<p>I am at my wit's end. My DS is very bright he has already skipped a grade and his IQ tested at 142. Here is the "but" you could hear, he doesn't care. He doesn't care about his grades or his classes. He blows off major assignment after major assignment. (currently 3.14 gpa) He doesn't care if he gets to school at all. (14 tardies this semester) He doesn't care if he's suspended. (twice this year already) He thinks he'll get in whereever he wants because if his IQ. He thinks he smarter than everyone including the teachers and me. I've explained to him colleges look at GPA, attendance, rigor (he is all honors), ec's (none), community service (none), & recs ( I can't imagine ANY teacher saying too many nice things). He will wake up one day and regret all of this. Is there any way I can open his eyes now. It's breaking my heart.</p>
<p>Find an alternative way to school him. For example, combine all or some of these: distance classes from EPGY or JHU, local university classes, plus homeschool/unschool, work, service learning, have him apply for TASP and/or other highly competitive programs, study abroad, national language exams, national math competitions, etc. Find a way to break the mold and buy him time to mature. This may result in “unskipping” him.</p>
<p>I always advise checking the Hoagies website for links to discussions with other parents who have BD/DT.</p>
<p>He will still get into a decent school with 3.14gpa, high SAT’s. Not the level of where he could if he tried, but he’ll still get into many good schools and save you money if you don’t have to pay for an elite school. Question for you, is there any class or subject he likes alot and actually tries hard in? He sounds bored.</p>
<p>Well, they don’t admit based on IQ scores as you know. He probably knows it as well. I don’t know what you can do other than educate him about the criteria used for admissions, the realities of what his choices for college will be as a result, the reality of what will happen if he decides not to go to college - and you should have a plan for this that hopefully doesn’t include you still supporting him if he decides to do nothing after HS. </p>
<p>However, with a 3.14 GPA he’ll have some options on colleges if he chooses to go to one. You don’t say what year he is but if he’s currently a senior and doesn’t mature up quickly then he might be better off taking a gap year and doing something else in that timeframe - hopefully something productive. With the attitude he currently has it’s hard to see how he’d be successful in college and if it were me I’d be very careful about sending him to an expensive college. But, kids can change their mental outooks quickly at this age and maybe he will so hang in there.</p>
<p>Someone once gave great wisdom on CC about deal with the kid on the sofa, not the idealized one you wish you had.</p>
<p>You present a good argument for kid’s not knowing their IQ score. Fortunately, in my case, I figured out by 9th grade that there were a whole lot of people a whole lot smarter than I was…and I was far from being a dummy. Your S needs to reach a similar epiphany and there’s not much you can do until he does. You can huff, you can puff, you can blow his bedroom door down and the response will be, “Whatever.” Motivation must come from within and there’s nothing you can do to change that. He’s got to see that there’s something he wants that he can’t get while blowing things off.</p>
<p>I think this is a case where you need to stand back and let things crash. To get the most out of college, he may actually need 2-3 gap years. If he even cares to apply, let him apply to all the colleges that he wants. Let him deal with the rejection. If the options are northwest state technical, agricultural, and basketweaving, then so be it. Or community college. His pride may take a major hit when he sees those he considers inferior having better options and better experiences but a chafed pride can be a motivator as well.</p>
<p>I’m sorry if this sounds harsh. This would be one of my nightmares as a parent and I do sympathize.</p>
<p>It sounds to me like maybe he doesn’t want to be the Smart Kid with 142 IQ. He is self sabatoging so he doesn’t have to be that kid anymore. I think Consolation is right, find another way to let him educate himself, even if it means “unskipping” him. You say he doesn’t do EC’s – what does he do? Does he have a passion? If I were you I would help him find a way to work what he wants to do into a life that will allow him to connect with the world and back off the being a Smart Kid as his identity.</p>
<p>For what it is worth both of my sons tested about 144 IQ. Neither one of them knows.</p>
<p>It doesn’t sound harsh at all. I just don’t know if I can do it. I know all you say is true. I’ve said it to myself a thousand times. But the hardest thing to do sometimes, is nothing. I don’t know if I can stand watching him crash and burn and do nothing about it. I also understand that everytine I come in and rescue him I am most likely making things worse but how can I stop myself? It’s like watching him walk toward the edge of a cliff. Would you be able to watch him just step off the edge?</p>
<p>The classes he loves is math. But even that gets little effort. He pulls As with out studing or trying.</p>
<p>I’m not sure this would work, but…</p>
<p>Could you check out Mensa in your area? It’s the organization for those with high IQs. While many of its members are successful, some are not. A messenger at one of the local law firms, in his 50s, used to be very active in it. Some of those who belong do so precisely because they are stuck in dead end jobs and have difficulty meeting folks who are as smart as they are. </p>
<p>Now my idea may sound inane, but I think it might benefit your son to meet some really smart folks who haven’t been successful in life. He will also meet some smart folks who are. They were the ones who worked. He should be able to figure that out.</p>
<p>I’ll admit that my idea is a bit off the wall…but it might work.</p>
<p>You say the class he loves is math, but what does he do after school? Does he work, does he play video games, does he play guitar, does he sit in front of the TV? There will be something he wants to do, find that, even it is not school related. Work from there.</p>
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<p>Amen to that. Although I’m certain there is benefit in cognitive testing of children, in my opinion there is nothing more ludicrous than testing and pegging children with a single “intelligence” number, except perhaps telling them what it is. I’m forever grateful my dad refused to let me know mine, although I managed to find out, but not until my senior year of high school. A Caltech educated physicist and mathematician, he had a healthy suspicion of the notion that something as complicated as intelligence could be distilled to a single integer. </p>
<p>My personal opinion of the valdity of IQ testing aside, I’m certain that almost all the kids on the other pages of this website with the spectacular statistics across the board have similarly high IQs. This is the competition, as the OP knows wells.</p>
<p>I’ve got no advice for the OP but I’m sure others will, as this does not appear to be an uncommon problem on here. In fact, I am sure there are several other threads that address possible solutions. Good luck.</p>
<p>By your description your son is apathetic, arrogant, lazy, irresponsible, entitled, has a inflated ego. Basically you and the school have created this monster by letting him get by with all these unattractive qualities because of his IQ number. So why should he change? You’ll do the college apps for him and get him into college. He won’t care if he fails because he is too smart for college. He will always work for idiots, who are not as smart as he. Yet he will wonder why he isn’t successful. Good luck in helping him, only a patient parent can stop this runaway train.</p>
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<p>Well, to be brutal: which is worse, having him step off the edge of a cliff, get banged up, have to come to some new understandings, and rehabilitate himself (not you rehabilitate him, he rehabilitate himself), and find direction and success at life</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>become a perpetually unsatisfied, unproductive kind of person leading the kind of Batlo so wincingly describes?</p>
<p>I think you also need to look up the word “co-dependent” as quickly as possible and then act upon the ensuing knowledge.</p>
<p>That seems rather harsh. The description of the young man sounds like someone who is very bright but extremely bored and unchallenged. School has been very easy for him. He’s not failing, he’s doing okay but not living up to his potential. Which happens with kids quite often. His mom doesn’t say that he is an arrogant jerk. Maybe he is smarter than most of the people around him, but we can’t make the assumption that he treats people badly. It just sounds to me like he should do something that he loves that he is very challenged at, and he may be exceptional at it.</p>
<p>And there may be something else going on in his life. How does he get away with showing up at school late? I knew every time that my kids were going to be late by the time they left for school.</p>
<p>chrismom:</p>
<p>I noticed that when you listed what colleges are looking for during adminssions you left off SAT/ACT test scores but these are important to many colleges. Has he taken them to benchmark where he’s at?</p>
<p>Another point - if you end up paying for his college does he realize the disservice he’s doing to you by not scoring higher, since he likely has the capability, and therefore dooming his chances at some good scholarships thereby costing ‘you’ more money? His apathy and attitude doesn’t affect only him. He may turn around in the next year or two but by then he may have already blown some of these financial opportunities at your expense. It sounds as if he’s likely thinking of only himself at this point, as many kids do, but he should realize the effect he’s having on others not only in the potential financial impact I mentioned but also the emotional toll you’re clearly going through.</p>
<p>I was that kid once (without the suspensions). I spent my entire senior year of high school playing D&D. Almost never did homework, never studied for a test, and relied on latent smarts to get through my classes with mostly B’s and the occasional C or D.</p>
<p>I finally got straight A’s for the first time during my senior year in college.</p>
<p>I didn’t get my PhD in chemistry until I was 32. I didn’t sign my first three-book deal with a New York publisher until I was 42. And at 47, I still haven’t made my first million.</p>
<p>So I guess I’m what you’d call a late bloomer, and maybe your son is too. But when I was an underachieving teenager in the late 70’s, and in your son’s case today as well, all the potential is still in there. As parents we want to see that potential in action, but the season just might not be right. And here’s the part you don’t want to hear: your son may never wake up and regret all this. Even with the wisdom of hindsight, I don’t regret that “wasted” year of high school, because it was what I needed at the time, and fertilized the soil for a lot of what came later.</p>
<p>But don’t think I’m not sympathetic – my daughter is driving me nuts these days by being the same kid I once was, and I have to keep reminding myself every day of the things I’m saying here. Maybe the biggest benefit of having lived through that experience myself is that it’s keeping me (and my wife) off her back now, however maddening that can be. But she needs time to grow inside right now the same as I did, and she’ll bloom when it’s her time.</p>
<p>To some extent, I agree with the poster who says that you and/or the schools may have let him get away with this because he’s so smart. Why does his IQ matter? He needs to learn that even the smartest people need to live by the rules, whether they like it or not. When he gets tardies at school or detentions/suspensions, what are the consequences at home? Is he just getting away with it because you’re agreeing with him that he’s so smart that he’s bored, others are stupid, it’s their fault etc?? Or are you disciplining him also?</p>
<p>Also, to the extent that you’re not satisfied with him having a 3.1, why aren’t there consequences for that? Most families use grounding, restrictions - no tv, no going out etc. if grades aren’t up to par. That tends to bring grades up, regardless of someone’s IQ. You can control certain things by discipline and you can even make him commit to an EC or a part-time job if you wanted to; there are certain families that require one activity per semester/season so their kids aren’t just going to school and coming home. He sounds like a kid that may benefit from a part-time job, say in retail, where he’ll realize that his intelligence won’t get him out of stocking shelves, dealing with customers etc.</p>
<p>spdf: Thank you for posting your story. I think we tend to forget that these years are not “do or die.” To the OP: as someone said to me recently, "It’s a lot better and more socially acceptable for a kid to go through a “figuring things out, but not doing it very well” stage at age 18 to 24 than after he is older and has a wife, children and a mortgage. It’s NORMAL for some kids to be like this at this age. Let your son decide what he wants to do about school. It’s hard, but he will make a decision and you will support and love him and this time will pass. Even if he were getting a 1.0 GPA right now, it would not say anything about who he will be or what he will be doing even five years from now. Your job is to make sure he is not suffering from any mental or physical health problems (addiction, depression, etc.) or from any undiagnosed LD’s. It’s not easy, I know, but you can let him do things his way now or later. Now is probably better for all of you in the long run.</p>
<p>He’d probably be this way whether he knew or not his actual IQ. I know hubby and I had similar IQs, but we knew at some level anyway long before we had confirmation in adulthood. Our kids have similar IQ’s, but don’t know the number, but they feel pretty confident they are smart. It doesn’t require test results to know. </p>
<p>And I know a lot of PhDs who would say that they never took the whole highschool thing very seriously. I am not sure why. Maybe boredom earlier on? Maybe confidence in their own intelligence so their ego or sense of ‘how smart they are’ isn’t attached to letter grades? Maybe earlier on they never had to work at school so it took a long time before they shifted the necessary gears? Or maybe they just didn’t connect with the rat race? A lot of the whole college admissions thing is a ton of hoop jumping and rule following, often with little to do with anything truly intellectual, and some just don’t get there is a game that has to be played.</p>
<p>Sometimes, young people don’t want to achieve at the level they are capable of because they don’t like the consequences – having to work hard at a competitive college and a competitive career. They may prefer a different path in life, but if they had high grades and test scores, they would be sort of obligated to the high-powered route.</p>
<p>And sometimes, school may be more difficult than parents realize. I have an IQ slightly higher than your son’s, but I struggled with some subjects both in high school and in college. Scoring high on an IQ test does not imply that every academic subject will come easily to a person.</p>
<p>Yeah, if you need a test to tell you your kid is smart, he is smarter then you are.</p>
<p>I’ve seen a lot of kids like this and often times they feel a great deal of pressure in being the smart one – so they work hard at proving that they are not. But at the same time they know they are smart, so they get frustrated that other people (teachers and parents in particular) don’t seem to “get it” . They are trying to figure out how to use and enjoy their intelligence without being labeled “The Smart Kid”.</p>