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

I recall in Kurt Vonnegut's _Sirens of Titan_ how people on Earth were handicapped, to counter their strengths. The most intelligent people had to wear earphones that constantly emitted annoying sounds so that it was harder for them to think clearly. That's very much like the way GLaDOS was handicapped in the Portal 2 backstory by attaching Wheatley to her--a personality core that was designed by the best scientists to be the worst possible idiot, to constantly feed her bad ideas.

The US educational system piles gratuitous additional work on the smartest students. Rather than just graduating, how about graduating while taking a bunch of AP or IB classes? The system accommodates them by digging additional official channels, rather than allowing them to become self-directed autodidacts or entrepreneurs.

I know that when I was a kid, I would have totally wasted any additional free time I may have had outside of classes, but it's very possible that some of my classmates in all the various "X" sections might have taken part-time jobs, or started low-capital businesses, or educated themselves on topics the school could never teach.

The gifted program at my school was genuinely fun and interesting. They spent the year on a theme, say astronomy, and explored that theme through a variety of projects. For example, they designed a game about space travel, they built a model of the solar system, etc.

I was not in it until the 6th grade, the last year before "gifted" meant "do more homework" in my school system. I got in because the previous year I built a fairly impressive lego castle for my entry project and maybe they thought that because they were doing architecture as the theme that I would do well. I really did enjoy it and looked forward to it every week.

But I was not, and am not, an exceptionally hard worker or particularly motivated to excel. I probably have an above average memory and was thus able to do well in school despite my laziness (I graduated high school with a 3.3 GPA). Even if I was "gifted", you wouldn't know it from my work. But given the opportunity to engage in something, I took that chance and looked forward to it.

I'm not sure that this addresses the children in the article, but I feel it's sort of a pity that the weekly "explore your interests" classes are no longer part of the gifted program in my child's school district. Not because she's necessarily gifted, but because I think she'd find it fun.

But when I was a kid, the school begged my parents many times to take me to some kind of doctor, and this only offended my parents, that always refused, the exception is that they once too me to see if I was deaf or not.

After I reached adulthood, and flunked hard at life in general, that I went to seek medical help.

The results were:

1) the first few medics I went, believed I was a junkie wanting fake prescription, I have no idea why (I never used any illegal substance, never had used controlled meds before, and never got drunk, and never smoked).

2) My parents had a few nasty fights with me, claiming that I was normal and only doing what I was doing to hurt them or something.

3) As I went learning about my conditions, and started to be open about it, people instead started to interpret that I wanted pity and attention, or that I was humblebragging, and had invariably negative reactions.

4) Eventually I found a good medic, that prescribed me Ritalin, it is helping a little, but very little.

Among my issues is that I never learned how to work "hard", I only work in bursts, and only when I am interested or close to a deadline, school was extremely easy to me, I don't even know my teacher faces of the last school years because I just slept in the classes (and still aced the tests), I never learned to sit down quiet and study, this is now biting me in the ass (I don't had Calculus classes on university, and now that I need it I am trying to learn by myself, but I keep getting distracted...)

I never learned hwo to pretend that I am working, like people do in their workplaces, even when I was the highest performing person in the workplace I still got fired because I was not "serious" or I wasn't "wearing the company shirt", because while all my co-workers just sat staring at their code 8 hours, I coded all that I had to code in 1 hour and then spent the rest goofing around on youtube and reddit.

When I DO want to code 8 hours, I still end goofing around too easily (example: Xcode crashes... while I wait for it to launch I decide to read e-mail, one e-mail has a link to wikipedia... and here we go wasting 4 hours reading wikipedia).

Plus lots of other issues irrelevant to work performance (like needing stuff cut-off from t-shirts, moving all the time to the point of losing a girlfriend over it, puking when eating certain foods, inability to communicate with "normal" people, because no matter what phrase I construct, it keeps getting way over their heads, and the list goooooes on).

The best I found I can do is rant on internet sometimes.

And keep taking Ritalin properly, and going to the psychologist... still very slow progress, I am 28, live with my parents, have no girlfriend, I am unemployed, and don't own any property (but have debts, my total net worth is negative).

I think these come from different sorts of intelligence. You can be intelligent in regards to knowing the right answer but be stupid in regards to knowing that you shouldn't be a know-it-all. Or you could lack the ability to evaluate the advice of adults and thus fully believe what they say at face value (which when combined with the peer-pressure is evil message can lead to optimizing social interactions in some of the worst ways possible).

Those who are gifted socially and in other ways are likely to have far less trouble. I think the gifted who have problems are those gifted in some way, but who are below average in terms of social skills, because the ways they are gifted leads to adults missing that the ways they are challenged.

My wife and son are Aspergers. I put a lot of effort into teaching social skills to my son (via myself and through courses) and by proxy, my wife has benefitted too. We also put my son into a regular and high performing school, despite his gifted ability (WISC tested).

I've had several friends tell me that I saved my son, which I think means that focussing on socialisation and behaviour was of more benefit to him than solely driving his academic performance.

He went from a troubled boy to reasonably accepted in a few years. While it's feigned behaviour (eg. He mimics being like others), it helps him socially. I've seen other Aspergers kids be broken by their peers because they don't try to (or can't) conform.

I spoke with his teacher last week and said "I expect the same respect and treatment for my son where possible" and highlighted a bad example where my son was singled out in front of the class "you can't treat an Aspergers like that".