Hollywood stereotypes, in Tiarnan's eyes.

Tiarnan, three, is, as most three year olds are, an avid consumer of Hollywood products - with a bias towards cartoons, over "real" films - though he likes those, too. Today, he had something funny to observe about them.

Tiarnan turned to his mummy with a slight frown on his forehead.

"Why do bad guys have small heads and big bodies?", he asked her.

She would have laughed, but for the seriousness of his intent. I am not privy to her answer...but only to his question. However, the question itself is funny - and telling. It immediately called to mind the Terminator movies of Arnold Schwarzenegger...a man big of body, small of head (by proportion)...or any of the other tough guys. Then, again, thinking of the cartoons he watched, it was most clear that he was right: the bad guys competed with each other, over muscularity and sheer body mass.

It is refreshing listening to Tiarnan talk of how he sees things. In his eyes, the world seems new, again. It is also oddly surprising to witness the natural wisdom of his questions. He asks the questions we would ask, if only we were still alive to the world, and its ways.

Perhaps I should have a talk to him about how intelligence is undervalued in some quarters...Hollywood in particular...and how brawn/beauty is elevated to a place it does not deserve. Funnily enough, it is in America that we find the worship of the physical taken to its extreme. That is just what Tiarnan was noticing in their cartoons, of course.

(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.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication 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.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

A child's response to Wall-e.

Ainan saw Wall-e with us all, a few days ago. His response to it was most interesting. He didn't just talk about it, he actually did something.

When he got home, Ainan drew all the characters in Wall-e that interested him. He drew them with a biro in a notebook and labelled them all. What particularly struck me was that each character was recognizable - and was given its appropriate name - yet he had only just seen the show once. Ainan had absorbed the physical esssence of each character and was able to reproduce them, in pen, later.

He drew images of the following characters from memory: Mo, Eve, Van-go, Buf-4, Go-4, Brl-A, Auto, Wall-e, Wall-a, Pr-t, D-fib, L-t, Vak-uum, Han-S. To me that seems an awful lot of different characters to register in sufficient detail to be able to actually draw a good likeness of each of them later. Yet, Ainan did just that.

To my mind, Wall-e struck Ainan deeply enough that he had to respond to it in a creative manner in some way. His response was to draw every character, perhaps to capture the experience for himself in his own way.

For me, the most memorable aspect of the film will now be the way Ainan responded to it. Though I must say the film itself is an enjoyable comment on modern life - and a warning about it, too. See it, if you haven't already.

(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.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.)

Fintan's cartoon watching

Fintan likes to watch cartoons. Since he is only three there is nothing unusual in that. However, there is something unusual in what he chooses to do in relation to cartoons.

On watching him do so, we note that he interacts well with the cartoon: he laughs when he should, is surprised when he should be, leans forward when the action gets intense - and so on. Clearly he understands well, what is going on in the cartoon. There is nothing unusual about that you might think.

The only thing is the cartoons are in Chinese. This is what we found surprising. Fintan seems to understand Chinese cartoons - yet neither of his parents speaks Chinese to him. I rather think that he has a gift for languages - and the little Chinese he does hear, in school, is enough for him to begin to piece together an understanding of this difficult (for a Westerner) language.

Carry on cartoon watching Fintan - in whatever language you please!

(If you would like to read more of Fintan, three, or his gifted brothers, Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and four months, or Tiarnan, fourteen 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 children and gifted adults in general. Thanks.)