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The boy who knew too much: a child prodigy

This is the true story of scientific child prodigy, and former baby genius, Ainan Celeste Cawley, written by his father. It is the true story, too, of his gifted brothers and of all the Cawley family. I write also of child prodigy and genius in general: what it is, and how it is so often neglected in the modern world. As a society, we so often fail those we should most hope to see succeed: our gifted children and the gifted adults they become. Site Copyright: Valentine Cawley, 2006 +

Friday, June 08, 2007

Delayed gratification and achievement

We live in an impatient world. A world in which everyone wants everything done yesterday. Yet, is such a world a world in which greatness can thrive?

I would suggest not. Greatness comes from great effort over a long time. No significant project of human creativity happens without determined effort. Novels don't write themselves. Scientific revolutions don't just happen. Works of art don't just appear on the canvas. In all forms of creation there is the inescapable fact that someone must have put a lot of time into their art or science. This is the time it takes to learn the art, or science; the time it takes to find a worthy project; the time it takes to come to a solution to the problem or artistic expression - and the time it takes to make it happen, to make the art real, the science solid. None of this happens without a hidden factor: patience. This is the ability to simply endure while all this painstaking work takes place. There is too little of this ability in the modern world. Everyone expects everything to be immediate - and yet, without this ability to patiently endure while the slow process of creation unfolds, nothing worthwhile can ever be created. Only the trivial can happen in an instant.

So, does the modern love of instant results make for a shallow modern world? I believe so. Very few people of today have the quality of lifelong endurance that characterized most of the great geniuses of the past. People today want a life of instant luxury founded on the least effort possible: they want, in brief, instant gratification. Yet, it is a truism, that if the pleasure is immediate, the reward is slight. The greatest rewards come to those able to wait.

Yet, all is not lost. Some children show this nascent quality of delayed gratification - and its consequent possibility of great achievement - in their earliest years. One example is my son, Fintan. I can't help but note his ability to buy some chocolates - and simply hold them, without eating them, for several hours, until his older brother Ainan has returned home, so that he might share them with him. That shows the quality of delayed gratification most clearly - but also the quality of selflessness - for Ainan would never know if Fintan had simply eaten the sweets without a thought for him.

I look therefore at Fintan and note two things about him. He likes to draw - and has a gift for it. He also shows the ability to delay gratification. Putting these two attributes together one could conclude that he has the basic dispositions of an artist.

We will see what he eventually turns out to be and to do - but, at only three years old, it is quite straightforward to see foundational psychological attributes at work, in him, that could give rise to an interesting life to come.

(If you would like to read more of Fintan, three, or his gifted brothers, Ainan Celeste Cawley, seven years and six months, or Tiarnan, sixteen months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted adults and gifted children. Thanks.)

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posted by Valentine Cawley @ 6:43 PM  0 comments

Thursday, June 07, 2007

The need for greater empathy

Empathy is a much underestimated quality. It is not first on the list of most parents when they speak of what they desire in their children, yet I think it should be.

Parents often seem to want intelligent, beautiful, healthy, happy, creative children...but who among them asks for an empathetic child? I think the world would be a much better place if this quality were more prized.

Empathy has great power. An empathetic child will feel the pain of others around them - will reach out to help them, to comfort, nurture and cherish them. An empathetic child will grow to be a warm hearted person who blesses all they meet with a supportive presence. An empathetic child does not grow up to be a criminal; does not wound or hurt others; does not behave in an anti-social manner. An empathetic child understands well the impact they have on others around them and would never do anything, consciously, to harm another. Empathy is the one quality, that for certain, leads to a better world. Intelligence can be a positive or negative force. Hitler was pretty intelligent, and Stalin too - but it lead neither of them to a place of goodness. Had both been empathetic European history would have been a very different affair. Empathy is a preventer of wars, a guardian against crime, a bringer of happiness. None of the other qualities that I have mentioned: intelligence, creativity, beauty, health and happiness - necessarily has any of its power.

Yesterday, I wrote of Tiarnan's empathetic reaching out to a tree. Now, that might seem funny - but to a fifteen month old toddler, seeing the tree standing alone and immobile in a field, it must have seemed that the tree needed comfort. It was an act of empathy, to reach out to it, and hug it. In that single act, we see that Tiarnan has an empathetic nature - that he is built to care. Tiarnan should, if this act is as diagnostic of an empathetic nature, as it seems to be, grow to be a warm, nurturing, caring and supportive individual. Whatever else he may be - whatever else of the qualities parents normally seek, that he may transpire to possess, I think that number one among those qualities is the inner kindness and thoughtfulness that led him to hug and comfort what, to him, was a lonely tree.

I rather feel that, among the many other things he will no doubt be, Tiarnan will turn out to be, quite simply, a great friend to have. That's empathy.

(If you would like to read more of Tiarnan, sixteen months, or his gifted brothers, Ainan Celeste Cawley, seven years and six months, or Fintan, three, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted adults and gifted children, in general. Thanks.)

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posted by Valentine Cawley @ 8:08 PM  2 comments

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Tiarnan's love of nature

Now, I have heard many a curious thing in my life, but this is one of the more curious.

A couple of weeks ago, my wife was walking with Tiarnan, then fifteen months, in a park. Suddenly, he ran off across a field to where a lone tree stood. He looked up at the tree - which to him must have seemed a giant, but, as trees go, was both young and modest in size - and then he did something unaccountable: he put his arms around the tree and hugged it. He hugged it long and hard, embracing the tree as if it needed comfort. It was a long while before he released it, perhaps satisfied that he had comforted this lone tree, when it had, to him, clearly needed it.

Prince Charles would be proud of him. For those who don't know, Prince Charles won himself quite a reputation many years ago, for talking to plants. I suppose hugging them can be lumped in the same category. There is one difference, of course: Prince Charles the plant-talker was middle-aged at the time of the revelations; Tiarnan, the tree-hugger was fifteen months.

Who knows. Perhaps trees do feel a bit solitary at times. In any case, that was one tree that found itself unusually comforted by a little human, that day.

(If you would like to read more of Tiarnan, now sixteen months, or his gifted brothers, Ainan Celeste Cawley, seven years and six months, and Fintan, three, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, creatively gifted adults, gifted children and gifted adults in general. Thanks.)

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posted by Valentine Cawley @ 5:10 PM  0 comments

Note for "Lena"

If I am to answer your post, please send an email to me. Otherwise the answer is simply: "Nothing special."

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posted by Valentine Cawley @ 10:28 AM  0 comments

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Child prodigies and Nobel Prizes

Do child prodigies grow up to be Nobel Prize Winners? I ask this because it is clear that some people believe that child prodigies don't or won't do any such thing. (I can tell from the content of the searches with which they arrive on my site.) There is a general lack of awareness of what child prodigies have actually gone on to do, as adults. Perhaps this is because there is often more attention focussed on their childhoods than on their later adult achievements - or if they achieve big things, there is a tendency to focus on their adult achievements and forget their childhoods. Either way, there is a kind of reporting bias that obscures the truth of the lives child prodigies. Many of them go on to do interesting things.

One example is Lev Landau. Now, if you are of a certain age, you would recognize his name. He was a Physicist, born on January 22nd, 1908 into a Jewish family based in Baku, Azerbajian. He had a most curious childhood and was very early recognized as a child prodigy in mathematics - indeed, so early did he develop this gift that, he was later to say of his childhood: "I can't remember a time when I wasn't familiar with calculus."

This promising beginning bore fruit and he graduated from the Gymnasium at 13, but was not allowed to go immediately to University so he entered Baku Economical Technical School at 13. A year later, at 14, he matriculated at Baku University, in 1922, studying in two departments simultaneously - the Physico-Mathematical and the Chemistry departments. In 1924 he moved to the Leningrad University, graduating in 1927, and then to the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute, from which he received his doctorate at the age of 21.

In his early career, he managed to study for a time at the Niels' Bohr Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen - a time which was seminal for him. On his return to the Soviet Union, he began to publish a stream of papers in Theoretical Physics. His greatest contribution was the Theory of Superfluidity in which he explained the properties of liquid helium, but he also wrote many papers across the fields of Physics: discovering the density matrix method in quantum mechanics, the Ginzburg-Landau Theory of Superconductivity, the quantum theory of diamagnetism, the theory of second-order phase transitions, Landau damping in Plasma Physics, the Landau pole in quantum electrodynamics, and the two-component theory of neutrinos.

In 1962, for his work on Superfluidity, Lev Landau received the Nobel Prize in Physics. This was also the year he was involved in a head-on collision with a truck, on January 7. He spent three months in a coma and was never to recover his creative abilities. He died on April 1st, 1968, as a consequence of the injuries he sustained.

Lev Landau is one of many child prodigies in history who grew up to be as distinguished as an adult as he had been as a child. He received many prizes in his lifetime for his diverse work - including the Max Planck Medal, the Fritz London Prize, the U.S.S.R State Prize (which he was awarded several times) and the Lenin Science Prize. It is, however, the most famous prize of all, the Nobel Prize, that we tend to remember.

He was a foreign member of both the Royal Society, London and a Foreign Associate of the American Academy of Sciences of the USA among many other international societies.

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posted by Valentine Cawley @ 6:22 AM  0 comments

Monday, June 04, 2007

Does water boil at room temperature?

Ainan, seven, is fond of his home experiments. By this I mean, he is ever tinkering with his world in ways which are often surprising.

Last week, he came to me and showed me a little device he had put together for the manipulation of air pressure. Within it he had a little water.

"Watch Daddy.", he commanded, at the beginning of his demonstration.

He proceeded to lower the pressure in the container. At first, nothing seemed to be happening but then something strange began to happen: bubbles started to form in the water. It appeared to be boiling gently.

"It's boiling." He announced.

Then he reversed the procedure and increased the pressure. At some point, there was a sudden condensation of water vapour on the inner surface of the vessel. "And there," he declared, "is the proof that it was boiling."

Excess water lined the vessel, Ainan's proof that it had boiled away to fill the tube, only to condense again.

Now, I had never seen that done - and didn't expect it to be done by my seven year old, at home - but that's Ainan.

Please note that Ainan did not heat the water to achieve this effect: he simply manipulated the air pressure - and this did not heat the water, either.

(If you would like to know more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and six months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, three, and Tiarnan, sixteen months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

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posted by Valentine Cawley @ 6:19 AM  2 comments

Sunday, June 03, 2007

What is Savant Syndrome?

I wonder, sometimes, whether all the searchers who arrive on my site looking for "genius and savants"...or "Is my child a savant?" actually know what a savant is. I think there is much confusion about as to the distinction between a savant, a genius and a prodigy. I will therefore look at what a savant is.

Savant Syndrome is the presence of an extraordinary mental ability - of a particular limited set of kinds - in an individual who usually has some disability. It is found innately in some autistic individuals - or may sometimes be induced in previously normal people through damage to the left side of the brain. This indicates either that it is a form of compensation for left brain damage - or that the left-brain was masking its presence, until damaged and the gift could shine through.

Savants have one or more splinter skills: very deep, but very narrow abilities in such areas as maths, music or sometimes art, which allow them to display an extraordinary skill - such as lightning calculation, or the recall of long pieces of music, numbers or speech - at a single hearing. Other skills noted include calendar calculation - noting the day of the week of any day over tens of thousands of years - estimating distances accurately; telling the time without a watch; acquiring random information in a usually very narrow field at a single exposure - such as number plates, or telephone numbers and the like.

Some of the searchers to my site, seem to be unaware that there is a major difference between savant and genius. A savant is not a genius - and a genius is not a savant (though some geniuses have had savant like skills). Most savants are impaired in their general intellectual functions, though savant like gifts can exist in unimpaired individuals (but these people are not, then, called savants). The key difference between savant and genius is that a savant is not creative; whilst a genius is creative by definition.

Perhaps the most famous savant, of modern times, is Kim Peek, the inspiration for Rain Man. He is unusual in many more ways than that, however, being non-autistic - but having no corpus callosum - meaning his brain is actually two separate halves. Kim Peek has a photographic memory and can recall the contents of thousands of books word for word.

As for the difference between savant and prodigy: a savant has an over-development of at least one lower level thinking skill; a prodigy has a precocious over-development of higher level thinking skills that allow them to tackle an adult domain, while still a child.

I hope that clarifies the distinction between savant, and other forms of "gift", somewhat.

(If you would like to read of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and six months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, three, and Tiarnan, sixteen months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted adults, and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

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posted by Valentine Cawley @ 3:01 PM  2 comments

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