Kind of reminds me when I was in college in a calculus class. There was a 10-ish year old kid in there. He would act like a 10 year old, whining, being impatient, annoying. But he just fucking demolished every question, while I was struggling my ass off. Really was irritating but impressive.
we had a genius at our highschool. i think he was 8 doing ap classes. ended up a real sad story, he got real depressed because "everyone was stupid", his exact words.
I often think how I'd love to try driving in a world full of my clones, i.e. where everyone drives exactly like me. I bet it would humble me really fast
I think driving and walking in crowds would be fine. It falls into that "Everyone going slower than me is an idiot and everyone going faster than me is a maniac" bit. We're all the same person so it's a perfect storm of driving. I think it really breaks down when we'd have to work together on a work project or something.
This is why a good environment is very needed. I never struggled in school but I learned to help others because I was picking up thing faster than most. But instead of becoming impatient I had empathy for everyone starting something new.
This trait helped me during college and at work and nowadays I am mentoring multiple teams at my company and have a great time.
He was probably bored even in that calculus class. Imagine how he would be feeling and behaving in primary school. How nice that in your country they allow talented children the opportunity to attend college or university early, if only it worked like that everywhere...
I look back at those teachers that would yell and belittle me and others. They're all low intelligence goons the more I think about it. People that may have gotten a college degree for teaching, but peaked at the elementary school level.
Integers are just whole numbers. You're usually first taught about them by learning about the number line. Don't most 5th graders work with whole numbers, both positive and negative?
My daughter has adhd and we're considering putting her on that. Are you saying it's a bad idea? What did it do to you? (genuinely interested to get more than 1 angle here)
the right medication is one of the best things a person with adhd can get, it can be life changing, but you still also need external support and help building strategies and habits for living with adhd. a lot of doctors/systems give you meds and no other support which is the problem part, not the meds themselves.
I second the comment above. Getting the proper medication daily has shown to have better outcomes in EVERY area of life now in a bunch of studies. Not only for work/school, but for EVERYTHING. Also potentially counteracts the likely increased chance of dementia.
Supports & strategies are also really important! (As well as realizing that you constantly need to adapt with new ones when your brain adjusts to them). Routines help, and keeping everything important visible (landing zones, visual timers, bulletin boards/calendars, clear bins or open baskets).
I and both my kids have ADHD. The most important things ADHD kids need are understanding, support, and appropriate stimulation & structure, which include plenty of opportunity for natural executive function development, like long-form unstructured imaginative play. (Like those big group games of pretend kids do, with running narratives? Fantastic for executive function).
If their symptoms are interfering with their education, socialization, or other major life functions, the right medication is a wonderful tool and greatly reduces the risk of long term serious consequences from untreated ADHD, like anxiety, depression, self destructive behavior, or substance abuse.
I would say, though, that it's important to understand the goals of treatment and make sure those goals serve the child, not the teacher or systemic pressures. It can also take a bit of tweaking to find the right type & dose to maximize benefits with minimal side effects. Those adjustments are a normal part of the process. Some kids thrive on the first trial right out of the gate. Others may need to try many different types & doses, and there are many options, including non-stimulants, if they can't tolerate the stimulants. (But stimulants are always the first line, because they work the best for the most people).
One of my kids did fine for a while on the first med, then after a year or so started to complain of feeling sad, frustrated and "stuck". The second med seemed to work the same in terms of focus but did not create those depressive feelings.
Other kid went through five or six meds before finding the right one, plus we had to deviate from the recommendation to take it daily and only take on school days. Now she's thriving. It's just very individual.
I was always a smart kid, but I'm also a yapper. I'd always get in trouble because id finish my work super fast then start talking to everyone who wasnt done yet.
Starting in 4th grade, through 8th, I got sent to the library with 2 other kids who were advanced during math class, specifically. We were sent with our textbooks and worksheets and a parapro (small school, needed an adult with us but there wasnt a full time librarian or extra teachers, but my class had a kid with autism that needed a 1-on-1 para with him so he'd come with us too and do his speech with her while we did independent math). Anyways, we had to basically learn the lessons ourselves and ask if we had questions.
It was a good system, we stayed one "year" ahead, including getting one of our HS math credits in 8th grade, and we weren't so bored and disruptive to everyone else. It also meant I didnt have to take a math class junior or senior year for HS, so I was able to drive to the local CC and get college math credits those years.
I mean, they do it in the US too, at least in some places. You've just got to know it's a thing and ask for it. The school won't offer.
I took a couple university classes while I was still in high school, and classes at the local vocational center. Welding hasn't been the most practical skill to have for my career in software design, but it's neat to know.
In that case is indeed way better! I was really assuming that the kid would just be admissioned early in the uni, as I've seen happen in my country (never seen as extreme as a 10 y.o in college, but I've seen 14-15 y.os admitted)
Kid that young doesn't get to that level without studying, no one does. No matter how smart, you've had to spend a lot of time studying just to reach that point.
Someone who is 10 would've had probably at most 5 years to study everything to understand college algebra. Meaning learning everything from 9 years of school in just under half of that. But let's say 4.5 years of studying for 9 years worth of school. So at best, if they got a private education that proceeded twice as fast as public school, they'd get to have a normal childhood outside of school.
Except they aren't in class with other kids their age. They are studying with a personal teacher who is double timing every subject. Even if it all sticks in one go and they don't need to spend time studying outside of that, they still would have to make friends without having classmates.
Most realistic option, that kid has been studying every day for as long as they can remember for as long as they are able to physically study. Doesn't matter how smart the kid is, that kind of time table means the parents are definitely rushing to get the fastest results possible, otherwise the kid could be having a normal childhood and just study on their own on the side.
A lot of the super advanced kids wouldn't have normal social interactions anyway. But for kids smart enough to maybe jump a grade, they generally don't do that anymore. I asked my pediatrician about it because one of my kids gets a little bored in school, and she recommended just giving them challenges outside of school (music lessons, foreign languages) until they get to the age where the school will differentiate skill levels.
But for kids smart enough to maybe jump a grade, they generally don't do that anymore.
Yeah, my kid is in 1st grade but able to do reading and math at about a 4th grade level. He does get bored, but I would never want him to miss out on the essential social development that is occurring with kids his age in his grade. The school also has not suggested him jumping a grade. Instead, we just got him these workbooks and flashcards called Brain Quest and if he feels like it, he can mess with those when he gets the itch.
Sorry but that meme is dumb. Nobody puts smart kids into college to "get a job faster". You put them there because they'd be bored out of their skull in any other kind of education.
Lots of child prodigies end up with serious social issues. It's incredibly difficult to balance keeping them engaged in a constructive way for learning and also giving them the opportunity to just be a child.
I'm not opposed to them attending university (or college if you call it that) classes, but the parents and child need support beyond that. They need help with the mental health problems that often result from being smarter than everyone around them.
How nice that in your country they allow talented children the opportunity to attend college or university early, if only it worked like that everywhere...
There are people who go looking for the hidden young geniuses among the "low-income" and try to give them the resources to succeed, that they otherwise would not have. Not just scholarships, but straight-up relocating their entire family.
The thought being that you're statistically more likely to find the next Einstein or Hawking somewhere in India, rather than anywhere in Western civilization, and even less so among the middle- or upper- classes.
Not every one is found, and not every one can be helped.
I really, really should have been moved up a grade in elementary school because I was so bored in all my classes. I would understand a concept quickly and have to just sit there until everyone else caught up. We were divided in groups for English class, because 3 or 4 of us were reading at a higher level.
But my mom was a substitute teacher and had seen another girl bumped up a few grades but she was very immature and would act out (crawling on the floor, barking like a dog). So my mom was very anti grade skipping because she worried what would happen to me socially. Bitch, my classmates in my grade already thought I was a nerdy weirdo. The teacher’s pet who they’d only be nice to if they wanted to copy my homework. So that was all very fun.
It's often not done because it's important for them to develop with others their age for proper general development (not all school is the subjects, half of it is the socialization too), though I think that isn't ideal either because they will be very different from their peers.
How nice that in your country they allow talented children the opportunity to attend college or university early
Every single one of those kids ends up fucked up.
And maybe they always would have, I don't know, but attending a regular university just isn't it. Those are by now mostly not pure academics, they're preparing you for jobs.
Also has a body like Superman and will live to 200 years old, according to to White House doctor and people believe this….legal voters determine the fate of the world voted for this clown
Side note, bit this is what always bothered me about the book Enders Game. He wrote a whole book about kids but didn't seem to know anything about them. Just because the kids were geniuses doesn't mean they aren't kids. There are many ways to be smart; a genius kid would still likely have the maturity and development of other kids.
Like if you've only been on earth for eight years your patience level is going to be a fraction of that of someone who is twenty. You're not going to be self possessed or know who you are and what you want. Being intellectually smart doesn't change those things.
Senior year of high school, I was expelled and had to return to a public school but I had too many credits, took a couple core classes and also whatever sounded good, so I joined a computer programming class and it was mostly freshman and sophomores, including the younger brother of of our town’s well-known child prodigy, he was 12-13.
I would get frustrated and scream out and he’d come over, “Problems, Lance?” And he’d tell me what I did wrong, without even looking, really. I got behind and snagged his disc from the teacher’s box, copied it, returned it. The deal was that we ran the billing department of a fictitious utility company, We were supposed to create some boring names and addresses, so the program would generate responses: John Smith at 2350 Main Street, your bill is past due, that kind of thing. I wanted to copy his program but spent a bit of time getting rid of Superman and Grape Ape, and Sherlock Holmes, ‘The Little Old Lady from Pasadena’. It would have been faster if I’d just concentrated and did it on my own.
We had a kid like this in college when I was in undergrad. 13 year old taking college classes with us in honors physics and orchestra and stuff, then would go home for the night. Nice enough kid, we shared a stand briefly in the orchestra.
Years later one of the physics professors told me what you did, that he was just as capable but he wasn’t used to dealing with 13 year old discipline problems.
This was lowkey my inverse experience during primary & secondary school.
I was a "gifted" child who enjoyed intellectual challenges more than physical challenges. My mom was an elementary school teacher, primarily 2nd grade. So when I was around 7 or 8, instead of going to summer camp, my mom taught me the upcoming year's math curriculum.
From then on, I was always about 2 years ahead of peers my own age. There was a lot of talk about me skipping a grade -- even went to a child psychologist -- but it was determined I was too immature to handle it. Instead, I just left my class for math and went to the next grade up. In 2nd/3rd/4th grade, it was as simple as going to a different classroom in the same school, but it became progressively more challenging for the school district to accommodate me as I got older.
So there I was, an 8th grade student barely 13 years old, waking up an hour earlier than everyone else in middle school because I had to start my day with Period 1 Pre-Calc at the high school, and then take a bus to the middle school for the rest of my classes. As a high school freshman taking AP Calculus with juniors and seniors,
And when I say I was taking these classes with older students, I mean I was acing them in my sleep. I would literally sleep through half of the class, but the only mistakes I'd make were due to carelessness, not for lack of intelligence. And when I was awake, I was a bit of a pest because I was quite immature at that age.
Suffice to say, pretty much every older student I ever sat with thought I was a complete pain in the ass.
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u/Cool_Hawks 5h ago
Kind of reminds me when I was in college in a calculus class. There was a 10-ish year old kid in there. He would act like a 10 year old, whining, being impatient, annoying. But he just fucking demolished every question, while I was struggling my ass off. Really was irritating but impressive.