Sensitivity to the laws of human nature.

Tiarnan is only six years old. Yet, in his few years, he has come to certain assessments of the nature of people which are interesting to hear, at times.

He was watching “Once upon a time”, recently. This is a TV series in which a fairy tale world and the real world collide, with fairy tale characters living in our world. Tiarnan quite likes this. The other day we got a peek into the kinds of things he is thinking as he watches it.

Having observed the characters for a few episodes, he suddenly piped up, whilst watching it:

“Good guys can become bad but bad guys cannot become good.”, he said to his mummy. He said this because he clearly did not believe that one of the bad characters was being genuinely good, as he appeared to be. Tiarnan was "seeing through" his behaviour. It was surprising, given his extreme youth, that he had not been fooled, by the character's actions and words - because, superficially, they did seem like "good" acts.

We were both quite taken by this, because it seemed he had used the evidence of the personalities at play in the TV show, to draw a general rule about human behaviour - and to come to his own view about a particular person's moral nature. This is a very rational thought process, akin to what scientists do: gather evidence, and spot patterns, to draw up laws. That is what Tiarnan is doing, about people. It is interesting to witness his developing understanding of people – and to see just how he thinks about them.

I see in Tiarnan’s human rule making, a cross between Syahidah’s thinking and my own. Syahidah is socially skilled and I have a tendency to invent laws, in the scientific manner: Tiarnan is crossing both thinking styles to deduce his own laws of human nature. Of course, this is just the beginning of his thinking about people. It will be interesting to see how far he takes this approach to understanding people, in future. Perhaps, not all TV watching is useless!

Posted by Valentine Cawley

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Tiarnan on moral complexity.

Last month, Tiarnan, three, at the time, was talking to his mother about character. He stood still before his mother, with his customary serious expression on his face, when he is about to mention something of significance. It gave him a presence that demanded attention - so Syahidah duly gave it to him.

"Mummy, you shouldn't always choose the good guy, because sometimes the good guy can be bad, and the bad guy can be good."

It was an interesting comment, for it showed that Tiarnan's understanding of morality and character had gone beyond black and white, and now incorporated every shade of grey, too. For him, character was not clearcut, anymore: there were ambiguities and blurrings of categories. To me, this seems a sign of a maturing grasp of the nature of people - for no-one is perfectly one thing or another, but a blend, instead, of various dispositions. Tiarnan has come to understand that, already.

Seeing childhood, from the outside, as I do, as a parent, it amazes me how quickly, very young children come to understand the world, when you consider how little time they have had to do so. They seem to come an insight of what it is all about upon very little exposure indeed. It seems to me that they are better able to do this, than a typical adult: ie. come to an understanding based on little information. Young children, in my experience, do this very well.

In a way, this is very revealing, because it goes beyond the world view that Hollywood would have little children believe: that of the pure good guy and bad guy division. Tiarnan has seen much Hollywood fare...but he has also been observing the world itself. His conclusion is clear: all is not clearcut, the world is not black and white, but grey. It is, I feel, a step towards a maturer understanding of the social world.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 6 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.

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

Hollywood good guys and bad guys.

Hollywood is a world of good guys and bad guys, of lines between good and evil carefully drawn. It is world in which there can be no mistaking who is good and who is evil, unlike in the real world, in which spin, media control and other measures can obscure what is truly evil and make it seem to be better than it is.

Children, however, have a way of seeing through to the core of things. Fintan, five, likes his Hollywood films and cartoons as much as any other child, but he doesn't just watch them, he considers them, too.

The other day, he turned to his mother, suddenly, with a question on his lips, as is his way:

"Mummy: why do the bad guys always lose, when they are bigger?". His eyes puzzled up at hers, sure that something wasn't quite right in this picture.

Now, I don't, at this moment, know Syahidah's reply...but the question alone is revealing enough. He had spotted an inconsistency between film and reality. In the real world, the big guys tend to win. In film, this is not necessarily so: if they are big and EVIL, they will lose against the heroic good guy. Fintan wasn't happy with this picture since it conflicted with his understanding of likelihoods.

The funny thing about it is that many adults may have overlooked the truth that Fintan had spotted: the EVIL guy does tend to be more powerful, more dangerous, larger, more difficult to defeat - yet, he (it is usually a man) is always defeated by our daring Hollywood hero.

It is sweet to watch Fintan try to reconcile the world of the TV/Film/Cartoon to the real world, sketching out where they meet and where they do not. I find that he sees things that often we tend to overlook - perhaps because he is actually thinking about what he sees, instead of just receiving it passively.

I hope this habit of thought endures and that he is always someone to question what he sees and what he learns.

Regarding the winning of the good guy...if only it were always so in the real world, too.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight 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, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

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