Re: Growing up gifted

On Dec 4, 5:29 pm, Serene <ser...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Guy Barry wrote:

I've heard that said many times, and I'm not sure whether it's true or
not. What "privilege" do you think gifted children have when going
into the world that isn't available to other reasonably bright
people?

First of all, you're assuming I meant "privilege over other
reasonably bright people". Not everyone is bright, and the bright
people are not the only ones who count.

That's a fair comment.

You and I can make our livings with our minds.

Well, that may be true for you and me at the moment, but it certainly
hasn't always been true for me. If your mind is firing all over the
place with strange ideas it can be pretty hard to make any sort of
living with it.

My oldest friend, let's call her Sheryl,
can't do that. She's not smart, and she knows it. She cleans hotel
rooms for a living,

I don't see anything wrong with that. If I weren't such a slob I
might well have taken on cleaning jobs to earn a living - they pay
quite well, are usually finished pretty early, and there's a genuine
sense of achievement when you've completed them.

and tells me how she wishes she were smart like
me so she could use Craigslist (or computers at all) to increase her
earning potential.

How can Craigslist increase your earning potential? Maybe it has some
magical powers that I'm not aware of, but to me it looks like a bog-
standard small ads site - you can find similar ads in the local paper
here.

I have an advantage over people of average or
below-average intelligence, just by dint of being smart.

Do you think that's true? I could earn a hell of a lot more money
than I do if I worked on a construction site, but I'm not in a
position to do so. I'm not sure if academic intelligence is the great
money-spinner it's made out to be.

> No one's ever said to me "well I'm quite impressed by your
CV, Mr Barry, but the real clincher is that you were able to read at
the age of three".

I think you misunderstand what privilege is about if you think it's
about people praising you for some aspect of your privilege. What
it's about is not having the kinds of barriers to success that many
(most?) other people have.

I think you misunderstood the sentiment behind my comment. It wasn't
about praise, but about the ability to earn a living based on one's
experience and abilities. Many people are highly successful in what
they do without having any great academic background.

[radio programme about former gifted children]
You said it was a revelation, so I assumed it went contrary to your
expectations.

It did, inasmuch as it's not the sort of thing I would have expected
to hear at all.

I used to throw awful temper tantrums because adults
couldn't understand what I was saying. It took me a long time to
learn to be patient with people (and I'm still not always).

I was the opposite. I was a sweet, serious, compliant child, and all
the adults loved me.

Glad to hear it! I suppose I got frustrated with adults when I took
issue with something they were saying - generally they didn't want to
be corrected by a kid.

I didn't learn to have my own opinions (and
risk people's anger/upset with me) until my late teens.

I didn't have a lot of opinions when I was young either - it was more
factual disagreements that upset me, particularly when I *knew* I was
right. Did you ever have problems with those?

That's a shame - what was sad about it? I remember having a lot of
fun when I was a kid.

I had a fair bit of fun, too, but I felt disconnected from it all. I
have trouble making close friends, and I had nearly no friends at
all that weren't family members when I was a child. I found other
children to be difficult to relate to, and they found lots to
ridicule about me.

That's a great pity. I don't remember having those sort of problems
when I was little - I used to get called "brainbox" and similar names,
but generally it was good-natured and I had three or four good friends
in my class. What did they ridicule?

Add in the fact that I was a Navy brat, moving
every few months or years, and it was tough to connect.

Yeah, that must have been difficult. Moving around a lot when you're
young is probably one of the hardest things.

Plus, I'm
introspective by nature, so I spent a lot of my childhood in my room
reading.

Interesting. I wasn't introspective when young - that only came about
a lot later. I did do a lot of reading, though, but I suppose that's
because I could.

[brother]
It was good to have him. Still is. We understand each other. We
got so close at one point that we could almost read each other's
minds. We were a kick-ass Pictionary team, I'll tell you that.

Excellent. I'm jealous of you!

"Better" in what way? Morally better? Socially superior? More
useful to society?

Yes.

And I take it you've turned out to be all three? :-)

My mother wanted me to get a degree and become some kind of
professional -- a lawyer, because I was so good at arguing, was her
standard joke.

My mother said that about me as well. I think it's just a standard
thing mothers say about awkward kids...

I decided I don't like being away from my home (my very happy,
wonderful home) ten hours a day. James works at home, too, so it's
been just lovely being home with him.

Delighted to hear it.

You can't tell when people are smarter than you are?

I don't have an objective definition of "smart". Do you mean quicker
on the uptake, or more articulate, or better at reasoning, or more
highly educated, or what? I try not to put people in that sort of
hierarchy.

Not exactly, but I do find myself drawn to really smart people (one
reason I adore Piglet so, certainly), and the circles I travel in
(largely folks I met on Usenet) encourage intelligence and a certain
kind of brainy geekiness, so I suppose we're self-selected for each
other, if that makes sense.

Yeah, sort of. I've never made face-to-face contact with anyone I
know from Usenet, so maybe I don't have that sort of circle of
acquaintances.

I don't really miss it, but on the other hand I've
suppressed it for a long time and I think it's a bad idea to deny
aspects of one's identity.

I think you're probably right, but I also think it can be a mistake
to make something more important than it really is. I try to strike
a balance.

So do I, and if the subject hadn't come up here I don't suppose I'd be
thinking about it. Maybe I feel there's something missing from my
life at the moment, and I'm trying to put some flesh to it. It's
certainly an unresolved issue that I feel I need to address.

Guy

.

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