Children Above 180 IQ Stanford-Binet: Origin and Development

by Leta Stetter Hollingworth

Aside from their dissatisfaction with the play habits ordinarily associated with their sex, gifted girls have various other problems to face which arise directly from the facts that they are able and that they are girls. When they reach the stage of life-planning, as they do very early, they are confused in their self-seeking by the uncertainty in contemporary customs as to what a girl may become. This difficulty is growing less and less, to be sure, but it is still something to be reckoned with, especially in certain localities. The intelligent girl begins very early to perceive that she is, so to speak, of the wrong sex. From a thousand tiny cues, she learns that she is not expected to entertain the same ambitions as her brother. Her problem is to adjust her ambitions to a sense of sex inferiority without, on the one hand, losing self-respect and self-determination, and, on the other, without becoming morbidly aggressive. This is never an easy adjustment to achieve, and even superior intelligence does not always suffice to accomplish it. The special problem of gifted girls is that they have strong preferences for activities that are hard to follow on account of their sex, which is inescapable.

PROBLEMS OF CONFORMITY

Judgments of teachers and parents indicate that highly intelligent children are, on the whole, more easily disciplined than children generally are. Nonetheless, certain problems of discipline do arise, which grow out of their intelligence. First, in the case of the schoolroom situation almost the only respect in which discipline is especially troublesome with these children is in the matter of orderly discussion when they are together in special classes. It is hard for them to maintain silence when ideas press for utterance. The tendency is for many to speak at once, each striving to outspeak the others. An atmosphere of confusion is thus created unless discipline can be imposed. To hold his tongue, to listen quietly and respectfully to others, to speak according to some order of procedure, and to restrain disappointment at failure to be heard at all—these habits seem especially difficult for gifted children to form. Only gradually do these children learn self-government in this respect.

Also it has been noticed during the experimental education of the highly intelligent that they sometimes tend to slight routine drudgery in favor of more stimulating and more original projects. The sheer drudgery involved in learning their multiplication table, for example, is likely to be waived in order to follow some absorbing story or experiment, unless conformity be urged from without.

At home, a special problem of discipline may arise occasionally due to the circumstance of that child, while still very immature in years, has come to exceed one parent or both in intelligence. For the best discipline routine the parent must be more intelligent than the child or the child's respect for the opinions of the former will inevitably be lost. With the most gifted children this may quite early become a problem, since such children, by the age of ten years or before, are more intelligent than the average adult is. Very readily such a child perceives that in comparison with himself his parent is slow-witted and lacking in general information. Yet in self-control and in experience of life, the child is still very immature. Thus quite unfortunate developments may ensue in the parent-child relationship. The child may become the director of the parent's activities, reversing the socially acceptable condition of affairs. Fortunately, in the vast majority of cases at least one of the parents is a person of superior intelligence. We seldom find a very intelligent child in a home where both parents are average or below average in mental power.

Because he learns everything very quickly, the highly intelligent child is especially quick to discover what forms of conduct on his part bring him satisfactions. If the tantrum is rewarded by the parent with cookies, company, attention, or other childish delights, then the bright child may display even "bigger and better" tantrums than will those who are slower to learn. If illness brings coddling, release from undesired responsibility, and other pleasures, then the quick learner will readily perceive the value of "headaches" and other aches as means to ends. On the other hand, the very intelligent learn readily to refrain from undesirable behavior that is followed quickly and inevitably by punishment. Two or three experiences usually suffice for these excellent learners. Neglect and ostracism are good forms of punishment for them. Darwin tells us that he was cured of telling sensational fibs, as a child, simply by the chilling silence with which they were always received by his parents.

One more problem may be noted here. There is with intelligent children a stronger tendency to argue about what is required of them than is found with the average child. This tendency to argue as to the why and wherefore of a requirement is met both at home and at school, and calls for thought in proper handling on the part of parents and teachers. To find a golden mean between arbitrary abolition of all argument, on the one hand, and weak fostering of an intolerable habit of endless argumentation, on the other, is not always easy, but it is always worth while as a measure for retaining the respect of the child.

THE PROBLEMS OF ORIGIN AND OF DESTINY

Early interest in origins and in destinies is one of the conspicuous symptoms of intellectual acumen. "Where did the moon come from?" "Who made the world?" "What is the very end of autumn leaves?" "Where did I come from?" "What will become of me when I die?" "Why did I come into the world?"

Although these questions rise vaguely and intermittently in the minds of children in general, they do not begin to require logically coherent answers until about the mental age of twelve or thirteen years. Then they begin to press for more or less systematic accounts. From these circumstances of mental development, the erroneous idea has long been promulgated, even by psychologists, that puberty in some mysterious manner leads to the rise of religious needs and convictions. Since among the generality a "mental age" of thirteen years is, roughly, coincident with the age of pubescence, the two developments have been assumed to be casually related.