Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion How Do You Raise a Prodigy?

Er-- or the child has food allergies, or maybe diabetes? I think that one is a great example of how things which are "lifestyle" issues for people with some diagnoses/medical challenges can seem just plain odd or even like incredibly controlling parenting.

Some of what we do looks that way. We look like total helicopter parents-- though we're actually pretty laid back and very definitely authoritative (neither permissive nor dictatorial) in most ways.

Relative to my DD's friends, with a few exceptions, we're the "awesome" parents because of the things that we allow/permit/facilitate.

I think your interpretation of this part of the article is incredibly generous Howler and La Texican. The author transitions to this particular child's story with the ominous "If you dream of having a genius for a child, you will spot brilliance in your child, sometimes even when it isn’t there." He then points out the food control, coat control and the mom's unwillingness to allow her daughter to even answer a question.

Combine this with no liquids for 3 hours despite vigorous violin play and you have more than a medical condition. The author concludes that the girl played "not with such brilliance as to resolve the question of why a childhood had been sacrificed for this art." I assumed he withheld this family's name to protect the mom from a firestorm of criticism that the author felt was well-deserved. Everyone else was named if you'll recall.

Poor little girl. DH represented a boy whose dad was intent on making him an athletic prodigy. Every game was immediately followed by a critical home screening of the game film made by dad. Daily training runs were with dad driving beside son in the car. If batting practice was not good enough the pitching machine at their house was pointed at the son a time or two. The boy became a superior athlete-but finally murdered his father.

The relationship between the wannabe prodigy parent and her sad little manufactured violinist prodigy reminds me of this tragic case. The author concludes that when she finally gets a chance to speak with her violin her music is incredibly sad.

Here is a video to accompany the article:
It's said in the comments that he composed this at age of 6.

Another one:

and it's mentioned this one composed at 7.

To me, the biggest question is how these children were taught or trained to work hard and to have good self-discipline while developing and maintaining strong interests in what they do. I do believe extremely hard working in addition to strong interests is required for them to have this level of success. But people in general and especially children tend to avoid hard work.

Well I clicked on the youtube vid. First off, Way Cool! emailed it to my grandmother. Second if I were to try to imagine what led to that I would guess musicians in the household. I would like to think his family plays too so he grows up around it plus he practiced and did his lessons. But obviously I would only be guessing. Musicians in the family would feed each others fires but you still gotta do your lessons I'll bet.
I just thought of a couple more people I gotta go mail that to. That was uplifting.

Wei, I don't think a "rage to learn" is really taught and definitely not trained. Also hard work is mostly a perception thing. Work being effort over time becomes meaningless if you are in Flow (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) and not really experiencing the time aspect. I think when there is a rage to learn, one seeks the level of optimal challenge where learning (and flow) best takes place. To someone perhaps with less learning aptitude that may seem hard. To one person running uphill five miles is pure joy to another it's torture.

Gifted kids often have a rage to learn; some are oriented towards breadth and other towards depth. Perhaps the most damaging thing to do is to push an extrinsic motivational system in the way of their freight train of intrinsically motivated learning.