Tony, nice article. Very well done. I found the comments from Gardner you elicited fascinating. I've always thought his book opened the eyes of educators to "intelligence" beyond the normal IQ measures, but I had not considered it could also be a "curse" to show kids may fall short in multiple intelligences.

JR

Tony, I chuckled thoughout the entire piece. Nice work. There was just enough self-deprecation to (almost) convince one that you --- and not the readers --- were the objects of essay's mild scorn.

Christopher Hawking added some blunt force trauma to a similar sentiment: "People who are always talking about their high IQs are losers."

Read your article on Intelligence Designer in WSJ. Very good. I invite you to attend the Mensa Annual Gathering in Denver from July 2 to the 6th to confirm that "those with high traditional IQs . . . are not guaranteed better performance in the real world." One of the most frequent questions that Mensans are asked is "If you are so smart, how come you are not better ____ fill in the blank (paid, compensated, married, etc.)" I refer you to www.us.mensa.org for info on the AG. Press can usually attend without having to pay the registration. I feel that after attending the conference for a day or two, you will not have such angst about your boys. Believe me, with two loving, caring parents, who will teach them value creation, they will do just fine.

I laughed until I cried. My husband and I are earching for signs that our three boys will exceptional, or at least employable, too.

Regarding helping our boys become who they are supposed to be rather than who we wanted to be, you ask us to "imagine the sports leagues and other extracurricular activities that would be eliminated in one blow..."

Well, yes, but. I'd be interested to hear more of your thoughts on this issue.

I started my 7 year-old son in basketball this winter, thinking it would be a good social experience because all the other little boys in his class play basketball in the winter (and soccer in the fall and baseball in the spring, and don't forget the basketball clinics in the fall and the soccer clinics in the spring, and it would be best if he could learn hwo to swim and do Tae Kwon Do too, and if he doesn't like basketball in the winter, there is always wrestling, which reminds me that lacrosse is coming on strong for spring but he can't do both baseball and lacrosse, and to get ready there will be lacrosse clinics this winter).

If my son doesn't play sports, it's hard for him to get face-time with the other boys, because their days after school are filled with practices and games, not with biking around the neighborhood and playing a game of kickball. Our neighborhood is a ghost town after school.

It seems my son will never catch up to the other little boys who have been playing basketball in this league since they were 5 years old. There's something wrong with this picture.

Advice?

Nice work in the WSJ.

Raising a gifted kid is no picnic – I recall one day when my oldest son was five and being punished over some minor infraction when he informed me in great and accurate detail how he was going to hire a lawyer and sue me and his mom for failure to raise him in a fair and consistent manner, and because we were hindering his development as a member of the pre-adult world.

Someday I'll tell the story about when he remarked how “...lucky we must be, not having to raise an ordinary average kid.” Using medium sized words (I’m average but have a decent education) I let him have it.

Thanks again for your work.

A round-about way of answering the question regarding what to do about sports:

In "A Circle of Quiet" the first in her autobiographical trilogy, Madeline L'Engle addresses a query posed at one of her writing seminars, by a teacher of young children, about how to give the child a self, and then later a notion that, "if a child in their classrooms does not succeed with his peer group, then it would seem to many that both child and teacher have failed."

If we carry this idea into any realm of our children's success (here it would be sports), might the answer be the same as she suggests, namely "That night during a wakeful period I thought about all the people in history, literature, art, whom I most admire: Mozart, Shakespeare, Homer, El Greco, St. John, Chekov, Gregory of Nyssa, Dostoevsky, Emily Bronte: not one of them would qualify for a mental health certificate. It's been small game with me this summer to ask,'Do you know anybody you really admire, who has really been important to the world in a creative way, who would qualify for a mental health certificate?' So far nobody has come up with one....If we were all what was generally thought of as mentally healthy, I have a terrible fear that we'd all be alike....I can't think of one great human being in the arts, or in history generally, who conformed, who succeeded, as education experts tell us children must succeed, with his peer group....If we ever, God forbid, manage to make each child succeed with his peer group, we will produce a race of bland and faceless nonentities, and all poetry and mystery will vanish from the face of the earth."

Perfect. It confirms my own personal goal of having children who are odd (because they read and play instruments and play knights and build fantastic Lego robots, and for whom sports are a fun diversion) and at odds with their peers, for now, so that one day they will be satisfied with who they are in Christ, pressing toward the goal. I find looking at others to define my way is exhausting and disheartening.

So, since this is such a short period in their lives, the mad dash to be mediocre in a plethora of sports, why aren't we as mothers more willing to hurt (because of course it kills us to see them "fail" with their peers) and press on toward the things our children need most in the many years they will live beyond the sports phase of their youth?

I am glad I fed on leftover WSJ this morning, this President's Day 2008, only to find your piece. As a father of four, working on helping along all of their nine or so intellegencias and mine too, I was delighted to learn I have company, and get a laugh out of it. Blessed be your spirit. Has Gardner, or have you, thought about the talent for the numinous?! It is whidespead in these Southern parts, or the belligerous and the humorous, both very important in life. Which makes me think about extending the list even some more. I will run to the library tomorrow to get the book. I will turn seventy these days, and I have no time to lose. Thank you! Lothar Griessbach

Thank you, 'The Wife'.

My wife home-schools here in England, and she meets with no end of discouragement from her own peers. When challenged on the 'social effect' we would, effectively, fall silent. But here you provide us with the answer - expressing what we hadn't realised to be our goal all along - to have 'odd children'. And not just a little bit odd, remarkably so. What a paradoxical relief to have Him as our measure.

The next time this comes up in conversation, the temptation for me to wallow in this point is going to prove too irresistible.