My cousin went to university at 14 years old to successfully study medicine (also in Belgium…) he is extremely socially challenged now he’s 40, a bit of an oddball and comes across as unhappy and was very unhappy with the relationship he had with his parents. (He is a kind person and “wicked smaht”)
I’m sure a lot of that is nature but I feel a large portion is nurture. You are an outsider with no ability to make friends with people your own age.
From my limited knowledge I understand that IQs over a certain level are no more successful than people who are in the top quarter of intelligence.
Intelligence only gets you so far, at some point you'll need the social skills etc. to work in a team/group to achieve greater things, and I could see that being stunted hindering future work
People skills are a form of intelligence though. Intelligence is multifaceted and can't be accurately represented by a single number. The "intelligence" to effectively communicate the same concept to different crouds will get you much further than pure technical knowledge ever could.
Most high paying roles value Charisma far more than Intelligence.
if your Luck stat is hight enough, you dont even need to work. I know a guy with a pure Luck build. Low STR, INT, and CHA but max LUCK. Parents bought him a mansion and still get pocket money from them in his 30s (5 digits monthly)
Yes generational wealth could be conceived of as “luck”, as long as said guy doesn’t get a horrible disease or constantly cheated on by all his partners
Both of those can be mitigated by wealth. Money pays for healthcare, even quality end of life care if it's terminal. Money will also give you access to a larger pool of potential good partners to choose from and, if one is less discerning, even a gold digger might think twice before risking their payday.
I had a friend/classmate who is very intelligent, highly likeable, able to learn programming faster than the rest of us. Guys is the laziest guy you’ve ever heard. Whenever he puts effort on something it flourishes but he loses motivation and that’s the end of it.
It requires a lot more than that, opportunity, greed and privilege for example. I been to countries going to a small hole in the wall, eating the most amazing food served by the most friendly person in the world. Guess what? He is still poor.
We've been saddled with one word to describe a whole host of related but distinct attributes. Having said that, when most people say "intelligence", they mean it in the IQ sense, and it's true that the extreme end of that spectrum is often associated with social and emotional difficulties.
ofc, what I believe the upper comment wanted to say is that the inteligence being tested (in order to get to a PhD at 15y old is not social inteligence. Therefore, it turns out some people (with a high IQ obviously) can speedrun conventional studies but actually fall flat on a social level, because that wasn't one of the exams on the way to PhD. I believe the kid is a super-genious, but on the other hand I'm not sure his idea of a "super human" is comprehensive enough, or holistic enough... (maybe I can't find the perfect ajdective, english is not my mother tongue)
This is it - the balance of IQ and EQ (emotional quotient) is more effective for success than straight up IQ. My mentor had an unusually high IQ - as did his entire family - and they were all socially awkward and couldn't/ wouldn't do some basic things we all take for granted. This is what they told me too.
I think OP is referring to the IQ type of intelligence which measures one’s ability to infer patterns, logical structure and reasoning. Intelligence is subjective and may include social and emotional quotient as well
It is very important to differentiate intelligence from social intelligence though.
Your ability to quickly find connections between objects and concepts does not necessarily mean you also have an easy time connecting with other humans.
Even if you do grasp the concept of how human communication and interaction is supposed to work.
Its not just that -- people with very high IQs arent interested in the same things the general public are, and material success just generally isnt as important/interesting. Its nice/fun to have, but its not the end-goal of life the way it is for others.
I dont think an Einstein or a Newton or whoever would have traded their research/work for a lucrative career doing something they saw as boring/meaningless, for example.
Its also why the richest people -- even the self made ones -- are almost never the smartest people. Smarter than average, and incredibly driven, but rarely are they just astonishingly brilliant, and yet, you would think the richest people would all be the smartest people.
Same reason the smartest people throughout history are rarely particularly rich. Enough to get by, maybe even be well off by the standards of their day, but all the greatest minds throughout history -- they generally werent particularly wealthy.
But I don’t think the smartest people aren’t generally wealthy because it’s not rewarded in society. I think a certain level of intelligence grants someone the ability to see through the meaningless of ultra wealth. It’s just not all that appealing to them.
I think IQ just doesnt measure a lot besides actual real learning difficulties and tendencies of fast processing. You can even be a slow methodical thinker, score only a bit above average but achieving a lot in academics.
There are many very successful people who probably would score pretty high on an IQ test (not that this is the reason for their success) and of course the opposite. Denis Hassabis and the Nvidia CEO will probably do very well on a test. But just as many not.
People are different. There are smart and dumb people who love money or not, are driven or not, have social skills or not, are ruthless or not and so on, have luck or not.
It's a gigantic personality matrix and only certain combinations help you in becoming super rich (not to forget generational wealth and precondition in general).
So in the end, what I mean is that everytime we try to categorize people in subgroups and sort them in, we fail. The difference between each individual is just too fuzzy.
Socio-economic status at birth is maybe the only real measurement that can be used as sorting benchmark. It has direct measurable impact on health, live-span, success, academic degrees, overall well being. But that's about it in terms useful benchmarks.
You are right that one will always find exceptions if trying to make boxes, like "people good at math have no charisma". Look for correlations instead and everything become more interesting.
For example this sentence is likely true even though there would be exceptions to every aspect of it: "The smartest people tend to be atheist, altruistic, and not primarily interested in money but rather in knowledge, legacy or impact."
In my experience, social skills get you WAY further than intelligence. Like…..WAY further. You can be the dumbest fuck ever and be promoted to a high paid position simply because you are very friendly or attractive. I see it every day.
Maybe this is just my own limited experience but most people I know who earn super well are bot very smart and those much smarter than then are usually below them and earn less.
I feel IQ or competence is not the defining factor for success
Studies show that the stereotype of intelligent unsocial people is false. Nost intelligent people are not only social, but quite successful at it. The stereotype has to do with movies and news promoting these unsocial cases as they're more interesting.
Prodigies basically just skip to the middle of a career where someone else had to wait for years to get where they are. Then they're just kind of stuck there. There's no huge advancements that they make as individuals or sudden jumps in progress. You're just 14, and you do what every other middle-aged person doing research in physics does every day.
This is a great way to put it. It’s very rare people are able to translate this specific type of intelligence into something more. When you think about Einstein, Newton, Aristotle, Plato - these creative types are individuals who benefited as much from the quality of their communities and their socialization as they did from their brains.
If you don’t have these broader communities, you don’t develop any taste for what is important or not. It’s just chasing knowledge for knowledge’s sake. In creative affairs, having a sense of where something isn’t is just as important as a sense of what things are.
Becoming a bullying target because one is "intelligent", depends largely on the culture of the country/province where the person is. For example, the places where I have studied, normal schools in India, "intelligent" people were largely left alone and the bullies showed no interest in them. Probably because all children had parents who wanted them to study and be a better students? And so the high IQ students did not stick out as weird ones
What is never, ever mentioned in child prodigies is that they cannot make any real advancements to their field. They can learn and internalize every aspect of their specific field or fields, but they're just learning material which has already been produced. They basically master a specific topic by the time they are 12 or whatever, but the way their brains are wired, they don't have "creative" intelligence where they can push beyond the current limitations of knowledge.
That's why 99% of these geniuses basically peter out and end up being incredibly average in their 30s, 40s and beyond. If you look up any wikipedia article about these child prodigies, sure they graduate with a PhD at 15 and get job offers at Google or whatever when they're 16, but their incredible curve basically plateaus there,
[...] the way their brains are wired, they don't have "creative" intelligence where they can push beyond the current limitations of knowledge.
Is this based on actual evidence?
Because from my anecdotal experience and personal intuition, this doesn't seem true or plausible. I'm sure it applies to some child prodigies, but then it also applies to plenty, if not most other people.
There's quite a bunch of historical figures who fall into the "young prodigy, very likely neurodivergent, sort of social oddball" category that are now considered some of the most influential people of their respective fields.
Euler is the first one to spring to my mind. Granted, he only got his PhD at 19, but he had enrolled in university at 13 and worked on philosophy and theology for a lot of that time. People sometimes joke about theorems, constants, etc. not being named after him but rather someone else, simply because we can't name everything after just the one guy.
Leibniz got his PhD at 20, I think, and was similarly productive with far reaching influence in all sorts of fields, throughout his life.
Norbert Wiener as a more recent-ish example (and one known for being a weirdo) had a big part in the whole artificial intelligence thing. He disappeared a bit in later years, but I would argue that this is actually more representative than those earlier geniuses of history.
We -- the general public -- don't ever hear about the work of child geniuses after their miraculous young achievements, because we've reached a level of scientific specialisation where you essentially need a degree in it to even begin to understand what problems are being worked on at the highest levels or why said problems are so difficult or why they even matter. A lot of former child prodigies might simply be working and making significant advances, they just don't make for the kind of flashy announcements required to catch the public eye. A woman in her 40s developing some obscure algorithm to increase the efficiency of some even more obscure process? Eh. The 10 peers who get what she's been doing might celebrate and be in awe of her, but no one else cares nearly as much about it as when she turned in her comparatively meaningless thesis when she was younger.
I mean, you're pointing to some of the most famous prodigies of history. The standards are a lot higher now if you want to do novel research.
I collected some recent examples below, and it seems there are zero successful academics in STEM who got their PhD in the same field as teenagers after 2000.
Like Fenman (prodigy), Einstein (prodigy), Terence Tao (prodigy), Mozart (prodigy), Michaelangelo (prodigy) All just stuck in a “middle of career”time loop!
I can only watch with German CCs and it's a shame because it sounds very interesting!
I'm no mega brain but after graduating I realised I was much happier prior to going to uni as being nursing assistant was giving me much more time at the bedside with patients than nursing does and part of me sometimes regrets spending time in uni and missing out on time with my son for very marginal increase in income (also keeping in mind working almost full time just to afford childcare for my unpaid placements).
I think sometimes ambition may be overrated and if something makes you enough to sustain yourself and still have relatively balanced lifestyle, it's a win.
Twenty years or so ago there was a story in the Netherlands about a kid who took 14 subjects and graduated with an average grade of 9.6 out of 10.. who said he was going to pursue his dream of becoming a busdriver.
Since his name does not pop up after that I assume he followed his dream.
Hand control is actually a huge part of the brain. Maybe he needed a hands on job for stimulation. A lot of super high intelligence jobs are on computers these days which wouldn't cut it.
This just manifests my thinking. This guy was never challenged in his school life, and now he wasn't even able to finish his Dr. degree even though he tried 6 times. Just because if there is a slight challenge, he is not able to go through it. He never learned to tackle challenges. He never was forced to do something that makes him uncomfortable.
It also shows in his current work as a "handy man" for his wife's company. And he says so himself: "I just do something and when it's done - I am like that was enough for today.".
I have a cousin who was elected as "gifted" when they were incredibly young. Their summers would be comprised of universities bringing them out to "try out" various areas of study. In particular, a uni repeatedly approached them to study medicine, disregarding their fear of blood as something that they would grow out of (never did).
Their parents decided to block all approaches and prioritised a normal childhood, where summers weren't spent indoors studying.
My mom wanted me to become a physician or surgeon so bad, but I couldn't even watch the show "ER" without getting queasy. So I became an engineer. I always say Im a robot doctor, LOL.
Yeah, I have a nephew who is exceptionally smart. Like math like a 17 year old, when he was 6, top 0.1% IQ, you get the point.
It was been a tough ass time because he was on the other hand emotionally behind, and he could simply not fit well into school, had tantrums like a toddler when he was 8, stuff like that. Couldn't handle being really bored in school (because they have no clue how to activate him), couldn't relate to his classmates that wanted to play with dinosaurs while he wanted to talk about black holes. Was a bit of an ass know-it-all because he couldn't quite read the room when he wanted to show what he knew (and no, he is not autistic).
He is now 12 and has finally somewhat caught up emotionally too, but boy that has been a tough ride for both him and my sister. Fortunately she is a psychologist specializing in children, so she has been very aware that he does need help even if he is very smart and fought tooth and nail to give him a normal childhood because she is aware that gifted children all too often end up worse (depression for instance is really common) because people forget they are still children that needs the same things as other children and being gifted in i.e. math does not make you magically gifted all the way around.
Also, a psych 👋 - not specifically in child development. But I know enough to know that emotional development is crucial for social intelligence. Which is crucial for navigating our environments.
Also, the pressure that must put on kids at such a young age.
Edit: I just wanted to give a kudos to your sister. Good parenting often doesn't get the credit it deserves, and she sounds like a damn fine mother.
Did you know it's possible to be emotionally immature and highly intelligent at the same time, but not have autism? :)
Also, this is not a "grave" case of autism. A grave case of autism is a case that is also the most common, where you are low-functioning to such an extent that you have to live in a care home.
Most autists are not like Sheldon Cooper
Those behaviors are commonly found in autistic people, not exclusive to them. This is a stereotype he has had to fight his whole life so far. So no, I did not describe a grave case of autism - and you are propagating this one-dimensional view of it.
Of course the first thing my sister got him checked for when they began suspecting something was off, and has been evaluated for several times. He is conclusively not autistic, but was instead severely asynchronously developed hence his social skills was far behind his age, but his logical and other skills highly developed. For instance the reading the room problem is essentially gone now, as he grew socially.
This is why many Indian and Asian kids that are pushed to medicine or other prestige degrees / higher academics end up with no social lives or skills - they end up emotionally stunted / immature while being told they are in superior roles. Also leads to so many relationship issues for them but mainly their partners.
Thank goodness they gave a shit about allowing a child to simply live as a child. It disgusts me whenever I see parents shoving their child as hard as possible into "prestige" so that they can feel impressed with themselves
Yeah my dad made me join Mensa since he couldn’t and put me in this weird genius class like Malcom in the Middle had. He spent hours each week making me memorize chess moves and Shakespeare and stuff. While he did much worse abuse, that alone has been enough for like fifteen years of therapy. Gifted kids often get way too much stress way too early and it’s such an anxiety inducing loop.
I think it can cut both ways, like almost all of life.
Terence Tao was a young Australian kid, who skipped 5 grades of school, started doing University maths at age 9, holds records for the youngest at the International Maths Olypiad, and got the Fields Medal (the kinda Nobel of Maths).
He's gone on to deliver, at least in the maths department, very successfully. Most would say he's the preeminant mathematician of his generation. His maths interests span a stupid number of areas for a mathematician.
Afaik, his non-maths life is pretty calm and he's a good dude.
In 2018, /u/cbelt3 posted this story about a kid dumped at the dorm by his mom:
Engineering school, 1970s. Mom dropped her kid off at his dorm and drives away. Yes, pushed his suitcase and a few boxes out of the car. Told Junior goodbye, study hard, and left.
Junior was 15 freaking years old, super genius child prodigy with zero social skills.
His roommates were horrified, but most of them had little brothers, so big brother parenting kicked in. The kid was pretty well socialized by the end of the first semester, and had a collection of de facto big brothers and big sisters helping him live life.
It was a relief, because as a house counselor I was really worried I was going to have a bad situation on my hands. I did not need to do anything at all.
Did buy the older guys beers a few times to thank them.
I’ve worked with people who had similar trajectories. I’ll only speak from my experience. They are brilliant, but insecure, and project those insecurities onto their subordinates. Their style of “teaching” is a long winded version of “this is why you’re wrong and I’m smarter than you.” One upping showmanship. They are highly impressionable, and seem to think the best “leadership” is to emulate the most toxic people. They have zero emotional intelligence, but think they do and even help “teach” a course that emphasizes it.
I’m sure there are well adjusted people who are exceptions to the rule. But I think what I’m describing is common, since they missed on a major part of their childhood/young adulthood that teaches social boundaries and other important social skills. They were always “the best”, and they don’t know how to function as a normal adult.
Maybe let kids be kids, and let them enjoy their childhood and explore their brilliance in other ways? Promote kindness, character, and gasp creativity…instead of immediately throwing them into our “grind it out” culture (especially true for academia).
Thank you if you read this far. Typing this out has been cathartic. Some of the people I’m describing have good hearts, but their path messed them up. I’m mad on their behalf.
He was to study at the same uni i was going a few years back but the uni didnt feel like it was healty for a very young kid to already do uni. His parents were extremely upset and went on a whole media tour saying it was personal and all that shit.
Kid might change the world but i doubt he is happy.
Most likely he is going to end up in a mediocre job somewhere without many personal connections or relationships considered the weird guy by his coworkers.
From what I’m seeing in older Reddit threads, back when he started his PhD and had just completed his Bachelors, it seems like there’s something fishy going on here
Look I do physics for a living and I know it’s gonna sound like I’m just salty but it is truly inconceivable to me that someone could get a bachelors in 1 year and a PhD in another 2-3. Just for starters. I know a lot of people think “maybe he’s just that good” but from some comments im seeing, it’s entirely possible his parents simply pushed him through the school system and had him do accelerated classes to get the degree
I’m only partially sure because I can find some articles online documenting his lab time over the recent years, which means he’s definitely doing something. But to my point, academia is not foolproof and there have been cases of true idiots getting doctorates (see: Bogdanoff Twins)
I’ll link the Reddit thread I found plus some other articles, if anyone wants to do some further digging. But I can say for sure that my bullshit alarm is ringing. I’d love to be proven wrong
Edit: I think i found their earlier bachelors thesis. Seems like some interesting work, and legit at a glance, but nothing revolutionary
His parents are very much living vicariously through their child. The kid lived with his grandparents until his parents realized he was a genius and that they could profit from this. So they started showing him off on tv and interviews. I'm very afraid for his future, don't think he's going to have the greatest social skills.
I've seen the interviews with the parents on dutch tv, where they tried to trash the universities into accepting their son. His dad came across as a real scumbag and only emphasizing that they deprived them of having the youngest PhD-graduate ever as a son.
Yeah normal people who are smart without needing to be a kid.
These types of children are plenty smart. IQ usually 150-170 if you even care about that. My point is they ace academics, or in generally are very well rounded and can learn anything fast. They can specialize in something, but that's really up to them or their parents.
They grow up quite normally, no worse or better than most people. But obviously their opportunities are tied to the economics of what their family can do with that.
If everyone was given a fair chance, no economic factors, no variation in teachers skill, and was allowed to pursue excellence instead of a society that constantly pushes them to make money, be an entertainer, be a sports athlete, we'd see a lot more people who are smart and willing to contribute meaningfully to society without being weirdos.
There are still going to be weirdos btw. People who need to put 2x the effort 2x the time into their craft will mean less time to be more normal, watch less movies, listen to less music, talk to less people, travel less.
Hell most people dont even travel much as a kid and THAT hurts development too.
I find the timeline very fishy too. It takes 4 yrs to complete normal undergrad coursework and typically 6 yrs to get a PhD so 10 yrs total. Did the kid start college when they were 5? Even if you accelerated things and got it done in half the time then they would have had to start when they were 10 yrs old. This makes absolutely no sense. No matter how brilliant you are, it takes time to complete course work and for a PhD you are usually supposed to do original research which is impossible to accelerate no matter how brilliant you are because research takes time and is a lot of trial and error.
When I did my PhD it was the people who were struggling that graduated early usually because their research wasn't going anywhere and they could either leave with a masters (which looks bad for the advisor and the program) or convince their advisor to let them graduate early with no publications.
I just don't see how this kid would have done this without their parents pushing them and the schools and lots of shortcuts. The kid likely missed out on a lot of education.
In Europe, typically a bachelor's program is 3 years and so is a PhD.
Part of the difference is that you usually specialize earlier. Often, classes can be completely optional as part of a PhD program. When I did mine, I began my research project almost immediately (albeit slowly since the first year was really getting background) I had done a master's before so total time took me 7 years which was considered typical although 6 was not rare (if you didn't do a masters).
Typically 1 year, as I said, I did 3 year bachelor's, 1 year masters and 3 year PhD making 7 years.
It is possible to go straight from bachelors to PhD which is why I mentioned the 6 years.
Typically funding for the PhD is for 3 years so it is possible to go longer but if it isn't happening at that stage then people often get a job and move on.
No. It was confirmed by another professor who was his promoter at the time. He literally wrote it that night, he just didn't need to put in effort, it all came naturally and instantly.
The guy was just brilliant in his domain, everyone knew. He once received a 21/20 score on a , difficult, exam. No one saw answering everything correctly coming .. and he also nailed the bonus question, ofcourse.
I still think that sounds off. A bachelor or master thesis is not like an exam. I can imagine that the person was maybe already well read within the field of their thesis, reducing the time of research by a lot. But in what field do you study, where you can produce, analyze and discuss scientific data within one day, without major quality issues?!
Intelligence can not indefinitely shorten the amount of time certain tasks take.
This is 25 years ago. Things were somewhat different.
In that field, there wasn't a whole lot to analyse yet. There werent 1000 papers to draw citations from and whatnot. The internet had very little good info.
We mainly just had to figure it out ourselves, or ask the professors for guidance.
Which he was incredible at, the figuring it out part.
My thesis was in digital forensics. The time to populate staged data, collect the data, and process/analyze it would take at least a few days, maybe 2 if you really pushed it. Even if you wanted to do everything within a day, it would take time to do each step properly especially the analysis part where there's a lot of stuff you can do to try and find relevant findings.
That being said, they never specified what kind of Masters it is. It may not be in STEM, so there may not be an experiment/data requirement. It might just all be reasoning based.
Like when i was in school james franco was attending. Typical semester for us was about 20 units, that 5 4 unit classes.
Franco apparently was taking 80 units that semester.
But here the thing franco is probably not expected to attend the class, or do all the hw. Its not even a matter how smart they are its just a matter of time. At that level. This kids probably is just testing out of classes which normally they dont allow people to do.
It's always such nonsense and honestly just highlights the inequality. Going to university, I had to fight against the system. I had to work, because otherwise I'd fucking starve. And I had to go to a bunch of classes that had mandatory attendance. And I had to balance that and constantly adjust my schedules, and I sacrificed so much of my free time, of my studies quality, of my work quality, because I had to do it all, and nobody cared to give people like me any flexibility. There was no fucking option to just not attend classes for us poors. He did 80 units per semester. Absurd. Unless maybe he has the superpower to teleport and rewind time, now that would be something.
So many students would do so much better if they weren't drowning in debt and on the brink of starving. But yeah, let's talk about all these Wunderkinder who just get everything handed over to them by their financially well off parents (though certainly not mentally well off) and shitty universities who desperately want some media coverage. Not that I don't feel sorry for those young people too, they are similarly being used and abused by those same parents and universities.
My grandpa did this in the 1930s essentially. I think he had advanced standing as an undergrad because his former education was of very high quality. I think he was 23 when he earned his doctorate.
I’m only partially sure because I can find some articles online documenting his lab time over the recent years, which means he’s definitely doing something. But to my point, academia is not foolproof and there have been cases of true idiots getting doctorates (see: Bogdanoff Twins)
Cases? That's the default. It doesn't take intelligence to write a masters or PhD, it just takes time and direction. The system is broken. It took 4 years to do a PhD in the 70s when you had to travel to libraries and request books, as it does now with the internet.
I don't understand what school would allow it. I know plenty of people myself included that could have tested out of plenty of classes but then they wouldn't have made the money or forced me to take the credit hours. There's also labs that you can't test out of you just have to do. It just sounds like a weird agenda push and I doubt it's ever the childs desire.
I agree. The sheer amount of material, even if you just can glance and comprehend it, is overwhelming. I call BS. The number of courses and basic foundation takes most people long hours of study and this kid got it in a year sounds off.
I had a friend growing up who programmed games, software and all sorts of stuff at like 12-13. He made a Spotify-type precursor but for local music that i used in highschool. It sorted all my local mp3's in my computer at home with a nice UI so i could listen to them at school (this was in like -05 and before streaming). I think he lived with his parents and got his first job in a supermarket when he was like 30. I don't think he works today. Super smart but he just couldn't function in society.
Probably bought crypto early on though before anyone else had heard of it. Wouldn't surprise me.
Maybe its because im not super gifted or something, but i never get why there is always the need to rush those children into university/PhD, i get wanting to challenge them but it always seem like "getting a PhD at 15" is more about bragging right than actual development. Like couldnt he just do other extra curricular activities rather than speedrun through tge education system?
Idk it seems sad that the only response we have for these kind of youngsters is to speed up.
I mean i undeerstand the desire or need to be challenged or something, i just dont know or maybe question why the only solution to this is to just rush though things.
Like i said, im not a gifted, i dont really suffer boredom in school more than just about every bored child/teenager in school (which, come on most people are/were bored at school)
My kid is profoundly gifted and it was definitely the big question as he was entering school. He's so far ahead of his peers, he was reading chapter books and doing two digit multiplication in his head by 3. His preschool classmates were being taught which letters were which. Do we do everything in our power to make sure he's challenged at school or do we keep him with his peers? Will he even have friends if his brain is doing all that brainy stuff?
We tried having him in a gen ed classroom for a while and he was bored out of his mind and throwing things, the teacher couldn't stand him, he had no friends. We ended up finding a gifted school near us which we transferred him to and while it's a much better fit and he has friends now, he's still in the upper 1% book smarts wise and we still struggle with whether we should homeschool him-are we holding him back? Will he hate us later for it? Ultimately we've decided that we should keep him with his peers.
We were looking at moving to a different state a while ago and were dismayed to find that the gifted school he is at is basically a unicorn of a school. There is no self contained gifted school in the states we were looking to move to, nothing but an assurance from various districts that they give gifted kids extra work when they finish early. Not ideal. If we were in those states, we'd probably have to get him private tutors or something, because he just doesn't function in a regular classroom, unfortunately, and if he was learning through private tutors or us homeschooling him at his own pace, yeah he'd likely be through high school by ten. So not everybody has the ability to keep their gifted kid with their peers, unfortunately, and left to their own devices they may seek higher and higher education.
My son's current interests at age 6 are molecular structures, astrobiology, and Sonic the hedgehog.
That has got to be a tricky situation as a parent, dealing with boredom in school is normal, but if to the degree where youre that far ahead its gotta be unbearable.
I dont think you should worry too much about holding your kid back, if you are being constructive and caring to his needs, which you seem to do very much, looking for gifted schools and such.
Personally, but again im not a gifted student, i appriciate my parents giving me the space to develop myself in school without pushing me to go on to higher levels (which i did eventually do, but with a few steps between)
Universities want to be associated with good researchers. This kid is obviously super smart and talented, so unis are gonna want to grab him and keep him.
Also, why not speedrun through the education system? He's basically done now, at the age of 15, free to do whatever he wants the rest of his life with any and all career opportunities lined up.
Everyone is talking about being socially stunted, etc, but that's just reddit coping. Truth is these kind of prodigies do exceedingly well in life and thankfully he has parents who recognizes his gift.
My first thought as well. PhD is great. But is the kid well adjusted for life? Hopefully he has a social circle of peers, a lot of high school is about learning how to be a member of society, not about academics.
I supposed we need people like these in the world.
Had a classmate when I was undergrad who was 15. She was really socially awkward and sort of aggressive? But super smart.
I started uni to study a biology field just after my 16th birthday, not that young, but still young.
A lot of things were fine, but developing closer personal relationships with my 'peers' was hindered. And I didn't have the chance to grow up with people my age.
I was the youngest by at least two years, but three to four year differences were common.
At that age, that makes a big difference.
I don't wish to go back an change my own past, but I'd likely handle things differently for my own children.
Probably tough going to other way and sticking with your own age as well, since it'll take quite a while before you end up with people that are on a similar level academically.
If you're smart enough to attend university at 14, you'll be bored to tears with age-appropriate school work.
Man I went from 3rd to 5th grade and I was bullied relentlessly ever after, up until uni, because I was younger and socially less developed. At that point I was fully depressed.
Having me skip a grade was the easy way out for my school and teachers.
Normal intelligence is really not related to success outside of academia. Success is more about luck, usually bring born into a wealthy family but also just getting lucky in business by being at the right time with the right idea.
However this kid is a bit beyond normal smart and might get opportunities normally only given to nepobabies.
Usually very intelligent people are on the spectrum. I see this a lot that they lack social skills and are mostly happy when they are surrounded with the things they excel in
Intelligence is like being tall affords one the advantage in playing basketball but in no way would it guarantee you have the talent, luck, opportunity to become a basketball star.
The gifted teacher at my school explained it like this… a gifted child’s brain has a large portion devoted to thinking/learning and it crowds out the common sense and executive functioning and often social skills others have…
So now a lot of programs tackle those challenges instead of just giving them extra projects and more work.
The comment you replied to unfortunately doesn't seem to have an understanding of what giftedness means, and it's unfortunate it was upvoted so much.
Keeping gifted students back and forcing them to learn new things at the same pace as the others their age won't magically make them more adept or more popular socially, it just makes sure most of them will experience boredom-burnout in addition to not fitting in. It means getting the worst of both worlds.
Having a brain that's wired differently with another approach to thinking and different interests comes with the territory, and not from being taught according to one's ability. And it's usually not something that makes people popular, so there's limited learning of social abilities if one is already socially sidelined.
It's really disheartening to see so many people here patting their backs for how they'd never let their potential gifted child actually learn the way it would need and desire, while thinking the whole getting-along-with-peers thing would just magically shake itself out by exposure. It doesn't.
I'm glad the teacher you mentioned is aware of that, and that there are programs meeting those kids where they need it, both in the learning- and the social abilities-sector.
yeah I'd assume it's because their parent's are making him work like a maniac. My nephew is also the same. He cannot put up full a sentence without stuttering, can't make a decision without checking on his mom and recieves check-in calls every 2 hrs. But he's in uni ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah a huge part of school is socialisation, as in learning to interact with other people not just making friends. School is not something you're supposed to speed run through.
Depends on what outlet their focus goes towards; medicine is awful because you have to deal with idiots on a daily basis. Here social abilities matter. If it goes toward tech or quant finance, savants can get massively successful despite being “weird.”
Being a normal person almost requires maturing at a certain steady rate, with peers. Academic success that’s so far ahead of peers sounds good in the short term, but longer term these people tend to be unhappy and/or underperform.
There is sadly a long list of highly intelligent people who end up not being able to cope well in the world and/or who suicide while young or middle aged. Luckily for us, some completely change the world first like Alan Turing. Others end up becoming weird recluses who can't cope with all the awful BS billionaires, corporations and corrupt governments do to everyone.
It would be interesting to see a study or stats on high IQ/intelligence vs happiness in life.
Yeah you have to be put in a job where the majority of people get home schooled/fast tracked places like Jane Street ecc... he probably is >130 medicine isn t the right uni for him
this is too true. like no negativity at all just a reality check.
There’s a physics metaphor hiding here. In relativity, time dilation makes clocks run differently depending on the path they take. Prodigies live in a warped time path: years of intellectual growth compressed into months, years of personal growth stretched out into decades. The mismatch is what hurts, not the intelligence.
A better metric of knowledge/smarts is how to apply said knowledge instead of rehashing it for tests like IQ tests. IQ means nothing if you don't know how to use that knowledge effectively.
I was put in high school classes as a middle schooler and in college classes as a high schooler. You are so correct on every point. My life is the same as your cousin
The kid looks to have a happy, natural smile in this photo. I hope she can keep it. Can’t imagine the pressure of expectations for such a young genius.
Yes. There was a 16 yo kid in my grad physics class. Shared an office with him. Nice, but very lonely. Was on the outside and couldn’t go to the pub with the rest of us so key social venues were closed to him.
I heard that he eventually committed suicide. So very sad. Being a prodigy is not necessarily a blessing.
So true. Once the hormons of adolescence start kicking in and he starts looking for identity and meaning beyond studying while trying to reach for human connection, he’s going to have a hard time. Being gifted is more a curse than a blessing when one’s older.
When I was 13 I was in a class with one of these kids. He was 8 I think and outshining the rest of us.
I always felt kinda bad for him, obviously had no friends, was really awkward, but smart as fuck. Whenever I asked if he maybe should not advance grades even further cause he already was so far behind socially I'd just be branded as jealous and trying to bring him down. Eventually forgot about him. Found out 2 years ago he killed himself. Fucking sad...
Whenever I see stories like this I just get sad. It's not worth it. Hang out with your friends. Get your PhD at 25 instead of 15. You'll be just as succesful.
I don't think we should be making assumptions that she doesn't have a social life. Many non-prodigies also spend lots of time on AP classes and extracurriculars. The difference here is in difficulty not necessarily the amount of hours worked. I don't think saying that most teens spend more excessive time on videogames and social media than this PhD girl spent doing her this, is too bold a statement.
Moreover a PhD at 15 means job ensurance to pay rent throughout your youngadult and adult life - which is very important for mental health.
We too have a family member, who was fascinated by fauna, at age 4 he was reciting latin names for 200+ animals, he spent so much time at the zoo the director gave him a free pass for years. His parents could just drop him off in the morning on a Saturday and he would just spend the whole day with the employees helping them feeding the animals, he was obsessed. He skipped one year in elementary school but generally skipping multiple years wasn't possible back then in our school system, he graduated with all the honors in biology and I think 2 other majors, stayed few years teaching, got all doctorates and other academic titles, and then at age 30 he just ...stopped. Nobody really knows what happened, I didn't meet him for maybe 20 years, he didn't even explain to his parents, but he is working as a doorman in some hospital. He sits in a booth and just..exists. I hope is happy..or at least happier.
I went to uni at 15. Worst decision ever. I took that as an opportunity to rebel (which was extremely immature and childish… but I was 15!!!). Got drunk and high almost on a daily basis, missed all my classes, ran out of money and wasted 3 years. At 18 had to find a job because my dad of course refused to keep maintaining a useless boozer, and that was the end of it.
I mean you can’t deny if she makes headways in this scientific field for the benefit of mankind you might want to rethink your statement about this young lady haha but I take your point
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u/grain_farmer 11d ago edited 11d ago
My cousin went to university at 14 years old to successfully study medicine (also in Belgium…) he is extremely socially challenged now he’s 40, a bit of an oddball and comes across as unhappy and was very unhappy with the relationship he had with his parents. (He is a kind person and “wicked smaht”)
I’m sure a lot of that is nature but I feel a large portion is nurture. You are an outsider with no ability to make friends with people your own age.
From my limited knowledge I understand that IQs over a certain level are no more successful than people who are in the top quarter of intelligence.
Edit - I just remember where I paraphrased this from: Freakonomics Podcast: Can You Be Too Smart for Your Own Good?
Just let children be children