I think you make a fair point in that family dynamics/education level/awareness/expectations/understanding of gifted issues play a large part in whether or not a young gifted student attends full time 4 year university early or not.
It was clear that in the case of the young Cornell student, the family was very on top of everything including testing, education and an early awareness of the level of giftedness. In addition, the father is a graduate of Cornell, and the grandfather teaches there, so the parents were very familiar with the school and presumably the admin. They worked with the admin in setting up a support system for their young son. That seems to be a very wise thing to do.
Other families with highly or profoundly gifted kids are simply not at that level of awareness and advocacy, and there are families who are aware, but still choose a different path, again, based on a variety of factors.
As to what happens to child prodigies who attend college radically early, well, I think the answers are as varied as the human race. One of my favorite historical figures who fits this category is Benjamin Rush, who graduated from what is now Princeton Univ. at the age of 14-a different era, I realize, but an inspiration to me, nonetheless.
Purely anecdotal, but I’m still in touch with several former CCers that I know from back in our mid teens. Most went to college very early. Not one is more than a year or 2 ahead of me now in schooling because they all had to take time off for mental health issues.
I just don’t think putting a kid through a 4 year college when they’re 14 is a good decision. Mental maturity is not always up to mental age/ intellectual abilities.
Probably easier because people lived in much smaller communities where it wouldn’t have been possible to age-segregate children and young adults as strictly as we do. I suspect that the kind of individualized upbringing that seems necessary for super-gifted kids would have happened more easily then than it does now.
@SculptorDad, I would not allow a 12-year-old, no matter how gifted, to go without a recommended immunization. But maybe that’s just me.
One mother of a gifted child that I’ve known for years on the internet has said that in retrospect she would give her child “the gift of time.” Her child went to college a couple of years early, and similarly to grad school. This caused social dislocation, just around such simple things as a study group getting together at a bar where her student couldn’t enter for the first few years.
Clearly this doesn’t mean that a gifted kid should be condemned to take excruciatingly boring classes with age mates. But there are ways to address the student’s intellectual needs without matriculating at a college.
My D started PhD program when she was 19. One of the activities during the annual “open house” was visiting a local beer brewery. During that time, my D just joints the other group’s activity (there are 2 groups: EE and CS). She seems to be cool about it, “I don’t like beer anyway.”
When I asked whether it bothered her to be the youngest in the group, she said, “It doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t bother anyone else. Noone cares!”
She taught a large class in which most of the students were of the same age, or older than she. It didn’t bother anyone either. She conducted the class professionally, and the students seemed to like her.
@Marian, I personally put flu vaccine in a separate category than other vaccines. It is generally only “recommended” as in different context as other vaccines are “required.” For this instance, I had no doubt that she would make an unselfish choice so I didn’t even think about it too much.
For hunter gatherer, I guessing that they had good time inventing farming, pottery, wheels and stuffs. Or just painting in caves. Their survived genes indicate that they fit ok.
It is very YMMV depending on the individual gifted student and any decisions IMO should primarily be student rather than parent driven.
Parents pushing either to hold them back with same-aged peers or to accelerate them when their wishes are the exact opposite is a bad idea.
As a flipside to the account about the gifted UCLA admit who flunked out, I had an undergrad classmate a few classes ahead of me who GRADUATED from Oberlin at 17 with honors, spent 2 years teaching English in a foreign country a competitive program, entered and finished a social science PhD in a top 8 program in 4 years, and is now a tenure-track Prof at a respectable university in the NW part of the North American continent.
I can’t truly relate to parents of a 12 year genius prodigy who is already done with all AP courses but as a father of a precocious high achiever son, I can empathize with their struggles. However, I would never consider sending a 12 year old to an institution where average peer is 19 year old.
Their situation is diffrent from average families as they seem to have established connections with that school, as grandpa being a teacher, dad being an alumni, kid having attended summer programs there and with family living on campus. It’s a unique situation. I wish them best but still sad for this kid missing out on so many enjoyable experiences in life. I hope he loves physics enough to never regret decisions of his parents.
They seem very affluent, accomplished, informed, connected and overly focused on their only child but they might be depriving him of normal relationships. He travelled and did eschool for many years so likely never had strong friendships, now he is going to be around adults for rest of his formative years. Well, who knows, it may works out for the best. Conventional path can’t be the only path.
A big difference for the OP family and several others talking here about special arrangements for their gifted child is that the family has one child, so the focus can be on that child, what’s best for that child, what school is best for that child. My slightly gifted child did not run the show at our house as she has a sister who has her own needs to be met. They did go to different middle schools, but usually I was picking a school that could provide a good education for both, also had a nice after school care arrangement, good ECs that they could do at school and that didn’t cost a lot, activities that they’d both enjoy.
Money also played a part. Not everyone can afford courses at the community college or private lessons or genius camps.
It’s not always the case that accelerating the profoundly gifted child will impose a greater financial/parenting burden on a multi-child household. It was the exact opposite with the classmate who graduated from our LAC at 17 with honors.
According to his parents, he has basically lived independently and managed financial/other adult situations independently well before starting undergrad. Undergrad expenses were taken care of through the full-ride FA/scholarship package and part-time/summer work in technology and academic tutoring services. The dynamic between his parents and him even during our undergrad years was much more similar to how parents interact with established 30 something adults rather than teens/young adults in their late teens/early-mid 20s.
As a result, his older sister who took the conventional educational K-12 path ended up with the lion’s share of their parent’s attention and financial resources. He even took the lion’s share of advising her on college applications and prepping for college life during her late HS and during her first year in undergrad despite the fact she’s OLDER by chronological age because he was almost done with undergrad right around the time she was starting her undergrad.
“Depriving him of normal relationships” is exactly what I was accused of in the case of my D.
During a visit to my brother’s, my D, at the time 7 yrs old, instead of watching cartoons with her cousins of the same age group, sat quietly at the table, drawing something in her notebook.
My brother asked her to show him what she was drawing. It was a schematic of a circuit she was building, with 7-segment LEDs flashing “hbdd” for “Happy Birthday, Dad” (my birthday was coming). My brother exclaimed, “The girl is doomed! She is deprived of all the fun!” My D gently but assertively raised her objection, “Uncle, how do you know I’m not having fun?”
All her life, she is well aware that she is not “normal,” whatever that means. She couldn’t care less about “normal relationships” or anything “normal.” When someone asks her why she does/thinks/acts differently from other people, she tells them, “Because I’m Jennifer.”
She is now 19, in a PhD program, and if asked, she’ll say that she’s having “normal relationships” with the professors, her employers, her cohorts, and her students.
I would NOT do this-no matter what the ability. Having had gifted children, we chose, instead to help them pursue another activity that challenged them-think music, sports etc. With school being relatively easy, they were able to excel in another area, while enjoying their peers and childhood. In my humble opinion, there is just NO rush… Adulthood lasts a long time…let them be kids as long as you can.
I don’t know. It seems that he is a prized project, being groomed since birth to be brilliant. His parents are the only constant in his life and he spents most of his time on earth with his mother doing traveling, math, physics, languages, art, architecture, eSchooling, preparing for AP courses, taking SAT tests. Not saying that he doesn’t have interest in doing those things but he gets steered heavily towards those things by his loving and well intentioned but obsessed parents. I didn’t see that he got much chance to be a kid. Well, may be “normal childhood” is overrated and genius minds have diffrent needs.
In my neck of the woods, even bright kids are given the subliminal message that the only thing that matters is athletic prowess if you are male, and being “hot” if you are female. Popularity is the important thing- you go to school to see your friends and make plans for later.
I can’t imagine that the handful of extraordinary prodigies in America who are fast-tracking to college and avoiding the vacuous mass of instagram postings which is the typical HS is really a problem worthy of anyone’s worry or time. In an age where majoring in “Leisure Studies” and “Recreation Management” are seen as a good use of four years at a university (these are actual majors at actual universities- not mail-in diplomas like the good old days) I’m finding it hard to worry about this kid. He was clearly born to the right family who knew what to do with his gifts.
OP- read the Cornell thread that is currently being posted on. You will learn a lot. As earlier posters here have commented, so many parameters to consider. Giftedness is a range. Grade acceleration is needed for some, including attending college before 18.
Strollers may choose to stroll the rest of their lives. Underachievers? Lazy? Definitely not maxing out on potential. Used to being bored? All sorts of words that can connote negative feelings about doing the average thing for a highly gifted kid.
So are IQ’s for the gifted. A low end of 130 is vastly different than a 150 or a 180. And all are very different from the middle majority. Too many variable to make one size fit all. btw- you are forgetting some of those kids would be forced to march in place or be really slow “strollers” to go at the pace you suggest. Think WAY outside the norms. A 4’ kid and a 6’ kid are vastly different sizes and should not be forced to wear the same clothes. Intelligence and physical size are two things a person can’t change and so many are forced into the too small/too large box that works okay for the majority.