I'm sorry, but this appears to me to be another case of "winners observational syndrome." Basically I'm saying if you go into the locker room of the person or team who just won, and you ask them how they got there, they'll tell you all manner of important stuff, from playing hard to having a great plan to not changing their sweat socks, or whatever . But there's no evidence any of that matters, and there are plenty of other people who didn't win who did all the same things. In this essay, you mention that these "winners" were gifted. In my view, that's the explanation right there: the gifted kid becomes a winner because of his/her gift, not because daddy brought them into adult conversations, immersed them in Latin, or taught them one on one. Yours is a nice story, but I don't buy it.
Childhoods of exceptional people
I'm sorry, but this appears to me to be another case of "winners observational syndrome." Basically I'm saying if you go into the locker room of the person or team who just won, and you ask them how they got there, they'll tell you all manner of important stuff, from playing hard to having a great plan to not changing their sweat socks, or whatever . But there's no evidence any of that matters, and there are plenty of other people who didn't win who did all the same things. In this essay, you mention that these "winners" were gifted. In my view, that's the explanation right there: the gifted kid becomes a winner because of his/her gift, not because daddy brought them into adult conversations, immersed them in Latin, or taught them one on one. Yours is a nice story, but I don't buy it.