Child genius -which bright spark decided to put it on on a Tuesday???

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Anyone watching?

David makes me laugh!

Thomas, again, wow! And a happy child as well

Thomas is just wow, she must spend a fortune on books

Poor ESA. I loved the clip of him hammering everyone at chess!

Poor holly

I love "its not your fault. It's mummy's fault for putting us in!"

I'd be terrified of having a son like Thomas!

What's wrong with Tuesday OP?

Holly must have wanted to be on it if she applied herself?

It's a Sunday night program

Kale - I did think, what would MN baby section think of that

David was so adorable. Oh my word those cheeks!
As was Ieysaa, felt sorry for him and Holly though.

Why do they bother with the mass testing of applicants when they only ever choose the extremes?

What I always love on the show once I stop judging all the parents are the friendships the kids make.

The problem is Banjo that so many programs like this can be very unfairly edited. They might only pick shots where a child is looking bored, sad or picking their nose as opposed to the bits where they are laughing, happy and playing.
It's very hard to think about the bit you didn't see.

The only one of my children who would do well at those sorts of tests is DS2. I have never considered entering him for the C.G. competition, but we found out today that he got a merit in the UKMT Junior Olympiad. He's happy as he wins a keyring.

Brilliant littleFirst .

I felt sorry for the brothers on it although they seemed saner than their mother and to have the measure of her, "mum goes to work and coaches us and that's her life". They spotted their mother was living a proxy life through her kids. I also think the family where neither parents worked to home educate their kids are living through their kids too, plus missing the fact that a lot of success in the world is related to your ability to get on with and organise people, ditto the Chinese lad who at least had his mum on side and seemed strong enough to rebel against some of the excesses.
Thomas seemed frighteningly bright but seemed to be pushing himself not having parents insisting he study whilst he is desperate to play games.

My view of genius is that you can only judge whether or not someone was a genius after they've done something spectacular. So Einstein is a genius for his theory of relativity plus the one he got the nobel prize for that I can't remember. If he had never published any of these he would have just been a clever man remembered by no-one. There are lots of clever people out there. To be a genius requires you to be looking at the right things at the right time in the right way which is part luck and part aptitude in science and maths. Musical geniuses have to compose music other people want to listen to. Literary geniuses are probably harder to describe. Is a literary genius someone who writes books people want to read like JK Rowling or someone who writes a book considered excellent that very few can read more than a few pages of like Proust?

I too feel sorry for those brothers, particularly the one who was so motivated by food - he didn't want to leave because the breakfasts there were so good, and he got sweets when his mum was testing him and he got a question right.

2rebecca - yes you're right none of these children are geniuses yet! Indeed I think that elsewhere in the country are the real potential geniuses, but they I hope are being encouraged by their parents to develop skills and imagination to discover new things and to solve problems, rather than memorise and answer maths questions and pub quiz questions quickly.

Also why does MENSA still think that Harold was killed by an arrow in the eye - have they never watched Horrible Histories - that's known to be complete rubbish now.

I thought the mum of the two boys must have been doing something right as the boys do have that independent streak. Also they way they got on, rivals but good friends. Plus the TV show only cares about home coaching and weird stuff. They probably do loads of normal family things too.

Same with David in a way he came over as a very happy, secure child despite the pressure at home.

I have barely been on MN for a couple of months but I am watching the first episode on catch up and just came on here specifically to see if there was a thread on this :o

Agree Holly looks very distressed at times, but her mom made the point that Holly had been begging to go on this programme for several years and she had finally relented. So it wasn't as someone said "Oh I know I'll put her on TV" and her mom seems the most grounded of all the parents that I saw. It is a puzzle why Holly (who doesn't like attention) wants to be on the show, but she does, and she's won her place.

Feel sorry for David and think his father is a horror. "I don't think my father believes in me" - dear god - his father is totally emotionally illiterate, but David seems to rise above it somehow.

I wondered why there was more focus on the boys than girls, and I noticed too that children from a minority ethnic background were over represented, although that might not be the case in some geographical areas as white UK children might be minority ethnic group. That's just an observation incidentally.

Do find it fascinating though how unbelievably clever these children are.

I agree some of them are clever but they haven't had to demonstrate much cleverness so far just memory. To me cleverness is about using logic and deducing things and working things out not just memorising a road atlas or pi to over 100 places. Why be a road atlas or calculator when we have road atlases and calculators? Remembering stuff is only useful if you can apply it somehow.
When I orienteer having map memory is useful as I can run without having to look at my map all the time. It's only useful though if I can apply my remembered bits of map to my surroundings though and make the contours and features fit.
In maths and physics it's no good just remembering the formulae you also have to know which formula to use in which problem. I wonder why so many of them do maths early rather than physics.