Child Genius

[Whizzz]

on now.......this merits a MN thread !

I was considered a gifted child - I was reading at two and writing by four and my language skills were always several years in advance of my age until I guess I was old enough that people stopped noticing. Fact is, it was just as well for me that it was reading and writing and not 'rithmetic that I was gifted in - no one turned me into a child prodigy although a sixth grade teacher tried to make me write a storybook for her (!) and my extreme frustration at school (being so far ahead all through primary school and never actually allowed to access higher level materials than were available to my classmates) was channelled into playing two instruments and striving for music exams. My parents never really noticed that I was under-challenged at school and so didn't do anything about it and certainly never hot-housed me. I got myself into a good secondary school by way of taking masses of scholarship exams, and when school was still not particularly challenging even after all that effort, I think I became a bit dispirited and decided I may as well take the line of least resistance. End result being lots of teenage angst and a rather stunted approach to learning, as I had never really had to apply myself to learn anything. I had an awful time at university as a result as I was so used to things being too easy for me. I loved it though! Twenty years on, it hasn't really made a big difference to the way my life has turned out. I may as well have had an average childhood, without all the boredom that being gifted brought about for me. I remember a programme about gifted children a few years ago where many of the children interviewed years later said the same thing. At thirty and forty they were just average joes who had once had a big fuss made about the fact that they were quite precociously clever in one way or another. At the end of the day, a child's development has to be about more than their brains and abilities

Didn't they say he went to school - I think got a scholarship at a high acheiving school and was driving them nuts too! Was the playpen in the kitchen for Dante to walk on or was there a young baby in the house. If I was Dante's mum I would be depressed!

Oh yes, I think I'm getting him muddled with Adam.

Another thing I've been woolgathering about ... I wonder how the kids all got on when they met? That photoshoot of them all propped up against a backsheet? I think that would be such an interesting piece of the picture - ie, who got on with whom, who was competitive, who was friendly, who opted out - I would bet that would be a prime indicator of rosiness of future.

I wonder if any of them have a Playstation?

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cod I doubt the pianist was average - she'd been accepted by the Royal Academy and I kind of suspect they know what they're looking for. (and it's presumably a bit more than getting the notes right). I have to confess to not watching all of this. I found it such difficult viewing. In many cases I doubted pretty deeply the motivations of the parents. And I wanted to shout at them and tell them they'd got it wrong.

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I can blast out the first page of moonlight sonata. I had a few lessons a few years ago and the teacher asked me to play something so she could see what level I was, so I blasted out Moonlight and she said "hmmm, to be honest, it 's a classic party piece that. coz it sounds great but it's not actually that difficult...." if only my mum had made me pratise more...

"they should have shut him in his room that day he nicked the mobile phone and not let him come out"

actually DH and I were talking about that one and even DH commented that although (obiviously) it was a naughty thing to do - the brains behind it (at such a young age - was it 3 or 4??) to understand why the lollipop had been taken away, and not only that but to put the idea actually into practice was pretty smart.

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OMG - a thread I started has over 280 messages ! This must be a record for me - I seem to kill most threads at the mo

and having read CODS message aobut Aimee - not she WAS talented - its one thing to be able to play a piece of music it's another to play it musically and with great expression and talent - when I went to specialist music school they didn't even take into account what "Grade" you had reached on your 1st instrument - they used to say (which I think is very true) that ANYONE (well almost) can learn the notes - but it doesn't make you a musician.

I neaerly cried when they said she had tenditis in her wrist......brought back memories of a fantastically talented violinst in my (tiny) class at music school - he would certainly have gone a LONG way - but developed recurring tenditis and was forced to quit .

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tbh - if her wrist problem isn't ongoing I think they'd be better trying to get her into one of the specialist music schools - perhaps Purcell or Yehudi Menhuin (as they're both pretty close to London) as when I was that age (10/11) I was really struggling trying to fit in school work, music lessons, music practice etc etc. Once I was at specialist music school everything was 'planned out' during the day so that - apart from the usual homework in the evening the evenings and weekends were ours to do exactly what we wanted - and to be 'normal' teenagers. Music lessons, academic lessons and music practice sessions were all timetabled into the school day.

Dante's father wrote Robin Hood for the BBC. Wonder what the parents were like as children? Although I don't want to think about the weird GCs.

I watched the first half hour of this programme and couldn't bear any more of it - such freakish kids, such weird parents!
I agree with everything in Caroline1852's post - love the bit about the rent boy on the fens!!

plus that mother of 4 needs some serious lipstick advice....

"id have blardy jumped on her wrist to get her oout of hte hole she was in tbh"
LOL! Poor kid was very doleful looking, I thought. Unsurprisingly, since she seemed to be living a life of pure pressure with v little freely chosen activity.

Just watched this from recording - feel very sad for those kids, seems like more of a curse than a blessing

Only watched half of this but what really seemed obvious in most of the cases was that the parents were almost hoping to live out their own dreams through their children being gifted, without taking into account if hothousing was actually going to make them happier in the long run... the family of four and the 3 yr old maths genius in particular bothered me.

Of the ones I saw I felt that Dante at least had the perception to know that there was more to life than scoring well in an IQ test, going to Oxford at 12, blah, blah, blah.... the others were being brainwashed into getting onto some sort of academic treadmill at an early age.

I'm very proud of my ds's little brain, but I am fully aware that intelligence alone very poorly correlated with future success in life. Perseverance, confidence, charm, chutzpah and energy get you a lot further. I am intelligent but lazy hence the lack of barnstorming success.

MY DS has a high IQ. He still can't lift the loo seat though!

I'm always astonished that anyone volunteers to be on this sort of programme! Through a mailing list we're on I actually heard about this programme a year or so ago, and at the time I thought who in their right minds would agree to be involved in such a public project?

So I guess that goes some way to explaining the sort of families you end up with.

I must admit though I found most of the children endearing, despite their faults, and the difficulties of their situations.

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I thought the kids were all lovely. They were amazingly bright. It would do them all good to meet others with similar interests.

I think at the age of 10 they should be playing games a bit more and hot housing a bit less. Their parents should be ashamed of themselves for letting them be on this program, I can't imagine it will do any of them any good.

I do hope they focus themselves when they are adults on saving mankind from global warming and providing hangover free alcohol etc rather than playing the piano or chess(nice but not useful) or writing J K Rowling clone books (entertaining and lucrative but not really adding to the sum of human knowledge).