I watched the parenting on “Young Sheldon”—and did the exact opposite

Sheldon’s parents' decision to perennially give in to him turned him into an entitled, arrogant, self-absorbed monster. Adams decided to parent her exceptionally bright child very differently.

“The Big Bang Theory” premiered September 2007. My husband has a nuclear engineering degree from MIT. Our younger son, then four, was a budding scientist. (Sample conversation: Him: Can’t come out of the bath. Working on surface tension and light refraction. Me: You mean splashing?)

We tuned in to the pilot. We liked it well enough to keep watching. However, as inevitably happens with Chuck Lorre shows, the humor quickly became mean-spirited, the characters nasty, the plots cliched.

When “Young Sheldon” debuted ten years later, though, it seemed different enough in spirit that we gave it a shot.

By that time, we had a fourteen-year-old son who’d been begging us to let him drop out of school since third grade. He said he was bored. He said he wasn’t learning anything. He said he could do a better job educating himself.

We struck a deal. He would stay in school, behave himself in class, and, once he graduated 8th grade, he could go straight to college.

There were definitely ups and downs over the intervening five years. Instances like his teacher calling to report he got an uncharacteristic D on a geography test. “I don’t think it’s a learning issue,” the teacher began.

“Oh, it’s a learning issue,” I snapped. “He didn’t learn the material.”

My son informed me he didn’t study for the test because he found geography pointless. I informed him that this wasn’t keeping with our bargain.

There were also report cards with the note: His need to question everything the teacher says can become tiresome.

A sample exchange:

Teacher: Think of “is” as an equal sign.

Him: No. Because if you say, “A rose is red,” then the color red is an aspect of the rose, but if you say, “Red is a rose,” a rose is not an aspect of the color red.

He managed to graduate eighth grade. He’d kept his promise. I was determined to keep mine.

We agreed one of New York’s city colleges would be fine. But, as it turned out, CUNY won’t let applicants take its placement test without a high school diploma. Over 50 percent of teens who graduate NYC high schools with a diploma can’t pass the CUNY placement test—but passing the placement test won’t get you a high school diploma!

With the plan for him to attend an affordable school and live at home proving impossible, we adjusted our parameters and visited Simon’s Rock, an early college in Massachusetts. Though it was by no stretch of the imagination affordable, it claimed to meet all financial need via scholarships.

To make the day trip happen, my husband and I took off work. Because neither of us drive, my brother volunteered to chauffeur us, which required him taking time off work, too. I arranged for my daughter to go to a friend’s house after school and for my oldest son to pick her up from there in the evening.

While none of us were impressed with Simon’s Rock’s academics, we still allowed our son to apply. He was ecstatic to get in. Then came the price tag. They wanted four times what we were paying for our oldest to attend an Ivy League university. So much for “meeting all financial need.”

My son was devastated. He was furious. He was belligerent.

Seeing him so upset, I was severely tempted to find some way for him to go. We’d borrow the money.

This is where “Young Sheldon” came in. That show’s narrative never matched “The Big Bang Theory’s.” Adult Sheldon maintained no one in his family understood his genius or supported him.

Yet, in seven seasons of the spin-off, we watched Sheldon’s mother, father, and grandmother go out of their way to drive him to his university classes. His dad flew with him to Caltech. His mom went with him to Germany. Sheldon was incredibly supported by his family—which he never appreciated.

What stopped me from giving in to my son over early college was watching Mary perennially giving in to Sheldon—and the entitled, self-absorbed monster that turned him into. One who didn’t even notice the sacrifices other people were making for him, because he simply accepted it as his rightful due.

So we told our son he’d be attending Stuyvesant, NYC’s top public high school. At the end of freshman year, he asked again to be allowed to drop out.

We didn’t let him.

The reasons were, once again, connected to “Young Sheldon.” I didn’t want to give my son the sense he was better than the people around him. Stuyvesant is a school for NYC’s highest performing students. If it was good enough for them, it was good enough for him (and his father and his brother, too). The last thing I wanted was a boy who, like young Sheldon, thinks he’s smarter than everyone around him and that this gives him license to belittle them. A kid like that grows into an adult who mocks his friend for “only” having a master’s degree (even though said friend is also an astronaut) and dismisses entire areas of study, like geology, as not real science.

So my son returned for sophomore year. And then the pandemic hit. Now when he said he wasn’t learning anything and showed the level of work that was being asked of him, I was forced to agree.

So could he drop out and educate himself now?

Yes. But on one condition. Again, thanks to “Young Sheldon.”

I told my son he could drop out and homeschool himself. But he would do all the work himself. He would research homeschooling law himself, and file the paperwork himself, and select his classes himself, and arrange to take his Advanced Placement tests (and, later, his high school equivalency) himself. I would not lift a finger to help.

This was because, on “Young Sheldon,” I saw what happened when a mother put one child’s needs above all others.

I watched Missy explain that while her dad and older brother Georgie have football in common, and her mom and Meemaw are always “fussing over Sheldon,” Missy is left on her own. I seethed when, during a trip to Houston so Sheldon could debate math with a NASA scientist, Missy’s pleas to stop at an ostrich farm are ignored. And I was driven to tears as Missy’s cries for attention, to the point of running away from home, are dismissed and punished, while Sheldon’s horrible behavior is excused and even rewarded.

That wasn’t going to happen at my house. Thanks to “Young Sheldon,” I went out of my way to make sure it wasn’t only my son’s triumphs which were celebrated. I insisted he attend his sister’s gymnastics meets and, when she competed internationally, that we watch the livestream of her opening ceremony. (Did we see her in the throng of thousands? No, we did not. But that wasn’t the point.) Her accomplishments were no less valuable than his.

Last month, Jonathan Plucker wrote about the sitcom “‘Young Sheldon’ provides insight into parenting bright children.” I couldn’t agree more. But for me, the show proved a blueprint for everything not to do.

I didn’t want a son who acted like young Sheldon Cooper. I most certainly didn’t want one who grew up to behave like adult Sheldon. Even in the last episode, Jim Parsons’s cameo demonstrated that Sheldon still spoke condescendingly to his wife, had no interest in supporting his children’s passions, and mocked people whom he called his friends.

If looking at everything Mary Cooper did when raising Sheldon and doing the opposite was what it took for me to raise the anti-Sheldon, then so be it.

But how could I argue with Sheldon’s success, some might ask? He went to Caltech! Doesn’t that make putting up with his abhorrent personality worth it?

If that’s what we’re using as a metric, then my son also got into Caltech—but chose to go elsewhere. There’s definitely more than one way to parent a bright child. I chose to go the anti-“Young Sheldon” route.

Editor’s note: This was first published by Education Next.

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Note: The following elements of the newsletter were compiled by Brandon Wright, Advance’s editor.

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QUOTE OF NOTE

“Yes, a child born extremely intelligent is lucky and likely to do well, but as Lubinski and Benbow mentioned in their conversation with me, we want to see each person whole. I’d put it this way: It’s nice to know who is good at taking intelligence tests, but it’s more important to know who is lit by an inner fire.”

—David Brooks, “What happens to gifted children,” New York Times, June 13, 2024

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RESEARCH REVIEW

“Perspectives of Parents of Highly and Profoundly Gifted Children Regarding Competence, Belonging, and Support Within a Sociocultural Context,” Rebecca M. Johnson, Anne N. Rinn, Rachel U. Mun, and Glorry Yeung, Gifted Child Quarterly, OnlineFirst, June 17, 2024

“The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study was to investigate the experiences and perspectives of parents of highly and profoundly gifted children in developmental and cultural contexts. A purposive sample was selected from parents who are members of networks and organizations serving highly and profoundly gifted students. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 11 parents. Data were analyzed using the six-step approach of thematic analysis and revealed eight overarching themes including (a) self-efficacy within sociocultural contexts; (b) feelings of confidence; (c) role in fulfilling children’s needs; (d) decisions and actions related to children’s giftedness; (e) development of the parent/child dyads; (f) sense of belonging within the larger community; (g) impact of Covid-19 pandemic on their child’s gifted education; and (h) resources needed to facilitate children’s social-emotional and academic needs. Implications inform educators, counselors, and communities of the lived experiences of parents and their need for a sense of support and belonging.”

“Validity Evidence of the HOPE Teacher Rating Scale-Arabic Version for Identifying Gifted Refugee Students,” Ali M. Alodat, Marcia Gentry, and Hyeseong Lee, Gifted Child Quarterly, OnlineFirst, June 12, 2024

“Exceptionally talented refugee students are often underrepresented in allocating to gifted programs because of inadequate identification methods in Arab countries. This study investigates the Arabic version of the Having Opportunities Promotes Excellence (HOPE) Scale for identifying gifted refugee students. Students (n = 13,598) from refugee camp schools in Jordan were surveyed in the 2020/2021 academic year. Elementary, middle, and high school teachers (n = 423) completed the translated Arabic version of the HOPE Scale, measuring 11 items on the academic and social construct of giftedness. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated an excellent fit; however, multigroup confirmatory factor analysis results revealed that the scale needed more invariance across groups. The results suggest that although the HOPE Scale-Arabic version has sufficient validation evidence, careful consideration is required when applying it to different subgroups of refugee students. Constructs of cultural relevance may need to be added to better assess the item’s validity.”

“Accelerating Opportunity: The Effects of Instructionally Supported Detracking,” by Thomas S. Dee and Elizabeth Huffaker, May 2024

“The pivotal role of algebra in the educational trajectories of U.S. students continues to motivate controversial, high-profile policies focused on when students access the course, their classroom peers, and how the course is taught. This random-assignment study examines an innovative district-level reform—the Algebra I Initiative—that placed 9th-grade students deemed well below grade level in Algebra I classes coupled with teacher training instead of a remedial pre-Algebra class. We find that this reform significantly increased grade-11 math achievement (ES = 0.2 SD) without lowering the achievement of classroom peers who were near or on grade level at baseline. This initiative also increased attendance, district retention, and overall math credits. These results suggest the impact of higher expectations coupled with aligned teacher supports for the lowest-performing students.”

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WRITING WORTH READING

“What happens to gifted children,” New York Times, David Brooks, June 13, 2024

“Only gifted students can correctly answer…How do you equalize a forest?” New Pittsburgh Courier, J. Pharoah Doss, June 11, 2024

“AP African American studies dropped in South Carolina, prompting criticism,” ABC News, Kiara Alfonseca, June 11, 2024

“Equity paradox: Minority, low income students suffer most from lack of gifted programs in Massachusetts,” Fox News, Taylor Penley, June 7, 202

“WEBINAR: Rethinking Gifted Education,” FutureEd, June 6, 2024

“Gifted and talented programs are vanishing from schools. That’s a bigger problem than you think,” Boston Globe, Kara Miller, May 29, 2024

“Talented students are kept from early algebra. Should states force schools to enroll them?” EdSurge, Daniel Mollenkamp, May 28, 2024

“A Brooklyn ‘gifted’ school wins first waiver to opt out of NYC’s literacy curriculum mandate,” Chalkbeat, Alex Zimmerman, May 28, 2024,

“Fixing the calamity in U.S. math knowledge starts with algebra,” New York Times, Brent Staples, May 24, 2024

“The algebra problem: How middle school math became a national flashpoint,” New York Times, Troy Closson, May 22, 2024

“She just earned her doctorate at 17. Now, she’ll go to the prom.” New York Times, Alexandra E. Petri, May 22, 2024