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?

I think that quite settles that we have nothing in common, SofiaA (lol).

I seem to often read about these kids in some gruesome wretchedly deprived African or Brazillian slum who go from never having played chess to being grandmaster at International Level within like 3-6 yrs. They must be gifted too. They always seem to have quite supportive families by the slum standards, tbf.

Or you get young woman boxer from some tiny village in India where NOBODY has any money but the woman ends up at the Olympics anyway, having fought cultural & economic obstacles for 15 yrs. Or some Iraqi(?) guy who ends up being amazing ballet dancer even though family tried to disown him for being a poof. Another set of amazing gifts.

lljkk you never know. I have done a lot of esoteric things over the years. I worked as a bouncer and a dj all through university and then did promotion and management and a&r at various record companies. I then went on to get an MBA and then got bored with rock and roll and got a master of architecture and now 20 years on am bored and ready for my next career. I have worked as an apprentice car mechanic, secretary, book editing, shucking oysters, biotech researcher, biotech lab work, bookkeeper, construction worker....I even interviewed for a matchmaker job once.....surely somewhere in there we overlap?

YouCan'tGetThere I was not and still am not the "classic" MIT type of student but really I actually found quite a varied community when I was there. Of course lots of super smart people, but very international, creative and interesting.

Feel free to PM me if you would like to a place to stay when you come out to visit CalTech. My cousin was a math major at Berkeley and my other cousin runs the Juno project at JPL....I can connect you up with people to talk to.

P.S. speaking of dd's who don't quite know what they want to do in life....mine is 15, highly gifted, skipped a few grades and is currently taking university classes and trying to decide between becoming a pop singer, marine biologist or a trophy wife.

She should deffo go for the trophy wife thing!

MN is about the most in common thing we have. I have deep family roots in Pasadena. Nobody went to CalTech or anywhere like it. I wouldn't be surprised if my family never met anyone who went to those "elite" colleges.

DS currently showing off his amazing gifts when it comes to moaning about new molars.

Yes. Affluence doesn't equate to parental effort. And parental effort doesn't equate to a child's 'giftedness'. Case in point. I was a G&T. My parents were around and put in a basic amount of effort to encourage me but never pushed me in any way. My parents were in a working class income bracket and up to their ears in debt. The only way the money helps gifted children is when parents notice that their child is gifted and use their money on resources that can help the child develop their talents. But this can be said of children of all abilities. The notion that wealth begets intellectual ability is a false premise. At most it can help develop it if spent wisely.

Case in point is Jacqueline du Pre, the cellist, who had a short but brilliant career before so tragically developing MS.

I remember hearing how at the age of 4, she heard cello music on the radio, and said to her mother, 'I want the thing that makes that noise.'

She was provided with a small size cello - very expensive - and lessons at a very early age. What if she'd been born to parents who'd never have had classical music playing, let alone had the money for expensive instruments and lessons?

RoseWhiteTips I am being a good mother and supporting all 3 pursuits and not worrying too much. At her age I wanted to be a professional soccer player (at a time when they didn't even have professional male soccer players in the USA).

lljkk I found another one...my ds is also moaning about his new molars!!!! It's actually the most complaining I've ever heard him do about something medical which is really quite odd since he has a pretty serious genetic disease which is always shutting down some part of his body and includes weeks of migraines and vomiting. And had 8 stitches 2 weeks ago when a friend accidentally hit him in the head with a stick. All he could do was moan about when I was going to take him to the dentist.

It's all down to having money, time and resources to encourage / support natural talent. My DS is exceptional at art and drawing. His pictures are astonishing for his age and people are bandying around the gifted word. We send him to art classes and provide him with rafts of materials to help him develop his skills. He says he either wants to study fine art or architecture and we will support him in whatever he wants to do. We are fairly well off and can afford all of this.

What's interesting is that DS's art skills come from my side of the family. My grandfather and a couple of my uncles were very skilled artists but because we didn't have lots of money (I grew up in a council house), their skills were never developed or even recognised beyond doodling at the kitchen table and showing it to the family. As a working class family, the men ended up in manual work of some kind or joined the army. This actually makes me feel sad thinking about such wasted talent.

I think it's a mix between in-born ability, great input from teachers, and work.
A child is more likely to be recognised as having in-born ability if they have an educated parent who encourages different activities and then recognises that the child is good at one of them and helps them to pursue it, or the child goes to to a private school which provides those opportunities, or similar. They are more likely to get a great teacher if the parents have money.
I have a DC who is gifted in a particular thing. She has had lots of lessons in that thing, from excellent teachers. I have not paid for them, because due to her ability various organisations have always offered to pay for them, and sometimes they have been offered by the teacher free of charge. There can be a snowballing effect. Eg if your son is spotted as having early signs of real talent, he may be taken on and be given special training and nurturing free of charge, so he makes faster progress than kids who don't get that, attracts more interest from football scouts, gets more high level training for free, etc (just guessing about football, is just an example of how this kind of thing can happen).

I've only ever met one truly gifted person in my life, and not from a privileged background at all. Astonishing, jaw-dropping incredible natural physical talent, evident from a very early age. He is now a young adult and rapidly becoming recognised as one of the best in the world in his chosen field. Will be a household name one day.

I think its a subject that's quite hard to judge on an individual level unless you either have that talent yourself or you've had enough experience of others talent to know the difference. And even then it isn't necessarily clear cut, there's worlds between a child who is exceptional enough to be 1 in a 1000 and one that is 1 in a million, even though both are undoubtedly gifted.

And depending on other factors certainly with younger dc it can be very easy to muddy the waters between the 1 in 50 and the genius, unless you really know what you're looking for. And of course exceptional ability being rare by nature, most people won't have the knowledge to judge it.

geekymommy

You would not believe the amount of work that some of the gifted children I know do on a daily basis, it's full on and they thrive on it.
If they don't it's a mutual decision for the child to leave between School, parents and children, they wouldn't survive and it's best all round.
At first knowing a child was leaving I was really sad for the child, but realised how happy their future would be out of the environment, still in touch with child now and they are happy, well balanced and play music for pleasure occasionally.
These schools usually get it right though, it's not often someone leaves.
They do still manage to gain good GCSE and A level results if they are bright, if like some they aren't very academic the bar is set very low for future conservatoire entry. Much to my delight

Oh forgot, still screen time, going out with friends, camping, visiting attractions, shopping, just hanging out etc.
They just do less of it than some other children do.

Feel free to PM me if you would like to a place to stay when you come out to visit CalTech. My cousin was a math major at Berkeley and my other cousin runs the Juno project at JPL....I can connect you up with people to talk to.

Thank you - those are basically DD's dream courses/jobs. We're looking at Berkeley too.

It's a combination of nature / nurture. There's no way you can 'manufacture' a prodigy, regardless of how many hours you might spend trying. But knowledgable, supportive, 'pushy' parents with time and money will help,obvs.

Butchmanda, but according to the link above, a father had decided to create three chess champions and indeed succeeded. So it is possible?

Although it is often assumed that musical ability is inherited, there is abundant evidence that this is not the case. While it seems that at birth virtually everyone has perfect pitch, the reasons that one child is better than another are motivation and practice.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/jan/17/family-children-music-prodigy-practice

My parents were both profs at Berkeley....Biochemistry.

Can't speak about chess but, as a musician, with musical kids (gifted but certainly not prodigies) I would confidently say that all the hard work in the world could not turn a gifted child into a prodigy. I really feel that a prodigy is born, then nurtured, not created. Kids like Alma Deutscher are incredibly rare.

I quite like the idea of manufacturing a prodigy ( idea from PP and Guardian link)...However, it really couldn't be an instrument ( sounds like too much noise and screeching), not in a sport requiring height ( that definitely requires genetics), physics, languages, maths, English/writing are all out ( no connections) as is art..... Sometimes I think it is just not worth the effort . I think they could be an amazing chocolate connisur.

I think "gifted" in educational terms can be also defined as having potential. I think a prodigy is someone who is gifted ( there are further categories of gifted up to "exceptionally gifted" ) and has developed and reached in at least one area that potential (frequently at a early age ).

Just re the music thing -

I went to music school and some of the younger people there hadn't had proper teachers or instruments (I was one). At that age, you can find gifted people who haven't had much training, and you can find people who have had lessons with the best teachers and there's only so far they get.

You def can't teach someone to be a prodigy in classical music, no way. But on the other hand, if you are "gifted" and don't work/ have good teachers at a young age, you won't get anywhere in the classical music world.

I'd add that most people's parents were also professional classical musicians, so middle class culturally, but didn't have a huge amount of money. All UK citizens who get a place at one of the three music schools in the country gets a full means tested scholarship.

But I mean, most people who encourage their kids to have music lessons at such a young age are from a certain background of course.

Anyway, its a very strange weird environment for kids to be in, I would never want that for my child.

My music school was just an awful place to grow up and from what I hear Yehudi Menuhin was even worse.

Put me off music for life.

I see others have recommended Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, who believes prodigy or genius (not just giftedness) is mostly effort.

The link with the Chinese is culturally, Chinese place more importance in effort over natural ability, hence the Tiger mum stereotype which ultimately stems from a belief that your children will succeed if they just tried harder.

This belief is fertile ground for nurturing a child prodigy.