<p>We also let S choose his own reading. It consisted of math, science, sci-fi and fantasy fiction. The one school assignment I remember him liking was The Odyssey, followed by Dante’s Inferno. By and large, however, being told that a particular piece of fiction was a classic tended to be a turn-off.</p>
<p>bogi, there are many, many people on this forum who have sons like yours and regrets like yours… I am optimistic that these kids will be better off for working through these issues, and frankly, it seems like it’s the parents who worry more than the kids. The profile of smart – dare I say brilliant – boys with passionate intellectual interests who nonetheless underachieve in high school is a common one, and so there is no doubt that your S will end up at a college where he will find comrades in arms!</p>
<p>Blossom–Aaahhh, the words of wisdom from someone who has “been there and done that”. I think that I am relaxed but thank you for putting things into perspective. Not sure how I will stay composed when I am just beginning to start the college process for the 1st of my 4 kids. But I’ll try.</p>
<p>My son is a voracious reader…Do Problem Solving Strategies, IMO Compendium count as literature? It certainly is tough to get him to read fiction, but I am always trying. Thanks.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for your words of encouragement and suggestions. </p>
<p>Blossom - He is very active in math club, computer science team and physics team…very, very lopsided and that is absolutely okay with us. He has met some great kids and we’re very thankful for that.</p>
<p>Finearts - My son does not care for tv or movies, but those are great suggestions. Do you know of any movies in Latin?</p>
<p>No, but he could read Winnie Ille Pooh (aka Winnie the Pooh). :)</p>
<p>Does he like to read books about math such as by Sir Roger Penrose, Richard Hofstadter, Simon Singh, Eli Maor, and others?</p>
<p>If you don’t mind the slightly risque nature (but then again, we are talking Rome and orgies)…rent the Masterpiece Theatre “I, Claudius” series or get it from the library. I was a complete Latin/math nerd in HS but that really woke me up to the possibilities outside of Virgil (Catullus has some pretty racy stuff) …Does anyone else remember this series?! We had to cover D’s eyes/ears a couple of times but it was a big hit with the family. </p>
<p>And…for MATH/Science series…try Nova, Fractals: Hunting the Hidden Dimension….my math/artsyson absolutely loved this…there was one on string theory that motivated him to register for IB Physics over AP because the teacher offered to include a section on this.</p>
<p>Or he could read Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe. S read it in 6th grade and thought that string theory was the way to go. By the time he got to college, however, he’d changed his mind.</p>
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I think it gets much easier after the first one. At least you understand how the system works by then.</p>
<p>Marite - He’s read a couple of those authors, but please keep the titles/authors coming…it is very helpful.</p>
<p>Finearts - Don’t know about the risque part…he is easily embarrassed, maybe we’ll have to screen it first. Thank you for the NOVA suggestion.</p>
<p>My son loved the Elegant Universe. Read it many years ago, so he’d probably enjoy it a lot more now. Thanks for reminding me.</p>
<p>I watched I Claudius when I was in college. The book (by Robert Graves) is also very good. Did Mel Brooks have the Romans speaking Latin in the movie he did about the life of Christ? My mathy guy reads a lot of sci fi and fantasy, but he also read a lot on line. (Computer news sort of stuff, I think!) A math book he liked very much was this one: [Amazon.com:</a> The Book of Numbers (9780387979939): John H. Conway, Richard Guy: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Book-Numbers-John-H-Conway/dp/038797993X]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Book-Numbers-John-H-Conway/dp/038797993X)</p>
<p>bogibogi,
Is your S involved in USACO? Everyone assumed my S would attend MIT – and he did get in with a 3.76 UW/4.56 W (school doesn’t rank, but he was just outside the top 10%) – but he’s a very happy math major at UChicago. He was ALL math/CS, all the time, until junior year when he finally got to social science/English classes which engaged him. This new interest in the humanities (combined with Chicago’s top math) were a major reason he picked it. His rationale was that UG was the time to expand his horizons, esp. since he knows what he wants to do long-term. That is not to say he doesn’t sometimes has very fond feelings towards MIT…</p>
<p>I will also say that while S accumulated a lot of math/science awards, etc., what every college interviewer wanted to discuss with him was his time on the newspaper staff. It clearly didn’t fit the stereotypical math student profile. He has always been a news hound and the journalism (and his mom’s genes) stemmed from that. He found a niche that satified his interests in writing plus the techie side. That interest has continued to expand in other cool ways while in college. </p>
<p>Other good options to consider: Harvey Mudd, CMU, UMich, Cornell, Caltech, Stanford, UMD, UC Berkeley…</p>
<p>My S was also young for grade and we were not crazy about sending him off to college early. Frankly, his HS offered really deep electives that worked for him. We know of folks who were accepted to MIT after junior year of HS, and maturity is a HUGE issue for admissions in making those decisions.</p>
<p>Feel free to PM me…</p>
<p>bogibogi,</p>
<p>You may have been responding tongue-in-cheek when you said you may pre-screen “I Claudius” because your son embarrasses easily, in which case you can ignore this comment. But, if you were even half serious, I would like to gently suggest you carefully think about whether or not your young-for-his-grade son will be ready for some of the social aspects of modern American university life a mere 18 months from now.</p>
<p>“I Claudius” contains some risque themes, but there is not a lot of explicit material. College dorm life can be downright explicit. </p>
<p>I sympathize with your frustration and sadness at having to witness your son be unhappy with his high school life. I feel very fortunate that high school ending up working out for my son, and even though he had met all requirements for graduation by 11th grade, he was happy to stay and finish hs with his friends. I can easily imagine that in a different time and place, we would have sent him off to college earlier. As it worked out, he has benefited from the extra maturity, not only because it made it easier to deal with the social pressures of college life, but because the added year of working with adults in a variety of settings made him confident enough to search out research opportunities and job prospects as a brand-new freshman.</p>
<p>I think the mantra “there is more to college life than academics” is way overdone on CC, but it is true that maturity and self-confidence can help a lot with the academics, insofar as dealing one-on-one with faculty and graduate students is concerned.</p>
<p>CountingDown - Yes, my son is heavily involved in USACO and he loves it. It would be great if he discovers a humanities class which sparks his interest, but I won’t be holding my breath. Thanks for sharing and for being available.</p>
<p>midmo - My son is 14 and not allowed to watch rated R movies. Call me a prude, but that is just how it is in our house. I have never seen “I Claudius”, but it sounded like Finearts was warning me about the content. I am well aware that he may not be ready for the social aspects of college. He has always been socially awkward and I’m not sure if that will turn around any time soon. Not sure how the process works, but we were thinking that if he got accepted to college, we would defer enrollment for as long as possible. I’m glad that things worked out so well for your son, but do you have any suggestions for me? His intellect has always far exceeded his maturity, but we can’t keep him at home forever. We have accepted the fact that it will never be a perfect situation for him.</p>
<p>bogibogi
When the time comes, you could try looking for a nice gap year program that keeps him with youngish kids. If he wants to get away, one of the 13th year abroad programs from Youth For Understanding might be nice. These programs are more well supervised and less of a stretch than a typical gap year program for a kid who is young or seems a bit young for his age. You go overseas, but you live with a host family and - here is the good part - for most of the countries, you are in year 13 of high school. You are able to take interesting classes and interact/socialize with high school age students. [Youth</a> For Understanding USA - Countries](<a href=“http://yfuusa.org/american-students/countries.php]Youth”>Youth For Understanding USA)</p>
<p>bogibogi, rest assured my kids did not watch R-rated movies at 14, either. I’m not criticizing you for that. I don’t know how ‘I Claudius’ would be rated if it were a feature-length movie released to theaters. I think more likely PG-13 than R, but what do I know? At any rate, my point was that he will be exposed to more than the screen version of Caligula at college, so it is something to keep in mind. For good or for ill, a lot of college freshman males are already 19 before they get to college, thanks to states like mine with ridiculous minimum age for starting kindergarten, combined with a penchant for holding back small 5 yr old boys so they can be more competitive athletes. There may be significant differences in interests and activities between 16 yo and 19 yo guys.</p>
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<p>The circumstances with my son would be difficult to reproduce, sorry. He lucked into a group of friends with similar interests and talents when we removed him from public schools for the middle and junior high years. By the time he returned to public high school he had regained his enthusiasm for school and had discovered he was very capable of making a lot of friends and participating in group social events–he was a different child than he had been by the end of 5th grade in a no-track/no-challenge elem. school (there was a one day per week pull-out gifted program and it helped just a little bit). Big factors for him in high school: lots of AP (well taught), a district-wide program sponsored by NASA (one of a kind) and definitely not least, a public flagship university down the street at which he took a bunch of courses while in high school.</p>
<p>It won’t help your son, I’m afraid, but at the high school level, my son had a very broad range of academic interests. He was very good at math but not at the level you are talking about; he took several post-calc math courses at the university. However, he also took Greek, Latin and Russian (at the Univ,), enjoyed his AP English and history/govt. courses and thought the AP science courses were reasonably well-taught. He really spent a huge amount of time on various math, engineering and science competitions and various quiz bowl teams and helped run the NASA-like program for the school district. He kept busy and made a lot of friends. If he had only had hs course work for activities, he would have been miserable.</p>
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<p>Each family has to find the best compromise for long-term happiness and success. I do think it is good to keep the long term in mind. As I’m sure you do!</p>
<p>Bogi, our philosophy was that anything that involved the written word counted as reading- regardless of the language or the content. Your son doesn’t need to love literature to become an avid reader. If it’s been a while, you may want to leave an interesting biography hanging around the kitchen to see if it sparks his interest. Or even something like “The Right Stuff” by Tom Wolfe about the early years of the Space program. It’s a fun read, breezy style, but the story behind the astronauts is a fascinating one. Good news is that once you find a book your son loved (of any genre) you can go onto Amazon and see what other people who loved that book also recommend. Math people have many, many interests outside of math but I can tell you from experience that the things they love may not be obvious unless you are one of them.</p>
<p>Some kids with profiles like your son’s get into military history in a big way- particularly codes and that kind of subterfuge. There are a couple of books about the Navajo’s participation in WW2 that your son might really enjoy-- he won’t even know it’s “history” that he’s reading, the story is fascinating. </p>
<p>Did he ever show an interest in chess? </p>
<p>Finally, although these books don’t get too deep into the Math (which the math folks find frustrating) I can recommend Michael Lewis’ “Moneyball” (or in fact, any of his books) which is the story of how statistics transformed the way baseball teams are managed. Also check out Steven Dubner’s “Freakonomics” which virtually every kid on my son’s hall at MIT got for Christmas the year it was published. </p>
<p>If I were you (and I realize I’m not) I would not expend a whole lot of energy worrying about your son’s maturity. Plenty of kids go off to college who aren’t ready; plenty of kids who are very immature Sophomore year end up ready by senior year; you are waaaay too early in the process to be able to make any reasonable predictions.</p>
<p>I knew three things for sure when my son left for college:</p>
<p>1- He would starve because he would lose his meal card, wouldn’t know where to find an ATM to get cash to buy food, would have locked his credit card in his room and would have lost his key so he couldn’t charge a meal. All by October.</p>
<p>2- He would smell- something awful- because he’d forget to change his clothes, shower, or do laundry, or all three.</p>
<p>3- He would flunk out for any number of reasons, most having to do with sleeping through class, showing up for exams without a pen, forgetting which building his lab met in and instead of asking someone, would head back to the dorm to take a nap.</p>
<p>I’m sure each of these things happened at least once or twice (although he didn’t flunk out.) But in college, unlike at home, since Mom is not around to wake you, cook for you, put fruit in the refrigerator, hand you a sandwich when you’re hungry, or fold your laundry, you screw up once or twice in each of these critical areas and eventually, you get it right. You have hall-mates, some of whom are much more competent than you in some areas, and some who are less. You all pitch in and stuff gets done- you borrow shampoo when you forget to buy, and you lend your roommate $10 when he loses his ATM card (again.)</p>
<p>So the social and practical immaturity that you observe now is temporary. Enjoy him, he sounds like lots of fun!!!</p>
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<p>That’s ours, too. I believe that hoagiesgifted.org has lists of books of interest to gifted students with varied interests. You might check out that website.</p>
<p>My S went off to college after junior year at 17; but yours would be 15? 16? It might make a difference in terms of maturity and social adjustment. I laughed at Blossom’s list. My kid was on a meal plan. Unless he lost his ID card, he would not starve (also there are plenty of restaurants nearby). He swore he did his laundry (including bedsheets!) every ten days, took a shower every day. He went to class regularly (unlike some of his roommates). To my surprise, he took a number of humanities/social science electives, above and beyond the Gen Ed requirements. He did not do very well in them, but he said he enjoyed the courses. It made me happy because I could hold real conversations with him rather than passively listening when he talked math.</p>
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<p>bogibogi has expressed an interest in (or curiosity about) early hs graduation, i.e., finishing after the coming year. If he decides to go with early graduation, and he wants to apply early to MIT or elsewhere, the application procedure will begin six months from now or sooner. I disagree that this is waaaaay too early to give thoughtful consideration to the question of whether or not he is ready for living away at college and flourishing there.</p>
<p>I know a lot of CCers went off to college at a relatively young age, and some of the children of posters also went off to college early and have done extremely well. It may well be a good option for boribori’s son; I wouldn’t presume to know either way. However, it is my observation that college freshmen are getting older due to changes in K-12 education philosophy, and that combined with elimination of the ‘in loco parentis’ aspect of dorm life supervision might warrant a bit of thought.</p>
<p>It is a miserable experience to watch your child be unhappy–I was there for several years before throwing in the towel and paying for an independent school for my oldest. But just as a general statement, not one directed to boribori, trading one unhappy situation for another is not progress. Speaking only as a parent who is not yet done with the child-rearing adventure, I think caution is always advisable.</p>