13-year-old with 168 IQ joins NYU master’s program: what it really takes to parent a profoundly gifted child
The first thing I noticed about Aaron was not his vocabulary or his math skills. It was the way he sat in my seventh-grade classroom—slightly slouched, eyes half-lidded, tracing patterns on his notebook margin while I explained the water cycle. He wasn’t being rude. He was just done. Five minutes into my lesson, he had already connected evaporation to atmospheric pressure, to climate models, to the engineering challenges of desalination plants, and was now quietly calculating something else entirely.
That was three years ago, before his IQ test came back at 168, before his parents started driving him into the city twice a week for college courses, and before I read the news that he had been accepted into NYU’s master’s program in computer science at age 13. I wasn’t surprised. But I was worried—not about whether he could handle the coursework, but about everything else that comes with being a profoundly gifted kid in a world that isn’t built for them.
When Aaron’s mother first called me to talk about the IQ testing, she sounded exhausted. “He comes home from school and just cries sometimes,” she said. “Not because he’s sad. Because he’s frustrated. He says his brain feels like it’s itching.” I knew that feeling—I’d seen it in a few other kids over the years, the ones who finish their work in fifteen minutes and then have to sit for another hour while everyone else catches up. The ones who ask questions that make other students uncomfortable. The ones who correct the teacher (politely, but still) and then wonder why their classmates start avoiding them at lunch.
So when the NYU acceptance came through, everyone celebrated. Local news showed up. Relatives posted on Facebook. But his parents were quiet during the public congratulations. In a private call, his mother said, “We’re proud, but we also don’t know what we’re doing. There’s no manual for this.”
There isn’t. And that’s precisely the point I want to share with other parents and teachers, because the story of a 13-year-old at NYU is exceptional, but the underlying experience of parenting a profoundly gifted child is not as rare as you’d think. The challenges repeat themselves in homes and classrooms everywhere, just with less press coverage.
One of the first practical lessons Aaron’s parents learned was the hard way: don’t push, even slightly. When he was in third grade, they signed him up for a weekend robotics class thinking he’d love it. He spent two sessions pretending to be interested, then said, “I don’t like being told what to build.” They dropped it. They didn’t turn it into a conversation about commitment or challenging himself. They listened. For profoundly gifted kids, unstructured exploration often matters more than advanced enrichment. Their brains are already moving at high speed; what they need is room, not more pressure to perform.
Another thing they did that I think every family should try: they created what they called “low-stakes boredom time.” No screens, no books, no structured activities. Just quiet afternoons where Aaron could do nothing—or do whatever small thing his mind drifted toward, like sorting coins or rearranging his bookshelf by color. For a kid whose brain never stops, having a bare stretch of time with no expectations is like a reset button. It sounds counterintuitive, but it prevents burnout that can show up as anxiety, meltdowns, or sudden refusal to engage in anything at all.
In the classroom, I learned just as much from watching how Aaron’s teachers used him as a resource. Not as a teacher’s pet or a demonstrator of “what smart kids do,” but as a genuine thinking partner. His social studies teacher would say, “Aaron, you read about the Ottoman Empire last weekend. How does that change what I just said about trade routes?” That kind of invitation made him feel included without putting him on the spot to entertain everyone. It also let him know that his intense interests had a place in the world, not just in his head.
But the hardest part, by far, has been helping him navigate relationships with age-peers. Aaron doesn’t fit in at a middle school lunch table, and he knows it. His parents tried several strategies before finding one that worked. What finally helped was connecting him with other profoundly gifted kids through a residential summer program—not a generic “gifted and talented” thing, but a university-based camp specifically for students who test in the top 0.1%. There, he met kids who also liked to talk about Gödel’s incompleteness theorems at breakfast. He came home quieter, more settled. “It was weird,” he said. “I didn’t have to explain myself.” That’s something no academic program can give you: the feeling of being simultaneously exceptional and normal.
Since starting at NYU, Aaron’s life has gotten more complicated. He’s not a full-time student; he’s taking two courses a semester while completing his high school requirements online. His parents arranged a schedule that leaves afternoons for walking, biking, and just hanging out—with no academic content unless he asks for it. They also insisted on keeping a weekly “no-science-rule” dinner where conversations about algorithms are gently redirected to topics like which video game character would win in a fight or what he’d do if he could only eat one food forever. That might sound silly, but it’s a deliberate move to help him stay connected to childhood in a small, concrete way.
There are still rough patches. In his first NYU programming course, the professor made a joke about “the kid in the back who doesn’t have to shave yet.” Aaron smiled, but later told his mom, “I just want to be invisible sometimes.” He’s been called “a robot” by classmates who don’t know how to respond to his speed in problem sets. His parents have learned to check in not with “How was class?” but with “What felt okay today?” and “What felt weird?” That simple shift in wording invites a more honest answer than the automatic “Fine” most teenagers give.
What remains uncertain is the bigger picture. No one knows if Aaron will stay on the academic track or decide he wants to pivot, burn out, or simply slow down. His parents are bracing for that possibility. They’ve told him, more than once, that getting into NYU was not the goal—that his worth was never about his IQ or his grades. They’ve said it so often that he rolls his eyes, which is probably a good sign. A kid who can roll his eyes at his parents is still a kid.
As for me, I’ve stopped worrying as much. Watching Aaron over the past few years taught me that profoundly gifted children don’t need you to be awed by them. They need you to be steady. They need adults who won’t treat them like miracles or problems, but like people who happen to think at a different speed. They need time, low stakes, and a few honest conversations about what felt weird that day.
When I heard about the NYU acceptance, I sent Aaron a short email. I didn’t congratulate him on the program. I asked if he’d played any good board games lately. He wrote back a long explanation of why Risk is mathematically unwinnable for more than three players, and ended with a single line: “But I still like playing it.” That’s the part that matters. He’s still playing. The rest is still unfolding.
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