Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Outliers, Tiger Moms, and Nature

If stuff is still too easy, maybe another skip is needed.

At the same time, I'd also bear in mind that it also takes time and maturity to learn how to focus on a problem when the answer isn't immediately obvious. It's probably a learned skill (at least in some or many people) and may not come magically because of acceleration. So, don't be surprised if a skip creates problems at first because the answers aren't immediately obvious anymore. The problems could actually be a sign that the student is finally at an appropriate level.

Sorry if this is getting OT?

My mom keeps buying me Malcolm Gladwell books, and after reading the first couple, I developed a strange, instinctive distaste for his work... although I could never really understand why his books irritated me. And then a couple weeks back I came across this little jewel on the intertoobs:
http://www.malcolmgladwellbookgenerator.com/

Perhaps it's his over-simplification that I find grating, but at least the gentle(?) mockery at that site makes me giggle.

Regarding Outliers in particular, I like Val's observations... and especially the two "myths" demonstrating extremes. Our DS9 definitely holds the "Myth of Not Working" as gospel truth, trying everything in his power to avoid any meaningful effort in life. He's forever hoping to rely on his highly-capable melon, while I work tirelessly to push him to the other end, almost wishing at times for stark -- if not moderately painful -- object lessons that will teach him the importance of hard work.

I must admit that my inner-Amy-Chua definitely regrets not pushing him harder along the way, especially when I see him give up (or not even undertake) tasks that pose even the slightest degree of difficulty. Even after two grade skips, the greatest regular challenge he encounters is... well... getting to Purple Wizard Level 19 ( or whatever) in his favorite online game.

Our kid's definitely an Outlier, and he has no where near 10,000 hours of anything (other than whining) under his belt. When I look at what he's been able to do so far, I can only imagine the possibilities were he to put even a fraction of those 10K hours toward something productive.

One thing I really liked about Outliers is how it demystified the process of getting to a state where one person is vastly better at something than another. It's not *just* that it takes 10,000 hours (say!); that's a necessary, not a sufficient, condition. What's interesting is the way that even a small initial advantage prompts spending more time, which prompts a bigger advantage, which prompts spending more time. Given enough bits of luck to allow that process to continue - it was Outliers, wasn't it, that laid out a long list of points at which Bill Gates was through sheer luck able to keep working with computers - by the point at which the time spent reaches 10,000 hours, the advantage may be huge. It's not just the 10,000 hours, but the whole process that led to the doing of the 10,000 hours. My feeling is that the "talent" element shows itself not so much in the initial advantage but in the repeated choice to keep going with the process of spending the extra time and going to the next level.

E.g. maybe you take two rather musical 5yos and they both start piano, and for a few years they are both keen and they practise more (with or without parental insistence) as they get better, and they take up the musical opportunities that come their way as the result of their early promise. They get to 8 and you can't tell the difference yet. But from here on Child A gets more and more keen on piano and maintains the process of working harder, getting more opportunities, etc., while Child B gets interested in Egyptology and gradually puts less energy into piano. We could also through in a Child C who is just as keen a Child A but gets stymied through living somewhere remote where there isn't a good enough teacher to take her to the next level. We rejoin them at age 16, by which time Child A is thinking about being a professional pianist and B and C have more or less given up. It's easy to say that Child A is "more talented" at piano than Child B - but remember it didn't show for the first three years. And we might twitch a bit at saying that Child A is more talented than Child C, but claiming to know that it isn't so would be silly - we don't *know* that Child C would have continued on a path like Child A rather than like Child B.

Moral: talent is what you have now and can demonstrate. It isn't a fixed innate quantity. It makes sense to ask of a small child "I wonder how much talent at X he will eventually have?" but it doesn't really make sense to ask "I wonder how much talent at X he has?" - he doesn't have it yet.

Indeed this makes sense to me close to home. In DS's first term at school, he was mildly ahead in maths; doing simple sums rather than cementing his ability to count. What got him to being seriously ahead was a self-reinforcing combination of his choice to spend vast quantities of time doing maths, and his parents' willingness and ability to talk about maths, provide resources, etc. etc. At his age I had the impulse to spend the time but I hadn't had the support. He's more talented at maths than I was. Whether he's more talented than I would have been under different circumstances is fortunately unanswerable! (Why yes, I am envious, regardless of how little sense that makes!)

I'm tempted also to make a distinction between "talented" where someone may need to push you up the first few steps - e.g., we remind DS to do his piano practice - and "seriously talented" where you don't need that - nobody has ever needed to remind him to do maths! I don't know how much that holds water; there are certainly musicians who recall being made to practise when young. It may be more about the difference between music and maths. (That said, for my DS, it does seem clear that his maths talent is of a different order from his music talent, and it
was interesting to talk to another mother who has an older DS also into music and maths but the other way round. One thing I noticed was that, if her recollection can be trusted, her DS's early progress in piano was much faster than my DS's, although it doesn't sound as though he practised much more. IOW in that, my guess is he already had a noticeable advantage within weeks of starting. That happens too.)

Perhaps, but I believe that a point comes when more hard work won't result in more skill unless you have the talent in large quantities.

Some (most) people just wouldn't be able to do a triple axel, no matter how hard they try. Others wouldn't be able to recall 14 digits backwards, regardless of effort. This doesn't stop some from trying very hard to do these things, but if someone doesn't have the muscle and the balance and the timing and the guts, landing that triple won't happen. Ditto for the reverse digit span. Some people won't manage a single axel and some won't manage 8 digits backwards.

I'm not advocating against trying: often, you can't know unless you attempt something, and trying is great. I'm saying that our society doesn't do itself any favors by pretending that a positive attitude and hard work are all it takes. I actually think that the hard work myth can be very damaging. It discourages honest self-critique and/or can create feelings of inadequacy ("The teachers keep telling me that I can learn long division as fast as everyone else. I'm such a loser because I can't.").

Here are Charles Murray's comments on Amy Chua. He mentions that her kids have good genes:

http://blog.american.com/?p=24765
"To get a little bit serious: large numbers of talented children everywhere would profit from Chua�s approach, and instead are frittering away their gifts�they�re nice kids, not brats, but they are also self-indulgent and inclined to make excuses for themselves. There are also large numbers of children who are not especially talented, but would do a lot better in school if their parents applied the same intense home supplements to their classroom work.

But genes play a big role in whether you can demand that your child get an A in advanced calculus or make first seat in the violin section of the orchestra. With that in mind, let�s contemplate the genes being fed into those Chua children who are doing so well.

Maternal grandfather: EE and computer sciences professor at Berkeley, known as the father of nonlinear circuit theory and cellular neural networks.

Mother: able to get into Harvard (a much better indicator of her IQ than the magna cum laude in economics that she got there); Executive Editor of the Law Review at Harvard Law School.

Father: Summa cum laude from Princeton and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, now a chaired professor at Yale Law School.

Guess what. Amy Chua has really smart kids. They would be really smart if she had put them up for adoption at birth with the squishiest postmodern parents. They would not have turned out exactly the same under their softer tutelage, but they would probably be getting into Harvard and Princeton as well. Similarly, if Amy Chua had adopted two children at birth who turned out to have measured childhood IQs at the 20th percentile, she would have struggled to get them through high school, no matter how fiercely she battled for them.

Accepting both truths�parenting does matter, but genes constrain possibilities�seems peculiarly hard for some parents and almost every policy maker to accept."

These problems Val describes are exactly what dd encountered in her trial skip period. They are exactly why she and her dad and I want dd to continue in the higher grade. DD says, "I finally have to pay attention." But since its not perfect after the first month, the school isn't comfortable.

My goal is just one "normal" year where dd can be a more mainstreamed kid who is accelerated in math, rather than pulled out and accelerated in everything. We are finding that she is just not held accountable for her work and growth when everything is done in enrichment, pull out groups. Everyone coddles her and she is never going to learn the organizational skills required in life until she is faced with organizational challenges. I don't think that wanting those challenges for her makes me a "Chinese Mom," but I have now certainly been branded one.

It's good rhetoric - but don't you see, it isn't an argument, just a set of assertions.

Who says Amy Chua's children would have got into Harvard/Princeton regardless of upbringing? Murray does, but he doesn't advance any argument for it. Who says a child with an IQ at the 20th percentile would have had a hard time finishing high school regardless of upbringing? Again, only Murray. These "facts" are obvious only if you are already committed to a talent-is-innate world view.

In fact, I'm sure every one of us knows of a child of very high achieving parents and grandparents who didn't go on to be similarly high-achieving, for whatever reason. And fwiw, if this Wikipedia page is correct (I don't think it's worthwhile to check, but feel free if you disagree) 85% of American adults have completed high school, so logically [quibbles deleted] at the very least, a quarter of those whose IQ is in the bottom 20 percent do complete high school!

Even if you decide that he didn't really mean to claim that these things *would have* happened but only that they probably would have, it's still not obvious, as he suggests, that genes give a hard limit to achievement whereas parenting doesn't matter at all provided the genes are good enough. The standard figure is that IQ accounts for about 25% of the variability in school success. Now, you might argue that Chua's children have good genes in ways not accounted for by IQ, but then, IQ isn't solely determined by genes either.

Strictly speaking, I dare say Murray's assertion "parenting does matter, but genes constrain possibilities" is true, but I don't think I'd back it to be more true than "genes do matter, but parenting constrains possibilities" after we turned both into precise statements.

Memory appears to be something extremely susceptible to improvement-by-training. I found the article here to be very interesting: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/02/20/magazine/mind-secrets.html

It didn't for us either. While there is a bit more challenge, it's not enough to require DS7 to practice more than just going through the motions of homework, classwork, etc... even with the sports he has played, though helpful, it has not proved to him that he would have to practice outside of scheduled team practices.

I am hoping the introduction to something completely foreign - a new language (pun intended) - at the new school next year will help teach him. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Grade skip did not solve this issue for us, either. The challenges of grade-skip have been "I have no friends" and "I write more slowly than the rest of the kids," but very little "this work requires more effort of me."

Grade skip solved the "I'm bored and miserable in class" problem, but not the "I can get high As without significant effort" problem.