I think of an IQ score as a single indicator in a box of cognitive talent. IQ and other factors go into what a person accomplishes, and different factors give different outcomes. Someone with a lot of drive, imagination, and opportunity may create something new, like a new type of engine or a new way to understand gravity. Someone without drive may lead a more typical life, and might influence others around him, but might not. Who knows? Luck and connections are also huge factors.

People with very high IQs may tend to process information differently than those without this trait, but the conclusions they draw often mesh with those of others. Highly intelligent people are also liable to making dumb mistakes like everyone else. My kids and I all have friends who aren't gifted, and we connect with them just fine. I may connect with one person about science and with another about politics and with a third about our kids. I don't believe that people will automatically connect just because they have high IQs any more than I believe two athletes will connect because they both made it to nationals in the 400.

This is part of why I've become leery about terms like PG. Profoundly gifted is just too loaded for my money. Also, there's a tendency here to set "PG" apart from everyone else, which I see as being unhealthy. Who wants to be that isolated? Not me, anyway, and I don't want that for my kids. I don't want my kids to see themselves as being more different than they already are. You skipped a grade, but that doesn't set you apart from everyone else in every other way, and people who aren't as smart as you are often see connections that you didn't.

I had a friend whose father did something amazing during a war. She got annoyed with others for putting him on a pedestal, telling me that he was just an ordinary guy who did something extraordinary during an extreme situation, and then went back to being an ordinary guy after the war. Like him, accomplished people with high IQs (and also kids with high IQs) are still just people who speak out of turn sometimes and who have to change their socks and eat properly. If a war hero can be an ordinary guy in almost every way, my kids with high IQs can, too.

So an IQ test tells me that I need to find ways to challenge my kids cognitively,and yes, that's a struggle. But it doesn't mean that they're somehow really incredibly different from the rest of humanity and that raising them is some kind of unique journey that's completely different from what others experience. Smart kids still have to learn to eat properly and change their socks and be polite, just like everyone else.