The author of Bring Up Genius would agree with you about the positive feedback loop. If your children get better than average before they join the school, they will keep getting rewards, which will increase their motivation, etc.
Now the question is how much of “children getting better than average before joining school” is about nature or nurture. If your child has good genes, it is definitely worth it to make the difference visible. If your child is average, your options are limited. But still, kids can spend enormous amounts of time talking about dinosaurs or pokemons; if you succeed to redirect some of that energy into something academically relevant (e.g. by teaching them to read the names of the dinosaurs, then some short texts about them), it may help.
The act of studying the subject becomes more aligned with B’s self-concept than with A’s self-concept.
(ergo B studies more than A)
It’s not just “more” or “less”, it’s often studying different things. The child failing at math will study the textbook, and will hate it. The math prodigy will read some interesting books on math instead. Which again increases the gap.
That said, it sometimes also happens that the smart children stop studying things that are not interesting for them. Why study something, if you are smart enough that you can guess the answer or in the worst case just read the textbook the night before the exam? Sometimes these smart kids get in trouble later when the strategy they successfully used at previous school suddenly stops working when they get to high school or university, when suddenly they are surrounded by people just as smart as them, except that many of those people also have good study habits. I have seen talented people drop out, because they couldn’t switch to the “in this environment, I am not so special anymore, and I need to start working hard” mode fast enough.
The author of Bring Up Genius would agree with you about the positive feedback loop. If your children get better than average before they join the school, they will keep getting rewards, which will increase their motivation, etc.
Now the question is how much of “children getting better than average before joining school” is about nature or nurture. If your child has good genes, it is definitely worth it to make the difference visible. If your child is average, your options are limited. But still, kids can spend enormous amounts of time talking about dinosaurs or pokemons; if you succeed to redirect some of that energy into something academically relevant (e.g. by teaching them to read the names of the dinosaurs, then some short texts about them), it may help.
It’s not just “more” or “less”, it’s often studying different things. The child failing at math will study the textbook, and will hate it. The math prodigy will read some interesting books on math instead. Which again increases the gap.
That said, it sometimes also happens that the smart children stop studying things that are not interesting for them. Why study something, if you are smart enough that you can guess the answer or in the worst case just read the textbook the night before the exam? Sometimes these smart kids get in trouble later when the strategy they successfully used at previous school suddenly stops working when they get to high school or university, when suddenly they are surrounded by people just as smart as them, except that many of those people also have good study habits. I have seen talented people drop out, because they couldn’t switch to the “in this environment, I am not so special anymore, and I need to start working hard” mode fast enough.