<p>Eventhough I don't believe in "Born Smart", I think this might be the closest to what people on CC call "Born Smart". Even in this case the child self taught himself courses to gain the knowledge but still what he did at the age of 3 was indeed SMART.</p>
<p>For</a> 12-year old astrophysics prodigy, the sky’s the limit - Yahoo! News</p>
<p>I think that that would fall under the label of truly prodigious, vs. just “smart”. Most people are nowhere near that level of intelligence–even “smart” people, though they can work very hard, are going to be in the 125 - 150 IQ range which is just a different ballgame entirely, and five more points up or down could make the difference between a score that gets you in, and one that doesn’t. Whether that comes from good habits or good nutrition or whatever I have no idea, but I don’t think that the “born smart” debates are about curiosities like this one. That’s like being 7 feet 11 inches tall (with no known genetic defect to account for it). That’s not tall, that’s a freak of nature. In a good way. :)</p>
<p>I think “smartness” is a combo of nature and nurture.</p>
<p>^^^: I always thought ‘nurturing’ is what makes the people smart because I can’t bear the thought that a child can be born dumb (unless disable). The above case is what I would acknowledge as being born smart. If he can reason at age 3 like that then he is indeed different.</p>
<p>As much as you do not want to believe it, not everyone is born with the same cognitive/intellectual potential. We are not all equal blank slates when born, waiting to be molded into the next Stephen Hawking or Beethoven.</p>
<p>I got scared when my DD was 18 months old, she was so smart. It took a lot of effort to tone her down to being just a hard worker. LOL!</p>
<p>I think that intelligence is largely inherited. I see it in my own two sons. My older son is a sophomore at a California State University majoring in Geology. He works very hard to get Bs in his Calculus and Calculus based Physics courses required for his major. My younger son is a senior in high school and a total slacker but has a lot more natural ability than my older son. He got much higher SAT scores but is going to community college in the Fall due to his low GPA. </p>
<p>Last Sunday at around 5:00 PM, I found my younger son playing a computer game when he was supposed to be studying for his AP Physics exam and I became enraged. I grabbed the college level Physics text, found 8 double starred problems meaning that they are exceptionally difficult for even the best students, sat him down and told him he was not to get up until he had done all the problems. I figured he might get half of them done by midnight. He comes to me at 6:15PM and hands me the eight problems, all solved correctly. </p>
<p>My sons are less than two years apart in age so they had essentially the same nurture. As siblings they are genetically similar but different enough that one is simply above average in intelligence and the other is way way above average in intelligence. My younger son had a much larger head when he was born than my older son. As a child he was teased for having such a disproportionately large head. There is a theory that intelligence is positively correlated with brain size and brain size is is positively correlated with head size. While my two sons are just anecdotal evidence of that, it has given me reason to think there might be something to that theory.</p>
<p>DD scared me again today. I TOLD HER that she would not be accepted to Stanford. Ooops, she was accepted. I hate being proven wrong by a kid! But, I am just as proud.</p>
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I believe that theory (known as “The Peanuts Theory”) has been de-bunked. Although Charlie was the star of the strip, it ends up Linus was the smart one. Poor ol’ Charlie Brown’s big head held a brain that was just average in intelligence. ;)</p>
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<p>But your example actually contradict your stance. If it’s inherited then there is a greater chance either both of your sons are above average or not. There are more chances that there nurturing is different because nurturing depends on many things. School environment, house environment. Having an elder child to a younger sibling actually changes nurturing environment to a large extent.</p>
<p>There have been lots of studies about the first child, the only child, the second child, the middle child. Because all these affect nurturing.</p>
<p>So your example actually show that “SMARTNESS” is nurtured and not born except in the case of that documented 3 year old boy.</p>
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<p>Congratulations to your DD! She is “SMART” because you have provided a very good nurturing. </p>
<p>You get scared so often because you might not had the similar nurturing. See everything is relative and not absolute.</p>
<p>** From the Big Bang Theory characterization
Sheldon’s mom is scare of Sheldon
while
Leanord is scare of his mother </p>
<p>While both are described as insanely SMART (Not normal SMART) by Penny.
**</p>
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People are born with all kinds of variations. You should hear the stories a pathologist or some other medical professionals (or the Guinness book of world records) can tell. This is true with the brain as well - all kinds of variations and it’s not a simple thing to quantify as in an IQ test - there are some people who are terrible at math yet are unbelievable artists, who excel in one area but not another and not through lack of trying. There are some who will likely never get above a particular ‘level’ regardless of how hard they try and others who excel in performance despite putting little effort into it. Like it or not these variations exist but of course it’s only one factor in how ‘smart’ the kid ends up being.</p>
<p>[Non</a> identical and identical twin studies on IQ](<a href=“http://www.molwick.com/en/intelligence/055-twins-brothers.html]Non”>Non-identical and identical twin studies on IQ)</p>
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