Shawdesh Desk:

Elon Musk, the prodigious entrepreneur and visionary behind companies like SpaceX, Tesla Inc., Neuralink Corp. and The Boring Co., is a household name. But as with many luminaries, his early years were riddled with challenges and misunderstandings. While his eventual success would silence some critics, Musk was the boy who was once labeled as different. His latest biography delves into his childhood and how it shaped him.

From an early age, Musk’s intellectual curiosity was evident. As a toddler, his mother, Maye, recognized his exceptional intelligence and enrolled him in nursery school at age 3. This was against the advice of the principal, who believed that Musk’s young age would make it challenging for him to socialize with older children. Maye insisted that Elon be enrolled in the school, telling the principal, “I really have this genius child.”

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But Musk’s experience was not what Maye anticipated for her son. In school, Musk was the boy who often appeared to be lost in his thoughts. “The teacher would come up to me and yell at me, but I would not really see or hear her,” Elon Musk said.

This recurrent behavior raised concerns, prompting a meeting with the school’s principal who told Elon’s parents, “We have reason to believe that Elon is retarded.”

Seeking an explanation for his behavior, his parents speculated that it could be a hearing issue. “They decided it was an ear problem, so they took my adenoids out,” Musk later said.

Musk frequently found himself engrossed in observation, often gazing out of the window. When teachers reprimanded him for not paying attention, he would make observant remarks like, “The leaves are turning brown now.”