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MethDozer And that is the kind of parenting both got. It is like so many other things: there are some broad general themes -- and I would agree generally with your point -- and then when you get down to individual cases it becomes the old debate you find so often between is it nurturing or is it nature. And there seems to be some cases of "nature", short of outright autism, where they live in a different world. A world where everyday stuff is just too boring to stick in their minds, no matter how well taught they might be.
I'm reminded of a couple of hall mates back in college. One was so bright the university kept allowing him to continue although he flunked out 3 semesters in a row (he didn't know how to take a test). He also preferred sleeping curled up around the pedestal of a dining room table rather than the bed in his room, and when he caught a cold insisted he knew how to cure it. He took a cold shower, stuck his bed halfway out the window in the dead of winter, and contracted pneumonia. He claimed success because the doctors could treat pneumonia. The other used to take notes on the old accordion-pleated computer paper, scrawling away rapidly almost verbatim, flipping over to the next sheet, and when he ran out, continuing to write on the desk top non-stop. It was a co-op, so we all had assigned jobs to help reduce the costs, and had to put in 5 hours of work a week. He complained that his assigned job -- sweeping the stair wells -- took far more than 5 hours. The workshift manager couldn't understand why until he went to observe and discovered he was sweeping the stairs UP instead of down. He later went to work for either the NSA or CIA, which may explain a lot.
