If you had an ‘academically’ bright preschooler, did they continue to be smart as they got older or does everyone catch up in the end and they are just regular for their age? Just wondering.

[luckycat888]

Stupid question really but basically wondering if being (somewhat) advanced now (I think) is an indication of being smart when they are older. DC very normal socially and is confident, gets in with others, happy to participate etc so no worries there.

Very bright from very early. Hyperlexia. Still extraordinarily smart with a superb memory. Continues to excel academically as an adult.

Very much this! I've never had a discussion about academics or homework, but I've spent my life banging my head against a brick wall, trying to teach her how to be sensitive to others, how to understand others, and basic skills to keep herself alive 🙈

Yes Dd has been diagnosed in adulthood as having ADHD. Extremely bright in every area. Hard work as she had to he constantly entertained. Whilst other children were happy to sit and watch tv etc this didn’t wash with dd. I had to be doing things with her all the time. She wrote her class Christmas cards at age 4 and they were all legible.
She has gone on to be extremely successful in her career. She can pick things up easily and read the room with incredible aptitude. She herself has said that she knows very quickly who to ‘be in with at work’ how to appease the right people. Whereas her sibling will speak their mind whatever the cost.
So to answer the op.
Yes dd was bright and is still bright. he didn’t ’level off.’

Both mine were very bright at preschool. One had working memory issues that kicked in as she got older, meaning she began to struggle academically. The other ( who had taught herself to read before school) has been diagnosed as autistic. She had a blip around gcses but now that she can again just focus on her favorite subjects at A level she is doing extremely well.

My dd was never that interested in learning at pre school age. She was late to talk, didn’t want to do puzzles, didn’t learn phonics before school, couldn’t write her name. She’s summer born so one of the youngest in her year too so was quite behind a lot of her class when she started school. She’s now coming up to the end of reception and she has rocketed to the top third of her class and keeps being moved up reading groups. Something just clicked when she started school, whilst some of the children who appeared more able haven’t progressed as quickly. So I don’t think pre-school ability is always an indication.

Both my DC were bright toddlers / preschoolers (could count to 100+ by age 3, knew 2x tables and could read before reception etc). By the end of primary, they were still in the top 2-3 kids of their year group (2 form entry). Now they’re year 8 & 10 at secondary and quite average I think. One will just about scrape passes across the board at GCSE and the other will probably do better, but won’t excel. I think they were just early learners rather than geniuses 😂

DS1 was very bright as a young child. On the first day of reception, his teacher (who had been teaching for 20 years) told me that his reading was phenomenal! I honestly hadn't taught him to read, he just picked it up from me reading to him.

He's now 19yo, did very well at school and is studying maths and physics at a top 10 uni. So still very bright, but not a genius or anything like that.

Yes in my son's case. He was a ridiculously early talker etc. Top of the top sets now.

I didn't hot house him, just followed his interests and introduced him to new things too.

I didn't parent him any differently from my other child who has learning difficulties. All children thrive if they have parents who are interested and supportive and let them follow their passions and support them with things they find hard

Truthfully op I think the best thing is let things be.

This is a really interesting thread topic because it touches on quite a few issues that I think are quite impactful for a great many children.

I would firstly point out that many children tend to be very “quick” at the early learning stages and don’t continue this trend later down the track, simply because most of these these skills are not actually related to intelligence per se.

There is a lot in the early school years that is based on rote learning and handwriting skills. Maths is more “ counting” at first and then times tables - all of which can be impressively, if not more impressively, achieved with rote learning type skills rather than real intelligence. Ditto letters and phonics.

Handwriting is another skill that is unrelated to intelligence. Yet the proficient hand writers tend to enjoy putting one to paper more, demonstrating what masquerades as precocious ability.

I think tied up in all this is a great potential for damaging situations.

Firstly, very bright children ( by which I mean genuinely intelligent, rather than the compliant and mildly curious classroom participants) are often not as interested in the things being put before them at nursery/school. A real intellect fuels and feeds itself and the teacher intoning “ 1,2,3” or “ T for teapot” is just background noise. It’s becoming quite well known that bright children often have poor handwriting.

That’s not to say no very intelligent children aren’t ever interested in these early skills; rather, it just doesn’t really prove much either way.

The problem in that for the children is that very gifted children can get overlooked or even “written off” too young, while quite average children absorb the glow of success and expectation that starts to shape their whole sense of self. I have seen awful outcomes when these “ early starters” begin to fall behind and the “dozy” peers who wouldn’t listen in phonics because they did were dismantling a pen and reassembling it unguided rather than saying “m”,”m”,”m” over and over suddenly steam ahead once they all hit quadratic equations.

I think watching, waiting and supporting with zero pressure or expectations is the wisest and kindest thing a parent can do.

Sorry, I meant to say “ not to say very intelligent children aren’t ever interested…” I haven’t got my glasses on!

I just want to chime in here with my own experience and also a podcast I listened to recently.

I was that kid that was very smart when I was little. Very advanced, early reader. Everything perfect. All through primary school. I didn’t even need to try, I just did it and it came so easy

when I got to secondary, I had pretty much zero idea how to actually study and keep trying and putting effort into things that didn’t just come easily to me. I had never learnt to try, because I never had to try before.

so like someone said, eventually for all the smart younger kids, the time comes when something will be challenging for them, so the important thing is to learn grit and perseverance, even when things don’t come easy.

this is what I try to focus on with my kids. Reward the effort and always explain that we just need to keep trying and nothing is easy.

I didn’t start actually learning how to put proper effort in, until I went to uni. I chose all the a levels that were easy for me, all the GCSE’s that were easy. If anything was difficult, I just wouldn’t do it.

then when I got to uni I was in for a huge shock and that’s the first time I really learnt to actually study and try to figure stuff out. Not ideal !

What @Oldfashioneddinosaur has written.
Both DH and I were very advanced readers before school. I was self taught . When they gave me a reading test at school I was put at age 16, this was at primary school. We have never been diagnosed with anything, we are late fifties now so it was less of a thing. We both have hypermobile joints which is also linked to ASD. I have major sensory issues as well and preferred the company of adults as you could have a decent conversation with them. People really seem to like us but find us a little odd. Both ended up working in academia, which is full of huge amounts of very odd people so was wonderful for us.

DD and DS were both way above average, sadly DD died so we never got to see what she was truly capable of. DS was more precocious than her. He has done really well, all A grades and got a place on a very competitive degree apprenticeship. I would say he is around my intelligence level, his Father is however a genius and was one of the worlds leading experts in his field.

Both sets of our parents and also ourselves just let the children get on with it. I did make a massive effort to socialise the children though. I always asked how they were getting on socially at school, I knew grade wise it was fine. DS was irritated that they expected him to assist other children with reading. A girl and him were used like mini teaching assistants. He was annoyed he wasn’t paid like the teachers.

@ViciousCurrentBunThanks for your input. And sorry for your loss.
Everyone has made so many good points actually and given me so much to think about. Someone else I know had mentioned the same about pairing clever kids with those that needed more help so those kids weren’t learning as much in those situations and getting frustrated.

Generally there’s a couple of things that impact.

firstly there are a lot of bright kids out there who only get to see phonics and maths when they start school.
so a kid who is ahead at age 4 by age 7 will find that most of the rest can now read and they don’t look as far ahead.

by contrast, the kids that are behind at age 7 usually stay behind. This is because the standard ways of teaching haven’t worked for them and they don’t often catch up (unless diagnosed with something easily fixable).

the best way to keep a bright kid engaged is give them lots of exposure to different experiences - maybe a musical instrument, do a sport, take to beach/castle/museum/mountain etc.

in upper primary and in secondary it’s not so much about learning to read and write and count as it is knowing and understanding the world.

This is certainly true in our case.

In my experience of teaching, yes, children who show early signs of academic promise generally continue to do well academically.

A few caveats though- children who are "gifted" often end up doing worse than their peers as so many of them are undiagnosed ND and don't get the support they need. The UK education system also often fails to recognise giftedness as a special educational need in itself and provide the extra challenge needed for gifted children to develop their skills, so their ability to try hard withers.

There are also many children who don't show early promise who later turn out to have barriers to learning, and once those are removed, they flourish. Many children thought to be a bit slow at primary school find in secondary school that they are dyslexic/dyspraxic etc., and go on to excel, once they get support.

My stepdaughter has been "behind" in language skills since nursery, doesn't say much and what she does say isn't very articulate. Primary school wrote her off. However, she's now taking 3 maths GCSEs (maths, further maths, statistics) and heading for 8s and 9s in all of them. English is still a struggle for her.

I was very bright early on. Did well and got to a top uni but once there was average to good and there were many people who were seriously brighter than me.

DD was noticeably bright and predicted 9s at gcse. DS more average as a little boy but seems to be creeping up the scale now he is a teenager and I wonder where he will end up.

He continued to be bright but also became quite lazy as a teenager. He did v well at uni but it took a few years to get the work ethos to match.

There is also the attitude. My ds gets lower cat scores than DD but he is very conscious and focussed and ambitious. DD is brighter on paper but more disorganised and less focussed. Which will be more “successful”? I don’t know.

what is “success” anyway.

That’s true.

There are so many components and that’s why I feel it’s really dangerous to put much emphasis on these early years.

Average children who are diligent and compliant can look very capable, yet in fact are destined to fall behind when the skills required change. Very bright children can look average or even slow because their skills are not being outed or called upon. And average children can be hugely successful or not because they have or lack work ethic. Work ethic can come later, or children led to believe they are far ahead of the game can lose all motivation when they find their skills were most suited to primary and they all but give up.

There is just so much that forms part of the picture and I think forming expectations early on is only ever counterproductive and damaging.

The tables will turn and turn again many times yet.

For me success is achieving any goal you set yourself.

The system of good grades in exams often hits those who are intelligent but have exam anxiety
This can affect moving forward career wise
It doesn’t take away their intelligence though

On another note
Being average academically doesn’t mean you can’t excel in other areas. It just means you’re not great at maths but a brilliant artist.
We are all different and I would hope schools can help children find that out along the way.

So true and a good aim to set children

I read somewhere that grit was the key to “success”.
A good friend of went to a top private school and onto Cambridge to do Astro-physics, later “downgrading” to quantum-physics and the former was too difficult. She’s very smart. However, she told me she was essentially spoon fed throughout private school so when she got to Cambridge she really struggled (as she was suddenly on her own), while other kids that had been to regular state schools were finding things a breeze. Their own grit, determination and self-motivation had got them there and was helping them get through it.
She and I now work alongside each other. She is so much smarter than I am. I went to an unremarkable state school with hands off parents (worked 2 jobs to feed 5 kids), grew up poor so none of the experiences kids get today. Yet we both ended up in the same place. So I do believe grit and self-motivation play a huge role.

All so true.

I feel our education system is overly narrow and judgemental in terms of “ success.”

It undersells some and creates unrealistic expectations of others.

There are no easy answers, but a good dose of caution and a pinch of salt taken by parents is a good start in terms of neither limiting nor over-pressurising our children.