veers off on a tangent
That kid wouldn’t make Doogie Howser look like a slacker. Doogie graduated from med school at 14. 
Sure, the kids exist. The question is, rjung, why does your wife think it’s so desirable to have a kid that smart? Not that it would be terrible, but why does she feel that it would be that great?
Super-smart kids can have a hard time. It’s hard to keep them entertained, because normal kid-stuff means very little to them. It can be hard to make friends. They’re bored stiff in school, unless they’re lucky enough to live somewhere that is willing to accommodate them, or their parents search around until they find something that will work. It can be difficult to have a super-smart kid, and it can be difficult to be a super-smart kid. (For one look at the obstacles smart kids face, try Genius denied.)
I’m not saying we should feel sorry for parents with really smart kids, but I don’t see why we should be envious, either. What’s wrong with having a normal, ordinary, run-of-the-mill kid?
Yep. I’ve heard stories like that. You have to realize that just because someone’s taking a 300-level course, doesn’t mean he isn’t 16 and won’t act like a 16-year-old. The only way you’d have gotten him to these meetings is if you’d offered him pizza.
I’m about to run into that problem - I might be professionally qualified* as an engineer before my 21st birthday. Trouble is - I’m less mature than some 16-year-olds now and I don’t know how potential employers and employers will take to having someone who by all non-professional appearances is an adolescent and something of a hot-shot at that.
*Meaning in this case “academically qualified to function as an engineer in the industry, and capable of being employed as an engineer”. As you can’t take the Professional Engineer license examination until you’ve accumulated a couple years of engineering experience, the P. E. license is not what’s meant by that statement.
Prodigies are real enough… but it would be interesting to know how many child prodigies in ANY field really go on to accomplish great things.
On a semi-regular basis, we’ll see 5 year old violin or piano virtuosos on TV, but really, how many of the all-time great violinists or pianists were prodigies? Not many, I’d wager.
It’s sort of interesting to see old film or TV footage showing what a capable golfer Tiger Woods was at age 4, but I guarantee there have been a number of kids who were that good at age 4. There just haven’t been any as good as Tiger was at 24.
We hear occasionally about 10 year old Korean kids who are already studying physics… but how many of them grow up to make important contributions in physics?
I’m genuinely ASKING, not pontificating. I’m quite prepared to be corrected. I just have a strong feeling that the men and women who make lasting contributions or who perform most brilliantly in their fields are VERY rarely those who looked most impressive as little kids.
I mean, it’s interesting that Mozart was composing symphonies at 9, but only in the Ripley’s Believe-It-Or-Not sense. Mozart is remembered today for the work he did as an adult, NOT for what he did as a child.
For that matter it can be hard to be a regular-smart kid. I’m no genius (went to university at 18 like most other people), but I had most of the same problems in high school myself. It sets you apart from the other kids if you’re smarter than they are, especially if you don’t work as hard for it. I can only imagine how bad it would be if you’re several years younger than your classmates to boot.
I started college when I was 12. To me, it wasn’t that big a deal. There was the occasional story in the local paper. I was and am humbled by the many people who were ahead of me still (though not at my school), starting at eight or ten. I also hate being called Doogie.
Just to tack another direction onto this, there aren’t many stories about the students who do plenty of extra work, but make a point to stay with their “social peers”. Say the kid who finishes two and a half years of college through summer and evening courses and AP and IB exams, who’s published original research in a peer-reviewed journal by his 18th birthday, who completes a BS/MS in three years of college (while attending at the same time as other of his age group)…
Honestly, I know a very large number of the mathematical “stars” and none of them that I can think of offhand had a Ph.D. before they were 21. One reason you hear many more “plans to get a Ph.D. in math” stories than you hear “has a Ph.D. in math stories” is that most of the kids who think they’re cut out for math get slapped down hard when called upon to state and prove a theorem rather than going from predefined point A to predefined point B.
Thanks, Ilsa. How long ago did you start college? How have things turned out since then enrolling?
Oh, yes: how many Pulitzers and Nobels do you have, and why aren’t you total a loser if the answer is zero?
and please stop hitting me! ahhggh!
While I’m not anywhere close to any of these, I will be a college senior when I’m 19, if I decide not to bump that closer by taking some summer classes.
No Pulitzers or Nobels, but I have a few publications, and I’ll have my PhD (hopefully) when I’m 21 or so (possibly earlier, or later. The world is my burrito).
In my calculus class at university we had a 10 year-old student. He was asian, but not quite stereotypical; VERY talkative and annoying… but was near or at the top of the class. And just like Joey P described, it was frustrating to be stressing out over how in god’s name we were gonna pass the midterm while Jeffrey just ran up to his parents waiting in the hall asking where they were going for lunch after every class.
I seen this same kid a few years later at the university and barely recognized him. He’d become a teenager (13-14?) and gotten all gangly and lost the “little kid” persona. Sadly he no longer stood out as being notably different than anyone else… just another young skinny chinese kid walking through the cafeteria. I’m quite sure that he was still kicking ass in his classes - he just started physically blending in. The child prodigy gig only lasts for a few years until you are no longer a child; then you’re just like everyone else except you’ve got a few extra years work experience (assuming you can even get a job at 15 in your specialized field).
The “super-students” definately do exist - they are actually semi-regular in the news - but the individual attention paid to each is short-lived.
That should make for interesting processing at the State College police station during the annual beer riots… 
I know they exist; I’m curious as to how frequently they pop up.
Durned if I know. Parental insecurity, I suppose. As a member of the “Just appreciate your kids for whatever talents they have” school of thought, I find any fixation on super-progeny to be annoying.
I startred college at eleven.
I juggled my class schedule so I could sleep in.
Now that was brilliant.
I went to middle school with one of the parents-are-PhDs-and-now-he’s-a-genius types. Mom and Dad are professors at Oglethorpe. I can’t remember their specialties but Dad went on to be dean. Mark got a perfect score in his SATs in elementary school and was takign college classes in middle school. I think they only made him attend middle school at all for the social benefit. Didn’t work too well, he was always an outcast. And that was more of his doing than ours. I don’t remember anyone ostracizing him, he just didn’t know how to participate.
Anyway, he went on to Oglethorpe and has acquired advanced degrees in every subject they offer. Basically, he can’t find anything interesting enough to pursue as a career. And his parents continue to indulge this childishness even though he’s almost 30. So, no, they definitely don’t all succeed. And with Mark, he’s been allowed to fail because he’s “too smart to not apply himself to something great”. Well, he’s currently applying himself to nothing. :rolleyes:
On the other hand, there is a 19 yo in the lab where I got my Ph.D. He seems quite capable and I think he’ll do just fine. But he doens’t seem any more likely to leave a mark on molecular bacteriology than any of the other PhD candidates. He’ll just get to start trying earlier.
Oh, and both of these kids are caucasian.
Yes, Ruth Lawrence achieved a starred first in Mathematics at Oxford University at age 13, back in 1985.
Even back then, I felt sorry for her.
I grew up in a normal middle class family. Neither of my parents had college degrees until I was 15.
I could have done fine academically in college at 10 or 12, but my social ability would have been nothing. My first roommate was 16 when she started college and she couldn’t go out with any of us because all the clubs were 18 and up. She suffered a bit from that and she was only a few years younger.
My psychologist when I was three (yeah, I had a psychologist at three) evaluated me at a second or third grade level but cautioned my parents against advancing me because I would suffer from being so much younger than the other kids. (not to mention I’d be in the same grade as my dyslexic brother who struggled in school, and would have made my home life horrible too).
My social skills suffered enough from being the smart kid, and I thank my parents for NOT advancing me ahead of the other kids my age.
There was a kid (the younger brother of a friend of mine) who attended high school math classes while he was in elementary school, but got D’s in English and history. So, he was a prodigy, but only in one subject. He was also remarkably social and well-adjusted, if a bit nerdy.
I think a lot more of these kids exist than we know, because of smart parents like mine who don’t push their kids. Just because a kid could go to college doesn’t mean they should go to college.
Those sort of issues were touched on in the Time Magazine article I mentioned above.
Maybe I’m missing more background but I’m not seeing anything in that article that suggest her life has gone anything less than fairly normal. (Yes, she married a man 6 years her father’s junior, but she was, by my calculations, 26ish at the time.)