard school practice I can even go so far as to agree since these tests (Gate Tests in particular) seem to test for high achievers not necessarily those kids at the highest end of the scale.
However, as a mom to a Exceptionally Gifted child who struggled in school all the way through 7th grade, who we could not figure out why she didn’t fit in, who she herself thought was stupid until we finally had her privately tested by a psychologist specializing in GIftedness.
So while your intentions seem good, I feel you missed the point here. IQ tests can help us understand who are kids are and how they are wired. It can help us get them help for the emotional sensitivities and quirks that often come with giftedness. It can help us find intellectual peers for our kids who finally get them and comfort for ourselves from other parents of gifted kids who feel like no one gets what we are struggling with either. For our kids, it can help them feel normal for the first time in their entire lives.
Yes, there are parents who go too far and put a focus on all the wrong things but there are also well meaning parents like myself who needed understanding and insight into how my daughter is different that my other kids, her school mates, her friends.
Karen
and clearly from all my typos- we can see I am not gifted. LOL
“Un-gifted” by Scott Barry Kaufman. Excellent read on “intelligence” and everything that it is/isn’t. Read my blog – I have many good links to the subject.
I worry about the interpretation teachers give to these tests.
Pure anecdata, and I believe the system is run differently now, but… here in the UK, young children used to be given intelligence tests to determine what level they would be taught at and even which of the local schools they would go to.
I have an English friend who was given these tests as a child and told that her IQ was 98 – just on the low end of normal – so she wasn’t being recommended for the more elite “grammar” school. Her parents were surprised, and questioned it…
Turned out she had scored in the 98th percentile, and the teacher didn’t understand the difference!
She went to the grammar school, and then Imperial, and then I met her while she was a PhD student in Computational Neuroscience at Edinburgh. But she would have been able to do all that whether she was given the test or not. If they’d just accepted what the teacher said about her, I’m not so sure…
I hate your secret new start up. No new post for over a week? :(
You know what? I agree. It feels really yucky. LIke I’ve lost an important connection. So I’m on it. Making changes to my schedule so I can get back on the blog horse.
Thanks for this comment. You remind me of how sad I am when I don’t blog.
Penelope
This reminds me of something Calvin Coolidge said, when he talked about nothing in the world being as important as perseverance.
“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”
My parents always told me I was smart, and for a long time I was content to rest on that knowledge and not do anything about it. Only recently have I realized that intelligence alone means nothing practically. Like you said, and as C.C. would agree, the things which are essential to life come apart from IQ, and I think that while encouragement and affirmation in intelligence are important, there are far more important areas to encourage and develop.
Thanks so much for this. I was IQ-tested in the 2nd grade and based on that alone the psychologists let me skip to the next grade. Moving school districts helped me skip 5th grade and before you knew it I was constantly with students two years older than me and finished high school at age 16. My social skills and life didn’t really catch up until after university.
Now I’m trying to disabuse myself of the notion that I’m special, although my choice of career isn’t making things easy (Chinese-American who translates and interprets Spanish and Russian to English). Have you made any progress on not thinking you’re special? Since this http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2013/01/21/thinking-your-problems-are-special-ends-up-making-you-stuck
I know I am smart. I think it’s ok to encourage them to read, problem solve and do things like that, but for a cause. When I was little I wanted to find out how gravity worked, and how enough food could be made to eliminate world poverty. Now I’m studying economics in Uni, and did physics in 6 form for fun. Set fun and interesting goals, and let learning be the means to the end.
Learning simply for the sake of learning can be boring and can kill interest in children
Which idiot wrote this nonsense?
This is almost completely opposite of what you should do…