Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Race to Nowhere- any thoughts?

This is the kind of statement that makes me wish this board had a "like" button: thanks, Dottie!!! I truly believe we're all just trying to do what's right for our kids.

I think everyone made good points. And obviously I realize a problem otherwise I wouldn't have DD in CTY to accelerate her math. Or put her in the science program.

And being different is part of it.

Choosing science is not so easy. I remember my Physics prof approaching me in lab one day. I missed class constantly and was totally shocked when he suggested I pursue physics at the graduate level. I thought about it for 10 minutes.

My very PG friend actually did physics for undergrad and then did her doctoral in nuclear engineering. She was shocked when I went to Wall Street (this is a friend since we were toddlers) and said how could I choose business? Two years after she went to work, "now I understand why you chose business" and went into plant management and 7 years later went into project management and etc. Always with the power utility. They gave her the flexibility. Though she is introverted and better at people skills than I.

Choosing science doesn't always work and being a risk taker and pushy gave me more points overall. But it comes with the roller coaster.

There is a father from a little boy in DD's K class last year. He has a PhD in biomechanics or something. Worked at Bell Labs for a while. Started a company that did well for a while then hit the dust and now is unemployed for a long time.

There is a nanny for a girl in Wila's class. She is a chemical engineer. Burned out as chemical engineer and told me many of her friends also switched careers. My father did R&D for a synthetic rubber company. Worked there for decades, retired with a nice package and benefits. That is what people did. They did their jobs. Got benefits. Benefits are gone, loyalty to one company and the mindset you can do this job for a lifetime doesn't work all the time. I think when you look at the path you lay out for your child, I mean educationally and extracurriculars, you have to look at your child. If your kid is going to be great in a research situation, great.

My PG friend's brother did college and medical school in 5 years, got great job offers after residency. Had a nervous breakdown when he was 40. He has a beautiful house on the river, a nice family. But he feels like he did everything right, it looks right but his life continues in a monotone. No heartaches, but without heartaches you cannot feel real joy either. Just steady, limbo.

Not easy making choices either way.

Ren

See what I get for jumping in so late in the game... lots of posts to respond to but where to start? [sigh]

First, Wren's idea of not accelerating her DD and trying to fulfill some of her needs horizontally. Why did this get a negative response? Wren and I are both in the early years of our DDs and we are both (like many) trying to figure it out and find the best solution for our individual child. Just as we hear from so many all the reasons why you shouldn't accelerate, perhaps we (on the board) should be accepting when one says they are not comfortable with accelerating. Clearly Wren is speaking from her own personal experience and she is using that as a part of why she doesn't want to with her daughter. What parent doesn't use personal experience? I find nothing wrong with stretching outward before going upward, so long as we, the parents, watch for telltale signs. I, too, am using the horizontal approach. DD has the added bonus of many languages from her school but she also does piano and is now doing enrichment work from home. DD is not ready to be accelerated because she is 'content' to be with her classmates. When she does show signs of frustration and boredom then we will consider it.

As for the conversation about jobs and interaction with coworkers, yeah ... sounds so familiar. Wren's example could have been pulled off a page of my own life journal. I never really considered myself gifted but knew I was different from the typical worker in the corporate world. I was great at my job but found myself soooo bored, especially when I wasn't moving up the chain as quickly as I had in the past. I was able to complete tasks in a fraction of the time that others could. I'm also very analytical and was able to see issues clearly when others hadn't a clue. I really did not fit into the corporate world, not because I wasn't capable of doing a great job, but because I was always frustrated with how everyone else couldn't do the same.

Hmmm ... I'm sure I have lots more to write but I need to go back through and read some of the posts.

I did not choose not to accelerate. I accelerate what I can. But I am restricted by the NYC lottery. I posted in another place that I am trying again for an accelerated school. But I don't think I will op for across the board multi-year acceleration. First, I don't think her IQ warrants starting college at 12. And secondly, I look at the social issues. Starting college at 15 could happen, based on the path she is taking with math but I am not sure it is necessary based on the options.

And so I post the debate that goes on in my own mind.

And secondly. The jobs I was talking about were hard to get, seriously challenging jobs that paid very well. So it wasn't the job. It was the attitude. And they were exciting jobs where I got to fly around the world and ask questions of CEOs. I remember being 22 and sitting in Conrad Black's office. He gave me 15 minutes -- which I stretched out to 25 because I asked good questions. He really didn't say anything to me but I got something out of the nothing he said. I came back to Merrill Lynch and told my boss he was going to sell this iron ore company to the grocery store company to get the cash. He didn't believe me. No one believed me but I told some portfolio manager clients. 10 days later he did it. This was a cool job, not a boring one, which science research would have been for me. But because I could do it, it wasn't challenging after a while. That is the point.

Ren

I admit I read through this thread quickly, but it is the above one that made me do a double glance. Through her whole post this was what was pulled out and focused on. I don't think she is saying children shouldn't enter college early just that her own personal experience makes her ponder this choice for her daughter. Again, both our daughters are young and we are still trying to figure it all out but I agree with the horizontal approach. Saying this, I also know that with the enrichment that we are doing at home, we just might have to accelerate because the risk is DD becoming bored with the curriculum at school. Time will tell.

Have you ever been accused of pushing your child? If someone in the context of responding to your discussion of the needs of your gifted child "well I don't believe in pushing my child" - how would you react to that?

Wren,
I think entirely missed my point. It wasn't that you should have studied science or been a scientist. Rather, that I don't think it is a widespread problem that radically accelerated students grow into adults who are bored or unable to enjoy life in the workplace. Or, that keeping people with same age peers makes them have happier careers. Your story to me is an argument for good career counseling and for encouraging self awareness of what makes a person happy so they can make appropriate choices.

POP,

Good career counseling? I had career counseling up the ying yang. I scored way off the charts in risk taking. There is no career counseling for kids like this.

And besides anecdotal comments, does anyone really know how radically accelerated kids do? Lang Lang spoke about prodigies in music and how very few survive in musical careers.

There is that one case of the girl I wrote about who finished Stony Brook at 14 and went on. She seems happy. She also got really into karate and had a black belt at 14. But I do not know what happens to most of them long term.

The only people I know personally that are in Nobel track in science didn't accelerate actually.

Ren

It seems to me that there are confounders here that can't easily be disentangled. People who radically accelerate are likely to be those who are far outliers in a number of dimensions of personality, not only intelligence. They are those who simply can't tolerate the lack of inputs. Forcing them to endure it does not make it less intolerable, it just tortures them.

I think that when such people get into the work force, they almost certainly will still be unhappy in an environment where they don't have intellectual peers or where they are under the authority of people who are less competent and who can't grasp what they are saying or understand its importance. I speak from experience. My parents had the opportunity to radically accelerate me, and refused to do so. If I hadn't managed to finagle a situation where I could just sign myself out of my high school and go to the local college library, I would have left school just to escape. My experience in the work force has been one of unending frustration. The only work situations where I have not come home ranting and raving at day's end have been ones where either I was the ultimate decision maker or where I did not have to answer to people who were not at my intellectual level.

I think that in most fields there is an optimal level of giftedness, where an individual's ideas might be ahead of or different from the rest of the group, but not so different that the group can't comprehend them once they are explained properly, and where the gifted individual is close enough in cognitive functioning to the rest of the group that he or she can understand what the rest of the group is missing and why and find a way to bridge the gap. If the gap is too large, then everyone in the situation is frustrated.

Modern science is collaborative, and modern scientists have to do a fair amount of persuading others to go along with their ideas. I am not at all surprised to hear that those on the "Nobel track" are not the people who radically accelerated as children.

First, you'd need to start with defining what you mean by "how they do". Some people seem to have the expectation that anyone prodigious needs to change the entire world or win a top prize or they have failed. That is unfortunately the standard that to often is put on prodigies and there is no need to repeat that on a forum that is supposed to be supportive of gifted children. Similarly, I don't find a lot of value in trotting out "I once knew a kid who was accelerated and he was a weirdo who killed himself" type of stories.

As far as career counseling there has been more written about this recently I would suggest Googling gifted career multipotentiality and you will probably find a bunch. I don't at all agree there is no possibility of getting career advice and that's one reason why we've worked to connect our child with PG adults with similar interests. Along the way we've met quite a few who are happy - all of them academics.

Of course there aren't large groups of prodigies to study because they are rare. The book I found most helpful is by Miraca Gross: http://www.amazon.com/Exceptionally-Gifted-Children-Miraca-Gross/dp/0415314917 The real takeaway message I got from this book is that outcomes are not good when prodigious children's academic needs are not met.

If you want an anecodotal example, one of the children in the book is Terence Tao. He went on to have a great career in math including winning the Field's Medal (equivalent of the Nobel for math). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao

More generally there is quite a bit of research on grade skipping and acceleration. http://www.accelerationinstitute.org/nation_deceived/ http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/acceleration.htm http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/grade_skipped.htm