Originally Posted by ultramarina
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The kids who do best at school are the fairly bright kids with lots of parental support (emotional and financial) who like to please.

I'd be a little careful with this popular truism. If you'd met my DD, you'd be the first to agree that "likes to please" is not, uh, the phrase that one tends to pin on her. We are also way below six figures for family income. DD is a straight-A student, though. Now, I would say that part of the reason for this is that she obviously has an excellent working memory and fast processing speed, and no other bottlenecks (no dysgraphia, dyslexia, etc), and is well-rounded with her abilities. (It's also fair to note that her grades *improved* when she moved to a gifted magnet.)

We have little money. Ds6 does well - he is tall and sting and pg. He can be argumentative and ornery but he cares what the teacher thinks of him. I am supportive and have a good education. Ds4 is also probably at least hg. He will do what he feels like doing and ignore the rest. He doesn't really care what people think if him (or just assumes everyone thinks he is great), he won't answer questions to impress people, he won't do anything he has decided against and he is not quiet about. He will probably only do well when the subject interests him or he likes the teacher. The rest of the time he will be annoying the hell out of everyone else.