A synaesthetic family.

Yesterday, was a revelation, where Tiarnan, four, was concerned.

We all sat in the dining room, for lunch – well, most of us.

Tiarnan suddenly looked up from the table and said: “Fintan is back.”

“How do you know?”, asked his mother.

“I can see the sound of the bus.”, Tiarnan replied enigmatically.

I knew, then, what he meant, at once. Tiarnan was revealing that he, too, was a synaesthete, like his elder brother, Ainan. His choice of the word “see”, rather than “hear”, was not a youthful accident, but deliberate choice. Tiarnan was seeing the sound.

“You are confused.”, said, Syahidah, confusing him.

Tiarnan frowned. “I hear the bus.”, he said, seemingly unhappy with the choice of words.

“Don’t do that, Syahidah…you are confusing him. He sees the sound of the bus…he is a synaesthete.”

I was reminded, then, of the first time Tiarnan had hinted that he might be a synaesthete. He had been in my bathroom, at night, when I had turned on the radio in the bedroom beyond. Suddenly, I heard his excited voice: “I can see the music!”, he had exclaimed. He then ran into the room, repeating himself: “I see the music!”. That was, perhaps, six months ago, and he hadn’t mentioned his perceptions since.

Later on, yesterday, after dinner, I questioned Tiarnan a little to confirm what I now thought to be the case.

He was banging a spoon against a plate.

“What do you see?”, I asked.

My expectation that he would see something, not hear it, seemed to open him up to discussing it.
“I see a flying colour.”, he explained, seriously.

“Which one?”

“That one!”, he said pointing at the tablecloth, which had many colours on it. It wasn’t clear which he was referring to.

Then, I took the spoon and hit it gently against the plate.

“What colour do you see?”

“Gold.”, he said, “gold.”

I needed no further confirmation. Tiarnan is a musical synaesthete, one experiencing sounds as colours. Does he have any other forms of synaesthesia? Perhaps so. His eldest brother, Ainan has several types. I will just have to observe Tiarnan closely in the coming months and years, to work out just what kind of perceptions he has.

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page. To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html
and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

Seeing the unseen.

A few weeks ago, Ainan proffered a car magazine to me.

“What do you notice about this photograph?”, he enquired, intently, his eyes filled with hidden meanings.

He was pointing at the cover.

One of the cars I recognized, immediately.

“A Bugatti Veyron is overtaking another car…”

“Is it?” he asked, his gaze directing me to look more closely.

“Yes.”, for assuredly, the Bugatti was in front of the other car. Though, of course, I had no way of knowing what would happen shortly afterwards, or what their relative velocity was – however, the photo seemed to mean what I thought it to mean.

“Dad,” began Ainan, in the tone of one about to explain something to someone who clearly did not understand, “These two cars were never in the same place.”

They sure looked pretty close to me.

“This image has been faked, Dad.”

I attended to the photo more closely – and waited for Ainan to continue.

“If you look at the Bugatti, the shadows fall here,” he pointed, “and the highlights on the paintwork, are here,” he pointed again. “This suggests that the lighting comes from over here.” His finger was suspended in space above the photograph. “However,” he continued, “if you look at the other car, the shadows are here and the lighting appears to come from here.” His finger hovered in a rather different place to the first intuited Sun. “These two cars have been taken from different images and a composite made.”

“Ah.”, I said, eloquently. “I see.”

He was right. This image was not a natural one and these cars never passed each other in the way depicted.

It should be noted, here, that the shadows and highlights Ainan pointed out, were subtle matters and not at all obvious. The shadows were quite small and very few people would have noticed what he saw so clearly. I didn’t, for one and I am generally thought of as alert.

What was on show, in this instance, was one of Ainan’s particular gifts: seeing things as they actually are, and not as he is meant to see them. Ainan is a very observant boy. The little things which no-one would ever notice, in a lifetime, are just the things he points out, and discusses, sometimes at length and detail. It seems that he is particularly difficult to fool where visual matters are concerned. Of course, this is the primary way most people observe the world, so it is a most useful attribute. Often, the only thing that might separate two scientists one “brilliant” and the other ordinary, is how effective they are at observing. History is filled with scientific advances that have, at their core, a careful observer and a subtle observation. It would be difficult to overestimate its importance as a quality – both for the scientist and, I might add, any artist, too.

This is but one occasion on which Ainan has pointed out something less than obvious about his environment – something which everyone else had overlooked. However, it gives a sense of his peculiar attentiveness. I would be most unsurprised if this characteristic leads him to produce something interesting, or unexpected, in the course of his life – something which everyone else had simply missed.

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page. To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

My magic pocket.

I didn’t realize it, but the left pocket of one of my trousers, appears to have been charmed by Gandalf himself.

A couple of days ago, I put the electronic key to the electric gates to our home, in my left pocket, after I had left the house. I also placed the key ring holding the two most relevant keys to the house in my pocket.

I then took Ainan to his University.

Later, that day, on returning, I reached into my pocket, to pull out the gate control and was dumbstruck at what I saw: the electronic gate key and the house keys had become conjoined: the loop attached to one had become inserted in the loop attached to the other.

I looked sharply at Ainan.

“Did you do this?”, I asked, even as I wondered how he had reached into my pocket, taken out both physical keys and electronic keys, pried open the loop attached to one, enough to let the other in, and replaced them, in their new interlinked form, without me noticing.

He looked as puzzled as me, so I knew his answer before he spoke it. “No.” he said, simply, his little frown bespeaking his thought on the matter.

“That’s incredible!” I remarked, “They have had a “chemical reaction” and have spontaneously joined up in my pocket.”

Ainan snorted a laugh at that.

The admiring astonishment we both felt at this strange happenstance was a shared feeling as we walked up to the house.

I opened the door to my house and replaced the linked keys in my pocket.

Shortly afterwards, I took them out again to take a closer look at how it could have happened. Rather bizarrely, as if almost to mock me, the keys had separated again: no longer were they interlinked. It was most uncanny. It seemed that the random jostling in my pocket had both linked them up, then, later unlinked them again. How bizarre. What makes it even more bizarre is that neither event had ever occurred before: neither linking nor unlinking, had ever happened in my experience, in these circumstances. That both should happen one after the other, in short succession, seemed most odd.

I showed Ainan the unlinked keys.

His only answer was laughter. It seemed the most appropriate response.

I have kept a close watch on my keys, since. However, they show no sign of linking up again. Even so, the incident has given me a new respect for the apparently ordering properties, of random events: chaos is not always the outcome of random action, even though it might be the most expected one. Perhaps, the laws of thermodynamics have their gentler moments. Either that, or my pocket really is magical!

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page. To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

How to grow up fast.

Little children seem to grow up fast, from their parents’ point of view. Yet, as most of us remember, that growing up doesn’t seem half fast enough when you are a little kid. Tiarnan, today, came up with a solution to the problem.

My four year old son, Tiarnan was talking to his elder brother, Fintan, seven. They were in the kitchen, near the refrigerator, which, perhaps unseen by me, Fintan had probably recently opened. For those who haven’t read long enough to know, Fintan is the big eater of the three sons. He is also the biggest and strongest for his age.

“I want to be you.”, said Tiarnan, to Fintan, as he looked up at his much taller brother.

“Then,”, Fintan began, considering the proposition, “You have to go to my school.” From the way he said it, he seemed to think that would put him off.

Tiarnan was undeterred. “Let’s change places.”, he continued, focusing more intently on his new idea, “You become me, and I become you.”

I interrupted him, then. “Why do you want to be Fintan? Is it because you want to be bigger?”

“Yes.”, he said, simply.

Then the two of them raced off, continuing some imaginary game or other.

To my mind, this encapsulated Tiarnan’s outlook so well. Tiarnan is ever imagining himself as superheroes, who are physically powerful – yet he himself is small. So, something in him wants that power and strength for himself. He sees that Fintan has some of that: he is stocky and well built for his age and quite tall – so, for Tiarnan, a very big step towards his goal of physical power would be simply to become Fintan.

Then there is the more conventional side to Tiarnan’s aspiration: he simply wants to grow up and have the requisite attributes and skills (and size and strength) of an older person. He wants to zip through his childhood and get to a mature stage overnight. This is, of course, a common wish in many children. However, of our three sons, the wish is strongest in Tiarnan, perhaps because he is the youngest and smallest.

What Tiarnan doesn’t appreciate is how we see him. He is most endearing just the way he is, growing up the way he is and changing day by day, the way he is. I, personally, would not see him fast forward through any of it. Simply seeing him change gradually, over time, is a delightful experience. Were there ever a technology that allowed children to become “adult” in form, in a much shorter time frame, I, for one, would not avail myself of it, for my children. Childhood is short enough as it is, without throwing it away entirely.

That being said, the adult like quality of Ainan’s mind is also something I would not change. That brings its own pleasures. However, I am pleased that Ainan’s mental advancement, does not also mean a shorter physical childhood. It is good to see him grow, in the normal way, at an expected rate. It is, in fact, a good reminder, that he is a child, still, however bright he might be – and such a reminder is good to have, lest he be misunderstood.

Tiarnan will just have to be patient, as all children must learn to be – and wait for his own access of strength, size and power to come at the biologically appointed time. As he waits, he can, of course, imagine his own superhero status, all he likes. That, of course, is fun, in itself, to watch – but that is another story.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)