Child Genius

MX5huggy

I think it was the train loving lad who lived at house called "Wits End", brilliant.

fluffnutter

I didn't watch the programme but a preview of it mentioned a child who could name every king and queen since William I. That doesn't make you a genius! That makes you someone who's learnt a list of stuff.

It made me rather suspicious of the definition of 'genius'. Perhaps it should be 'precocious child taught to learn stuff by rote'.

FBaby

I believe many pushy parents are so because they feel that they could have accomplished better in life themselves if their parents had been more pushy.

It is a hard balance because indeed, there are some children who are clever, but lack in self-motivation and drive and these children and being 'pushed' is more about learning to be use the skills they are lucky to have. The problem is the line between 'high encouragement' and 'being pushy' is not very well defined.

My DD is 'Gifted and Talented', but I certainly never had to push her as she is naturally extremely hard working and ambitious. Her ability to learn quickly and retain easily (because that's what her intelligence is mainly about) was recognised from the time she was at nursery. Saying that, her primary school never made a deal of it, they didn't even have an official GandT registry. It is only when she won the 'pupil of the year' award (out of 110 pupils) that it became clear.

She started at a new secondary school where she knew no-one and she was quickly labelled as 'the clever one' and teased a bit for it, mainly by a few competitive pupils. She was ok about it, feeling a bit shy but not to the point of purposely not doing as well as she could. She was quickly accepted as she is not big headed and happy to work with others. Saying that, her teachers have sometimes not made it easy for her, like her science teacher once saying that she didn't need to take the weekly test because she would inevitably get it all right again and she could help marking exams instead. Still, she is doing very well socially.

Her brother is also a high performer. What I say to them is that nature has made them academic and able to learn more easily than most and therefore needed to make the best of it and not waste it, but I don't need to be a pushy parent as they are both naturally hard working and pushing themselves on their own.

ajsexton

I saw the program but first my back story.

I was labelled an intelligent child, I was very capable for my age. Not so much now, it has to be said it does tail off.

Everything academic came easy to me (apart from handwriting), especially anything maths-y, my older brother was also intelligent, though I believe I was viewed as 'cleverer' than he was at the same age.

With regards to my parents, they were not pushy in the slightest, they just wanted both me and my brother to be well behaved and happy, they supported both of us in whatever we wanted to do/learn.

I am a member of Mensa, and I think of 'intelligence' as the ability to work things out, basically logic. It incredibly useful but I agree with others its not the be all and end all. Facts are knowledge nothing more, useful in their own regard, but not necessarily an indication of intelligence.

Socially I think I was somewhat more balanced than a lot of the ones on the program. I really feel sorry for both them and their siblings. Some of the parents should be ashamed of their pushy behaviour and I hope when I become a father in a few months that I remember that.

I will also mention what I see as potentially the biggest problem with high intelligence and/or me, I hope these kids don't fall into it like I did.

Effort; nothing in school took me any real effort, therefore I never had to work hard, heck the first exam I actually revised for (and by revise I mean started on the morning of the exam) was my very last exam in university for my BSc (got a 2:1), this absolutely stuffed me when I first started work.

Treevo

abailey54 wrote: »

What's so great about being good at chess? That's what I find bizarre

It's what it entails that is so valuable.

warehouse

I watched it and really enjoyed the program. I think all the kids were just kids, they were the stars of the show. The real issue was undoubtedly with some of the parents.

At our local school a few years back they did this thing where they would identify an area that a child was particularly good at, then send the parents a letter saying that the child was "gifted and talented" at this subject. EG my own Daughter was a good little runner so I got a "gifted and talented" letter saying she should do the after school athletics club. I saw straight through it, but many many parents couldn't wait to let everyone else know that their child was gifted and talented, and they weren't shy about shouting it from the rooftops. It made me cringe for weeks afterwards as they kept mentioning it.

Kids are kids, but parents can be complete ar*eh*oles as the show clearly proved.

LannieDuck

I read an article about this in the Daily Mail and decided there was no way I was watching the show. The description of the parental pressure on the kids made be really sad.

I'm with those who say that it's fine if the kids want to do it. Otherwise, let kids be kids.

aileth

I felt really sorry for Joshua and also the little boy from Hong Kong, Longyin I think it was. He messed up the first round and you could see his dad getting so mad, the lad asked his dad to sit somewhere where he couldn't see him, i.e. behind a tall person in his words, and on the second round he blitzed it. I think that says it all really.

The trainspotter lads parents were talking about how difficult it is for upbringing, i.e. they didn't want to put him in an ivory tower of intellectualism, but then the lad goes on to talk about "Stupid people, well not stupid, normal people", and how he gets annoyed when they can't think as fast as he can and he has to tell them what he thinks of them. Hmm.

reehsetin

Full disclosure - I don't have kids so I may change these statements in a few years
I too enjoyed the program I agree some of the parents seemed pushy but I still saw some things I really liked....and I am honestly the complete opposite of pushy.
The american mum, she seemed to correctly identify that the kid was nervous, I was impressed that she took so much care when talking to her son, like:
'remember when you felt nervous last time and you felt sick and then you were so happy afterwards' 'do you want to give it a try and even take the whole two minutes to just get one question right'
And the kid seemed genuinely happy when he got his question
right. Teaching him to do his best regardless of nerves seemed like a great lesson.
As for pushing him at chess. He bounced off the walls when not playing chess, she even said to watch him as this ball of energy and then sit there for hours fully concentrating on chess. She believes she's found what works for her son to exercise his mind and develop his concentration skills etc. Would I do the same and push for grand master level, probably not, but I honestly thought she did a lot of things right and she seemed to care and actually talk to her son. She also did this the give him an alternative to chess and grow as a person.

The chinese kid I don't think we saw enough of to form a proper opinion. It seemed like he had a much more varied skill set and wasn't just focused in one area (books, trains, chess etc) and I was actually impressed by the dad talking about controlled failure, one thing we're not very good at is seeing the positives in failure, you're never going to win all of the time and there are valuable lessons to learn from failure.

There was also a lot of kids being kids, they may be smart but they still knew how to have a temper tantrums

reehsetin

aileth wrote: »

The trainspotter lads parents were talking about how difficult it is for upbringing, i.e. they didn't want to put him in an ivory tower of intellectualism, but then the lad goes on to talk about "Stupid people, well not stupid, normal people", and how he gets annoyed when they can't think as fast as he can and he has to tell them what he thinks of them. Hmm.

If I remember rightly the mum was great and straight away picked up on it though, something like 'we don't say x because it upsets people...'