The email sat in the inbox for two hours before anyone noticed. It was a Thursday afternoon, and the boy—13, from Long Island, with a 168 IQ—was busy finishing a history project for his eighth-grade class. His mother was in the kitchen, packing lunch for the next day. When she finally scrolled past the usual newsletters and school notices, she saw the subject line: “NYU Tandon School of Engineering – Admissions Decision.” She clicked it without thinking, assuming it was junk mail. Then she read the first sentence and had to sit down.
The boy, who had applied to NYU’s master’s program in computer science after a family friend suggested it, had been accepted. He was 13. He still had to finish middle school. And now he had a decision to make: do you skip ahead to grad school, or do you stay where you are and see how it goes?
That moment—the quiet, slightly awkward pause between “you got in” and “what happens next”—is where most real parenting of profoundly gifted kids actually lives. It’s not a movie montage of confetti and proud teachers. It’s a lot of standing in the kitchen, trying to figure out what “support” means when your child’s brain is running a version of the world that you can’t fully see.
A 168 IQ is rare. It places a child in the top percentile of intelligence, far beyond what most school curriculums are designed to handle. For parents, the first instinct is often celebration. Then comes the fear. Then comes the very practical question: What do we actually do at dinner tonight?
That’s the part nobody talks about. The boy’s mother didn’t suddenly become an educational expert. She didn’t pull him out of school or hire a team of tutors. Instead, she did something more grounded. She asked him what he wanted.
He said he wanted to keep going to his current school for now. He liked his friends. He liked the basketball team, even though he wasn’t great at it. He wanted to take NYU’s courses remotely, one at a time, and see if it felt right. “If I don’t like it, I can stop,” he told her. That was it. No grand plan. Just a trial run.
That kind of low-key, flexible approach turns out to be essential for families of profoundly gifted children. The typical educational response to a kid like this is acceleration—skip grades, take college classes, move faster. But speed isn’t the same as growth. A 13-year-old with a graduate-level mind still has a 13-year-old’s body, a 13-year-old’s social world, and a 13-year-old’s need for boredom. The trick is not to solve the “giftedness” problem. It’s to let the child live in both worlds at once.
For teachers, this is a familiar tension. I’ve seen bright kids who can solve calculus problems but can’t remember to bring a pencil to class. I’ve seen kids who read college textbooks but melt down when a group project goes off-script. The IQ number doesn’t tell you how to help them with time management or frustration. It doesn’t tell you that they’re still terrified of asking for help because they’re used to being the smartest person in the room.
The practical stuff matters more than the intellectual stuff. For this boy, that meant sitting down with his parents and talking about how he’d handle deadlines. NYU’s online courses are not like middle school assignments. They move fast, and they assume a certain level of independence. His mother didn’t just say “you’ll be fine.” She said, “Let’s look at the syllabus together and figure out where you might get stuck.” That’s a concrete, realistic way to support a kid who is smart enough to hide his confusion.
Another thing that helped: letting him choose his own pace. He wasn’t forced into a full-time master’s program. He took one class. The syllabus was dense, but he could revisit lectures and pause videos—something that doesn’t happen in a typical classroom. That control made a huge difference. Gifted kids often have very little control over their learning. They’re constantly waiting for others to catch up. Giving them autonomy, even in small increments, reduces the anxiety that comes with being out of step.
There’s also the social piece, which is easy to overlook. At 13, most kids are figuring out who they are in relation to their peers. Being in a room with adults—or in a virtual classroom with 20-year-olds—can be exhilarating but isolating. His parents made sure he kept his regular social life. He still went to the school dance. He still fought with his sister. He still complained about math homework, even though he already understood the concepts. That mundane normalcy is what protects a kid from becoming a “prodigy biography.”
What I noticed about this story, though, is how unremarkable the family’s approach was. There were no special tutors, no expensive acceleration programs, no dramatic decisions. There was just a kid who was good at something, a family that listened, and a school that didn’t panic. NYU let him in. His middle school let him stay. His parents let him be 13.
That last part is the hardest. For a deeply gifted child, being “just a kid” is not a natural state. They sense their difference early. They hear adults whisper about their IQ. They get praised for things they barely tried. The most important thing a parent can do is not add to that pressure. Saying “you’re so smart” can actually backfire, because it ties their worth to their performance. Instead, say things like “I saw how much effort you put into that” or “That was a tricky problem—how did you decide where to begin?” Those simple phrases shift the focus from ability to process, which is where real learning happens.
The NYU acceptance is a great story, but it’s not a recipe for other families. Every profoundly gifted child has a different mix of abilities and challenges. One kid might need more advanced math. Another might need help learning how to ask for help. A third might just need someone to take them to the park. The common thread isn’t the IQ score—it’s the willingness to watch carefully and respond to the actual human in front of you.
Right now, the boy from Long Island is still figuring things out. He’s taking his second NYU course this semester. He’s doing okay, though he’s already had one moment where he realized he couldn’t blitz through the readings like before. He spent a full hour on a single proof, and at the end, he wasn’t sure he got it right. His mother didn’t offer a solution. She just sat with him at the kitchen table and said, “Well, what do you think you’ll do differently tomorrow?”
That question—patient, curious, without a neat answer—might be the most educational thing anyone has ever said to him. It’s not about the 168 IQ. It’s about learning to live with uncertainty, to stay present in a problem, and to keep going even when you’re not the smartest one in the room anymore. That’s a lesson for all of us, no matter what age we are or which program we got into.
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