Rant my ass. Your lack of humility, and your inability to step outside of your box, is appalling.
This kid is eleven years old. WTF were YOU doing when you were eleven years old.
Give him some TIME.
By the time he's twenty, don't worry, the Ivory Tower nimrods will have convinced him that not only doesn't he have proof of God, but that he has no proof of his own existence. There is no I. There is no self.
BULLshit.
When I was 11, I was preparing myself to disprove the theory of evolution. At the same time I was secretly entertaining doubts about my parents' fundamentalist Christianity, based on internal contradictions and contradictions of reality that I noticed in reading the Bible and based on reading Mark Twain on Christianity--having graduated from reading and rereading Tom and Huck. I was a bright boy, and I knew it; but I didn't think of myself as genius, and my parents, who believed in the Christian virtue of humility, would have never encouraged such a view of myself and told me not to be vain (a vice) about being bright. This boy's parents are encouraging him to be a mini-Donald Trump, "puffed up", to use a term I remember from the King James trans.
I was doing some above average stuff when I was eleven too, like reading adult literature at WELL beyond a sixth-grade reading level. By twelve or thirteen I was already reading college level material.
BUT, I was nowhere close this eleven year old's intellectual level. Few people ever were or will be. Only geniuses, like Mozart- type geniuses.
It didn't occur to me then to think of myself as a genius,
nor does it now. I'm the only member of my family, besides my mother, who has never taken an IQ test. Most Baurles, back at least to my grandfather, have registered IQ's well into the genius range.
When I mentioned to my genius father that it was said of Edgar Allen Poe that he had an IQ of around the 200 mark, my always negative father waved his hand and said, "Middling writer..." Just to upset me. Nice guy. Nah, arrogant asshat more like.
ETA: I forgot to ask my most important question:
What do you imagine is the way a parent ought to behave: should they encourage their child's precocious abilty, even if it makes the child a wee tad arrogant, or should a parent be like my father, and sh.it all over the dreams and hopes of his three children, and try at every turn to make them feel useless? I think this boy's parents are doing their kid a favor, since the kid will eventually learn to be more humble; but the kind of harm people like my father cause, never goes away, and even causes suicides, or worse, criminal behavior in their children.
Better an eleven year old smart-ass than an eleven year old sniper in the making, no? I'd also like to don my prophet's hat and predict that this smart boy will be an atheist before two years are out. Anyone care to wager? Let's see some cabbage up front!
Dang it...
Edited to add: My genius Uncle Herb was kind and supportive to his two kids, Eric and Susan. He raised them well. Both of them have registered genius level IQ's, and they are both insanely successful, while my Dad's three kids, two of them at least (Besides myself, since I've never taken an IQ test, never will), have barely succeeded, settling themselves instead into the lower middle-class income bracket. And we're all fuc.ed up mentally, while Eric & Susan are perfectly fine.
Hell, I'm so fuc.ed up that despite having been assured of my skill with poetry by widely-published poets and writers ( I could supply a list, and links to proof but that would be arrogant as all fu.k), I am reticent to try and publish, knowing that my asshat father, even if I were to win a fuc.ing pulitzer, would only wave his hand and say, "Sheeeeeit, any damn fool can write poetry and win those stupid awards..." and that's the kind of hurt I cannot risk. I also can't risk harming my father or mother by telling my father to go piss up a tree.
Just three days ago my father said, right in front of me but not TO me, said: "Sheeeit, everybody knows that most poets and artists are fuc.king crazy..." This is his way of "helping" me. He also told me, when I was discussing my case with my doctor and councilor, "You've got to realize that practically everything you're thinking is imaginary..."
My "beloved" sister, when I asked her two days ago why she has NEVER even tried to read any of my poetry, or novels, choosing instead to read Twilight over & over, told me, "You're delusional!" She gets that from my asshat father. Even after I showed email and Facebook
proof to my sis that I have support from
Tim Murphy and
Jennifer Reeser (recently recommended by
X.J. Kennedy for a Pulitzer!) she still insisted I was "delusional", and added later, after I called her an idiot, "Fine! Stay delusional with your friends! We'll both be forgotten when we die and you won't be any better off than me!"
Idiot.
[
