Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Interesting Story About Gifted Family

I saw this on TV a few days ago and thought I would share. Interesting that the father's perspective is that anyone can do this. I think there has to be a combination of innate talent AND drive.

Super interesting! That family is fascinating. I totally disagree that anyone could do college by 12, it's just not feasible otherwise it would be done more, especially by hot-housing types!
I'd love to see more about this family.

Great family. It's apparent those kids are very smart, are supported, and are ambitious.

And of course the father states that all families could do that because he has something to sell. All cynicism aside, I imagine that getting rid of a lot of time wasted at school could make a huge impact.

I think there's two families I've read about in the last year that are doing and promoting this very specific type of acceleration. This one is the Mona Lisa Harding family, and there's the Swann family. They're doing it by following a boxed curriculum set at an accelerated pace. Obviously you get done faster that way.


http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/t...d-getting-into-college/page__hl__college

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/t...-college-by-12-its-about-a-hsing-family/

Here's the two threads where the other forum discussed the Hardings and the Swanns. They went to a small private Christian college, which was able to make accomidations. ((State U's or Community College are reportedly less willing to make age accomidations because of homeschoolers doing exactly this.))

(I really hope I'm not breaking forum rules by linking to the homeschooling forum too much. I'm not spamming I'm just lumping my frequent forums togeather as "the internet" and yes, I mostly quote what I mostly read).

The homeschooling ladies in the other forum pretty much agreed that some kids will need college early, but most kids who can go to a so-so school early, can go to a great school if they work at it a little longer. Compare to the students who are profiled in the Davidson newsletter... the graduates this year looked like they all went to their first choice school, a lot of big names in there. Better to get a solid education than a fast one. Some kids do both.

I'm reading online about very smart kids who are homeschooled and many of them are doing highschool algebra by seven years old. They're not just spending all day long studying and doing nothing else. They're just very smart and learning at their own pace doing the average school day or even less time. I have to ask, what are you supposed to do about that? The answer is not to hold them back. Not to just do school all day and nothing else, obviously... because that's not healthy. But to consider it a good thing if that's how they learn.

I have more questions than answers.

I wish there was a video explaining what and how to teach your kids to be ready socially, emotionally, and educationally if they are noticably more rapid. I'm not sure "stick them in Calvert", (or Abeka,) or any other boxed curriculum and say "go" is it, is it? Is it?! I don't understand... what is comprehensiveness and breadth and depth? I read that gifted kids do well when matched with a mentor who's passionate and educated about something.

I hear you'll know more about what your kid needs by the time they needs it. The internet parenting quote I love best is, "I'm not raising children, I'm raising adults." I really just want to know how best to hand them full control of their life choices at a time and how to raise them to take that responsibility, in case it's earlier than eighteen. Here's the video lecture on how to recognize if your kid is at the age where they need to go to college early:


I guess the guy in the video (linked in the original post) is selling the missing piece I was hoping for, what to teach your rapid learner before then so they'll be ready. I don't want to buy the program just to find out. Why doesn't he come discuss his ideas for free on the forums, darn it!

FWIW, I keep reading the phrase, "The evidence supports acceleration as a beneficial educational choice."

La Tex, I think about this as a balancing act-- on the one hand, you have a PG child's innnate cognitive engine driving forward, and on the other, you have their innate chronological and developmental maturity acting as a drag on things.

While I do NOT believe in holding kids in lockstep with their chronological age (obviously!), I am also not in denial that there is a price to be paid for acceleration.

I am shortening my daughter's childhood by a full year every time we allow/encourage/support a full acceleration.

This is why at some point, that becomes a matter of thinking "This is wrong, no matter how 'right' it is for her, intellectually-- she deserves to BE a child while she is still a child."

This is one big reason why we have tried several means of slowing our daughter down by adding extracurricular activities, encouraging non-academic interests, etc, and keeping her in the slowest/lowest progression that she tolerates reasonably well.

While I'm not raising my child to be a child... I also don't want to raise an adult that never had a childhood.

And, uh-- not to overstate the obvious here, but NO, not "most" reasonably bright children can do college at 12-13yo.

Just-- no.

Those children who can would be considered BOTH hothoused and HG, probably HG+.

Believe me, we've heard a lot of that kind of rhetoric over the years from people who THINK that we are into pushing our DD to college as fast as we possibly can (on the basis of her 3y acceleration and partially also on her home-based education). They think (and sometimes say) two things-- how could you do that to your child, and just as often-- "oh, my {son/daughter} could have done that, too... but we chose for her/him to be normal."

Two things about that, obviously. Point number one is that they usually have no real concept of how difficult my DD's curriculum is when they're saying it. In her AP English class this year, they read TEN full-length novels/plays, and dozens and dozens of shorter selections... and were expected to analyze/synthesize information about all of it. So no, I do NOT expect that most of the kids that I've seen who are in even regular gifted classes could do that with as little relative effort as it has taken my DD. She's not "the smartest" and I'm not about that anyway-- but I just don't buy that MG kids or bright ones could do it, cognitively and developmentally speaking.

Secondly, we didn't "make" our daughter anything. Not our choice, really, the epigenetics involved in producing this particular cocktail of features. It's ironic in light of how hard we've worked to NOT have a 11-12yo college student how much we are judged for having one who will be 15.

Yes, I do actually think that hothousing is necessary for a child of 11-13 to be "at home" in a collegiate setting-- particularly to be independent in that setting.

It is not necessarily the case that one may only hothouse academic skills. In fact, I tend to think that early college entrants probably are more frequently in need of other types of hothousing-- cultivating beyond-age-appropriate skills in any domain where they are not naturally occurring/developing so rapidly.

On the social front, the executive front, yes-- I'd say that the vast majority of even those PG children who are ready to manage college at early adolescence probably require hothousing.


I'm not suggesting that this is an inappropriate thing, however-- for some children it is the least-worst option.

But it does serve to make them adults in a functional sense when they are chronologically still children.

I see it as a last resort, honestly.

But the other kids childhood includes a lot of hours of education, like it's "good for every child except the eg/pg kid". They're supposed to learn about the real world, which apparently means learning more about how other children learn and how teachers think, than about actual education. The whole world agrees that education is good for kids, why not for the brightest, also?
From what I've read (I think CFK said it) we can plan several gap years in between elementary, middle, highschool, and college but it won't work because once you've lit the fire for learning the kid's not going to take a break despite your plans. (except, like, signing them up to be a foreign exchange student.)
I don't think it's taking away a kids childhood to educate them. We send every kid to school.

I think, just from what the internet says, the kids need to somehow have an internal locus of control over their own education. Great, but when the school offers a young kid the choice between busy work and getting out of doing any work is that really a choice? I'm guessing they need to have executive function skills by about the sixth grade level, which is asynchronously awfully young for an accelerated kid. I've already been told I sound like a hothouse mamma. That's fine by me. I'm just trying to get my bearings and do this parenting thing right for my kids. Hothousing and scaffolding and "ready to learn zone" honestly sound the same to me.

No, but what is "taking childhood away" may look very different to a 10 yo versus a 30 yo.

Part of the social fabric of daily life is shared experiences with those around us.

We, as parents, feel that ANY action that serves to produce a singularity of childhood experience, or to deny a common childhood experience, is one that we have to undertake with a great deal of thought. Those things are not worthy goals, in our minds. Not without other reasons why alternatives don't work.

That's my complaint about this. The notion that this is a GOOD idea for-- well, for many children. That, I disagree with.

We are choosing our child's opportunity costs for her, basically.

So sure, she COULD go to college at ten. (And really, ours could have-- at least at the local community college.)

OR... she could slog through high school (building similarity with nearly everyone else she'll encounter in college and after) at a pace that is tolerable (not ideal), and enter a higher-level collegiate environment when she is five years older.


Putting her in college as soon as she is academically ready was never a goal in our minds.

We certainly didn't set out to GROOM her for that outcome. My goodness. I think this is a terrible reason for homeschooling, myself (and yes, I've seen a tiny handful of people who do precisely that in order to place 16yo in community colleges or regional public colleges).

It's one thing if it is child-led. It's quite another if it is push-parenting.