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For gifted children, being intelligent can have dark implications (2015)

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Re: For gifted children, being intelligent can have dark implications (2015)

#51

Post by goodJobWalrus »

belorn wrote: post #47
clentaminator wrote: post #12

Ah yes, the monthly link to an article about intelligent/gifted children and the troubles their talents cause them, leading to all the self-proclaimed gifted HNers coming out of the woodwork declaiming "Me too! Me too! Finally someone who understands me!". Not dismissing the article itself, but it's definitely a pattern on HN.

Most people intuitively understand that a person with 25 points lower IQ than the average population is going to have unique problems and go through life in a slightly different path and order than the average. However, for some reason, this is not easily understood regarding people with 25 points over the average. It's also a pattern on HN because it really is a rather new concept. In Sweden, the law that dictates t…

> However, for some reason, this is not easily understood regarding people with 25 points over the average.

I'm not sure how accurate this is. All the exceptionally talented kids/young people I knew growing up were nice and well-liked, well-adjusted people. All the weird kids I knew were just weird, not really especially talented.

I'd like to see the numbers behind those anecdotes. There was recently an article here that discussed why extremely academically gifted children rarely become grown-up geniuses and people who move their fields forward. They stated that it's not because they are troubled, most of them are socially well-adjusted, but I can't find that article now for the lie of me.

Re: For gifted children, being intelligent can have dark implications (2015)

#52

Post by tzs »

baldfat wrote: post #42
clentaminator wrote: post #12

Ah yes, the monthly link to an article about intelligent/gifted children and the troubles their talents cause them, leading to all the self-proclaimed gifted HNers coming out of the woodwork declaiming "Me too! Me too! Finally someone who understands me!". Not dismissing the article itself, but it's definitely a pattern on HN.

People miss the point. Intelligence isn't a gift for most people it is just a curse that you have to over come.

See "The Simpsons" episode BABF22, "HOMЯ", for an hilarious exploration of this theme. In that episode, it is discovered that Homer's IQ was drastically lowered by an untreated childhood mishap.

The damage is fixed, and Homer becomes much more intelligent than most of the other inhabitants of Springfield and it makes his life miserable, leading him to lament "is there no place for the man with the 105 IQ?" and purposefully restore the damage to return his IQ to normal Springfield levels.

Re: For gifted children, being intelligent can have dark implications (2015)

#53

Post by tdsamardzhiev »

I know smart people that had difficulties in school and smart people that steamrolled through school. Smart people that were bullied, smart people that bullied others, smart people that didn't have anything to do with bullying. I don't think any of the issues described has much to do with being smart per-se. There's this kind of people that just don't feel OK at school, smart or not.

Re: For gifted children, being intelligent can have dark implications (2015)

#54

Post by batz »

Intelligence is disruptive to the way people organize. Any trait that is disproportionately out of balance is in effect, a deformity. We used to say about gifted special education classes, "we're not retards, we're more like super-retards."

So we have a bunch of intellectually unbalanced kids whose deformity happens to be a mystical trait that modern society irrationally worships. Kids who have no control over the thing they are rewarded for learn to balance out their intellectual difference with new psychological defects.

You can see how this gets stupid really fast.

Like that comic character in the movie, I realized early on that gifted classes were not there to insulate me from the other kids, but rather to insulate them from me.

Do your gifted kids a favor and keep them out of special programs that isolate them from peers, and teach your kids to take their rightful place leading them.

Re: For gifted children, being intelligent can have dark implications (2015)

#55

Post by qb45 »

selimthegrim wrote: post #11
timwaagh wrote: post #8

luckily not everyone who is smart is necessarily a wreck, but some are. i was too. still am but now i'm a more powerful wreck and some people actually need to listen me.

I know it's incredibly immature of me to applaud this, but this sounds like music to my ears too.

Sure, but you may want to keep an eye on situations when this attitude limits you.

Stubborn power freaks tend to be excessively self conscious when they know how others are going to react once they "finally" make some big mistake.

Re: For gifted children, being intelligent can have dark implications (2015)

#56

Post by onion2k »

There's a reason why "outsider feels lonely, outsider is needed, outsider saves the world" has been a recurring theme in fiction for decades - it's something that everyone can identify with and everyone dreams of. It's normal. This isn't something that's limited to "gifted children".

Re: For gifted children, being intelligent can have dark implications (2015)

#57

Post by wdmeldon »

jwdunne wrote: post #29
taneq wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But my mum had to cut all the tags out of my shirts when I was in school too! Finally someone who feels my pain! :P Edit: She did though, damn things were itchy. Doesn't seem to be a problem since I grew up though. Funny that.

I ripped them out because I didn't trust my mum to cut it out completely. I was afraid the cut would create a sharp edge which would be even worse. I still wince at the few times I'd ripped a hole in a new shirt... Still unbearable but a lot more cautious after I ripped a cheap shirt in half a few months ago hahaha. EDIT: To note, I wasn't considered gifted. Undiagnosed ADHD. Teachers complained I couldn't finish wri…

Wow. I too feared the sharp edges created when my mom cut the tags out of my shirt, wasn't considered gifted AND had ADHD. There is no way that's a coincidence. Someone needs to study the link between ungifted children with ADHD and their position on incomplete shirt tag removal.

Re: For gifted children, being intelligent can have dark implications (2015)

#58

Post by true_religion »

goodJobWalrus wrote: post #51
belorn wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people intuitively understand that a person with 25 points lower IQ than the average population is going to have unique problems and go through life in a slightly different path and order than the average. However, for some reason, this is not easily understood regarding people with 25 points over the average. It's also a pattern on HN because it really is a rather new concept. In Sweden, the law that dictates t…

> However, for some reason, this is not easily understood regarding people with 25 points over the average. I'm not sure how accurate this is. All the exceptionally talented kids/young people I knew growing up were nice and well-liked, well-adjusted people. All the weird kids I knew were just weird, not really especially talented. I'd like to see the numbers behind those anecdotes. There was recently an article here…

I think it's orthogonal to the article. Under a system designed to the lowest common denominator, those on the low end have to put X amount of effort in order to pass. Those who are gifted have to put in X-Y effort where Y can almost nearly equal X (leading to kids not ever learning how to study).

The Swedish system basically begins with the proposition that all students should put out X effort. Gifted children get more advanced work, or more quantity of work till they are putting out X effort.

This isn't designed to make them better adjusted, or less 'weird'. It's just there to equip gifted students with more skills relative to the mean.

Re: For gifted children, being intelligent can have dark implications (2015)

#59

Post by spacehome »

brendonjohn wrote: post #39

I have a friend that is considered incredibly intelligent. When he attended kindergarten he realised he was different from the other children and so deduced he must be an alien. Fortunately his hypothesis was just a phase.

Funny. I look around and think this about myself about 3 times a month.

Re: For gifted children, being intelligent can have dark implications (2015)

#60

Post by scotty79 »

I think that there's plenty of intelligent kids who are able to devote part of their intelligence to noticing the whole lord of the flies going around and figuring that it's better to not raise you hand when teacher asks question (because answering it won't give you anything (besides grade which is useless) and can paint crosshair on your back) and figuring that it's better to be useful to reasonable group so you can hide among them, and figuring whom to hide from and how. I don't think intelligent kids are more maladjusted to average environments. It's just this is much more visible when smart kid is in trouble. When average kid fails to pay attention to their surroundings they are just bullied looser kids. I think there's proportionally more of such people than bullied looser geniuses.

Schools are just not healthy environments. Not only for gifted.

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