Excerpt:
At 7, when many kids figure they might be firemen, Seth announced he would be a military archeologist. His mom, Mona Lisa, encouraged that curiosity. “Wow! That kid was into this!” she marvels.
By 12, Seth was hanging out with students nearly twice his age, studying the Middle Ages at Faulkner University, near his home in Montgomery, Alabama. “How’s he doing?” I ask assistant professor Grover Plunkett.
“He’s got the highest average in the class.”
Seth was motivated by his brother Keith’s success. Keith is just down the hall, studying finite mathematics, a college senior — at 14.
“It makes you wonder,” their friend Wesley Jimmerson says, shaking his head. “Are they advanced, or are we just really behind?”
Sister Hannah was the first of the Harding kids to take college entrance exams — at age 12. “I didn’t expect to pass,” she says, “so I started crying, because I was thinking, ‘Now what?'”
By 22 she was designing spacecraft. She holds master’s degrees in math and mechanical engineering.
Ten-year-old Katrinnah Harding hopes to enter college next year. Her brother Heath started at age 11. He’s finishing his master’s in computer science — at 17.
“If they’re going to be working at my kitchen table,” Mona Lisa says with a smile, “why not earn college credit for what they’re doing?”
Named after her mother’s favorite song, Mona Lisa Harding home-schools her children in the basics, but found that her kids learned more quickly (and got less bored) when they were allowed to study deeply — something they loved.
“I don’t have any brilliant children,” she contends. “I’m not brilliant. My husband’s not brilliant. We’re just average folks.” Who inspired six children to enter college before they became teenagers.
[…]I can understand maybe convincing one or two children to enter college early, but Mona Lisa has more kids than Mother Hubbard: 10.
She shrugs. “By the time you get down to number five, number six, they just think learning seems normal. We find out what their passions are, what they really like to study, and we accelerate them gradually.“
But what happens to their childhood?
“We didn’t limit their experience,” Mona Lisa says. “They’re taking college classes, but socially, they are just teenagers.” Who live at home, not in college dorms.
What’s their secret? What I got out of the story is that parents don’t have to be smart in order to have smart kids. They just have to take an interest in what the children want to do and then guide them to the next level and the next level and the next level. It’s hands-on parenting!