To HATE Child Genius?

[ThePlatypusAlwaysTriumphs]

DH and dd are watching and I can't stand it. All those poor kids, crying from the pressure their egomaniac parents have put them under. IT DOESN'T MATTER!! Surely you can be proud of your lovely smart kids without pimping them out to tv. Makes me raging and sad in equal measure.

In IQ assessments it's only one of 4-5 parameters assessed. It's massively useful for mathy kids as they can hold numbers and multi step tasks in their head and move on quickly and it certainly makes people look very smart but it's also perfectly possible to be very smart without high processing/WM.
I never implied that other people can be very smart in other ways, of course they can, but this is not about being smart, this is about excelling at specific tasks that make these children truly exceptional. We can argue on the definition of 'genius' but it doesn't take away that those kids are exceptional in these skills.

ohmyfuck C4 tweeted earlier this week that she was ok now

The parents are total dicks, treating their kids in this awful way. Maniacs, ruining their kids childhoods.

Have you actually watched the show swing?
I have and I love it. I just have very different interpretation of it than you seem to do. Many of these children are choosing themselves to go because they want it. How are you judging that they come out with less confidence? We are not there to see how they feel a week/month/year later. We don't know whether they regret going or not, or whether even if it was a stressful experience, it was a learning one and as such, one they considered worthy?

Of course intelligence comes in many factors, that's not the argument. It's your judgement that this experience is inevitably nefast for all these kids.

Totally agree with diamond that it's how kids are so overly protected nowadays that is damaging them.

However, I'm not sure that I like the idea of watching that process on television.
You don't, but they chose to. They would have watched the show before, probably all of them. They will have known that most end up crying in front of the camera, they will have spoken with psychologists first, none of them would have been forced to go.

Crying in the face of disappointment and frustration is nothing to be ashamed of, especially at this age. What is to be praised is how they quickly get over it and don't let it hold them back. I really admire these kids.

Hate it. It's parents using their children as extensions of themselves.

I can't stand smug parents who spend silly amounts of time telling the world their kid is so gifted etc. I lump them in with people who fret about getting the right tutor at 8 etc.

Thankfully there are parents of smart children who aren't insufferable.

Oh FGS the usual hate against kids for being intelligent and for their parents. I can't stand the hate average people have for the very bright, sorry about your insecurities.

Come off it. I have 4 A grade A levels and the highest first in my year for my subject at a RG university.

Those parents are dicks. Utter ducks.

Dicks even!

Swing You have said that these children are all going to have fantastic careers because they are all really intelligent. That's what I really take issue with. Most of them don't have the personalities to cope with running the tax department of KPMG or being a HCJ. I truly wish them all the luck in the world and hope that I am wrong but history suggests that I won't be.

Who is NOT going to be disappointed and maybe a little tearful at the moment they are knocked out of the final rounds of a national competition? That does not mean they are damaged.we do not see them an hour, a day , a week after.

Oh FGS the usual hate against kids for being intelligent and for their parents. I can't stand the hate average people have for the very bright, sorry about your insecurities

Haha! Yeah alright.

It is possible to have a bright child and not be that kind of insufferable and obnoxious parent. I taught a child who wanted a different career pathway (still highly competitive and he wanted to study at a top uni) but he was worried about telling his parents because they'd already decided that he was doing medicine at Oxford or Cambridge. The child was 13.

You see this 'all you plebs are just jealous of intelligent people' all the time on MN. In my head I just write them off as either loving the kudos a smart child gives them or decide they're insecure if they need to bang on about intelligence.

From my experience very very bright people don't feel the need to wander around the place being all 'I'm so smart'.

we can argue on the definition of genius but it doesn't take away from those skills

I agree that from what I've read on this thread the children are smart and will likely have superior processing/working memory skills.

However, you also said that "*It's about how they can use their brain in a way to process an amazing amount of information very quickly. It IS intelligence and something that only people with extremely high IQ can do that"

Which isn't true. You're referring to processing and working memory which make up part of a cognitive assessment but which aren't even weighted as heavily as the others in IQ scoring. It's part of IQ assessment, not something that automatically comes with being extremely smart. It's definitely a talent and hugely useful if your actual ability is also high but it's not synonymous with genius and it doesn't automatically infer "an extremely high IQ".

My personal favourite is 'I went to Oxbridge' and I think ' don't you know which one?'

Stress is part of life definitely. Prolonged stress however is damaging both physically and mentally. The final of this competition doesn't mean the end of sustained stress for many of these children . They will be pushed to reach the next goal, the next set of expectations, the next big thing to show they are not failures.

The world will be queueing up to tread on our kids fingers soon enough so no matter how bright all kids benefit from a happy, relaxed childhood. And that doesn't mean that super intelligent kids are sold short. They can have happy childhoods at the same time as being gifted.

There's no point ending up in a high powered job if when you get there you are prone to suicidal thoughts, depression, anxiety, self doubt, extreme perfectionism, OCD etc. The majority of the kids on CG are under a ridiculous and dangerous amount of stress and pressure. It's abusive.

I saw the trailer and knew I wouldn't watch - seeing the name tags around the children's necks was hideous. Who thinks that is appropriate?
From the comments on this thread, that seems to be the tip of the iceberg.

Pushing themselves , challenging themselves,/competing IS the happy place for some kids

Most children's national competitions don't have cameras focused on their every stress and tears, making an already upsetting atmosphere even worse. These kids are now going to be being watched on tv by friends and peers and others who know them, judging them just like so many have been doing on mn. This is by no means the end of their experience.

Watched it last night with dh and my grown up kids and my dd and I actually cried for Nerissa.

It's so cruel and just awful from the ridiculous name plaques to the vile vile parents.

Jaw-droppingly wrong and horrible.

For the first time I am beginning to understand the people who post about their ghastly mothers on stately homes threads.

Has the father of the dear shy little girl have no say about what is happening to her, even if divorced?

Oh FGS the usual hate against kids for being intelligent and for their parents. I can't stand the hate average people have for the very bright, sorry about your insecurities
If you don't like it, here's a genius idea,don't watch it
Verging on defamatory comments, you're imagining shit. It's not abuse FFS. Rahul 's dad just misspoke, said well done then thank you, hasn't anyone here done similar. These are 8-12 yo preteens, not 6yos, and there is a psychologist who works with the show. And would several of you stop the mental health related insults, nice contribution to stigma there

Dont be ridiculous.

There are seriously disturbed children on the show. There are also others who are on the spectrum and whose parents call it by any other name rather than accept the fact.

As for what you call mental health related insults - perhaps people here live in the world of loved ones having a myriad of mental health conditions as well as having loved ones on the spectrum and for that reason can comment.

Average people? There's nothing average about any of my very high achieving lot/my extended family that at the last count had about 17 Phd holders in it and where a degree is considered basic further education.

Then there's my 26 year old son who is about as severely autistic as its possible to get, he also has a myriad of other mental health issues but he's certainly far from average given that he can sing all his nursery rhymes to the word 'fuck' and he can dead lift about 170 kilos.

It's so cruel and just awful from the ridiculous name plaques to the vile vile parents

The nameplates are awful.

As are some of the parents. The A Level teacher seems to hate her husband and does nothing but correct him and raise her eyebrows when he passes comment on things.

Spot on Rhubarb

To me it's akin to the dreadful dance moms or the X factor auditions. It's trashy car crash TV dressed up as being superior as it involves kids.

None of these children are geniuss they were probably the brightest in their class and so confident and secure.

Now they realise they arnt the only clever kid in the village they can't cope and you can see their confidence and security collapse.

Utterly trashy and nasty TV. Their parents should be ashamed

Why are some people systematically assuming that because a kid is being competitive to the point of being sick, it is forcibly because they are unhealthily pushed by their arrogant parents who are just expressing their own failed success on to the their kids?

Why not accept that kids are not just the extension of their parents, and develop their own personalities too? It is a scientific fact (as I learned when studying psychology at Uni) that personality traits are also to some extent genetic, so some children will born with it.

As said, DD is wired that way. She would be miserable if she didn't evolve in an environment where she is challenged. Probably something to do with me because I'm like that too, but I didn't have pushy parents at all, more the opposite, I wish they had challenged me more, and I am not pushing her either. Indeed, DS is not wired this way. There is a part of him that can be competitive, but it's nothing like DD, totally different personalities. I don't expect him in any way to be like his sister. He is his own person and has his own qualities.

I accept my kids as they are, both of them, so who is to judge that if my DD is competitive, it has to be because I'm a pushy parent (which I've been accused of a few times because just some posters here, it's been assumed that I must be if my DD is so determined to succeed).

Oh the level of judgmental attitude from people who would scream abuse if others dared to judge the way they raise their own kids!

Being competitive is great. 3 of my 5 kids were and 2 not.

That has jack shit to do with displaying them on a tv show.

It's like the bloody hunger games