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Re: [tlug] [OT] Raising a geek (was: Interesting Hans Reiser article in Wired)



On 16/07/07, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen@example.com> wrote:

Josh Glover writes:

 > [Tell him] that other kids who are not themselves different are
 > jealous of his intelligence.

No, they're not.  They may envy his grades (or the preschool
equivalent), but I doubt they envy him.  The point is that unless a
person is already different in this way, they simply don't understand
it well enough to want more of it than they already have.  It's a
qualitative difference, not a quantitative one.

Hrm... not quite sure I buy this. I think that the reason people pick on those who are different is some desire, whether conscious or subconscious, to be different themselves. Having said that, though...

So don't ever tell him that.  There are two ways it can turn out, IMO,
both bad: (1) he'll realize they aren't jealous of *him* though they
may want his grades or whatever, and lose some trust in your judgment,
or (2) he'll believe you, and attribute such twisted motives to people
inappropriately, leading to a cascade of rationalizations about how
they are lying to themselves.

This is probably good advice.

The important thing IMO and in my personal experience[1] is to make
sure he knows you love him, and that you want to share *his* world
with him (not *your* world with him, at least not until he's sure you
care about his world).

I completely agree.

If you can find other kids like him, so that
they can share their worlds with each other, that would be good too.

Yes, but there is at least some element of luck in this.

Footnotes:
[1]  Although as far as I know I was merely smart (too smart for my
own good often enough), not a genius.

Me too. I'm smart enough to know how dumb I am. :)

--
Cheers,
Josh


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