Practical Intelligence

[jenbrdsly]

I've been reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and was really interested in the section on Practical Intelligence and gifted people. Gladwell seems to use this term to be describing Emotional Intelligence situations, i.e. "Can you talk your way out of this situation? Do you know to handle this interpersonal conflict?" But it spurred me to think about Practical Intelligence in its simplest form; common sense, and how best to teach that.

I was hoping this could be a useful thread, but also a humorous one to read. (Don't we all need a good chuckle during the holidays?) Please share the funniest lack-of-common-sense story you have to share, involving a highly intelligent person. Then write a question at the end of your post that could be shared with kids of all ages. Hopefully this thread will produce a whole bunch of good dinner conversation starters with our kids. Here is mine:

I once had a roommate who was absolutely brilliant. She had both her bachelors and master degrees from Stanford, and is now a well-known and respected journalist. But all of that studying hadn't really prepared her for real life very well.

One day when I came home from my first teaching gig, I found the whole kitchen filled with soap bubbles! It was so bad, that the living room carpet was in danger of being ruined.

Question: What is the ONLY type of soap you can put in the dishwasher?

[zaichiki]

I once had a roommate who was absolutely brilliant. She had both her bachelors and master degrees from Stanford, and is now a well-known and respected journalist. But all of that studying hadn't really prepared her for real life very well.

 

One day when I came home from my first teaching gig, I found the whole kitchen filled with soap bubbles! It was so bad, that the living room carpet was in danger of being ruined.

 

Question: What is the ONLY type of soap you can put in the dishwasher?

 

You know, I don't think this has anything to do with being brilliant or going to Stanford. I definitely take exception to the "all that studying hadn't really prepared her for real life very well" statement.

 

I think this is simply "Mom never had a dishwasher." or "I never had to use the dishwasher growing up." I know plenty of "typical" people (old and young) who would/could/have made the same mistake.

 

The story/the delivery doesn't seem funny to me... but maybe it's just me.

[Ester Maria]

You know, I don't think this has anything to do with being brilliant or going to Stanford. I definitely take exception to the "all that studying hadn't really prepared her for real life very well" statement.

 

I think this is simply "Mom never had a dishwasher." or "I never had to use the dishwasher growing up." I know plenty of "typical" people (old and young) who would/could/have made the same mistake.

I agree. I don't think, if somebody is brilliant, that we should read their brilliance into many other things that happen in life and somehow attribute them to that brilliance. Maybe the kid just never used a dishwasher growing up, big deal. Many brilliant people, as well as many average people, made some beginner mistakes with funny results when they first tried something. It's normal. :001_smile:

[deacongirl]

I think the books Emotional Intelligence and Mindset cover this ground well.

[Storm Bay]

I agree. I don't think, if somebody is brilliant, that we should read their brilliance into many other things that happen in life and somehow attribute them to that brilliance. Maybe the kid just never used a dishwasher growing up, big deal. Many brilliant people, as well as many average people, made some beginner mistakes with funny results when they first tried something. It's normal. :001_smile:

:iagree: That said, there are some academically brilliant people who don't have a lot of common sense, but that isn't because they are academically brilliang, just that they aren't brilliant in that category. I have a brilliant uncle who has a great deal of common sense (he received a governor general scholarship, which is given to only 1 boy & 1 girl in a province, won prestigious grants for his research.) Same with my dad.

 

I am a firm believer in the multiple intelligence theory, and so it depends totally on where your strengths lie (usually 2-3, but there are variations.)

[ElizaG]

I agree that the OP's roommate's mistake seems like a pretty common one. It's the stuff of comic strips, and those old anecdotes about the young bride who makes some sort of basic goof-up with an everyday task.

 

That said, I've noticed that some (few) very intelligent people have a tendency to present all sorts of elaborate logical reasoning to explain why a wrong decision made sense to them. As if that matters??? :confused: In the real world, if you make a poor judgment and buy the wrong thing/burn the cookies/break the furniture you're assembling, you don't get partial credit for showing your work. And you can't always go back and fix it.

 

This might not be quite the same thing as a lack of "practical intelligence," though. It seems to be more related to spending too much time spent engrossed in abstract fields such as software development or philosophy, where it's relatively easy to go back and change faulty premises.

 

I guess the lesson here might be to make sure the child isn't given "do-overs" for everything.

[Happy2BaMom]

I think I'll throw my vote in on the "oh, lighten up" side.

 

I thought the story was cute. The OP didn't insult her roommate, she told a story about someone brilliant who happened to do something unpractical. I didn't think it was an offense to people who went to Stanford, to brilliant people, to people who have roommates, or to anyone else where the "correctness police" need to be called in.

[regentrude]

Question: What is the ONLY type of soap you can put in the dishwasher?

 

I do not think this has anything to do with brilliance or not being practical - but with not being accustomed to dishwashers.

 

If you are using dish washer detergent in the machine and are accustomed to this: do you have an idea WHY you can't use liquid dish soap?

I would bet most people don't. They just accept as a fact that you should not, without giving it a minute's thought. Then it is not a great practical skill they have, but simply repeating what they have been told without questioning the procedure.

[Parker Martin]

A woman married to a brilliant man saw her husband walking down the hall carrying a bath towel and a laptop trailing a cord behind him. "Where are you going?" she asked. "To take a bath," he said.

 

She stopped him. Why?

 

An extremely clever woman was cooking turkey for Thanksgiving for the first time. She put the turkey in a large glass pan, set the pan across two burners on the stove, and turned the burners on. A little while later, the glass pan cracked, and the turkey fell on the floor.

 

Why did the pan break? Why would the woman's plan for the turkey not have worked even if the pan had not broken?

 

A highly competent businessman was in a hurry to get to work one winter morning but went outside to find his windshield covered with ice. Unable to scrape it off and impatient with the progress of his car's defroster, he went inside to heat a pot of water. When the water began to boil, he took the pan outside and threw the water on his windshield.

 

What happened next? Why?

[kubiac]

I love absent-minded professor stories, but my only contribution to this thread is I once read a book by a wonderful young woman whose parents had mandated that she and her twin brother take an intensive cooking class the summer before they left for college. That struck me as the perfect use of that block of time, and I hope to do something like that with my kiddo when the time comes, assuming he's not already a master chef by then, LOL.

 

I believe practice practice practice and background knowledge are very important in these cases, as they are with so many things. I'm hoping to instill more "common sense" in my kid that my (very sensible) parents did in me, perhaps because we were all overemphasizing schoolwork. Academics are very important, but not everything. You also need to know about food, householding, finance and so many other pragmatic details of life. Balance and moderation in all things!

[Storm Bay]

A woman married to a brilliant man saw her husband walking down the hall carrying a bath towel and a laptop trailing a cord behind him. "Where are you going?" she asked. "To take a bath," he said.

 

She stopped him. Why?

 

An extremely clever woman was cooking turkey for Thanksgiving for the first time. She put the turkey in a large glass pan, set the pan across two burners on the stove, and turned the burners on. A little while later, the glass pan cracked, and the turkey fell on the floor.

 

Why did the pan break? Why would the woman's plan for the turkey not have worked even if the pan had not broken?

 

A highly competent businessman was in a hurry to get to work one winter morning but went outside to find his windshield covered with ice. Unable to scrape it off and impatient with the progress of his car's defroster, he went inside to heat a pot of water. When the water began to boil, he took the pan outside and threw the water on his windshield.

 

What happened next? Why?

 

Do you know how many people are clueless when it comes to pyrex pans? I keep having to remind my dh not to scrub it with anything abrasive. I wont answer the questions here, although I know them.

[jenbrdsly]

I'm a little surprised by all of the sensitivity on this thread. I am not meaning to offend anyone, but rather to generate a useful list of questions to help teach my own children some real world common sense lessons. There is a webinar on the SENG website right now called “If I’m so smart why can’t I find my keys?” To me, this says that practical intelligence and how to encourage it is a valid issue in the gifted community.

My experience in college was that a lot of truly gifted an brilliant people had spent so much time pursuing academic success, that their practical skills were sorely lacking due to lack of preparation and exposure. (I think Kubiac's idea of sending your kids to cooking school the summer before college is a great idea btw!)

I could tell story after story, but here are some more...

There was my freshman roommate (now a Phd) who lofted her bed without tightening the screws all the way.

Question: What does righty tighty, leftie loosey men? (I didn't know the answer to this myself until her bed almost crashed down on her desk and computer.)

There was my senior roommate (full ride to Columbia law, phi beta kata commencement speaker) who didn't think to blow her candle out in the middle of a Take Back The Night rally before it caught the paper wax catcher on fire and I had to stamp out the flames with my foot, causing a great scene.

Question: What are some common sense things to remember when holding a lit candle?

Then there is there is my own lack of practical intelligence story from when I was 17. I undertook my first big car trip on my own to drive up in the rain to a small liberal arts college for a weekend-long series of final interviews for a large scholarship. At the end of the weekend, I got in my car and it would not start. I had to go back into the dean of admissions office to ask for help, very red faced indeed. (I ended up getting the scholarship anyway, but turned it down to go to Stanford).

Question: What do you have to remember to turn off after you have been driving in the rain?

[wapiti]

FWIW, when I was a child, my mother often said that I had no common sense. (:glare: gee thanks)

 

Same woman tried to make gravy using a pyrex dish that had just come out of the oven with meat juices, I guess. She put the pyrex dish on the electric stovetop, it broke, and she ended up getting stitches in her leg from a piece falling and cutting her.

[regentrude]

Same woman tried to make gravy using a pyrex dish that had just come out of the oven with meat juices, I guess. She put the pyrex dish on the electric stovetop, it broke, and she ended up getting stitches in her leg from a piece falling and cutting her.

 

This not really ridiculous, because the original borosilicate glass cookware did have better thermal shock resistance and could be used on stove top. My grandmother's glass cookware went oven to stove top (open flame gas burner) for many decades without problems.

Pyrex has reformulated its glass and it does not have these properties anymore - but I would not consider it a ridiculous expectation that modern glass cookware performs as well as grandma's.

[regentrude]

I once put a Pyrex pan on a burner that was not on, but still hot. It smashed into thousands of tiny pieces and made one heck of a sound. I figured if the pan could be placed in a 450 degree oven it could handle a hot burner (without a direct flame). Apparently not! (BTW, my mother had an entire set of glass pots and pans that could be used on a direct gas flame.)

 

Exactly - that's why your assumption that this should work is absolutely reasonable. It is NOT reasonable to expect a product sold today to be inferior to one sold fourty years ago - in fact, that is contrary to common sense.

If your Pyrex had been manufactured in Europe, it would have worked, too. It is only in the US that they have replaced the borsilicate glass with lime soda glass.

[Bluegoat]

I think that for some people, the physical world isn't as real to them as the abstract world. For some it is the emotional world of other people, or themselves, that is mysterious.

 

For those people, the main remedy is more experience in those things, that is, time. They need to develop habits to take account for the practical things that they tend to overlook, and they need to integrate the concrete things into their abstract frame of reference. The same as for concrete people who struggle with the abstract.

 

I tend to live in the abstract world. Probably the one thing I did that made the most difference to my ability to tend to the practical world is join the army. I had a bit of a rough start and was never brilliant at real soldier stuff though I was good at my trade, but I got a lot better at it all than I was before I joined.

[lionfamily1999]

I don't think common sense is what it used to be. At the church fall festival I watched groups of kids led by oblivious adults walking directly behind a camel. ... It was a tame camel ... They don't kick, right?

 

My mom said I was a genius that didn't have the brains God gave spaghetti. She would always comment on my lack of common sense. I once asked what a yeast infection was... The God gave spaghetti comment was the answer. I was scared to eat bread for quite awhile.

 

I will say that dh is always amazed at how dumb his customers (some are literally rocket scientists) can be. Things like... well I didn't KNOW my car needed oil to run, or What does not having a gas cap have to do with anything?!? Oh, last week someone replaced their head lights and they were upset because the lights were not shining in the right direction. Well, when they screwed them in they didn't match up the threads, so the bulbs were crooked. They had nearly busted their bumber attempting to move the headlights around.

 

This one time a guy changed his own oil and his car started running like carp so he brought it in. Now, he is a defense contractor, college grad, good income, drives a Benz. You sort of assume that he's a bright guy. Well, he had forgotten to get an oil filter, so he used Dawn (because that gets the oil out ;) ) and cleaned the one in the car. He also shorted the car a quart of oil, because that was a quart more than he had gotten out. To dh, the man's a few eggs short of a dozen. To me, well, I see his funny logic, I get it. All that to say, common sense is in the eye of the beholder I guess. (Seriously though, don't ever ever ever introduce dawn into your engine. Oil is important.)

 

Oh! I had a neighbor come and beg me to set up her tv. She could not figure out what was wrong, but there was no sound. I got behind her tv and she had plugged the wires in all over the place, with only the audio cord actually in the white rectangle. Now, the cords are color coded, the inputs are color coded and the rectangle outlining the three inputs is white (on a black tv). Seems like it would be common sense, but to her that just seemed too easy :lol:

 

 

A woman married to a brilliant man saw her husband walking down the hall carrying a bath towel and a laptop trailing a cord behind him. "Where are you going?" she asked. "To take a bath," he said.

 

She stopped him. Why?

 

An extremely clever woman was cooking turkey for Thanksgiving for the first time. She put the turkey in a large glass pan, set the pan across two burners on the stove, and turned the burners on. A little while later, the glass pan cracked, and the turkey fell on the floor.

 

Why did the pan break? Why would the woman's plan for the turkey not have worked even if the pan had not broken?

 

A highly competent businessman was in a hurry to get to work one winter morning but went outside to find his windshield covered with ice. Unable to scrape it off and impatient with the progress of his car's defroster, he went inside to heat a pot of water. When the water began to boil, he took the pan outside and threw the water on his windshield.

 

What happened next? Why?

I didn't laugh. I cringed. This doesn't seem like common sense, it seems like... egads... holes in learning. (Not meant harsh, just meant that the whole thing had me gasping and cringing 'poor poor things.')

[regentrude]

From the anecdotes, it might seem as if intelligent people have less common sense... but the real question would be if that is indeed so, or if it is just more noticeable if they mess up because, after all, one expects stupid people to do stupid things and is not surprised if they do.

[lionfamily1999]

From the anecdotes, it might seem as if intelligent people have less common sense... but the real question would be if that is indeed so, or if it is just more noticeable if they mess up because, after all, one expects stupid people to do stupid things and is not surprised if they do.

I remember reading about Nobel prize winners that had a problem with the elevator wherever they go to get those awards. I think people notice more when it's someone they expect to be a genius.

 

Granted, with my neighbor I do not expect genius, the answer seems like it would be obvious to everyone. Apparently... too obvious.

 

Besides, it's not nearly as funny if average Joe who makes 30 thou a year in a blue collar job and has 2.4 children puts dawn in his engine... Actually, no... it's still pretty funny, just a little more sad because you know he'd struggle to pay for it.

 

I guess if you looked at the Darwin awards you'd see a pretty good cross section.

[psychmom]

I don't know if we notice smart people's screw-ups more or not, but they are sometimes funny...We've used quite a few babysitters over the years, but the only one who ever put my son's diaper on backwards was a Yale grade who had just been accepted into Yale law school:001_smile:

 

My grandfather, who was a headmaster at a British boys' school and a Cambridge grad, was famous for leaving the house in his slippers. He also once took his kids shopping in the next town, and was halfway home on the bus before he realized he had left the kids behind... (maybe he was a little ADHD, too).

 

The worst lack of common-sense stories I've heard came from a friend of mine in grad school. Her roommate (also a grad student) called 911 because she couldn't figure out how to turn the A/C on--and that was just one of many examples. To be fair, I don't think she was particularly bright in other areas, either.

[jewellsmommy]

My mother used to say that I didn't have any common sense either, when I was young. But, I think it was just lack of experience. I would consider myself quite versed in common sense now that I am an adult. :D

 

Dh and I still laugh about the day that he put his coffee cup on the dash board and then promptly ignored it as he started the car and put it in drive. :001_huh: I told him that I have a keen understanding of physics and didn't see this ending well. I gave him the same line when he had a tree branch tied up a certain way and was about to cut the branch away from the tree. I barely got the sentence out when the branch swung around and knocked him off the ladder. :lol: He was ok, and I supervised all tree branch cutting from then on.

 

The funny thing is that he usually has more practical insight than I do.

[zaichiki]

I don't know if we notice smart people's screw-ups more or not, but they are sometimes funny...We've used quite a few babysitters over the years, but the only one who ever put my son's diaper on backwards was a Yale grade who had just been accepted into Yale law school:001_smile:

 

My grandfather, who was a headmaster at a British boys' school and a Cambridge grad, was famous for leaving the house in his slippers. He also once took his kids shopping in the next town, and was halfway home on the bus before he realized he had left the kids behind... (maybe he was a little ADHD, too).

 

 

You know, "typical" people do this stuff all the time. Why is it such a big/funny deal when highly intelligent people do it? Because they "should know better?"

[chepyl]

Exactly - that's why your assumption that this should work is absolutely reasonable. It is NOT reasonable to expect a product sold today to be inferior to one sold fourty years ago - in fact, that is contrary to common sense.

If your Pyrex had been manufactured in Europe, it would have worked, too. It is only in the US that they have replaced the borsilicate glass with lime soda glass.

 

Sadly I do expect the older products to last longer :glare: We had a waser and dryer that were not very old. We bought a house with and OLD set. We put those in the shed, and moved ours in.....a year later we pulled out the old ones because ours had died. We have since given them to another family member. 7 years later, they are still going strong.

 

My parents don't buy cheap, bit they have been through three microwave in 4-5 years. Our older model is going strong. We have had it for 11 years, and bought it used!

 

My grandma still has had the same hair dryer my whole life. I must buy a new one every couple of years.

 

My nice pots and pans that are 11 years old, need to be tossed. I now have my mom's 40 year old pots in amazing condition.

 

I don't know if we notice smart people's screw-ups more or not, but they are sometimes funny...We've used quite a few babysitters over the years, but the only one who ever put my son's diaper on backwards was a Yale grade who had just been accepted into Yale law school:001_smile:

 

My grandfather, who was a headmaster at a British boys' school and a Cambridge grad, was famous for leaving the house in his slippers. He also once took his kids shopping in the next town, and was halfway home on the bus before he realized he had left the kids behind... (maybe he was a little ADHD, too).

 

The worst lack of common-sense stories I've heard came from a friend of mine in grad school. Her roommate (also a grad student) called 911 because she couldn't figure out how to turn the A/C on--and that was just one of many examples. To be fair, I don't think she was particularly bright in other areas, either.

 

My dad is a brilliant man. He does math and statistics for fun. He put my daughter's diaper on backwards and asked me why they make the things so hard to put on!

[zaichiki]

Exactly - that's why your assumption that this should work is absolutely reasonable. It is NOT reasonable to expect a product sold today to be inferior to one sold fourty years ago - in fact, that is contrary to common sense.

If your Pyrex had been manufactured in Europe, it would have worked, too. It is only in the US that they have replaced the borsilicate glass with lime soda glass.

 

I once took a Pyrex pan out of the oven. Dinner was cooked and looked delicious. Before I could put it down the whole thing exploded in my hands. I called and talked to the company. They told me that this happens a lot (without even putting it down on a hot or cold surface) and offered to replace the cookware for me. I thanked them for their offer but honestly told them I would no longer be using their products. I got rid of my Pyrex.

[jewellsmommy]

I once took a Pyrex pan out of the oven. Dinner was cooked and looked delicious. Before I could put it down the whole thing exploded in my hands. I called and talked to the company. They told me that this happens a lot (without even putting it down on a hot or cold surface) and offered to replace the cookware for me. I thanked them for their offer but honestly told them I would no longer be using their products. I got rid of my Pyrex.

 

I had the exact same thing happen to me! As we say in my family, it scared the batsnot out of me. Thankfully it was winter and I was wearing a thick sweatshirt and an apron. It exploded in my hands, in front of my stomach and chest. I was amazed that I wasn't hurt.

[Donna]

I once took a Pyrex pan out of the oven. Dinner was cooked and looked delicious. Before I could put it down the whole thing exploded in my hands. I called and talked to the company. They told me that this happens a lot (without even putting it down on a hot or cold surface) and offered to replace the cookware for me. I thanked them for their offer but honestly told them I would no longer be using their products. I got rid of my Pyrex.

 

I had the same thing happen. It completely ruined the spaghetti carbonara I had worked so hard to make. I also no longer use Pyrex for cooking.

[poetic license]

Oh boy, now I am completely paranoid about using my Pyrex in the oven. :001_huh:

[TracyP]

Oh boy, now I am completely paranoid about using my Pyrex in the oven. :001_huh:

 

:iagree: I think I'll ask for new cookware for Christmas.

[Parker Martin]

Yikes! I didn't know Pyrex could explode when used normally. I'm eyeing two of my pans suspiciously now.

 

As for why these things are funnier when smart people do them, I think people need to lighten up. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone. These things are just reminders that even the sharpest of us make them. And as long as no one gets hurts, they're pretty funny too. :001_smile:

[KAR120C]

I'm a little surprised by all of the sensitivity on this thread. I am not meaning to offend anyone, but rather to generate a useful list of questions to help teach my own children some real world common sense lessons. There is a webinar on the SENG website right now called “If I’m so smart why can’t I find my keys?†To me, this says that practical intelligence and how to encourage it is a valid issue in the gifted community.

I think there's a long history (not here - in general) of assuming that "book smarts" is balanced out by lack of "street smarts"... which is kind of an obnoxious stereotype... and I don't think it's really accurate. I went to a GT magnet high school in a big city and honestly there were almost no kids there who had any lack of common sense. They rode city buses, they navigated busy streets without getting run down, several came from families where the parent(s) worked two or more jobs and the kids had to do a lot of fending for themselves... two that I know of lived on their own. After four years the only story I can think of was one kid who had no idea that pickles were made from cucumbers. We never let him hear the end of that... but why would he know anyway? It's not like he had ever made pickles - as far as a city kid knows they come from the supermarket in jars and who cares about the rest?

 

But the real issue I think is that common sense is neither a type of intelligence nor something that can be well-taught with planned lessons. You pick it up from experience, and those things that you have experience with are those things you know. So if you're concerned about your kids having practical knowledge and common sense.... you could make your own pickles. Or you could figure that we all have some gaps and not worry about it.

 

The one area that I do go out of my way for is safety -- judging traffic when you're crossing the street, being aware of your surroundings, knowing where the dodgy areas of town are and not finding yourself there alone and/or drunk at 2am... But it's not by actively teaching him about it -- it's just in the course of our daily lives, keeping up with local news, making good choices... If you happen to live somewhere that allows you to get everywhere by car you can be really insulated from that kind of experience. So we walk places when we can, or take public transporation, because being aware of cars that don't see you, keeping your distance from creepy people, choosing routes and schedules with safety in mind... all of those come from experience. And I'd rather he make his rookie mistakes early on with me around.

[LittleIzumi]

I think everyone should have to take a solid cooking class and an auto mechanics class before they leave home. :tongue_smilie:

[zaichiki]

I think everyone should have to take a solid cooking class and an auto mechanics class before they leave home. :tongue_smilie:

 

I think kids should learn these skills by working side-by-side with their parents. Too bad parents don't teach these things anymore... What has happened to humanity?

[LittleIzumi]

I think kids should learn these skills by working side-by-side with their parents. Too bad parents don't teach these things anymore... What has happened to humanity?

 

I worked on the car with my dad, but I just followed his instructions or read the manual. I need a manual or a car guy there to tell me what to do, lol. I don't *know* how it works or why without that.

[Ester Maria]

I think kids should learn these skills by working side-by-side with their parents. Too bad parents don't teach these things anymore... What has happened to humanity?

I agree. I am actually appalled sometimes at how many normal life skills we have "formalized" into classes and "outsourced" to schools that way :001_huh:, in my mind all of those acquired as one grows up at home.

 

And of course that there will always be funny situations when one misuses something they work with for the first time, but that is not necessarily connected to high intelligence.

[jenbrdsly]

The car stories are cracking me up! Here's one more:

My uncle is a very smart and well respected doctor in a small town. In his mid 40's he once ruined his car by putting diesel in it, instead of regular gasoline! It was such a small town that of course, he knew the car mechanic who could not understand how my uncle had made this mistake, especially since the diesel handle is a different color. But my uncle said he was just thinking about something else (abstract) and not paying attention (practical).

As far as practical knowledge goes, my uncle had been raised by a mom who did everything for him, and now my aunt does everything for him. None of those ladies have ever pumped gas into his car as far as I know, so I still don't know how he made that mistake. :)

[Storm Bay]

FWIW, when I was a child, my mother often said that I had no common sense. (:glare: gee thanks)

 

.

 

This not really ridiculous, because the original borosilicate glass cookware did have better thermal shock resistance and could be used on stove top. My grandmother's glass cookware went oven to stove top (open flame gas burner) for many decades without problems.

Pyrex has reformulated its glass and it does not have these properties anymore - but I would not consider it a ridiculous expectation that modern glass cookware performs as well as grandma's.

 

I think that the lesson here would be to read care instructions,etc when you buy or are given things. I didn't know the changes in glass, but I did realize that they had to be differnt because I remember glass cookware that went on the stove and realzied they had to be different.

 

 

I don't think common sense is what it used to be. At the church fall festival I watched groups of kids led by oblivious adults walking directly behind a camel. ... It was a tame camel ... They don't kick, right?

 

re: the quote above & the one below. I think that some people have more common sense than others, whether or not they are highly intelligent academically. Some people make more foolish mistakes than others. I don't mean mistakes from lack of experience and knowledge, such as putting the wrong soap in a dishwasher (we had a babysitter do that once, and she was very average in intelligence, but she'd never used one before and I didn't think of explaining it to her since my mother got her first one when I was in kindergarten).

 

While I have a lot of common sense now, but I often had my head in the clouds growing up and was well known for doing foolish things that lacked common sense. Also, there were things other people knew that I didn't. When I first learned to drive a standard (aka stick) shift, I didn't realize that you had to start all over in first gear after every time you stopped because it wasn't something I ever thought about. Thankfully I already had my license, and learned it by myself, or I'd have never lived it down.

 

From the anecdotes, it might seem as if intelligent people have less common sense... but the real question would be if that is indeed so, or if it is just more noticeable if they mess up because, after all, one expects stupid people to do stupid things and is not surprised if they do.

[Rivka]

I'm a little surprised by all of the sensitivity on this thread. I am not meaning to offend anyone, but rather to generate a useful list of questions to help teach my own children some real world common sense lessons. There is a webinar on the SENG website right now called “If I’m so smart why can’t I find my keys?†To me, this says that practical intelligence and how to encourage it is a valid issue in the gifted community.

 

I think a lot of gifted people have had failures of common sense/practical knowledge used as a weapon to tear them down. "You're supposed to be so smart, why did you..."

 

Sometimes when I can't seem to do a simple task or I fail to make an obvious connection, I will announce "...and I have a Ph.D.!" as a way of making light of the situation. So I totally get where you were going with this thread. But if I had someone in my life who made it their mission to remind me that my IQ and education don't make me all that, I would probably be a little sensitive about it.

[Donna]

I think kids should learn these skills by working side-by-side with their parents. Too bad parents don't teach these things anymore... What has happened to humanity?

 

:iagree: All of my kids will have a good understanding of how to care for themselves, cook, car care, basic home repair, etc...before they leave home. If parents involved their kids in the things they do every day, it works.

 

I think in this day so many people pay people to do the things for them that in previous generations parents just did. I know my husband has people do things as simple as change lightbulbs and put together equipment that comes in a box with instructions because they just can't do those things. They are either too busy and involved with their own specialty or never learned.

[Halcyon]

I don't know....my DH is very, very bright--went to Columbia at 16 with zero parental support, scored the best score you can on the SAT (it was a while ago, so I don't remember what the top score was), never studied but aced everything...that sorta guy :glare:

 

Anyway, maybe someone can tell me why he always, always, always fails to leave adequate time to prepare for business trips. Just yesterday, he decided he was going to take the boys out to a big, loooong 1 hour plus breakfast, even though he had to make a 2 pm train (2 1/2 hours away), hadn't packed, hadn't showered, hadn't finished packing his business-related stuff (never easy), and it was 10 am?? Does he really think he can do all of that stuff done in just half an hour?? Because he can't. And he didn't. Again. :tongue_smilie:

 

Poor, sweaty, freaked out, "WHERE IS MY iPHONE???", frantic hubbie....:lol:

[4everHis]

I think I'll throw my vote in on the "oh, lighten up" side.

 

I thought the story was cute. The OP didn't insult her roommate, she told a story about someone brilliant who happened to do something unpractical. I didn't think it was an offense to people who went to Stanford, to brilliant people, to people who have roommates, or to anyone else where the "correctness police" need to be called in.

 

:iagree: relative (engineer for government making jet engines) so smart you can sometimes not have a 'normal' conversation with this person. . .went to the adjoining room in hotel to take shower, realized she/he'd forgotten his/her shampoo so was going to run next door and get it. Accidentally went out in the hallway of the VERY nice hotel, very NAKED!!! Of course the door locked behind her/him and their family was out so he/she had to flag down someone to help. :lol::lol:love to hear them tell this story! among many more just like it.

[deacongirl]

I don't know....my DH is very, very bright--went to Columbia at 16 with zero parental support, scored the best score you can on the SAT (it was a while ago, so I don't remember what the top score was), never studied but aced everything...that sorta guy :glare:

 

Anyway, maybe someone can tell me why he always, always, always fails to leave adequate time to prepare for business trips. Just yesterday, he decided he was going to take the boys out to a big, loooong 1 hour plus breakfast, even though he had to make a 2 pm train (2 1/2 hours away), hadn't packed, hadn't showered, hadn't finished packing his business-related stuff (never easy), and it was 10 am?? Does he really think he can do all of that stuff done in just half an hour?? Because he can't. And he didn't. Again. :tongue_smilie:

 

Poor, sweaty, freaked out, "WHERE IS MY iPHONE???", frantic hubbie....:lol:

 

I also think some of this, in some people, may be undiagnosed inattentive ADHD. It doesn't get diagnosed because usually through schooling, for some people even through college and graduate school, the giftedness compensates for the executive function deficits. But real life and careers and parenthood make it clear that there are indeed deficits. Of course we are all busy and forget stuff occasionally or don't allow enough time occasionally--but if it is constantly interfering with your life, it may be worth reading up on ADHD and what it looks like in gifted adults.

 

I have done some "stupid" stuff...but really it was inattention/distractability, not lack of common sense. (i.e. setting crystal bowl on stove top when distracted instead of putting it away, then turning on wrong burner. I am so thankful that my dd wasn't in the kitchen when it exploded).

[deacongirl]

After four years the only story I can think of was one kid who had no idea that pickles were made from cucumbers. We never let him hear the end of that... but why would he know anyway? It's not like he had ever made pickles - as far as a city kid knows they come from the supermarket in jars and who cares about the rest?

 

But the real issue I think is that common sense is neither a type of intelligence nor something that can be well-taught with planned lessons. You pick it up from experience, and those things that you have experience with are those things you know. So if you're concerned about your kids having practical knowledge and common sense.... you could make your own pickles. Or you could figure that we all have some gaps and not worry about it.

 

 

I am so glad to know I'm not the only one! I remember being just shocked to learn that pickles were made from cucumbers! lol! In my defense I think I was only 8 or 9 though. However, in college, the (very kind, fun) guys I was friends with would not let me be in the "Street Smart Club"--and I was constantly (unintentionally) saying dumb things to convince them it was the right choice.

[beaners]

I think a lot of gifted people have had failures of common sense/practical knowledge used as a weapon to tear them down. "You're supposed to be so smart, why did you..."

 

 

I think there's a long history (not here - in general) of assuming that "book smarts" is balanced out by lack of "street smarts"... which is kind of an obnoxious stereotype... and I don't think it's really accurate.

 

I think this is why I really dislike all of the absent minded professor stereotypes. If you're smart, you must not have common sense. You must be a bookworm who can't interact with people. You also can't be athletic or attractive. Just like there are nasty people with no common sense who do poorly in academics, there really are people who are successful in many different areas.

 

In my house growing up we had those glass pots and pans others have mentioned. I still have a scar on my wrist from dropping one while I was doing dishes. I wouldn't put a pyrex dish across two burners, but I wouldn't be shocked by someone trying to use a smaller one on a single burner. I check every single dish before I put it in the microwave, which is why I don't melt things when everyone else in my family does.

 

I am better at visualizing how something will work than my husband is when we do projects together (or more likely, I take the thirty seconds to do it and he doesn't) which is how I manage to avoid problems. I read all directions, stickers and manuals before asking questions. I also file things away in my head when I read them on message boards, which is how I heard about pyrex quality going downhill a few years ago.

Edited November 22, 2011 by beaners
reword

[LittleIzumi]

I also think some of this, in some people, may be undiagnosed inattentive ADHD. It doesn't get diagnosed because usually through schooling, for some people even through college and graduate school, the giftedness compensates for the executive function deficits. But real life and careers and parenthood make it clear that there are indeed deficits. Of course we are all busy and forget stuff occasionally or don't allow enough time occasionally--but if it is constantly interfering with your life, it may be worth reading up on ADHD and what it looks like in gifted adults.

 

That is very possibly my problem here. :lol:

[Storm Bay]

I think a lot of gifted people have had failures of common sense/practical knowledge used as a weapon to tear them down. "You're supposed to be so smart, why did you..."

 

.

:iagree:

[Embassy]

I have done some "stupid" stuff...but really it was inattention/distractability, not lack of common sense. (i.e. setting crystal bowl on stove top when distracted instead of putting it away, then turning on wrong burner. I am so thankful that my dd wasn't in the kitchen when it exploded).

 

Good point.

 

I have a smart guy who is often distracted by multiple ideas/thoughts/stories going on in his head at the same time. But he also currently lacks common sense. When he does something that leaves me shaking my head, it is common for him to be unaware that his choice was not wise. I'd guess about 75% of his "incidents" are related to distraction and the rest to his weaknesses in the realm of common sense. He is a happy care-free guy though. There are no perfectionism issues like I have with my children who show more common sense.

[lionfamily1999]

I don't know if we notice smart people's screw-ups more or not, but they are sometimes funny...We've used quite a few babysitters over the years, but the only one who ever put my son's diaper on backwards was a Yale grade who had just been accepted into Yale law school:001_smile:

 

My grandfather, who was a headmaster at a British boys' school and a Cambridge grad, was famous for leaving the house in his slippers. He also once took his kids shopping in the next town, and was halfway home on the bus before he realized he had left the kids behind... (maybe he was a little ADHD, too).

 

The worst lack of common-sense stories I've heard came from a friend of mine in grad school. Her roommate (also a grad student) called 911 because she couldn't figure out how to turn the A/C on--and that was just one of many examples. To be fair, I don't think she was particularly bright in other areas, either.

Dh and I learned how to put diapers on backwards with our youngest. It was the only way to keep his diapers on. :lol:

 

My uncle does the same thing. He is so focused on the 'big' stuff that little stuff (like clothing) takes a back seat.

I think kids should learn these skills by working side-by-side with their parents. Too bad parents don't teach these things anymore... What has happened to humanity?

A lot of parents don't know these things. Dh has run 'clinics' with the Cub Scouts (oil changes, tire rotation, &tc). What is incredible is how many questions he gets from the parents (the Scouts tend to be happy playing with the tools) that he thought all adults already knew.

 

There is also a serious dislike for manuals that seems, imo, to be pervasive in society. That's not limited to cars. I admit to putting together many things without bothering with the instructions.... only to go back to the manual when I realize it's not working properly. For some reason we assume these things (we being me and anyone who wants to come with me :lol:) will come to us naturally. Of course I can change a belt in my vacuum, how hard can it ????

The car stories are cracking me up! Here's one more:

 

My uncle is a very smart and well respected doctor in a small town. In his mid 40's he once ruined his car by putting diesel in it, instead of regular gasoline! It was such a small town that of course, he knew the car mechanic who could not understand how my uncle had made this mistake, especially since the diesel handle is a different color. But my uncle said he was just thinking about something else (abstract) and not paying attention (practical).

Okay, Mom stories :D She put diesel in her car (fyi, if you get to a shop quick enough they can drain your tank and save your car) because ... well, she heard it burns better. She had no idea you couldn't just switch.

 

She also bleached her teeth once ... take a guess ... with Clorox. Yeah.

 

In some ways she's knock your socks off incredible. She comes up with the greatest ideas (and they WORK) for super cheap super cool projects. Then she bleaches her teeth with bleach. You have to love my mom.

re: the quote above & the one below. I think that some people have more common sense than others, whether or not they are highly intelligent academically. Some people make more foolish mistakes than others. I don't mean mistakes from lack of experience and knowledge, such as putting the wrong soap in a dishwasher (we had a babysitter do that once, and she was very average in intelligence, but she'd never used one before and I didn't think of explaining it to her since my mother got her first one when I was in kindergarten).

 

While I have a lot of common sense now, but I often had my head in the clouds growing up and was well known for doing foolish things that lacked common sense. Also, there were things other people knew that I didn't. When I first learned to drive a standard (aka stick) shift, I didn't realize that you had to start all over in first gear after every time you stopped because it wasn't something I ever thought about. Thankfully I already had my license, and learned it by myself, or I'd have never lived it down.

Dh and I have both used the wrong soap in a dishwasher. Neither of us had them growing up and soap's soap, right? :lol:

 

The first time I drove a clutch I forgot to hold it when I stopped. I had managed to slam on the brakes when this monsterous deer stepped out (and stopped) infront of me. Panic set in when the car started lurching towards the deer while I was holding the brake to the floor. I thought the car was intent upon killing the deer :lol: The car owner was yelling, but to me it seemed like he was just yelling because his car had been taken over by some hellish demon bound and determined to take on the buck. Eventually the word, "CLUTCH CLUTCH CLUTCH" came through my mental fog :lol: That was a lesson I'll never forget.:auto:

[nitascool]

Sometimes the common sense issues with the very bright is not so funny. Like last week when my 10yo decided it would be interesting to pour a cup of water into the light fixture on the ceiling. Or when my GT 11yo decided that he would grab two exposed wires in the dishwasher. Fortunately I had turned off the power before he did it.

 

My MIL often says dh has no common sense. But I often wonder what she means by it. He has a lot more "street smarts" then she does. Her brand of common sense is stuff like, "Being a democrat is common sense", or "Calling home to tell her husband to start dinner while driving is common sense" (while I'm thinking not driving and phoning is better common sense").

 

My dh does have trouble putting on diapers though... after 4 children in diapers he still occasionally put them on backward and can't figure out what he's done wrong.

[lionfamily1999]

Well that's still better than me. I have never been able to learn how to drive a standard. My parents and my husband tried to teach me. I'm not teachable in this department.

I think it helped that when I was learning I didn't have an alternate (drive a manual or don't drive at all). I plan on doing the same with our dc. Of course, we'll have to get a car with a manual trans, :lol:

[jenbrdsly]

When I learned how to drive I didn't know how to go anywhere. I didn't even know how to get from our house to the grocery store! You should have heard all of the "Why don't you have any common sense?" lectures I heard from my mom...

The reason I didn't have any sense of direction was because I was always reading in the car or studying flashcards.