EQ has not yet been well defined. Totally different. Seems more of a fits into current society sort of thing. Has nothing to do with your topic.
Wow, @blossom, that’s kind of snobby, don’t you think? My sister majored in Recreation Management and she is 55 years old, so it’s been around a long time. It was a combination of PE and business with an emphasis on management. Her goal was to manage a spa, gym, etc. While that never panned out, she was in management of a large retail business for many years and put two kids through college at near full pay. Do you feel this was a “useless” or “fake” major with no purpose? Doesn’t someone need to manage stores, gyms, spas, hotels, etc? Or is it that those who do just have meaningless careers?
So, what do the Directors of Parks and Rec. in mid to large sized cities major in?
A 178 IQ is 99.9999900166% of the population.
There’s on average 6 kids with an IQ of 178 or higher under age 18 in the entire United States. The chances any one of them is born to a family perfectly posed to handle the challenge are probably slight.
Yes, these kids are very unusual but still, it seems like perhaps the family could have facilitated this boy getting to know the following young man who would seem to be a good peer for him with very similar interests and academic capabilities and is only one year older.
http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2015/01/like-any-other-student-but-shorter
It’s pretty funny how people who would bristle at anyone judging their parenting are so quick to do the same to others.
The world needs sports team managers too. My brother is one and he’s very good at making schedules, especially for tournaments, because he knows the moving parts - coaches, players, refs, whiny parents - and considers those things. A genius can make a formula that will work and all the teams will be assigned, but the formula won’t consider that Coach Bob needs to be on field 4 at 10 and therefore can’t be on field 24 (or across town) at 11 to coach his other son’s team, or that the parents of Tommy cannot be anywhere near the parents of Sammy (yes, that happens). If he can make it work, he does. Leisure study majors have their gifts too.
For many years the major league baseball schedule was drawn up by a couple, yep, Mom and Pop and a pencil and eraser, because there were so many variables. They considered when the stadiums/parks were available, if they shared facilities with football teams, how far the teams had to travel (so the Yankees would make a ‘west coast swing’ rather just playing a 3-game series). One year the republican convention was held at the Astrodome, and the team had to be on the road for the entire month of July. Orioles have to play at home on opening day, Red Sox in Fenway on Patriot’s Day, some teams ‘always’ get a 4th of July at home, etc.
My gifted son was simply nurtured by various mentors since 6th grade and went to a science and tech high school which worked out well socially and while not really challenged academically, is now mature and will be fine in college. The social angle is too important to ignore. Don’t let them go too early.
I don’t have a child prodigy, but if I did, I would want to find an approach that allowed them to develop socially, and athletically with peers, as well as academically. I would be very concerned about how a 12 year old can do that at a college.
I think it’s hard to generalize but the closer you get to profoundly gifted, the more challenging the accommodations become. I don’t have PG kids, but I know people who do and balancing the social and the intellectual is a very tricky balancing act. I am “profoundly” grateful I don’t have to walk that line.
I also am a firm believer in allowing a little bit of boredom to creep into kids’ lives. They will figure out how to fill those holes, often in surprisingly innovative and creative ways that are satisfying to them.
He can’t do it at a college. Not really.
Even kids who are skipped only one or two grades may have trouble fitting in socially, emotionally, and athletically – and if they do succeed in fitting in, they may then be tripped up by their chronological age. Consider, for example, a group of friends, all high school seniors, who decide to go to a movie on Friday night. The 15- or 16-year-old senior who has successfully assimilated into the group despite his age can’t go with them if the movie is rated R.
Do movie theaters check IDs for R movies?
They do where I live. When my son was 17, he had a 16-year-old girlfriend. They found out the hard way that they couldn’t go to R-rated movies because of her age.
But if you don’t like that example, there are others.
Consider a Jewish child who has skipped a grade in elementary school and adjusted well but is suddenly regarded as a freak by middle school classmates because of the need to have a bar/bat mitzvah in the “wrong” year.
Or the college senior who skipped a grade many years earlier and finds that he can’t interview for a job that he wants because he’s only 20 and can’t rent a car to get from the airport to the interview site.
Or the high school junior who can’t get a summer job or a driver’s license because he isn’t 16 yet and thus is excluded from the lifestyle of his classmates, which revolves around their cars and jobs.
(I skipped a grade. I can bore you with endless examples of potential problems that skipping can cause.)
My son is 15 3/4 and going to be a junior next week while most of his friends are 17+. He couldn’t apply to many internships, jobs and summer programs he liked because he wasn’t 16. We didn’t make him skip any grade, his elementary school was in another state so they didn’t have same start date and most parents here in Texas do red shirting. All of them hit puberty before him, started driving before him and started working by the end of freshman year. It’s not a big social issue for him but you can see that it is not an advantage. Fortunately, he always stayed ahead intellectually and was always included and loved by peers.
I think it’s especially hard for a boy to hit puberty later than his classmates do, @WorryHurry411. Somehow, that is less of a problem for girls.
It sounds as though your son has coped well with what could be a difficult situation.
My daughter was one grade ahead of her age peers. I didn’t even know about the R rated movie issue until she was a senior and told me. There were scholarships, usually from the US government, that she couldn’t apply to as a freshman because she wasn’t 18, and as others said interships too. Driving was delayed. She still has a Child passport because of the way it fell when she was 15 and needed a new one. Her boyfriend is 2 school years ahead but 4 actual years older, so he can go to bars and she can’t. She couldn’t go to girl scout camp when she was only 6 that summer but her sister and all classmates were 7 (or 8).
@Marian , yes, these are all possibilities, but I don’t think they’re reason enough to completely oppose grade-skipping or acceleration. My D started school a year early and graduated HS in three years-completely self-driven. So she’s run into some of these things. But it hasn’t begun to deter her or lead her to think it was the wrong path.
Movies: I believe if you’re accompanied by a legal adult 18+, you are allowed into an R-rated movie. D has gone to only a few as she often didn’t have time, but her friends were 18, so there was no problem. Her friends’ social lives don’t often involve movies, so it hasn’t been a real issue.
Birthdays: D attended friends’ Sweet 16 when she was 15 or even 14. No one cared. When she was a senior celebrating her 16th birthday at the same time classmates and friends were celebrating 18, they happily celebrated with her.
“Young” seniors looking for jobs and interview problems: People in many large cities often don’t even have a license, so renting a car isn’t an issue. There are public transportation, taxis and now, Uber and Lyft. I have 2 SIL’s, an older D and several friends who do not drive yet they get around fine. Age is not an issue here.
“Car-centric” lifestyles and summer teens: Again, a car is not necessary. My D worked every summer from the time she was 13-her choice. It was volunteer work but that led to a “real” job this summer, for which she was paid. She was younger than some of the youth she was in charge of. It didn’t seem to phase anyone. Her friends do not own cars and aren’t spending their time driving around. I wouldn’t want her spending her free time cruising anyway.
Acceleration isn’t for everyone, but most of your examples are of issues either unimportant or unnecessary to a young person’s life. It’s almost as though you’re arguing that kids should have only same-age friends or their lives are ruined. NO ONE has only same age friends that I know of.
I graduated from high school at 16 and wasn’t bothered by anything Marian mentioned. I did use my bonus time to take a gap year before college (year in France) and before grad school (got a grant to travel around USA photographing fire stations) so that by the time I entered the workforce I was pretty much the same age as everyone else. My 24 year old kid still doesn’t drive, he walks, takes public transport or gets rides. Obviously if we lived in a further out suburb it might be more difficult.
I think my oldest would have benefited from a grade skip. We seriously considered homeschooling. In the end he did school at a mostly normal pace (we were able to get extra acceleration in math and later in science) and spent lots of free time learning what really interested him, so it worked out all right, but I still don’t know if it was optimal. He didn’t have real friends until college.
Do people still go to the movies? I feel like 90% of the time my kids watch things on the computer/TV.
@Marian
“is suddenly regarded as a freak by middle school classmates because of the need to have a bar/bat mitzvah in the “wrong” year.”
Nothing like that happens in college, and probably not in high schools either as high school kids are usually not that childish. Skip the middle school entirely, and the problem is solved.
@mathmom what a cool project! Did you publish a book?
A I hear you about movies. MY kids all watch things on the computer or Netflix rather than pay the high cost of a movie ticket (much to the chagrin of my actor BIL). If they do go to a movie theater it’s either someone’s birthday night or it’s one of those movies best seen on a large screen. My H goes to far more movies than I do as a big fan of those comic book inspired ones. I’ve become more of a Netflix person.
My partner took another year off and got back surgery and wrote the book. It was a great project though.