LOL! No - do it sideways, Wren! Dark glasses set up a barrier between the wearer and the outside world.
Or, put on an eye patch?
NOW THAT would be an attention getter on par with Barbara Streisand's chewing gum stunt!!!
"ARRRGH....Educate me kiddies or we'll raid your firms and sell off the peeeces!!"
Gladwell's "Outliers" is a very important work that buttresses much of what we talk about on here. I listened to it on tape during my commute.
Precociousness is but one facet. He makes the comment that teachers equate maturity with ability and thus advance older kids over younger ones. The support system of parents and opportunities AND the capacity for hard work are key ingredients, not just precocity.
Ruf has to defend her work from an academic perspective. She has to select traits that work across most cases and which are recognizable to the broader population. Ruf does have a section on school structure for the GT kid ( and by inference - the general population.) which is interesting to educators. Ruf has also deal with a much greater number of examples over a longer period of time. Her book is aimed more towards those who work with kids more.
Gross is much more detailed in each case study and gives a more complete picture of each child. And her audience is Australia, not the US - the US is more accepting of elite intellectuals - so she has to present how unique these kids are to a hostile audience. For this reason, Gross' book is more accessible for the parent who has little experience with children.
Ruf and Gross both state that there is a range of traits and not every child will have all traits. Many kids start speaking before a year - others wait until later. Some start walking early - others wait. Even in TT's case, his verbal skills lagged his math skills making his parents wait on proofs for a time, whereas other kids might have been able to do the proofy stuff earlier due to better verbal skills.
The one thing that scares me personally is losing the desire to learn. I recently tracked down some classmates and with one exception, they have all plateaued. Their interests have fixed and they are content. They have not continued to grow intellectually and where they were once very interesting to be around and were unsually driven, are now quite rigid in their thinking and have little curiosity about things outside of their expertise.
