This is quite an anecdote you've got there ... cause in my experience (gifted, and in gifted classes with many much brighter than me), all of us kept a pretty diverse (academically) social group.

But that's _my_ anecdote ... surely people will exist on the entire spectrum between self-seclusion to social butterfly.

Or, even worse, these 8 year olds are incapable of sitting in a chair without any stimulation for 6 hours a day. So they're labeled as troublemakers, spend a lot of time with the principal (or these days, the police), and end up getting put on drugs that turn them into compliant zombies.

We had obviously gifted kids in my school and they came across as arrogant and entitled. 15 years later, most of them went on to get graduate degrees but don’t seem to be progressing socially (i.e. absent from reunions, weddings, small town bar run-ins)

Gifted children are aware just how dysfunctional this society is.

They aren't fooled by shiny things. They look at the structure of things and analyze them.

Thus they're a high-risk group because while most people see a few scattered small problems, gifted kids see one big problem.

Naturally, there are solutions to that including contexting and acceptance therapy, but those are never provided.

I bet they'll find gifted kids have a higher suicide rate, too, especially as an empire nears its collapse.

However, unlike the kids in the article, he doesn't enjoy Shakespeare or fawn over Incan currency. Talking to him is amazing. His thought processes are very mature, even compared to many adults. His language (when not telling fart jokes) is eloquent. He has no choice with his peers: dumb it down or be a freak.

Several of my friends fit into this profile too. None of them fit the mould painted in this article. Although, that doesn't surprise me. I found this article disappointing on several levels (eg. generalisation about gender is 'she').

There were a few points in the article that resonated with me: behavioural problems in my son (which we later categorised as Aspergers compounded with boredom) and misdiagnosis by teachers. My son was put in a special class for struggling students until I produced a WISC report showing he was gifted or near gifted. When he wrote a beautiful children's book at 5, they thought it was a forgery and ignored it until I had the WISC report to confirm his ability. The report changed a lot with his teachers.

The article talks about segregation as a positive. I'm not convinced this is a positive as these children are likely going to need to integrate in broader society. I purposely put my kids at a standard but high performing school rather than choosing a special school for this reason. The results have been mixed. There is bullying by peer girls and boys and at least one 'friend' said "my mother can't see me play with you or I'll get in big trouble" (also known as Aspergers are lepers to some parents - if this is true, she is an awful person).

If I have one suggestion for parents of a gifted child, it would be to accept that your child will have areas where they are smarter than you and to nurture their talent through their interests. I've recently observed at length two mothers with near gifted or gifted sons whom they mercilessly bully (I have no idea why a parent would do this to their child). Both mothers have a daughter too - and the daughter (in both instances) can't be praised enough. Two of my closest and gifted friends (50+) recalled similar bullying from their mothers (and were unsupported by weak fathers). Thankfully, my wife is not like that with our son.

So, yes, I see odd behaviour from gifted children as normal due to an incompatibility at an intellectual level. Gifted is noticeably different from clever. When you talk to a 5 year old that shows complex reasoning like an adult most of the time, they are most probably gifted. Someone that knows some surprising facts is probably clever rather than gifted.

That seems to suggest the cause of the problem is a lack of high IQ individuals. If the majority had a high IQ due to IA, nobody would feel isolated by their high IQ (although then the low IQ minority might feel isolated).

Also, a lot of the traits people mention when talking about smart, awkward people are common signs of Asperger's...

The practical upshot is that instead of going to a different school and being surrounded by teachers who were in tune with my needs, I stumbled through a public suburban high school replete with all the drama that Judd Apatow can fit onto the screen.

I consider this a very lucky occurence.

Why? Because it forced me to keep myself occupied rather than expecting anyone else to do so. It freed me from a mindset of educational entitlement.

By spending this years in a regular school, I was able to learn take on a host of other activities that I found interesting at my own pace and at my own behest. My intellectual development and curiosity drove me forward.

And it forced me to learn how to navigate elements of the "real world" that end up being speedbumps along the way. Isolation from that is a mistake. I've many friends who've learned that the hard way.

Now I'm a happy adult with a precocious son. I'm getting worried about his teachers in kindergarten are going to deal with a child who happily decides if numbers are primes and points out square roots.

How do I teach him to learn for himself. To realize that his school gives him a starting point for his education, and not the entireity. To help him end become a ferociously curious individual who gets stuff done, not in some isolation chamber gifted bubble, but in the real world -- omplete with alliances and politics and emotions and conflicts.

It's hard. It was hard to live through as the student, and I expect it to be hard for me to live through as his guide.

But it is absolutely the right place to end up.

My kid just got into the the local youth symphony (tough competition), and as I explain to her, every kid in that symphony is probably 1st chair in their school, and now one of you will be last chair.

You can be smarter than 99% of the people around you, and there are still 60M people in the world smarter than you.

Maybe you really are not “gifted”. Must be a western thing. My two examples above have a large percentage of Asian students. After reading the “Tiger Mom” book, there certainly wasn’t any coddling in that child rearing.

I've heard this a lot - it's always someone else's fault. In my experience in school, the disruptive students were not the gifted ones. They were the ones who never experienced negative consequences for their disruptive behavior. Neither the teachers, administration, nor parents ever disciplined them.

The unchallenged gifted students would read a book during class, or draw art in their notebooks, etc.

Social skills that work with a variety of people are something you can’t get by studying alone.

That said, it doesn’t take years and years to learn.

On the other hand, there have been numerous studies conducted by educators regarding what to do with the “best and the brightest”. Above all, we have learned what NOT to do. What you don’t do is make too big a deal out of it. The label rapidly becomes their identity and they hold onto it for dear life. This translates into becoming highly risk averse. In time this means they get passed by the average students who don’t have such fear of “no longer being considered a genius” and happily take more risks.

We know a few points * don’t talk about it much, it’s just “fun stuff” the kid is doing * let him do it. Kids learn to hate school that makes them feel bored * let them ease out or drop out if it without guilt or warnings about how their future will be average

Being “gifted” is one thing. Having the self drive to show something for it over a period of years is another.

100% of the kids aren't gifted. But something like 80% of them in the US could be performing above the current "average" level with the right encouragement.

We didn't have books (2 in the house, gifts from older cousins), but we were fairly competitive. And our folks told us "You guys are smart; you'll all go to college". So we did.

Of course, they may simply all be gifted until they're hammered into their little social boxes; I've often thought that. Some of us weirdos just can't be hammered as efficiently, or break before bending or something.