Are any of your children super clever?

[QuickTraybake]

I was a very good reader and mathematician from a young age. DS aged 7, he excels in everything at school. In reception he could count to 100. He is currently the best mathematician in his class and is a fantastic reader. He has recently received his “pen license” whatever that was. He is also great at history and exceptional at sports.
Are any of your kids like this or better?

This was me as a child. Always the smartest in my year group by far, was doing Year 1 stuffbin nursery apparently, top GCSEs, front page of newspapers etc.

However, I was (and am) always very socially awkward (wouldn't be surprised if I'm autistic). This has meant that despite getting a PhD (I have an excellent work ethic and can hyperfocus hugely), I've never especially excelled career-wise, and, although I'm good at my job, get stressed and anxious too easily to be promoted very high. Most jobs involve people and I am brilliant academically but that doesn't correlate to emotional amd social intelligence and being good at dealing with people. My sibling, who was awful academically throughout school, is a people person, and has been more impressive in his career than me. Being 'clever isn't all it's cracked up to be, and as a parent of a clever little boy now I'm trying to focus on supporting him socially rather than extending his reading and maths further.

LOL!!

Yeah, mine are very clever, but rubbish at sports and not great socially, and I suspect the latter two are connected.
They're all grown up now, one has a fancy finance job ( after 3 years in his bedroom after uni), one is working in the arts, and the other is on his second go at uni ( also spent 3 years in his bedroom).
Some of their peers who weren't so great academically and/ or didn't go to uni are doing as well , if not better , by 25.
I never thought it was something to brag about, they were born that way, and I'm not sure that finding school so easy has actually done them any favours.

Yeh, I do wonder if cleverness has a negative correlation to happiness actually. Not in all cases, obviously, but as a general trend. Being really clever does set you apart from your peers and make it harder to fit in socially - and I think people who are sociable are happier.

It’s very sweet when parents think their children are geniuses 😀

Mine are brilliant readers / humanities but average at maths and science DH and I are both the same so lop sided in our family hope they have children with scientists or maths types!

LeanIntoChaos
At one point 3 separate children came to me in the playground to tell me that my fourth child was the smartest in the class. I was preening away.... Until I realized it was all propaganda. He had told everyone that he was the smartest in the class. Because they were 6 they all believed him.

I love that.

He will go far! Self promotion is far more
likely to lead to success in life than solemnly counting to 100 😀

So true!!

This is true. There is a certain autistic profile of an Aspie toddler who is very bright and uses unusual/adult words. My daughter is like this and has been very late with socialisation and has only just found a special friend at 4.5 - apparently he's a lot like her.

Leta Hollingworth (one of the first researchers in giftedness) referred to the IQ range 125 - 155 as "socially optimal intelligence". She believed that once you go above 155 you start to experience problems with loneliness (lack of peers of comparable ability) and being too far ahead of age related expectations to be accommodated in a normal educational environment. These were age-ratio Stanford-Binet IQ's so the figure of 155 she had in mind would be more like 140 on a modern test i.e. the top couple of tenths of a percent.

Yes think there is something in that - normal clever so top third of class and having good social skills and likeability is far more likely to lead to a happier / easier life than ultra off the scale intelligence. Many extremely intelligent types I have come across were slightly odd and socially isolated. They haven’t massively succeeded in the work
place either.

Gifted /genius probably stay ahead.
But just bright can peak early or struggle with effort/concentration/interest.
Similar to other posters my dc1 was speaking well early and reading early etc.
Behaviour at school is poor.
And dc chooses to try to compete on everything but sport or schoolwork so trying to trick you or for eg randomly waking her sister up when she is exhausted from travel.

The ideal would be a 6/7 gcse student who is popular and in sports teams.

A good (probably private) school can bring an average student.

Yep.
They’re now grown ups.
what do you want to know ?

please avoid the tiger parent game and add breath to their life if “ school isn’t doing enough “ rather then pushing the standard academic stuff. Also let them be board and let them fail and learn to come through - being a perfectionist / always top in everything can breed an awful sense of inadequacy and self drive that isn’t healthy.

I can understand what she’s saying in that when IQ goes above a certain it almost becomes problematic socially etc… but I can’t understand why she considers 125-155 as ‘socially optimal intelligence’.

It makes no sense considering only 5% of the population have an IQ of 125 or above and by the time you get to 130/140 obviously the percentage is lower, like 1/2%.

It would make more sense if the figures were 100-125.

@Fluffywigg I wonder if socially optimal means in giving you an edge while still operating at the same level socially as peers? Someone with an IQ of 100 would be average, whereas with say 125 they’d probably be at or near top of the class, find school easy and enjoyable but still having a peer group that is similar/without being too bored etc

God haven't read the whole thread. Posters literally falling over themselves to put the OP down. And in her place.

How very dare she think her child is extremely bright? What ? Are the rest of you jealous?

And roared at the " well round here they all count to 100 in reception"

Snort. Can't even.

Take proper advice OP. Ask their teachers. Make sure they're happy.

This is not the place for support.

I was a clever child - put up a year in primary school, joined Mensa etc. I then dropped out of uni and spent most of my adult life in normal jobs. Just be careful how much pressure you put on 'clever' kids.

DS1 who is now 17 and doing A-levels was also a clever child. When he started primary school he was assessed as having a reading (and comprehension) age of 14+ and has always been a super sponge absorbing knowledge. He got all A* and As at GCSE and is now doing Physics, Maths, Further Maths and Geography at A level.
However he wasn't reliably toilet trained until he was 7 and has never been very sociable.

The genius and most exceptionally bright kids I've taught are all neurodiverse. Einstein, Mozart, Steve Jobs etc stood out from the crowd in their abilities due to being neurodiverse. Counting to 100 or reciting the alphabet in Russian is rote & pattern learning and not an indication of aptitude. Adding within 100 or answering comprehension questions is aptitude. Can't help but inwardly scream when an aggressively pushy parent berates a artificially confident 4 year old to, "show the teacher how you count to 100...1,2,3" (nah, don't bother).

Agree with this re ND.

I was in the top stream of a grammar school and I would say everyone in my class fell within that “socially optimal”
bracket, save for 1 boy who had Asperger’s, had been moved up a year, and was a maths genius. Loads
of us went to Oxbridge. He did Maths at Trinity Cambridge and is now a maths professor.

He was (and I’m sure is) a brilliant guy but I wouldn’t wish that for my own children.

From what I can gather about a third of my dd's class are really quite clever. Many would have been able to do that and more in reception. A handful read very fluently. My own Y1 dd isn't crazy about Maths but does ok and has exceptional spacial reasoning skills. She can checkmate the computer on chess (ok when the computer is in dunce-mode but still...) and she is learning a musical instrument and doing really well with it. She can draw as well as me already. She's got very good physical skills and rode a pedal bike when she'd just turned 3. She can read a chapter book with relative ease. She is yet to get a single spelling wrong in her spelling tests. I'm incredibly proud of all this but seeing the kids in her class I'm not deluding myself that she's 'gifted' as such, just a bright and inquisitive child who's being nurtured well like many others her age. Most importantly she seems very happy, has lots of friends and loves school. What's the point in your post exactly? Are you worried about your child? Or did you just want to brag?

" not deluding myself she's gifted " @Princesscounsuelabananahammock

Crack on . Really .You've written a whole post about just how well your own daughter is doing just to make this poster feel what ? Like she's deluded? Or bragging?

Would someone really be on an anonymous forum to bragg? Not much return really.

And if OP wanted a steer or guidance she's long gone. Everyone was soooo quick to put her in her place.

Why does anyone even care sooo much if a random thinks their child could be very clever?
Perhaps they are. LOTS of kids are. 🤷‍♀️

The point I was making is that where my daughter is at (and where her child is at) isn't especially exceptional. There's these kindof posts all the time on here. It's difficult to be sure whether OP's post is a genuine worry or a stealth brag. Either way as a parent with a year's more experience I can tell them that they need to chill the heck out. Their child is doing fantastic by the sound of it and OP should be very proud. They sound perhaps more able than average but not exactly Stephen Hawking. They aren't going to spontaneously combust if they have to do phonics and read Biff Chip and Kipper with the rest of the mere mortals. Their teachers will have experience teaching kids just as smart and smarter.

No good will come of OP putting her child on a none-existent pedestal. They're tiny and they have a long way to go yet. Keep on nurturing them, don't make problems that aren't there and concentrate on any genuine problems if and when they surface.

The midwife gave my newborn a university final year maths exam and he finished it before starting skin to skin. He only dropped one mark and that was due to a mistake in the exam paper.

😂😂😂

DD was like this all the way through primary school, and then lockdown happened in Year 6 followed by a move to a crappy secondary school and she slipped. She’s still bright and is predicted very good GCSEs, but definitely hasn’t followed the same trajectory that she started off on. But she’s happy and capable so I’m sure all will work out fine.