<p>my two cents and experience here:</p>
<p>every kid is unique and one can never be sure what s/he wants or will do later on. thinking long term is the key.</p>
<p>Couple of years ago, I had the similar questions and posted on the parent forum got very good feedback and advise, I’d like to thank them again (unfortunately, the thread was not available any more). Basically everyone like supportive parents in this thread gave me very good advise and suggestions. The common consensus was to slow down, be natural and should guide the kid to other interests and challenge. Some advisers themselves were gifted when they were young and ended up to be lawyer or doctors at early age and had second thoughts on what they could have done in retrospect. </p>
<p>My son was constantly above his peers on all subjects when he was young and got accepted by JHU SET program at 11. He was both good at math and verbal, but especially good at math at the time. He skipped the first grade and was a little bit frustrated on peer sports due to most of kids were about one or two years older. He then enrolled a sport program with kids at his age, he was doing well. We had then carefully reprioritised on what we should pay attention to on his development: a. be happy; b. be challenged; c. explore other interests; d. be normal; </p>
<p>a. be happy: nothing makes him happier than having peer friends by hanging out, playing games, going to movies, doing sports and supporting each other; we’ve always encouraged him to make friends and he has varieties of groups of friends: school friends; debate friends, TASP friends and etc. </p>
<p>b. be challenged: it’s relatively easier to be good at math in the early age for a gifted kid, but it would take much more time to show talents on other subjects. My son got into one of top 10 HS just listed by WSJ and developed an interest on HS debate. Only through couple of years hard work, he’s now one of top debaters. This activity has endless challenges and needs lots of effort to get good and it’s time consuming. Even though he’s still good at math and science. (His upper grade friends still discuss their college math homework with him). But his interest is completely changed and he wouldn’t choose any math, engineering or science majors during this college application process. </p>
<p>c. explore other interests: as mentioned above, it took us a big surprise after he started debating in HS. He’s totally changed from science and math oriented activities to English, history, philosophy, writing and etc. He right now really writes well and fast. Countless debate research cards, philosophy books, debate camps have really reshaped his capabilities other than math and science. Other activities like TASP also opened his eyes.</p>
<p>d. be normal: we know that he has a long way to go. Functioning normal and not being pushed too hard are important. He’s been always taken above peer and advanced classes. But every single time, I’d talk to teachers about the each individual situation and have always asked for a backup plan should things don’t work out because not every plan A works perfectly. A backup plan will also help the kid, teacher and ourselves in a better position should anything comes up or a conflict schedule. Also I have been very happy that my son is a laid back person and have completely different circles of friends to talk about different things. Not many of his friends know much what kind of classes he’s taking since he was 9 and he never talks about it. It always tickles me whenever I see post modern philosophy books laying around side by side with some comic books in his bathroom. </p>
<p>His extensive travel experience for summer JHU and debate camps and debate tournaments either by group or by himself, his current academic background and maturity have prepared him for his college life. I feel very comfortable and couldn’t have asked more.</p>