Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy academically competitive

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I graduated from Harvard Med with honors, so I get the whole academic competitiveness thing. Frankly, I have always enjoyed academic competition and have thrived on it. I've tried to pass that on to my kids, who are extremely uncompetitive.
I just can't see making your child (or yourself) miserable over all of this. It just isn't worth it. How many such kids get into the Ivies, etc. and fail? They must face up to the fact that they aren't as gifted/smart/whatever as their parents want them to be.
The Chinese moms in my son's third grade class have all told me approvingly that he is the smartest kid in the class. I don't know if he is but I guess I'm glad that they think so!

I agree with mithawk's analysis.

Regarding the OP's anecdote, I would never tell another parent I was glad for competitive reasons that her child would be leaving my child's school. Besides being tactless, it ignores the fact that parents of other bright kids, and the kids themselves, are good sources of information about educational opportunities.

The anecdote does raise the question of whether the advantages of being with lots of other smart kids (probably learning more, having more like-minded peers) outweighs the disadvantages (lower class rank). For college and graduate school I think one wants to attend the most selective school possible, since (among other reasons) employers care about school selectivity. For high school, it is not clear to me that attending a Stuyvesant or a Phillips Exeter Academy boosts one chances of being admitted to an Ivy, since many students at those schools will be applying to Ivies. OTOH, the connections one makes at those schools are valuable, and given the Internet, they may be easier to maintain than they were 20 years ago.

I guess everyone in my family is pretty competitive, even in academics, but hopefully not in a boastful way. I didn't know if DS8 would turn out as competitive as his parents, but it seems that he will be. When I asked him if he wanted to do the Explore test, which is designed for 8th graders, he said that yes, he'd like to cream some 8th graders... I am happy that he's in a school environment with intellectual peers, where he is not the very top in everything and he knows it. Before we moved to this school, DS thought he was the smartest kid, but now he realizes there are others who know just as much as he does. He still *wants* to be the tops, though! I encourage him to be happy when his friends get high marks too. I also tell him that I'm just happy if he does his best and is learning new things.

Any conversation like this or the one the OP describes would be instantly put me on my guard. I would assume that "being the best" is more important to him/her than anything else--more specifically, that it doesn't matter if you ARE the best as long as you get to LOOK like the best and get the accolades/advantages that go along with that. I would suspect this was the kind of person who will do anything to get ahead, and I would be on my guard; IME, those people are dangerous and often empty at the core. (There's some honesty for ya.)

I do not agree

'working' with your kid definitely helps,however smart one may be,logically it should help more for gifted kids. teaching a work ethic helps immensely to any kid

I see kinda of opposition group to tiger moms in this forum.I feel highly educated chinese parents see lot of opportunities in this country and want education as their priority and may be do not want their kids to go through hardships they had gone through.

I am not backing any group,but thought of sharing my opinion

I totally agree. Also in the book I saw a gifted mom with an excellent sense of how hard she needed to push, certianly Sophie and eventually Lulu.

sorry Yannam....I missed the flow of the conversation here. Yes working with a chil to develop work ethic if needed is a key adult responsibility. If the schools can't or won't do that for an individual child then the parent must.
I thought you were talking about working with a child so that the child would be more academmically competitive. Srry. If I had read more carefully I wouldn't have misunderstood. Volital topic if I'm failing to be able to read.

Smiles
Grinity

teaching work ethic is going to work everyday. If you do notlearn that however gifted one may be it is difficult to keep his job...