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.)

ITA with ultramarina.

Those kinds of commments can be offensive when sprouted by the parent of a poorly performing student to a parent of a highly performing student or even about highly performing students in general. It can suggest a whiff of sour grapes. Having been parents to both kinds of kids, I have always been very careful in that regard. My oldest was classic 2E with high IQ scores and at least one almost perfect (not just 99 percentile) national achievement test yet there were a few quarters when he barely passed certain classes. My two younger ones are both straight A students but objectively beyond garden variety "gifted" levels and while one (DD) is a sometimes pleaser the other (higher ability DS) has not a pleaser bone in his body.

In looking at all three of my children's classmates over many many years, I honestly cannot say the highest performaning students are lower IQ that the students with poorer grades. Of course, I would not be so presumptuous as to assume I know the classmates' IQs but you get a general sense after so many years and conversations with teachers and their parents.