To think most "gifted" children are from affluent backgrounds?

[Notapushymum1]

I was reading about Alma Deutscher, a child prodigy who started composing at age 6 and had her first opera performed at age 9. She is a child prodigy who is home schooled, her parents are scholars with interest in music, she had the best teachers from age 3 and according to Wikipedia:
^^
Professor Gjerdingen recommended to Deutscher's parents the renowned Swiss improvisor Rudolf Lutz, who then connected them with the Swiss musician Tobias Cramm.[51] Gjerdingen sent exercises and commented on technical aspects of Alma’s composition, while Alma had lessons in improvisation from Cramm via Skype, with the pair using the pedagogical method of the eighteenth century Italian partimenti, instructional bass lines used for the teaching of harmony, counterpoint and improvisation.[52] Alma quickly became fluent in the music syntax of eighteenth century music

She spends 5 hours a day on music lessons from "Renowned violin and piano teachers at Yehudi Menuhin music school".

AIBU to think that most kids will become "prodigies" with such input?

@StayPositiveOk that's not entirely true. For example, I can't play snooker to save my life, I just keep miscuing or potting the white ball. That despite spending a lot of time trying in my youth. (I was good at table-tennis by contrast.) I read somewhere that Stephen Hendry potted a 50 break the first time he picked up a cue.

I had several years of piano lessons, I got to grade 5 without ever getting merit or distinction. The reason was that I had no sense of rhythm, and I still can't clap in time. I have a good sense of pitch though and could learn things off by heart.

Talent does into play, but it's not the only factor.

Lizzie Maybe it's your technique. Are you picturing where the ball might go at a certain angle?

How good is your central executive? If you've had a lot of stresses in your life it can play havoc with your organisational skills sobyour learning might be all over the place. Hence why you might not be able to fit ryhtms for e.g. in to modules to make distinctions between them.

Hope that makes sense.

Good concentration and you can master most things.

I've got 2 degrees, @StayPositiveOk so my learning is ok. Although thinking about it, I only got my act together later, it wasn't great when I was a child. I have had a lot of stresses in my life, a traumatic childhood, it's never occurred to me that that might have something to do with it. But maybe it is, who knows?

Food for thought, thank you. I can't be bothered with snooker now (I am considering playing table-tennis again though), but it might be worth exploring the issue with music as I love singing.

Gosh this thread is really interesting, although it's made me realise how far away my dd is from being normal

I think if you have a child who has a gift it can be tough on the parents and unless you have been there yourself you can't understand.
It's not something that a normal family would wish for, believe me.
It can take much of your time to satisfy their thirst for knowledge/ activities.
If they are relentless it takes over your life, not confusing this with being a tiger parent as that is something different.
I'm glad mine is happy and working towards her goals, not meaning to rush her childhood, but I'll be so glad when she has grown up and managing her own business, and of course paying her own way.

"Gifted" is the most vain term any parent can use - what they are really saying is "look what my child has inherited from clever old me"

My DD's maths ability is definitely not inherited from either of her parents. We're both resoundingly shit at it.

Maybe we should refer to it as an 'anonymous gift'?

gillybeanz it’s a poisoned chalice.

"Gifted" is the most vain term any parent can use - what they are really saying is "look what my child has inherited from clever old me"

I tend to agree and think the word is bandied about too readily, but what other word do we use.
What if they are defined as gifted by the school they attend, their teachers, other parents from other communities/schools.
When they are introduced to do their thing in competitions, shows, or concerts.
It's not necessarily a term that comes from parents and sometimes the gift/ area of interest hasn't come from the parents.

Whilst my dd is gifted in music, and I sang when younger, dh is a musician you'd think this is why.
However, her first instrument was a violin and me and dh know absolutely nothing about strings at all.
She then became interested in Opera, apart from the popular well known snippets we hear on adverts I hadn't listened to any and classical music wasn't particularly encouraged, once again apart from the popular ads.
Yet this is where her interests lie, certainly not pushed by us.
So maybe a gift can be inherited rather than given, but you may not have any influence as to what they do with a gift.

It's ridiculous to suggest any child could achieve what a gifted child if they had the same tuition. DS is bright but struggled to write his name correctly at age 7. He couldn't stay seated in a classroom until he was 8. You could have put him in a room with a tutor for 5 hours a day but very little would have been achieved, other than the tutor getting a headache.

People are born with different strengths. Some people are not bright and never will be. Some people have learning difficulties. They may excel at certain things but most likely they will not being writing an opera.

It's an interesting discussion definitely. We have adopted DDs, who are birth siblings. They are hugely sporty both of them, which DH and I are definitely not. But we've paid for swimming lessons for them, they do martial arts and they do gymnastics, which they're very good at.

Obviously in our case whatever gifts they have are not inherited from us, but we've encouraged them to nurture this. Whether they would have had the opportunity if they hadn't been adopted is sadly very unlikely. (Obviously adoption provides huge challenges as well and our DDs have their own struggles in coming to terms with that.)

How do these 'talents' translate cross culturally?

Is someome who's good at the steel pans as good as someone who's good at the violin, or are some talents just repected more in certain cultures?

Stay Of course someone who's good at steel pans as good as someone who's good at the violin, talent is talent. So is being good at the banjo or the tin flute. It's about pushing that instrument to a level beyond the capability of the ordinary player, whatever the instrument is. Knowing it inside out and having an innate sense of the musicality of the instrument and the pieces you play, as well as timing and dexterity. Why would you think not?

Notapushy I'm not being funny but... regardless of whether Mozart's childhood works were his best or not, the man was/is an absolute genius and "blooming late" is neither here nor there, in my book. What he produced in his full lifetime's works was not the effort of someone scratching around for ideas or the result of a tiger parent. This would have become obvious if he was considered a child prodigy at the time but faltered when it came to continuing to write original scores of the quality and volume that he did as an adult.

King, if your child was tutored from age 2 by best teachers in the country and you were a renown academic, and spent 5 hours a day drilling handwriting, I am sure by age 9 they'll be amazing at it.

Why would you think not?

I was just wondering if people see talent as the same in different 'cultural' disciplines.

I was also wondering about culture because you usually always hear about geniuses being white male. From my school years, I never came across a black or middle eastern female genius.

Sunday works, but if Mozart was born in an average family, did not have any early exposure to instruments and used his connections and fame, would he still becine a composer? I doubt it. That was my point - to become a "prodigy" at a young age you need somebody with knowledge and/or access to resources. People are not born composers/violin players/conductors. Therefore a child from a working class background is less likely to become a "child prodigy" by the age of 7. Can you name any? I can't.

So next question is, do pushy parents produce geniuses? Because how many 2 year olds can pay for piano lessons and spend hours practicing instead of playing with their toys?

I return again to my dd's ability to eat a digestive whole (dark OR milk chocolate - is there no end to her talent?) without breaking it.

It definitely didn't come from me as I hate them and her father is allergic to wheat.

I personally think her gift came from God.

The spectrum of 'gifted' is so very wide, it's difficult to generalize.

I think there are some out and out prodigies that don't need intensive input to succeed or who can squeeze so much from any small input they do get that they flourish all the same. Shakespeare would be a good example, though I appreciate he doesn't count as a child prodigy (literature doesn't lend itself to child preciosity though).

And I suspect Mozart's talents would have manifested even without the nurturing environment. That story of him transcribing Allegri's Miserere from memory is so extraordinary it suggests a brain wired in a completely different way. So while he may not have achieved so much so young without his father, I think it would have presented somehow.

And there are definitely stories of maths geniuses who've come out of nowhere.

However, these kinds of talents are vanishingly rare and Alma (for example) isn't in that league.

I can't be bothered to push but i'd be surprised if my DS does something other than music for a career.
By which i mean even if a 'gifted' child musician isn't pushed, or particularly hard working at it, they will prob just morph towards that as a career...

Laurie you can spot a child who will be a writer tho!

I can remember at dd primary school when they did the whole class music lesson, they had to choose a brass instrument.
Now the ones who could play a few notes were put onto the G&T list, and when the county ensembles played at the end of term, they joined in with a simple piece with the notes they could play.
I think it's great that children at all levels are supported, but these children weren't even ready for the training ensembles let alone the middle or advanced.
Most of county level are also not in the same league as those at specialist schools.
So, you can't really measure G&T when it's used so widely.
I think it would be easier to define prodigy tbh.

Kalifornia, but I am talking about kids who "made it" at an early age. There are hundreds of thousands of people that choose musical careers, there is nothing surprising about the fact that a musical person wants to spend their life surrounded by music.

Notapushy totally agree and said so upthread.

However when it comes to Mozart he was in the happy place of having a musically minded family and genius. Thus still his music lives on way beyond his life and not (in my opinion) just for being "classical" or "one of the greats" in a learned, educated, upper class kind of manner in today's setting. i.e. people like it because it's classical and makes them feel upper class and superior to know and like it. His music really was amazing. I rate the other classical composers as amazing for what they did at the time and it's still fantastic but again, IMHO, Mozart's music - even just the melodies and harmonies, let alone the full operatic scores - is other-worldly good.