Okay-- now re-reading, since I have my computer and not just my phone. Some of my favorite quotes from the article:
You can err in either direction. Given that there is no consensus about how to raise ordinary children, it is not surprising that there is none about how to raise remarkable children. Like parents of children who are severely challenged, parents of exceptionally talented children are custodians of young people beyond their comprehension.
SO true.
SO true. It's as though you have a child who has sensory perception that you... just... don't. Rather like trying to relate-- as a human being-- to a dog's sense of olfactory awareness.
Musicians often talked to me about whether you achieve brilliance on the violin by practicing for hours every day or by reading Shakespeare, learning physics and falling in love. “Maturity, in music and in life, has to be earned by living,” the violinist Yehudi Menuhin once said.
Ahhhhhh-- and therein is another often overlooked way of being a prodigy. Some PG children are such devoted students of the human condition from such a young age that they really
do seem to derive a supernatural-seeming "knowing" way about them. It's almost enough to make one believe in reincarnation-- until raising my own DD, I had no real idea what could make otherwise rational adults believe in reincarnation
a la the Dalai Lama, etc. There
is something truly a bit eerie about it. This quote also tickled me because my 13yo DD is apparently spending this year doing all of those things. Well, not the violin. She gave that up when she was 8, but she still plays piano.
Yet, Mozart was also clearly a child. “Whilst he was playing to me, a favorite cat came in, upon which he immediately left his harpsichord, nor could we bring him back for a considerable time. He would also sometimes run about the room with a stick between his legs by way of horse.”
Every prodigy is a chimera of such mastery and childishness, and the contrast between musical sophistication and personal immaturity can be striking. One prodigy I interviewed switched from the violin to the piano when she was 7. She offered to tell me why if I didn’t tell her mother. “I wanted to sit down,” she said.
This quote brought tears to my eyes. Yes-yes-yes. THIS is the gift that we have moved heaven and earth to give our child (who is not a "prodigy" in the same sense as the children in the article... but is in the next-lowest tier of ability). The ability TO still be very much a child, in spite of the adult, sophisticated parts of her. I also suspect that my daughter likes piano for the same reason. LOL. The funniest part of this to me is the chidllike "please don't tell my mom" aspect.
“I already have a normal childhood,” he said. “Do you want to see my room? It’s messy, but you can come anyway.” Upstairs, he showed me a yellow remote-controlled helicopter that his father had sent from China. The bookshelves were crammed with Dr. Seuss, “Jumanji” and “The Wind in the Willows” but also “Moby-Dick”; with “Sesame Street” videos and also a series of DVDs on the music of Prague, Vienna and so on. We sat on the floor, and he showed me his favorite Gary Larson cartoons, and then we played the board game Mouse Trap.
YES. This is my child's world, too.
When Kit was 3, a supervisor of his play group told May that he let other children push him around. “I went in one day and saw another child snatch a toy away from him,” May said. “I told him he should stand up for himself, and he said: ‘That kid will be bored in two minutes, and then I can play with it again. Why start a fight?’ So he was mature already. What did I have to teach this kid?"
Yes again-- I think that I've shared a few of these anecdotes about my own DD here.
We have felt SO alone in parenting a child like this. They are so much children-- and at the same time, so LITTLE like children; and so little, even, like one another because of the individual areas of asynchrony.
The comments associated with the piece are almost as interesting/insightful as the article itself, too, which is remarkable:
Who can see these children except through the lens of their own self image?
If a friend asked me how to raise a child prodigy I would say 2 things. First, share the things that have touched you most deeply even though for the child it may be a distraction and uninteresting, to see an elephant or sit by a campfire or see the sunrise at the beach. Second, search for that teacher who can make a path appear from child prodigy to adult master. They will put this child's needs before their own.
As a parent you give the gift of yourself so many ways, make the gestures meaningful to you. Then you need the help of the master, too; but it is a gamble with your child's life, with no guarantees of success. As all parents learn.
EVERYONE has an opinion-- and most of those opinions are twofold:
