<p>I don’t know if this will work, but I’d sit him down with Naviance charts, which are available through your school if you’re lucky, or via guest logins that allow the rest of us to get an idea of who gets in where. He will rapidly see that some schools simply will not take a 3.1 no matter how smart he is. He can get an idea of where he’ll be able to go to school.</p>
<p>And, if it’s math he likes, have him start to do some self study. You can get used texts online, and he can do problems to master the content of the texts.</p>
<p>Isn’t there a math club at the school? Is there a social worker or counselor who could help push him with that?</p>
<p>I have (had) the same kid. Fortunately there were a few events that set him straight. The first was when he wanted to take both French and German at the same time. The school said no and we fought for it because we knew he could handle it. He took this as the ultimate challenge to prove them wrong and got A’s in both. (but only in those 2 classes) The next year we told him to pick an EC or we would choose it for him. He opted for the Debate team. He rose to the challenge and was able to use his smarts to always one up the opponent. I think this did two things. One, it gave him confidence and two, he became and “expert” on the subject. The final thing that turned him around was to become a peer tutor at school. At first he was a little cocky about it, but then seeing how some kids struggle with what he thought of as “easy” somehow managed to humble him. His first quarter report card just came home with all A’s in honors/AP classes! (except for the B in AP lit - he feels that literature is a waste of time.) I think a lot kids who excel at math and science feel this way about lit class)</p>
<p>We were talking about college the other day and he said he wants to go somewhere where all the kids are smart, not just good test takers who can memorize data for one day and do well on a test. For some reason it annoys him that these kids classify themselves as smart. We still have some work to do on the ego!</p>
<p>Is it just me? A 142 IQ is a nice IQ but is not so strong that colleges would roll over and play dead even if IQ scores were used for college admission.</p>
<p>I have known folks with 200 IQ’s. My dad tested at 187 and was immediately made an officer during WWII. Changed his life because he was from such a poor background.</p>
<p>Since I do NOT have a 187 IQ I don’t I’m bragging. My kids don’t either.</p>
<p>They have nice IQ’s in the range of the OP’s kid, which I took as an ordinary IQ for the high achieving kids they were hanging out with.</p>
<p>They had their IQ’s tested for a G & T program their school had. I did not approve of it because their school was so small (a public with <90 in each graduating class) and I didn’t think it was needed. Special ed to help marginal kids succeed? Always. A G & T program in a tiny, fairly wealthy school? Elitist nonsense to me.</p>
<p>But I digress.</p>
<p>When my kids asked their IQ’s (aren’t I the lucky mom – within 5 points of each other) I said, “High enough to do anything you really want to do, but low enough that you’re going to have to work for it.” And that seemed to settle the matter.</p>
<p>I don’t think it was necessarily true, because each found many things they couldn’t really master, but they got the idea. They are both good enough at one or two things to really excel.</p>
<p>So, this is a very long-winded post to say that I don’t think the OP should buy into her S’s opinion that this IQ is a free pass. There are many kids with much higher IQ’s.</p>
<p>He will be judged by his accomplishements.</p>
<p>And frankly, my dad, with his 187 IQ seemed “smart” but not desperately so. IQ measures speed and accuracy of a certain kind of comprehension, mainly pattern recognition, and that’s it. My dad was an interesting guy but a bit conventional and glib. One didn’t feel as if one had met a genius after talking to him.</p>
<p>You don’t say what grade your son is in but have you thought about his moving to a different school? Regular public high schools are not necessarily the right learning environment for everyone. I know our school district has a Walkabout program specifically for underachievers, there’s also Simon’s Rock at Bard which is a college for kids typically in their Junior and Senior years in high school. Perhaps you could look at alternative high schools.</p>
<p>I know it’s hard to deal with, but one thing to change in your thinking is: He’s not walking off a cliff. He’s not “crashing and burning.” This is not a train wreck. He’s not ruining his life. Whatever happens now is not irrevocable a few years down the road.</p>
<p>He is, however, altering the path that you thought and hoped he’d walk. Maybe he needs the gap year to mature. Dealing with a ton of college rejections and realizing he will then need to [gasp!] get a job may be the appropriate wake up call. I know it was for a friend’s child. After two years of unfulfilling, low wage jobs, the kid decided to go to college and made Dean’s List every semester. Would he have done so if he had gone directly from high school? Doubt it.</p>
<p>This is not letting him step off a cliff. It’s more like letting your 4 year old fall off the two wheeler as he was learning to ride.</p>
<p>He may be making a mistake; sending him to college when he’s not motivated may be an even bigger (and more expensive!) mistake. But unfortunately, these are his mistakes to make. And they can be rectified in the future. </p>
<p>The only irrevocable mistakes are those that result in a criminal record, parenthood, or incurable health issues. The rest? They can be changed.</p>
<p>When I first started to read this thread at 6 this morning, it reminded me of my 8th grade math teacher who loved to tell us of the 2 smartest men: Einstein and the birdman of Alcatraz. I don’t know how much truth there was to his stories, but it sure made an impression on the too smart for their own good teens/pre-teens that he was dealing with. A high IQ only means something if you use it for some good.</p>
<p>Tough going, but I think you need to lay down the law. Why is he tardy for school? If you leave before him for work, insist that he is up and dressed when you are or see if you can adjust your schedule to leave at the same time. Why does he not do his homework? Perhaps you’ll have to enforce an hour or two of mandatory “homework” time before he gets to hang out or watch TV or play games. You need to put some restrictions around his time and friends. If he’s driving, take the keys away until he’s caught up in school. What were the suspensions for? Does your school have the ability to e-mail progress reports so you can see if he’s turned his homework in and showing up for classes? You are still the parent and you do have some control over the circumstances that enable your son. I’m not in favor of kids knowing their IQ, but really do take a step back and realize that IQ is nothing more than an indicator of what someone is capable of achieving and very little to do with what they actually achieve. And the world does not give brownie points for high IQ. No one likes watching their bright kids turn into bratty teens, but do know that you can put boundaries in place and insist that the kids do what they need to do within some realm of reasonability. Your bright child may never achieve what he is capable of achieving, but at the very least you can insist that he perform at some reasonable level academically and socially. What does the school say, it’s many times painful to hear what school folks think, but they see all kinds of kids and they may have a perspectives or thoughts that you aren’t seeing because you are focused on his IQ and not the output. Hopefully you can dig deep and do more than “explain the consequences” because all the talk in the world probably won’t change your situation and believe me many teenagers can’t “see” beyond the next week of their lives and they all have selective hearing skills. If you can’t or don’t know how to tighten the leash on your son, then I would suggest getting some counseling to help you learn how to be more assertive with him. Focus on today not on college plans and take it one step at a time.</p>
<p>Just want to ask if your son has had a neuro-psych. evaluation? He my have some issues with focusing, for instance. Many gifted kids have some issues that are not uncovered until this age.</p>
<p>I have a kid who is not even at school for her senior year. We have tried online, homeschooling, CC with dual enrollment/hs credit, individualized school schedule to allow her to follow an arts “passion”, all kinds of things. Now, she is getting her GED.</p>
<p>In your eyes, she may have fallen off the cliff, but I retain a sense of her potential and try to convey it to her.</p>
<p>Why don’t you ask your son if he would like to leave school and just get his GED? That would put him in the driver’s seat. If he chooses to stay, maybe it will then be HIS commitment to himself and things might improve</p>
<p>I don’t have any specific suggestions about behavior modification, but I do feel strongly about two points:</p>
<p>First, what college this child is going to attend is not the big issue. The big issue is whether he is going to be prepared to succeed in life. Good for spdf, but there are a lot more stories about smart people ending up with dead end jobs or no jobs at all than there are high achieving late bloomers.</p>
<p>Second, the boy needs to be receiving the following message: You have a 142 IQ? Guess what. NO ONE CARES. What matters in the world is production, not raw firepower , and hard work, thoroughness and preparation beats brilliant (which he is not in any event) 99 times out of 100.</p>
<p>First, thank you all for your input. It has been nice just to get this off my chest.
Next, he was always considered very bright (he was reading at a 3rd grade level entering Kinder) so it was not unknown to him he was high IQed. The school performed the IQ exam (with permission of course) but I did not request it, it was a part if an IEP (individual educational plan). He also was given a complete psyc work-up and a battery of social and physical tests. We already about what to expect so, when the number was there he asked and I answered.
Third, yes there are consequences for the tardies suspentions and missed work. He is grounded. He has lost his video games and most tv privileges. I am in constant contact with his teachers but with about 250 students each the can not (and in my opinion should not) have to keep after him. I do make him do his homework that I know about (he lies about having it sometimes). But even when he does the work he doesn’t always turn it in.
Finally, yes I know at least some of this will be resolved with time. It’s just hard for me to watch. He truly believes all kid do the same things as he does (despite all the evidence to the contrary) and that all kids act in the same selfish apathetic way but he is the only one who is being punished for it.
He’ll get through this as will I, of that I am sure. It will not turn out the way I want but, it will turn out the way it is suppose to. Thank you all for caring.</p>
<p>How very frustrating for you chrismom. Your story reminds me of a friend whose son behaved in exactly the same way. He too was very, very gifted but wouldn’t do homework, but would make A’s on all his test–though class grade was always pulled down by assignments not turned in. This kid took 15 AP tests and scored 5s on all but one (got a 4 on that)—of the 15 he only took classes in 5 or 6 of them and just took the others “cold”. </p>
<p>He got into a school that was not what “could have been” but he has been very happy there and got a full ride based on test scores. This young man flourished in college. He ended up graduating in the 4 years with 4 majors (got some kind of special permission to do that). For whatever reason, when he was on his own, he did fantastic.</p>
<p>Hope this story repeats for you and your son. Hang in there!</p>
<p>testing is a measure of one point in time- it means nothing if you don’t do anything with it & it sounds like by blowing off assignments, and being unable to show up to school on time ( which is rude to his classmates and the teacher), your son needs to see his actions have consequences. </p>
<p>( I would have learning disabilities ruled out- it is possible to have much higher iq and still have differences which interfere with completion of work)</p>
<p>His school sounds very forgiving, my D has a friend who was one of the most intelligent in a very intelligent class in their private prep, both parents college profs , who had an attitude of he was smarter than everyone else, and the administration told him that if he continued he would be expelled. </p>
<p>He was expelled a few months before graduation, but because the private school had higher requirements than the state, he was able to complete a state diploma, he went to to a several year period where he taught school in an isolated country, then joined the Marines , earned a Purple Heart in Iraq and founded an organization to support schools in his volunteer country.</p>
<p>If his school hadn’t shown him his actions have consequences, would he have been able to find the way to make his own path?</p>
<p>MythMom let the nose of the camel in, I’ll push in the neck: a 142 IQ ain’t all that anyway. I know lots of people whom I would guess to be in the 140-180 range. Their IQ was necessary but insufficient to their success; their drive and focus was necessary.</p>
<p>To mangle a metaphor, if I’m picking a “softball team of life,” I’m going to pick by temperament first, then sort into positions from there.</p>
<p>These kids are everywhere, they believe in magic. Some think their athletic ability will pull them through. If this boy wants to be in college he will eventually change his behavior. High school friends will go away, jobs will be hard to find/keep. I’ve seen parents spend money on an extra prep year or two, expensive-but-easy college where kid partied/flunked out first semester, community college for year/semester, then beg to come back. Other parents said “Go to inexpensive community college down the road and live at home for a year.” Parents just don’t know how it will turn out. The people I know who spent some of their retirement savings on the problem: prep school and easy-but-expensive college had the kid who wanted to be gone and slowly fixed her mess. The people who seemingly made frugal and sensible decision [community college to prove yourself] have a depressed, lonely slacker on their sofa 3 years out.</p>
<p>Gap years can be a problem with health insurance; some plans drop the child who is no longer a full-time student and won’t let them reapply.</p>
<p>Many a test claim to capture IQ, and ‘gifted students’ abound. On something with real construct validity, such as the WISC or Stanford-Binet, the mean is 100 and only .25% of the population would be observed to have an IQ above 140 (though I believe the WISC has a ceiling in the 150 range). So to me, not ordinary, and certainly as remarkable as a perfect SAT score (if one were to imagine how schools would react if they used IQ as a selection device). Only a few people living in the world have 200 or higher IQ…not even Marilyn vos Savant (who is at 187). </p>
<p>I concur it doesn’t do much for you if you don’t have the personality and motivation to go with it (and he may…he’s still developing!). But I don’t think we need to debate the judgment of an immature teenager, especially one who might be hiding behind bravado for reasons other than those he is able or willing to articulate.</p>
<p>.25% of a population of 4 million kids per year is 10,000 kids who are smarter than him in just his age cohort! I wouldn’t be so impressed. You should point this out to him if he is good at math. They could fill the whole Ivy League with kids who are smarter than him. Then there are the kids who leapfrog ahead because they work harder!</p>
<p>That said, a 3.1 GPA isn’t the end of the world, and maybe he need to be convinced he really is in charge of and responsible for his own life before he ups and does something about it.</p>
<p>.25% is not all that rare. That’s still one or more at a typical large high school. I would suspect even more in the developed world, and certainly more in high performing schools.</p>
<p>I also suspect it is not all that uncommon on this website.</p>
<p>Kids like this often do very well in boarding school environments. I didn’t catch what grade level he is at, but he sounds immature, at any rate, and it is common to repeat and to do post grad years. Boarding schools frequently take kids based on the test scores and because they are in study halls where the teachers supervising know what homework they have (communication) they have to do all of thier assignments. They develop good habits, get out from the mom and dad place and get involved more with thier peers. If I had a kid like this, I’d go the boarding school route. FWIW</p>
<p>I am sure my kids and their friends all had IQ’s in this range. Their G & T program had an entry of 135, and in my son’s case 10% of the class was in the program, and in my daughter’s case 7% were.</p>
<p>It’s true our town has: three hospitals in close range, two right within the town, a major university five minutes away and Brookhaven National Labs (real physics geniuses) fifteen minutes away. So the parents are professors, doctors and physicists.</p>
<p>So when I say I wouldn’t be that impressed, I am not diminishing the OP or her son in any way. I am just suggesting that there are many, many kids with this IQ and it certainly isn’t sufficient to ensure any kind of success.</p>
<p>My S had to come to terms with flunking out of Music Theory at his elite LAC. It was going to be his major. And he was working hard at it. Maybe not as a hard as he could have, but hard. Even with his “high IQ.” Now he has chosen a major much more in line with his true talents. Music will always be “the one that got away.”</p>
<p>And von Savant, the newspaper savant, is certainly not the smartest person in the world. I do know families in which the kid with the 180 IQ is the dummy.</p>
<p>It’s a test designed by folks with the kind of intelligence the test tests for, if that makes any sense.</p>
<p>Both Richard Feynman and James Watson, Nobel Prize winners, tested at 125. So what?</p>
<p>I am a friend to this child. Not a foe. Lower expectations based on his IQ and encourage him to find something he loves and the motivation to go after it. I think that’s the formula for all kids, regardless of their IQ’s.</p>