The nature of the Self, in the mind of a child.

Tiarnan is rather philosophical for a six year old. Today, he was having a serious little chat with his mother, when he suddenly asked, with the utmost intensity:

“Who is in control of me?”

His mother, Syahidah, focussed on him, somewhat startled at the question.

“Is it me, me, or is it my brain?”, he continued, drawing a distinction that seemed a little mystifying to her.

“Who do you think is in control of you?”, she prompted, acceptingly.

“Just me.”, he said, simply. “...and God, sometimes. God controls the whole world – but I am in control of me!”

He seemed happy with that conclusion.

Syahidah was quite happy, too, to have heard him think so. Listening to Tiarnan is rather refreshing. He ponders the world, asking questions of matters, that adults have come to overlook, or take for granted. He then reflects on them, deeply, answering them from within the context of his experience – yet, meaningfully, nevertheless. Tiarnan is a little philosopher and, in many ways, is proving to be a deep thinker, prone to pondering mysteries and cracking the enigmas of life. It is notable that the questions that concern him most could all be lumped under the heading: “The Meaning of Life”...for its nature and context are his primary interests. He really wants to understand what it means to be alive. He doesn’t just accept that he is alive and go from there...he is really questioning what life is and what it means to experience the living state. Yet, he is only six years old and has never read any philosophical or religious work of any kind. He is thinking for himself, afresh.

All of this leads me to wonder whether, as an adult, he might become a writer, who ponders deep questions and answers them for his readers. If so, that would be an altogether familiar outcome, for those who are privy to my writings of yesteryear (hint: not the general public, as yet).

Intellectually, Tiarnan has many a likeness to my own preoccupations – though his are in juvenescent form. That doesn’t disguise the fact, though, that he seems driven by the same motivations to question, understand and explain his world. Once again, I marvel at how much genetic influences appear to play in the formation of our minds, our characters and our interests.

I look forward to Tiarnan’s many interesting questions and ponderings, in the future.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(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

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, 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 athttp://www.genghiscan.com/This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.) 

A strange man in the house.

About a month ago, I called Ainan’s phone, expecting him to be at home.

“Hello?”, said a strange voice, one unexpectedly low.

I paused. I really paused, to listen to my memory of that voice because, quite simply, I didn’t recognize it.

“Is that Ainan?”, I asked.

“Yes.”, said the unexpectedly low voice.

It wasn’t. It really wasn’t the voice I had long known Ainan to have had. This was a new voice. In that instant, I came to understand that Ainan’s voice was beginning to break. It was a sad little, happy little, mixed emotions moment. My young boy, would soon begin the journey to becoming a man.

I cannot remember the rest of the conversation. What has stuck with me is the shock of realizing that Ainan’s voice was transforming into that of a strange new man, in the house.

I suppose I should have expected this, since my own voice began to break at around the same time, though perhaps a few months later, in my case, since I remember singing treble in my twelfth year – at least for much of the year. Ainan, by the way, is twelve years old, now.

Yet, even though expected, in the sense that all boys who live long enough, will go through this, it caught me by surprise, perhaps because all these years I had come to think of him as speaking in a particular way.

Now, that his voice is changing, I can’t help but wonder where it will end up? Will it be as deep as his father’s...or deeper? How tall will he be? His mother is much shorter than my mother...but he is rather tall for his age? Could he end up taller than his father?

We shall see. Ainan has embarked on a new time of change. A time in which he will become, in some ways, a stranger to the child we have known. In other ways, perhaps, he might become more familiar as he more closely resembles his parents.

In a way, this is a bit sad. I had become so used to the boy he was, that the thought that that boy will soon be gone and a man would be in his place, is an odd thought. I wonder what it will be like to have a mature Ainan around?

In a handful of years, we shall know. It won’t be long, now.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(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

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, 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 athttp://www.genghiscan.com/This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.) 

Clint Eastwood is not the only one.

Fintan, 8, can be a rather cool kid, sometimes. By this I mean, cool in the way that certain iconic film stars have been, in my lifetime – with their pithy lines and their meaningful expressions, saying so much more than the words they have used. I mean the kind of cool that makes an impression on the viewer that is still remembered many years later. Fintan has that kind of cool, without really being aware of it.

A week or so ago, Fintan was playing Team Fortress 2 – a “shoot em up” style computer game.

He played with an easy flair of one accustomed to such things. At one point he shot a rocket at the feet of an opponent, which blasted the intact man far into the air.

“You don’t want to have a dead man’s body falling from the sky!” he remarked to his elder brother Ainan.

Then he fired again at the man, in mid air, catching him in a direct hit.

“You want pieces of him!”

The man exploded scattering chunks of redness everywhere.

His action and attendant words were so deft, so skilled, so well timed, that Ainan laughed to see him do it. When I heard the story, it immediately called to mind the pithy sayings of Clint Eastwood’s, or Arnold Schwarzenegger’s filmic alter egos, in which they would, in a few words, make comic what is, in fact, disagreeable to anyone of any sensitivity.

I don’t expect that Fintan is aware of what he is doing when he speaks in such a way, but actually he is being quite comically skilled. He creates an expectation with one statement – in this case that he disagreed with the idea that a dead man should be falling from the sky – and then follows it up with an even worse fate for the dead man. That is a structure which evokes laughter in the unprepared. What strikes me about it is that a young boy can be aware of and make use of such a structure, without perhaps being conscious that he is doing so. Comedy seems to emerge spontaneously in child development, humour being one of the more interesting manifestations of a developing personality. What is particularly interesting about it is that it appears spontaneously in some children, but not, it seems, in all children. What is it, I wonder that allows for the development of humour in some but not others? Why are some children simply funnier than their fellows? One aspect, I believe is the ability to consider the unexpected and the unlikely and bring them into the conversation. Some children do that readily, it being, perhaps, a property of imagination. Other children are stuck in the real, in what is, and what is before them, and cannot readily do this – so they are not funny.

All three of our sons are funny in their own ways. This humour often depends on the bizarre quality of their thought. In seeing them in action, I am often moved to consider the nature of their parents, and the origins of such a tendency to the bizarre. In that, I would say both their parents are to blame to some extent. It is funny though, to see these attributes reincarnated in the next generation and see them manifest in different ways. Few things in life are more interesting than observing how elements of oneself are reborn in the subsequent generations. My children’s style of humour is one of them. I look forward to much enjoyment to come.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(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

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, 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 athttp://www.genghiscan.com/This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

The deepest wish for the future.

To have children, is to be a watcher of the future. To look on them, is to wonder what they might become, one day and to feel a duty to guide them or empower them , to be whatever they truly wish.

A couple of days ago, my wife Syahidah looked at me across the dining table.

“I hope our kids grow to be as patient as you.”, she began, her eyes looking deeply across the table and into the future, at the same time.

I was pleased to hear that implicit compliment.

“...and as tidy as me.”, she said, with a meaningful gaze.

I wasn’t so pleased to hear that implicit criticism!

I laughed though. “That is just like something Fintan might say.”

She smiled her agreement.

We see each other, in each other, every day, in ways little and large. Her remark had the comic structure of Fintan’s utterances – and no doubt, his had that structure, because of her. I felt the invisible bonds of like mindedness joining us, in that moment. We are each a part of the other, a partial reflection of each other. This is a fact of all families – but one too often not fully understood I feel. Every one of our children is a part of us, us a part of them. In their minds are thoughts we would recognize as like our own, feelings too, that we know so well.

I like this togetherness. It is what makes a family feel so different from any other random group of people known to each other. We are not just known to each other – we are like each other, fashioned from the very same cognitive and affective substance.

It is interesting to look at our children and see which elements of them come from my wife and which from myself. It is not difficult to see the jigsaw puzzle that they are, as a rearrangement of components within ourselves.

Considering her wish, I would say I have to agree. I hope they have my patience and her tidiness – the other way around just would not do at all!

One day, we will know. I look forward to that day and all the others, in which my children are becoming. It is a story of infinite richness, written before my eyes, daily. It is also a story I cannot, now, imagine, ever having missed.

Here’s to a patient and tidy future!

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(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

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, 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 athttp://www.genghiscan.com/

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

Where things come from.

Today, Tiarnan, five, asked one of his quintessential Tiarnanisms. I use the term to capture the distinct way he thinks about the world.

His mother had just been cooking. Tiarnan looked across at the sum of her work and enquired:

“Mummy made the soup...but who made God?”

His mother had no answer but a captivated smile. Once again, Tiarnan had asked a question that I doubt any other person has framed, in exactly the same way, ever at all.

Tiarnan is much troubled by the question of God, at present. His elder brother, Fintan, eight, has been heard to complain:

“Mummy: Tiarnan won’t leave me in peace, in the bathroom: he is always asking me about God!”

Tiarnan has come to see the question of who made God, as a bit of a problem. He understands the idea of a being that makes all things...but then, he is led, ineluctably, to the question of how the maker made themselves – or who made the maker. Like a good little scientist, he has seen the logical problem in the God Solution, to the origin of the Universe – and it concerns him.

Now, I could sit him down and tell him of my own thoughts on the matter. However, I don’t think I will. I believe that it is better for him to ponder this question on his own and come up with his own thoughts on it. Besides, telling him my thoughts, would only deprive him of the pleasure and reward of thinking it through himself. So, I will let him ponder – and enjoy the reports of his thoughts, as they fall off his tongue, at random intervals, in the times to come. It is better that way. Childhood is more entertaining, when left to the children, to think through.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(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

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, 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 athttp://www.genghiscan.com/

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

Portal 2 and spatial problem solving skills.

Portal 2 is a science fiction puzzle game, on the PS3 and other platforms. Each level is a spatial puzzle, requiring the player to interact with the environment and change it or behave within it so as to achieve an unstated spatial aim. The puzzles are of varying difficulty, throughout, some of them very obscure indeed, requiring quite a bit of thought to solve. It is, I would say, aimed at engaged, smart, young adults, willing to put in the hours to solve the puzzles. It requires, therefore, a much more thoughtful approach than is typical of computer games. Thus, it most likely appeals to the more cerebral game player.

In June of this year, Fintan received Portal 2 for his birthday, from his grandmother (my mother). He couldn’t have been happier at his present and immediately dived into the game world, on the very first day. Ainan joined him on the adventure and Tiarnan watched, largely silently, from the sidelines. Together, they solved every puzzle in the game, and completed it in a few days. However, there was one day which was particularly surprising. Ainan and Fintan had encountered a particularly devious puzzle. They had wrestled with it, together for much of one afternoon, whilst Tiarnan had watched them. Then they decided to take a break. Whilst they did so, Tiarnan, five, picked up the controls and began to play. A few minutes later, his little voice could be heard crying: “I did it! I did it!” Ainan and Fintan rushed to see what had happened. To their shock, Tiarnan had solved the problem, on his own, that had stumped them for hours. Ainan came to me with the news and I came to see for myself what he had done.

Tiarnan’s solution struck me as complex and clever – yet he had seen it in a few minutes of being in charge of the controls. I understood, then, that Tiarnan was showing considerable skill in spatial thinking. This was not the only time I had been led to understand so – but this example was particularly striking since I know that both of his elder brothers are also strong spatial thinkers. Tiarnan’s grasp of spatial problems is rather uncanny. How could he have solved, so quickly, that which had stumped his two elder brothers for a few hours? Part of the reason, might have been the obscurity of the solution...and somehow Tiarnan’s thinking leads him to consider obscure solutions, or less likely approaches.

That Tiarnan should have solved a difficult problem so quickly, with such apparent ease, reminds me of Ainan’s early years, when he, too, did things that were totally surprising and quite beyond belief. There seems to be much in common between the eldest and youngest brothers, which is not surprising, I suppose, given their common origin.

It was funny to watch Ainan and Fintan’s reaction to Tiarnan’s solution to the problem. They were very excited for him. There was no jealousy, at all. In fact, they were really impressed that he had done so. They, more than myself, knew how hard the problem was – and how surprising it was, therefore, that Tiarnan should have solved it. It is good to see them accepting each other, without rancour and being positive towards the abilities and achievements of each other. I have never seen any achievement inspired envy in any of them. I am glad that this is the prevailing “culture” in the family – long may it be so.

It should be noted that the problem that Tiarnan solved was the only one that Ainan and Fintan could not solve, in good time, themselves. There was something unexpected about it, which had thwarted them.

I can recommend Portal 2 as a challenge to any child and adult. I warn you though – that, to solve the game, many an hour, will have to be invested. It seems to me that a bright child is more likely to invest that time than a time harried adult. Nevertheless, both will find the challenge interesting. It is a game that actually requires an intellect to play – and there are too few of them around. I hope, one day, that there is a Portal 3 for my children to enjoy.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(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

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, 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 athttp://www.genghiscan.com/

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

Of Casinos and confectionery.

“Mum,” began Fintan, eight, with a certain puzzled intensity, “Why is gambling a sin?”

Syahidah’s curious eyes appraised his puzzled eyes, a little surprised at the question.

“It is a sin because gambling is addictive and it ruins your life.”

“Oh my God!”, Fintan exclaimed, with shocked, widening eyes, “What is chocolate, then? I am addicted to chocolate!”

She had to smile, at the connection he drew – and reassured him that chocolate was fine.

This little conversation didn’t stop him eating chocolate, subsequently, though perhaps he indulged a little more appreciatively of his “addiction”.

I like Fintan’s question. It shows that he is trying to understand the moral codes of adults and come to an appreciation of why it is that certain behaviours are thought bad and others not. It also shows that he considers that this adult labelling is not intrinsically clear – that is, things which we deem wrong, do not necessarily appear wrong to him. He could not, himself, understand why gambling would be a “sin”. He must have considered the activity – the playing of games for money – and not been able to see what was wrong with that. This suggests that the innate morality of a child and the constructed morality of adults are not the same thing. He appraises the morality of things from a fresh, innocent and largely uninfluenced position, not yet having been indoctrinated into adult thinking. It is refreshing to see him come to his own viewpoints as to what is wrong and what is not. Of course, by asking his mother for her understandings, he is seeking to teach himself the adult world’s moral stance – or at least the moral stance of my wife’s adult world. However, I see that, in him, there is another morality, already extant, to which he is comparing his mother’s views.

This leads me to wonder what his moral views would be, were he not to be instructed at all in the constructed adult world’s ones. Would his views remain as they are now – the moral outlook of a child? The experiment cannot be done, and should not be, for moral reasons, ironically...but it is interesting to speculate how much of our moral views are indoctrinated as we grow up, and how many are intrinsic. It is clear that Fintan has intrinsic views, but that he is seeking an understanding of the extrinsic ones. This suggests that he is prepared to believe that those outside himself, have more moral understanding than he does. His outlook therefore, is that he is prepared to learn what people he trusts believe to be so.

It is revealing that he considers moral issues at all. I am not sure how many kids these days, actually think of moral matters...but Fintan does. He is concerned that he lives his life, in the right – but to do so, he must first come to an understanding of what is right, and what is not.

I mustn’t let him spoil his enjoyment of chocolate, though...for that would be an unnecessary loss. Now, I am just going to give him a piece of one of his favoured chocolate bars...

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(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

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, 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 athttp://www.genghiscan.com/

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

A little old man.

Tiarnan is just five years old. Yet, at times, he seems like a little old man.

A couple of days ago, I was working, to a self-imposed deadline, on some project or other. It was night and my sons were waiting for me to put them to bed. The door to my “office” creaked open. In came my littlest boy: Tiarnan.

“We have waited SO long for you...”, he began, in an exasperated tone, his little face peering up at me with a certain degree of pique. Tiarnan, as you may know, is rather emotional and does “pique” rather well (and all other emotional states, for that matter). It is almost as if his emotions have been concentrated, in his small frame, by having such a small space to exist in. He is like one of those cunning little chillis, that look so small and unassuming but which have the capacity to burn through your mouth in an instant.

I looked down at him, not answering for the time being, my thoughts still on my project.

“Would you do that to your friend?”, he enquired, his eyebrows raised. “No!”, he answered, for me. “So don’t do it to us!”, he scolded at last.

His words seemed so out of place, on his diminutive tongue, supported by his modest, elfin frame. It was as if an old man had possessed him and given him the attitude and demeanour of a peeved 80 year old.

His words impressed me out of my chair. I rose, took his hand and led him to his room. Then, I read my sons a few stories and settled them down to sleep.

As I left them asleep, I couldn’t help but wonder at the social maturity of my youngest son. He clearly understood social norms of behaviour very well and knew how a person should normally conduct himself. The wonder of it was, how he had come to such an understanding, with so little time in the world, to do so. Was this an instinctual thing with him? Or was he able to derive social rules, quickly, on little information? Or was he just projecting himself into the world and judging the actions of others based on what he, himself, would do? There was no telling which it was. I knew only this: my littlest boy was not such a little boy inside his head. There is an understanding, in him, beyond his years, for many things, particularly about people and how they are or should be. It is strange to say it, but this premature wisdom gives him a great charm – for his words and observations seem so unaccountably out of place, that they draw attention to themselves. To hear something said by such a little person is, oddly, to give it great weight. We heed most, what we least expect to hear.

Tiarnan’s words did prompt me to reflect on my own actions. I hadn’t kept him waiting for long – perhaps fifteen minutes – which doesn’t seem long to me – but to him, it was far too long.

Maybe he is right. Perhaps I should attend to them, first, and set aside whatever else it is I am doing. In their world, brief times seem very long indeed.

Sorry Tiarnan. Next time, you won’t have to wait for Daddy.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(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

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, 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 athttp://www.genghiscan.com/

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

They will never know.

Looking back on my past, an unavoidable thought comes to me: many of the people I remember, are no longer alive, or are very unlikely to be.

Today, I was reflecting on my prep school days. This was a brief, though seemingly long few years of my life, which provided, perhaps, the only island of acceptance, in my whole school career. I shall explain. In the years before I joined this particular prep school (Westbury House School, in New Malden, Surrey), I had been in the state school system. In those schools, I had not been accepted, in any real way, by the students around me. I had “stood out” too much, as someone different. The difference was clear: I was much brighter than the other students – and they were even aware of it, for the names some of them used for me, were pejorative ones, based around the idea of cleverness. There were a few children there, who were well disposed towards me, however, so it wasn’t utterly uncomfortable – yet it has to be said, that it probably would not have been good for me to have stayed there too much longer. For a start, I wasn’t really learning anything, because nothing challenging was being presented. The only lesson I would have learnt, had I stayed longer, was that being clever means being marginalized.

Westbury House School was much better. It was a small school, with small classes and a personal touch. It was actually, as it stated in the name, a house, that had been converted into a school. As a child, I thought it enormous. As an adult, when I saw it again, I saw nothing more than an adapted house, with a playground attached. Yet, it provided something I didn’t know, until I received it, that I had been lacking: acceptance. At Westbury House School, I was not only accepted, but was popular. It is funny, but the teachers and the Headmistress, had managed to cultivate a culture in which being a good student, was to be admired. All there aspired to do well, and did not resent those who did well. It was a good place for a bright young child to be, in social terms, at least. Academic success was not punished by exclusion, as it so often is – but rewarded by respect.

Today my thoughts turned to a particular teacher. I cannot now recall her name – but she was my form teacher in my final year, at Westbury House School. She taught me English, among other things. It is this fact that awoke my thoughts. I realized that her pedantry over words and their use – for she was very particular about them, in a positive sort of way – was one of the reasons why my own use of English, became, as it is to this day: accurate, in its grammar and word usage – at least without any obvious errors. She would explain the rules of English to us, with an absolutism that we did not find off-putting, but actually found reassuring in a way – for, at least, someone knew what the rules were. She also did so without recourse to unnecessary jargon.

She was an old lady then. She had brownish hair, but her face was lined, and her body thin, with the kind of slenderness that comes to some, with the passing of the years. She must have been about sixty, when she taught me. It seems impossible that she might still be alive, since the time I reflect on is about thirty three years ago. She looked severe, in her bodily form – severe and spare – but she was actually quite kindly. She had a policy towards teaching me that I actually found quite liberating. She had noted that I usually finished any task set, long before the other kids. So, she asked me to read a book, instead. This was quite easy to do since I sat at the back of the class, in the corner, with the only bookshelf directly behind me. I would thus, turn my head and browse until I found a book I liked, then I would read until the other kids had caught up.

I loved to read, as a child, so this made my time in her class much more congenial. It also personalized it for me – because the books I chose were always ones that I liked. This policy of hers applied to all classes that she took with me – and that included maths. I also finished first in maths too, so I had plenty of time to read whilst waiting for the other kids.

I remember one book in particular, which concerned the finding by some children of “100,000 francs”, which, at the time, seemed an impossibly large sum and probably was, for when the book was written. What struck me about the book was the drawing the front of the children running. One of the children was me. Yes. It was most odd, but one of the faces of the kids, looked just like me. It was funny. I picked out the book because I liked the sound of the story and it just so happened that the picture looked like me. All the other kids thought so too. It was as if I had actually posed for the portrait myself. It seems the artist may have imagined a face, but that face had turned out to be not so imaginary after all. Either that, or I look like a French kid somewhere, long ago, since the book was set in France and may even have been written by a French writer, in English.

I felt welcome in that classroom, in that school. It was the first educational situation in which I could be myself without the hint of a social penalty. Of course, there was no use of the word “gifted” in those days. Nor was there any differentiated curriculum – at least not in that school. My “differentiated curriculum” was being assigned to read books, at the back, whilst others got the through the work I had already done. I wasn’t actually ever set harder work or different work to do. Yet, I didn’t mind. I wasn’t bored because I had books to read. The time wasn’t wasted and those days reading no doubt contributed to my ultimate familiarity with the written word. As a teacher, she was wise enough to make sure I had something interesting to do and did not leave me sitting BORED waiting for everyone else.

What gets me about this memory is that my teacher, whose name I am sorry I cannot recall, will never know what became of me. She doubtless has died already. Thus, she would never have found out the long term consequences of my presence in her classroom – consequences to which she would have made some contribution, in some way, even if it would be impossible to determine exactly what – other than, as I note, a particular attitude to the English language. She never knew that I became a writer. She has never read this blog. She cannot have read my books, because though written, I have yet to publish them. She never learnt of my scientific contributions – for those papers only began to be published in the last few years. She never learnt that I had acted, in plays, tv and the odd film. She never knew that I had fathered some gifted children and left the UK for South East Asia. She never learnt anything of my adult life. I left her classroom one day, to go to another school – and, from her point of view, I left her life, altogether, too.

It is a pity, in a way, that she never knew. It is a pity that I never got the chance to tell her what effect her bookish intervention had had on me – or how it had me feel so much more interested in my educational experience. I remember now, the feeling I felt as a young boy, being given permission to read at the back of the class: I felt it to be a privilege and an acknowledgement too, that I had done the work and needed something more to do. I felt a boyish pride in being so singled out. I suppose, in a way, that was a very important intervention, in terms of the growth of self-belief. It made me realize that I was special in some way and that that specialness had been recognized. However, it must be said, that there had been many prior occasions on which I had inferred that I was different in a special kind of way – but this was one of the first I can recall, in which another acknowledged that difference and responded positively to it. As such, it is, no doubt, important.

I would like the chance to speak to some of these figures of my childhood and to let them know what effect each had on my development. I would also like the chance to thank those who deserved thanks. Of course, there are those who deserve to be chastised for their conduct, but I don’t think I will trouble myself with them. However, it is, most likely not possible for many of these people, I still remember: most of them will be dead by now. Only I know, who was important and why. Only I know, who contributed positively to my early life – and who did not. They are gone now. They will never have known, the way they touched me. In a way, that is sad – but there is nothing to be done. It simply takes too much time to grow up and become, for those who were elderly at the beginning of the journey, to still be alive at its fruition.

So, I am left, here, to thank one who cannot read my words: thanks, to my nameless form teacher, for inviting me to read, at the back of the class, whilst others poured over problems I had already solved. It meant something to me, at the time, which I never got the chance to say. It means something more to me, now, that I have come to understand its long-term impact, on the person I became. Thank you.

(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.htmland here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, 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 athttp://www.genghiscan.com/

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