Raising a genius: Parents whose kids joined Mensa or graduated high school at 9 share their stories
“I never taught my son that he is smarter. I taught him that his brain works differently.”
It’s been three years since Ronya Balogun caught on that her young son David is intellectually gifted. In that brief time, David has completed his elementary, middle and high school education. He’s now 9 years old and enrolled in online classes at community college. When I ask Balogun what the last few years have been like, she is quick to answer. “Crazy,” she laughs. “It’s been crazy.”
The accelerated timeline in which David completed his education is something of an anomaly, and his parents had to adapt quickly to the speed at which David was learning. “When he was in eighth grade he said he would like to graduate high school at age 10,” Balogun says. He did it at 9.
Balogun is grateful for online college classes, because she insists that she would never send her son to school with classmates so much older than him. This exchange sparks a memory of a boy I knew in high school. Though he was three years younger than me and my classmates, Eric Sun sat behind me in AP English my junior year. The age gap felt like a lifetime when I was 17. Sun is now 34, married, raising a son and working in cyber security. I reconnected with him recently to ask about his experience as a gifted student. Looking back, he says a lot of things went right for him. “I never had a severe case of bullying, and I had hobbies that matched with older kids,” he says. Sun still has friends from high school, but he admits that he “wouldn’t readily recommend it for another kid.” He understands that online learning has changed things for gifted kids like himself, giving them safe and age-appropriate access to education. Sun explains that with an accelerated education, some doors do get shut, like dating or joining sports teams, but he understands that most parents will make that sacrifice. “From the social aspect," he says, “I was quite lucky.”
Balogun isn’t concerned with the social aspect of David’s education, or him having age-appropriate relationships. David never had thriving friendships with children his own age, she explains, and what he wants the most is to be intellectually challenged. “When you have a brain that in first grade can understand things beyond the teacher's knowledge, it’s very hard to connect with other kids — they’re trying to figure out the alphabet and my son is reading on a third grade level,” she notes. She doesn’t see any need for her child to conform to societal norms or the expectations of outsiders. “There is no limit for him,” she says.
When I speak to Cynthia Adinig, another parent to a gifted child, she elaborates on what Balogun says about raising a gifted child outside of the normal range of expectations. She says that she must “trust that the values I instill in him and the love of learning that I foster will be more than enough for him to become a successful adult, regardless of how far removed that looks from tradition. Especially in communities of color.”
Adinig reports that her son Aiden became a Mensa member at 5 years old and is internationally known as a prodigy in chess and math. "I believe my job as a parent is to make sure he doesn't frustrate himself from his perfectionism and high goals," she says. "To show him that his effort, and lessons learned in the journey of learning, is more valuable than perfection.”
Both parents understand that racism and ageism can work against their children, and they must be champions for them. When Aiden was only a baby his mother joined an online gifted kids support group to prepare for what might lie ahead for her son, and when he was older she scheduled playdates with local gifted kids of color in their area. “Aiden loved them all,” she says. “He is very charismatic.”
Another Mensa mom, JoAnn Icao-Muyskens, says that her gifted daughter Sky, 11, is a social kid and has many friends. Like the other moms I spoke with, Icao-Muyskens believes it is important to let her child choose her own path when it comes to her education. “We suggest, we encourage, but we don’t force her to do anything she doesn’t like,” she says. When I ask her advice for other parents who may be discovering that their child is gifted, she says, “It is best that they get the right level of education they need, because if you do not continue to challenge them, they might end up using that energy into something that is not good for them.”
Balogun’s advice is that parents with gifted children should believe in them, and worry less about outside opinions or expectations. “I had to move past the norms expected of myself and my son,” she says, adding, “I never taught my son that he is smarter. I taught him that his brain works differently.”
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