Story of my life! You have no idea how tedious it is to have to think down to the level of you “little brains.” 
If you’re interested in reading more about this, the website for the Talent Identification Program at Duke University has a page with a list of articles about the subject. (Or there was a less scholarly article in the New York Times a couple of years ago.)
Edited to add that I’m somewhat amused (although perhaps not surprised) to see that there are academic journals like “Gifted Child Quarterly” that specialize in this subject.
And challenges to their parents, too.
In hindsight, he may not have been, although at the time (20-odd years ago) he was being put before the press as a child prodigy and the result of a “genetic superbaby” project.
To be honest, I can’t tell whether he was an ordinary kid with a self-deluding mom who saw (and showed) only what she wanted to, or whether he actually was a child prodigy who simply burned out and was now trying to enjoy some of the things he missed out on as a kid.
I’ll throw in with everyone else’s “they’re pretty much like everyone else.” Prodigies tend to either
[ul]
[li]burn out into mediocrity,[/li][li]learn to go along to get along, getting a job like everyone else, or[/li][li]insist on taking the world on their own terms and get held down because every career path (even academia) is essentially bureaucratic and doesn’t take well to outliers.[/li][/ul]
It is also possible that IQ tests largely measure how good you are at IQ tests.
I would place more faith in genius where something is achieved or discovered e.g. maths or engineering.
Whether I.Q. tests measure anything of importance is really more of a Great Debates thread than a General Questions thread (and it has been debated a few times there). For the purposes of this thread, the thing to understand is that regardless whether I.Q. is something that can be measured and is a useful thing to measure, the question of the fate of child prodigies is a different matter. People who get their high school degrees at 12, their college degrees at 18, and their Ph.D.'s at 21 (or whatever) usually do well in their lives. So do people who get their high school degrees at 18, their college degrees at 22, and their Ph.D.'s at 26. So do people who get their degrees later in life. There’s no solid evidence that being educated at a very young age particularly helps or hurts people.
There have been some cases where parents have lied about their child’s intelligence in order to get publicity. It’s hard to tell if Doron Blake mentioned in Sunlight’s post is one of them. In any case, the mother was pretty messed up and proceeded to mess up her son. Note that the article in Wikipedia says that one should ignore any claims of being a child prodigy if the only source of information is publicity by the parents.
[off-topic]Welcome back?[/off-topic]
Busy year in New Orleans. Didn’t get renewed for another year. See list item 3 above
I have to wonder if in some cases, they’re “prodigies” because they’ve attained high levels of achievement exceptionally early, not because they’re necessarily any “smarter” in the long run.
I wasn’t a prodigy or anything, but I was way advanced in certain academic skills when I was little. I was given special work in kindergarten, sent to a higher grade-level class for certain things in first grade, etc. By third grade, it seemed that other kids had sort of caught up to me. I was always in the top reading group, for example, but not notably better than others in that group. I went into the gifted and talented program, but again, wasn’t the “smartest” kid in the program. Thinking of a couple of kids that were considered actual, genuine geniuses by high school…well, I’ll bet that I was reading better than them when we were 4, but they smoked past me soon enough.
For what it’s worth…
It is generally acknowledged vos Savant has an extremely high intelligence quotient (IQ) score, and she has held memberships with the high-IQ societies, Mensa International and the Prometheus Society.[5] But there is much confusion over the actual value, with data and calculations variously yielding 167+, 186, 218, 228, and 230. Extremely high IQ measurement is an inexact science: high IQs are very difficult to quantify because so few people have IQs at that level, giving rise to the problems associated with small sample sizes; ceiling bumping caused by tests not designed to measure such high IQs; and fat tailing which gives the impression more high IQs exist than predicted by a normal distribution. Moreover, there are general disagreements and controversies over the validity of IQ scoring at any level.
As I’m sure Unca Cece would tell you, MvS is exhibit 1 for the ineffectiveness of IQ tests in measuring anything in particular.
Great, enlighten me. 
Green Bean writes:
> I have to wonder if in some cases, they’re “prodigies” because they’ve attained
> high levels of achievement exceptionally early, not because they’re necessarily
> any “smarter” in the long run.
The definition of “child prodigy” is someone who attains a given level of educational knowledge long before the average person does. The definition of the term has nothing strictly to do with intelligence. Of course, it’s generally supposed that attaining such levels of knowledge at an early age requires a higher level of intelligence. It’s not part of the definition of “child prodigy” though. I personally suspect, as I said above, that a person who gets a Ph.D. at 21 with a thesis that is considered by his professors to be very good is probably actually no smarter than a person who gets a Ph.D. at 26 with a similarly good thesis. The person who got his Ph.D. at 21 just was more motivated or pushed harder or had better opportunities than the one who got his Ph.D. at 26, I suspect.
And right you are. My daughter speaks 3 languages at a her age level, and she doesn’t seem to me more intelligent than the average child, maybe a little more, but mostly I think it’s upbringing (access and love for books).
As much as I love her, and while I recognize she’s a smart kid, I know she’s not genius. She speaks three languages out of necessity, else she’d be cut out of some part of her family.
Back the the OP. I have always being intrigued by young prodigies.
First I do not consider myself to be a prodigy, far from it, but as a child I was always ahead of my class when it came to anything but math. I grew up hearing people tell me I was very smart. The fact that I suck at math always made me suspect I wasn’t smart.
And then I found the with the Theory of Multiple Intelligence and things just fell into place. No way to explain how I suck at so many things without being mildly stupid (never mind I graduated from engineering school, it was painful to watch), and yet some people still believe I am smart, mostly because I can talk pretty.
My math-aversion is so strong that I never dated a man that wasn’t either a geek, an engineer or someone really good with numbers. Nothing sexier than a man that makes me feel like a moron. 
And in more recent news, Sir Elton John has done fairly well for himself as well.
Enjoy,
Steven
I have a friend who too had twins from a genius sperm bank.
One is quite ordinary but the other one is noticeably awesome,they must be around six years old now.
The boy has incredible retention for briefly given non significant information such as a minor street name that he passed by several weeks ago and the Latin names for plants given just once also some time ago.
But its not just a case of an advanced memory he also can make pretty advanced deductions from various pieces of information that he himself has picked up in passing without any outside direction.
His mum is well educated but only average in intelligence and he is already out thinking her in a cunning sort of way.
I dont mean that he tricks her after the event like most kids can do on occasion but he actually misdirects her in advance by several steps so that he achieves his objective(He wants to play out there or,he wants that item to play with)while she is still distracted by red herrings.
I find this mildly disturbing in a "Damien Omen "sort of way but he is a good kid.
This sounds daft but I have no idea on how he does at school,also I dont know if this rate of intellectual advancement will continue (As opposed to absorbing received knowledge that many people perceive as intelligence).
On the opposite side of the coin I know someone of genius level intelligence who can rapidly come to a correct solution using disparate pieces of information but emotionally is incredible immature,he literally throws tantrums at the drop of a hat though he is in his mid thirties and never accepts responsibility for his own actions that have turned out badly.
Whether this a by product of the "Genius"wiring in his brain or simply the result of an overindulgent upbringing I couldn’t say.
(quoted from memory, but that’s the gist of it.)