By Jane Sonnenschein · First draft: January 5, 2026 · Revised on May 19, 2026

A couple of days ago, I wrote an essay called I Used to Think That Children with High IQs Were Supposed to Be xueba[1], and Later I Realized I Was Wrong.

After finishing that piece, one question kept staying in my mind without ever being fully unfolded: why do we so naturally equate “high IQ” with being a top student?

Later, I slowly realized that maybe the problem is not only that we misunderstand high intelligence. Maybe the deeper problem is that, from the very beginning, we have lumped several completely different kinds of children together and called them all “smart.”

In everyday language, if a child gets good grades, we say they’re smart. If a child thinks quickly, we also say they’re smart. If a child has a lot of ideas and does not follow the usual pattern, sometimes we call that smart too.

But those kinds of “smart” are not actually the same thing.

Some children are especially well suited to the school system.

Some children have high intelligence and can also adapt to the school system.

And some children really are very smart, but the way their minds work simply does not fit well with the school system.

If we do not separate these different kinds of children, it becomes very easy to reach a rough and simplistic conclusion: children with good grades are smart, children with poor grades are not smart enough, and children who are obviously smart but do not study well are lazy.

But reality is much more complicated than that.

Type One: the school-system-adapted xueba[1] (the most common kind in China)

The first type of child is the one we know best: the school-system-adapted xueba.

These children do not necessarily have the highest intellectual ceiling, but they usually have a very stable set of strengths.

They have a strong sense of rules. They can accept repeated training, and they can tolerate delayed gratification.

They know how to follow the whole process of previewing, listening in class, doing practice work, and reviewing afterward. Just as importantly, they are willing to stay in that process over the long term.

That ability is actually quite remarkable.

Very often, when a child can maintain strong grades over a long period of time in school, what supports that is not just comprehension. It is also self-management, time organization, task completion, emotional stability, and sustained effort.

In other words, what helps them win is not only intelligence. It is also their ability to adapt to the rules of school.

In the Chinese context, this is the kind of child we are most likely to understand as a “smart child.”

Because their strengths show up very clearly on report cards.

Teachers like them, parents feel reassured, relatives praise them, and the people around them easily arrive at the same conclusion: look, this is what a smart child looks like.

But there is an easily overlooked issue here: being highly suited to the school system does not necessarily mean that a child has the highest intellectual potential.

Of course they may be very smart. But their more visible advantage is that they are able to deliver their abilities in the way the system wants them delivered.

Type Two: high IQ + system-compatible (extremely rare)

The second type is the kind of “genius top student” people most love to imagine.

They understand things quickly, they are strong in abstract thinking, and they are good at drawing inferences. At the same time, they can also adapt to school rules.

They can grasp complex problems quickly, and they can also tolerate boring basic drills. They have creativity, but they also have execution. They have high ability, but they also stay engaged with tasks.

This is the type most likely to become the star of the story.

The young prodigies we see in the news, the competition champions, the people who go all the way through elite schools and then seem to do well both academically and professionally—many of them belong to this category.

Their existence is so dazzling that we easily start to assume: if a child has a high IQ, then surely they should naturally turn out like this.

But that is exactly where the problem lies.

This kind of child is actually very rare.

What is truly rare is not simply “being smart.” What is rare is having both high-level understanding and the ability to keep doing things you may not even like for a very long time.

They can think quickly, yet also slow down and do repetitive practice. They can raise questions, yet also obey rules. They have ideas of their own, yet can still produce standard answers inside an exam system.

Only when all of those abilities are stacked together do we get what we tend to see as the “genius top student.”

But very often, we use this tiny group of children as the standard for every child we think is smart.

And that is where things start to go wrong.

Because not every high-IQ child can tolerate repetition in school.

Not every child who thinks quickly can produce steadily inside a fixed process.

And certainly not every child with ideas of their own will automatically become an excellent student, emotionally stable, self-disciplined, hardworking, socially smooth, and held up as the ideal child.

Type Three: high IQ + not system-compatible (the most misunderstood)

The third type is the one most easily misunderstood.

These children may indeed have very high intelligence. They may understand things very quickly, and they often see problems that other people do not see.

But they may not be suited to the school system.

Some children are highly sensitive to sound, light, smells, and changes in their environment.

Some children have a strong need for meaning. If something feels like mechanical repetition to them, their brains resist it almost instinctively.

Others may be exceptionally strong in certain areas—spatial imagination, logical reasoning, visual thinking, language sensitivity, or an interest in programming—but clearly struggle with classroom order, homework management, writing speed, or social relationships.

At school, these children are the ones most likely to be described in one sentence: “Smart, yes—but just not hardworking.”

That sentence sounds objective, but it can do a great deal of harm.

Because it compresses a complicated issue into a problem of attitude.

If a child cannot finish homework, they are called unmotivated. If they drift off in class, they are called inattentive. If they hate repetitive practice, they are called lazy. If they become absorbed in a game, a model, or a specific interest, it is seen as escaping reality.

But if we look from another angle, maybe things are not that simple.

Some children are not unable to focus. They simply find it very hard to focus on things that feel meaningless to them.

They can spend hours studying a game world, a mechanical structure, a fictional setting, or a programming problem, yet they struggle to put their attention on a page of repetitive exercises they already understood long ago.

Some children do not lack ability. Their abilities are just distributed unevenly.

They may be far ahead of their peers in one area, while in another they seem clumsy, chaotic, or slow, sometimes in ways adults find hard to understand.

In educational discussions, children like this are sometimes understood through the framework of “asynchronous development.”

In other words, a child’s cognitive abilities may move very quickly, while emotional regulation, social abilities, physical maturity, or executive functioning do not develop at the same pace.

That creates a state that looks contradictory from the outside: this child is obviously so smart, so why can’t they handle something so simple?

Things get even more complicated when a child may also fall into what is called 2e, or twice-exceptional.

Simply put, this means that a child may have very high ability on the one hand, while also living with certain learning difficulties, attention-related issues, dyslexia, autistic traits, or other developmental differences on the other.

These are exactly the children most easily missed by the system.

Because their gifted side makes adults feel that they should not need help, while their struggling side makes adults doubt whether they are really that smart at all.

So they get stuck in the middle.

They are neither the traditional high achiever nor the kind of “problem student” people imagine.

They have ability, but they cannot produce the kind of results the system wants. They have ideas, but are often misunderstood as difficult or defiant. They may be suffering deeply, yet the people around them only see that they are “not cooperating.”

That is also why I now feel more and more strongly that school has never screened for intelligence alone.

Of course school needs children to understand knowledge. But at the same time, it is also screening for many other things.

It is screening whether a child can arrive on time, sit through a class, complete homework as required, repeatedly practice things they already know, and keep their attention on tasks assigned by the teacher.

It is screening whether a child can tolerate boredom, accept training that feels temporarily meaningless, and stick to the steps in front of them for the sake of a future goal.

All of those abilities matter. But they are not the same as intelligence itself.

So good grades cannot simply be treated as proof of high IQ. And high IQ cannot simply be treated as proof that a child will do well in school.

If a child does not become a top student, that does not mean they are not smart. If a child learns smoothly, that does not mean intelligence is the only reason.

Our biggest mistake in the past was that we mashed all these things together.

So the school-system-adapted high achiever gets called smart.

The child with high IQ who also fits the system gets called a genius.

And the child with high IQ who does not fit the system gets called lazy, strange, difficult, or unwilling to work hard.

Very often, the ones hurt most are the children in the third group.

Because they clearly have ability, yet from early on the feedback they receive may be consistently negative.

Why are you not doing your homework again? Why are you so lazy? You obviously know how to do it, so why won’t you do it? If you were willing to work hard, you would already be extraordinary.

When children hear those words often enough, they slowly begin to believe: I do not have difficulties—I am just not good enough. I do not need help—I am the problem.

That is the most frightening part.

High intelligence was never supposed to become a burden.

But when a child is kept for a long time inside a system that does not suit them, and no one helps them understand their own mind, their intelligence can start to feel like a kind of suffering.

They think faster than others, but cannot slow their minds down. They notice more than others, but cannot easily explain it. They feel many things more intensely, yet are told not to be “so sensitive.” They need meaning, but are forced to do large amounts of work that feels meaningless to them.

In the end, adults only see that they are not cooperating. They do not see that the child has actually been struggling with their own brain all along.

This is not to say that we should explain every problem away with “high IQ.” Nor does it mean that whenever a child resists studying, it must be because they are too smart.

That would not be right either.

“High IQ” cannot become a free pass for avoiding rules, and it cannot become a label parents use to rationalize every problem their child has. But it can remind us that before we judge a child, we should slow down a little.

When a child resists learning over a long period of time, besides asking, “Why aren’t you trying harder?”, we can also ask: Have they already understood it, and are simply being asked to repeat it again and again? Are they overly sensitive to environmental stimulation? Do they struggle to manage their attention? Are they exceptionally strong in some areas, but clearly weak in organization and execution?

And when a child becomes deeply absorbed in a particular interest, maybe we do not need to treat that interest as the enemy right away.

Maybe that interest is helping their brain reduce noise. Maybe it is the only place where they feel any sense of control. Maybe the real world feels too chaotic to them, while that other world, with clear rules, is the first place where they feel they can actually do something well.

What really matters is not labeling children as “high IQ,” “top student,” or “problem child” as quickly as possible. What really matters is helping them find a more accurate framework for understanding themselves.

A child who is well adapted to the system needs stable, ongoing protection for their rhythm, and should not be taught to treat grades as their entire value.

A child with both high IQ and strong system compatibility needs higher-quality challenges, rather than being treated forever as a perfect model.

And a child with high IQ but weak system compatibility may need earlier understanding, more structured support, and someone to help them learn how to live with their own mind.

All three kinds of children may be smart.

But what they need is not the same.

If we force them all into the same “top student template,” then someone will inevitably be misunderstood.

In the previous article, what I wanted to say was this: a high-IQ child is not necessarily a top student, and a smart child may also need to be truly understood.

In this article, what I want to say even more is this: maybe what we really need to rethink is the word “smart” itself.

Smart is not only one shape.

Some forms of intelligence grow on report cards. Some grow inside strange questions. Some grow inside a child’s intense sensitivity to the world. Some grow inside their refusal to repeat mechanically, inside their stubborn insistence on asking “why.”

If a child happens to fit the school system, they will be seen earlier. If a child does not fit it, they may have to walk a very long road before they finally meet someone who can explain them.

So more and more, I feel that for parents, the truly difficult thing is not judging whether a child is smart enough. The truly difficult thing is whether we can let go of that single template of success and see how a child actually functions.

Not every smart child will become a top student.

But every child deserves to be understood with care.

Because perhaps the deepest pain for a child is not that they failed to become what others expected.

It is that they may have been trying all along to live as themselves, and no one ever truly understood them.

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[1] xuébà（学霸）: A popular Chinese term for a student who consistently excels within the school system. It usually refers not just to high grades, but also to strong discipline, steady performance, and an ability to handle the routines, repetition, and expectations of formal schooling. It is not exactly the same as “gifted” or “genius,” because it often emphasizes success within the system rather than raw intellectual potential alone.

This essay is also available in other languages:

Chinese version: 高智商孩子为什么也会被说成懒？后来我才明白，聪明不止一种

German version: Warum werden auch hochintelligente Kinder manchmal als faul bezeichnet? Erst später habe ich verstanden: Intelligenz hat mehr als nur eine Form