It looks to me like Sidis simply burned out. He took an obscure job as a bookkeeper because he craved obscurity. He realized that he didn’t have to do anything else.
It seems to me that one of the hardest things a smart person has to learn is to stop trying to be the person everyone else wants him to be and to instead become the person he wants to be.
I read about William Sidis, and I immediately think of my own son who does quite nicely in dimensions that don’t involve space or time. He is also extremely brilliant. He learned to read at the age of 2 which was actually quite a surprise to me when I realized it.
My son earned the nickname of The Professor from his kindergarten and nursery school teachers who not only noticed his brilliance, but also his complete absentmindedness. He was first diagnosed with ADD and only later with Aspergers.
I see Sidis’ lack of social graces, his preference to live in his own world, and even his amazing collection of street car transfers as all part of what we would now call Aspergers. There may have even been a touch in his brilliant but neurotic parents.
It has taken a careful guiding hand to get my son through life. You don’t want to be too hovering, but at the same time, you have to provide enough guidance to prevent him from spending all day in his room thinking brilliant thoughts to himself. When he was in elementary school, I wasn’t sure if he’d make it in high school. In high school, we weren’t sure if he’d ever make it to college. Once in college, I wasn’t sure whether he’d find his way to graduate.
Two and a half decades later, I’m still not quite sure how he’ll do.
Two threads on the same topic have been merged.
This reminds me of a New York Magazine article from a couple years back.
Briefly, the gist of the article (which included some very convincing studies of school children) is that we aren’t doing smart kids any favors by telling them that they’re smart. Kids that are constantly praised for their innate abilities actually tend to underperform when they meet challenges or setbacks, because they start thinking that they’re naturally good at some things and naturally bad at others, and neither can be changed.
Rather, we should be praising children for their efforts, not their intelligence. From the NYmag article:
And don’t call him Cece baby !
I noticed that the Wikipedia page begins
The word “Jew” was added on Jan 24, 2015.
I’m not an editor but perhaps someone who is wants to fix that?
The possibly-racist problem is fixed. I had nothing to do with either.
Cecil’s response includes this:
That could be written with little change about James Joyce.