Smart Kids' Brains Mature Later

Recent studies have discovered that very smart children may actually lag behind other kids in development of the "thinking" part of the brain. The brain's outer mantle, or cortex, gets thicker and thins during childhood and the teen years. Studies have found that in kids which have super intelligence, the cortex reaches its thickest stage a few years later than that in other children. The delay in growth promotes higher intelligence because the child is older, and processes more complex information. Kids with the highest IQs of 121 to 149 did not reach maximum cortex thickness until the age of 11. Children who seem to be developing slow, may be do to the fact that their brain has yet to reach its' maximum potential. So, parents don't get discouraged if your child seems behind in his thought processing skills, they may be still growing in their minds. You never know you could have the next Albert Einstein on your hands.