Too Smart for School?

Intellectual giftedness is not the reason kids struggle

Last week, one of my doctoral students asked about a child she was assigned to evaluate. The child reportedly had poor academic and social skills in the context of a very high IQ. My student’s question was whether the kid’s struggles in school could be the result of his high IQ—essentially, could this child be so smart that he’s bored, checked out, and unable to relate to his peers?

Anecdotally, I hear about these kids a lot—the ones who are supposedly struggling because they’re “too bright.” But, in my practice, I never see these cases quite in that way. Often, there’s another factor at play, like a cognitive or social-emotional skills deficit that makes it difficult for the child to function. Other times, the “problem” isn’t really a problem at all—it’s more about the unfairly high expectations placed on these kids. A high IQ sets a high bar, leaving lots of room for kids to fall short. When intellectually gifted children don’t excel across the board (cue regression to the mean!), people sometimes wrongly interpret relative weaknesses as serious issues.

I advised my student that I didn’t think the child’s high IQ was causing his difficulties. Of course, I told her to keep an open mind and evaluate all the evidence, but from what we know about high IQ, intelligence usually isn’t the culprit.

In fact, research on children with high IQ generally supports my clinical experience. Typically, high IQ acts as a protective factor, associated with a range of positive outcomes. Theories of intelligence suggest that cognitive abilities are connected—if a child performs well on one mental ability test, they’re likely to perform well on others. The empirical literature backs this up: kids with high IQ tend to have strong attention, executive functioning, language, and social cognition.

Moreover, children with high IQ can often compensate for relative weaknesses in other cognitive domains with their strong reasoning skills. For example, a child with high IQ who has relatively weaker visual-spatial skills might still excel in math, because their strong intellectual abilities help them solve problems using verbally-mediated strategies. They can “talk themselves through” the problem, so to speak.

But while IQ correlates with many cognitive measures, it doesn’t predict that every skill will be equally high—enter regression to the mean. Even very smart kids have relative strengths and weaknesses in their neuropsychological profiles. Though neuropsychological tests often show that children with high IQ perform well across cognitive and academic domains, parents and teachers frequently estimate their abilities as lower than they actually are. This mismatch suggests there’s a gap between what adults expect from these kids and what the children can realistically achieve.

It’s also important to recognize that high-IQ kids are just as likely to have learning and attention disorders as their peers in the general population. So while it may soften the blow to blame struggles on being “too smart,” ignoring a real issue in favor of a euphemistic narrative can prevent a child from getting the support they need.

At the end of the day, high IQ isn’t the reason these kids struggle—high IQ is a good thing, and problems are much more likely to be caused by something else. And if there is a real problem, it’s crucial not to dismiss it.

***

This one is just gut wrenching. Watch if you need a good cry!