Children's intelligence level

In my friendship group there's a mix. Two of the ones who did well at school became a doctor and a corporate lawyer respectively. The latter makes quite a lot of money I think. Another friend was asked to leave sixth form has her own company and more money than anyone else in the group bar maybe the corporate lawyer.

Look at young Sheldon. In many ways Missy is more successful than the gifted Sheldon.

Look at the jobs held by Mensa members - many of them don't have particularly good jobs.

Good academic scores don't necessarily turn into highly paid jobs and highly paid jobs don't necessarily make a person happy anyway.

Children with dylexia are often thought to be 'middle of the road' (or lazy) when in school. The dyslexia makes easy things more difficult. Short-term memory stuff is huge in school and yet very difficult for dyslexics. Intelligence tests don't work well on them all either.

Oddly though, dylslexia can make difficult things easy. It does have an up side... but this won't be visible in most of their schooling.

Just help them through the things they find difficult now and don't worry.

If they are coping with dyslexia and seem middle in school - they are likely to be pretty intelligent.
(Primary school literacy and numarcy are likely to remain difficult even if they go on to study beyond Masters level at uni.)

It is likely that difficult things (like medicine/astrophysics/philosophy/running a business/being prime minister) they come across later will not be nearly as hard for them as for their peers.

I dont like having a high IQ. I think its just not practical in this world. Your children dont need high IQ or school results to be happy in life.

you need to adjust your perspective on ‘success’ and what this looks like.

There are other successful career paths that don’t need high academic qualifications.

Some of the most successful business people didn’t even complete school and are also dyslexic.. many more are very happy doing a job they love even tho they don’t earn a huge salary .. I wouldn’t worry about academic success just keep helping them when they need it and try not to put pressure on them. I have 2 Dd7 Ds12 are both top of class in everything despite both being youngest in class they find school easy the eldest DD15 struggles more and always has been mid range and I think will probably not want to go into further education. As long as they healthy and happy I don’t think it matters what they end up doing or earning.

A close family member was invited to leave school at 15 without any exams and started as an apprentice joiner. He earns a six figure salary now.

I haven't RTFT so apologies if repeating.
The past is no indicator of the future.
Men used to be the highest paid because they had physical strength. The industrial revolution made this skill redundant.
The intelligent used to be the highest paid because they could process information. The computing/AI revolution will make this skill redundant.
You need to ensure that your DC have future skills, that cannot be replaced by a robot. Encourage EQ and artisan, creative skills.

As others have said I don’t think it’s a sure indicator. I wasn’t top in anything throughout primary or secondary and very middle of the road. I went on to be an investment banker on Wall Street. Same as my husband who was constantly bunking school as a teenager/child.

But, more importantly, I would note that I come from a more privileged background and have siblings who have done excellent at school but struggled with mental health and I can assure you that if your child gets an eating disorder, anxiety, depression, psychosis that you will literally only care about them being happy and well. Genuinely this is all that’s important I can assure you. It’s irrelevant if someone gets top grades if they then can’t work because of depression and have a terrible quality of life.

If you are above average intelligence, your children will, on average, be more intelligent than average. They will also, on average, be less intelligent than you. This is an example of so-called regression to the mean. It's easy enough to see why it has to be so. (But I'll leave it as an exercise for you above-average-intelligence people.)

My children are smart, but not as smart as me. My grandchildren are also smart, although not as smart as their parents. Regression to the mean. Just a fact of life.

I love my children more than life, and my grandchildren even more. My children are all doing fine: well-educated, good jobs, decent partners, lovely children, happy. My grandchildren also all seem set fair (assuming we can stop burning the planet down, but sadly that's another matter). Why are they doing so well? Well, they have always - and explicitly, overtly - been loved ...

Intelligence, shmintelligence: what's it matter so long as your mummy and daddy love you?

(OK, OK, I know ... random illness, accidents, Tory governments: things can go wrong. But do the best you can. Love your children, let them know you do ... they'll be OK. Try not to worry.)

The other thing is that it's the best time ever to be dyslexic- there is so much tech to help that it doesn't need to hold anyone back these days

I work in the education field- just remember that most people are of around average intelligence, and its definitely not the case that the high IQ people get the best jobs. It sound like they have great skills - IF they wanted to make money they could go into sales type roles as they sound charming. They are also intelligent enough to do uni training for professional jobs (maybe wouldn't he the top grades for medicine or law, but that doesn't matter if they don't want to do that).
Average IQ with good soft skills will do much happier in life than high IQ but low EQ.

My ex and I are both academics, so obviously successful at school and university and on good salaries but nowhere near a ‘big’ salary. Of our kids, our DD is stellar - top grades at GCSE and on target for a top RG university to study a competitive subject. My DS is funny and sparky and has about 4 million friends who are always in and out of my house. Academically he’s VERY middling - a solid C student (pretty much straight 5s!) - no dyslexia/ADHD/ASD - he’s just not super bright 😂 He’s quite entrepreneurial and good at persuading people to do things for him though, so he’s going to be a brilliant BMW car salesman or run his own business or something similar and he’ll likely earn more than all of us put together. Academics are important, but they’re not the be all and end all.

And yes I have a separate thread about US high school certificates being achievable by most. OUr UK system really does say if you can memorise whole swathes of information and write essays you can do well... but that doesn't necessarily translate into real work!

Wow never enough - what do you do now??

I really haven't worked out how to increase my earnings despite being "clever"!

I didn’t do well at school. I hated every second of it, my take home pay is 8k+ a month and I only work 20-30 hr weeks. I was never academically smart but I had ambition and creativity.

academic achievement means one thing only - they are good at academic stuff. Bear in mind the vast majority of jobs and careers in the world aren't necessarily academically inclined - having a string of qualifications doesn't mean they would be good at working with their hands, or good at business or whatever other out of millions of different career paths.

I really dislike the way school caters predominantly towards the academic side of education, disregarding the vocational and practical skills that are generally more important in the real world. It also gives skewed perspective to students who are made to feel crap if they can't write a perfect essay or get 100 percent in physics or whatever - in real life jobs for most people these skills don't really count for anything!

Slightly off topic I know but as a home educator, this thread is lovely to read!

We focus on practical life skills, emotional intelligence, social skills, critical thinking skills and encourage our DC to follow their passions as well as a bit of traditional academic study. We also read to them every night (& they read themselves too) and all eat together away from screens. So you can see that this thread is very reassuring to me!

I’m also a teacher (ex teacher now) and know that academic ability/success does not equate to success later in life (whether financial or otherwise). Our DC will do some exams but only as a ticket to get to ‘the next level’ in whatever the want to do next.

Academic ability is really overrated in my experience. My DH has no GCSEs. Not one. But works hard at a trade he loves and earns a good income. We live a very comfortable life.
My best mate on the other hand, is as academic as you can get, (Oxford Grad) but made dreadful decisions about who she married and other bad choices. If it wasn’t for her family bailing her out, I’m not sure where she would be now.
If you’d have stood them side by side as children you wouldn’t have bet on my DH to be the one in the big house with the fleet of fancy cars!

Relax OP - they just need to find their way, which wont necessarily be what you had planned out for them!

3 out of 4 of mine are ridiculously academic . One isn't . I have to say he finds life harder than his siblings.

Similar here, with husband. Earning potential is often linked to your non-academic skills.

You can give your kids a lot of skills, experiences and force them to do activities that improve their attention span, ability to recall info and make neural connections and improve resilience.

Apart from the dylexia, which at least you know about, your kids are of normal intelligence. You can afford tutors, so presumably you can buy your way into a leafy suburb school with well-behaved children, who will allow your kids to access some of the best free education on this planet.

Also kids change a lot in secondary school. Both of mine were grade 5 sats scores, very bogstandard, but went on to do very well academically with a bogstandard comp education.

You have no need to be disappointed at all.

I found school relatively easy, my twin sons do not. When reports arrive they will have the lowest grades for attainment, but the highest for effort, and their teachers tell us they are a pleasure to teach as they give everything 100%. To be honest, the effort grades are the only ones I’m worried about. In my opinion, and experience, academic results and money are not the most important things in life, a positive attitude is far more important. If you try hard and are a happy and kind person, you can go anywhere and do anything. This might sound like a simplistic outlook, but its what I teach my children, and what I’ve found to be true in life.

My dH has to resit the year twice at school (grew up in a different country), never understood maths sciences, and left school at 16 with no qualifications because there was no other school in the area that could take him after he had been expelled twice. He went on to earn a seven figure salary for decades with several thousand finance professionals reporting into him, and finally retired age 53 exhausted but having done just amazingly for himself.

There are many talents that contribute to success - academic results is just one of them.
His talent is that in any room of complete strangers, all the men will want to follow him, establish trust with him very quickly and be his friend. I've seen it so many times and still can't put my finger on how he does it. He's really not affable (quite grumpy actually) and doesn't try hard at all. He's nearly 70 now and it still happens.

I’ve noticed that people with great emotional intelligence and social skills, tend to do well in life, even if they’re not very academic. In fact, they’re often more successful than people with excellent exam results but lower EQs.

I had very good GCSE results and went on to get a degree, yet work in a low-paid office job. Several of my colleagues (on the same pay grade as me) also have degrees. Meanwhile, two of our senior managers aren’t graduates, but have done pretty well for themselves.

If I’d have learned a trade I’d be far better off than pissing around at Uni doing humanities lol.

Push them to do something useful, that people NEED.