Natural hairstyle and individuality

As regular readers will know, Fintan, four, has curly hair. Yet, we live in Singapore - a "Land of the Straight-Hairs", as I call it. Basically everyone, apart from foreign visitors, has straight, black, flat hair.

A few days ago, Syahidah took Fintan to the Science Centre, in Singapore. This is a kind of interactive Science Museum - though not as extensive as the Science Museum in Kensington, London, that I remember from my childhood, it is still worth a visit, particularly for children.

While wandering around the exhibits, Syahidah noticed two children who looked rather surprising: they both had curly hair.

"Look Fintan!" she pointed them out to him, "They are like you."

He looked and he saw and then he spoke a little disenchantedly, "Yeh, but who is the father?"

His arm picked out a man far away across the room, amidst the bustle of many people coming and going - a curly headed man. How he spotted the man in such a crowded, busy, poorly lit, room is a marvel - but being sharp of eye is typical for Fintan.

There was too much separation between the children and the "father" so Syahidah watched him for a while. Soon enough she saw him close the gap between them and interact with the kids: sure enough, he was the father.

This was one of the only occasions that Fintan has ever seen another curly headed person. Two things are interesting here: first, he was very quick to scan the environment and link the distant curly headed man as father to the nearby curly headed children. But also, it is telling, perhaps in a sad way, the conclusion he drew from this: that those children had reason enough for their curly hair - but he did not. You see neither his mother nor his father have curly hair - but we both have slightly wavy hair. It seems that two genetic doses of "wavy" is enough to make hair curly.

Why do I write this? Well, Fintan feels set apart by his appearance here, in Singapore. No other child of his acquaintance looks remotely like him. He doesn't look Malay (but is half-Malay), he doesn't look Irish (but is half-Irish), he doesn't look Chinese (but speaks it a little), he doesn't look Indian (but occasionally eats their food!). He has no real visual affiliation with any of the basic groupings of Singapore. Being of two different racial lineages, he looks only like his brothers. Allied to this disparity of race, is his hairstyle - abundant, never straight, curls, with plenty of natural body - and this makes him feel marked out from his fellow children. That feeling is unlikely to ever leave him, unless we live somewhere else.

Even Syahidah's attempt to make him feel that there were others, by pointing out the curly-headed children fell flat - because the father's appearance made it clear where their appearance comes from: Fintan has no such understanding of his origin. He cannot say to himself: "My hair looks like Daddy's" or "My hair looks like Mummy's". The fact is, it looks like neither's. Perhaps, then, he feels a little unanchored, a little set adrift. He needs to be moored to the facts of his origin - in a comprehensible visual way - but, owing to his mixed genetic lineage, he cannot really have that. The admixture has obscured his origins - and made something new.

Yet, I am happy for him that he is different. He is different in many ways - and not just hair. He is very much himself and unlike any other. In time, I think he will come to appreciate that and learn to be content with the way things are. It is just that, at four years old, finding common ground with one's fellow youngsters is a big social issue.

I look forward to the day when he is happy to be a stocky, curly headed, half-Irish, half-Malay, handsome man!

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and nine months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and two months, and Tiarnan, nineteen 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, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

On being different in a conformist world

There are many things I could write about this topic, but today I will choose a single vignette which relates to the title. I may write other posts expanding this topic in future - indeed, I probably should.

We live in Singapore. In this city state, most people are Chinese - about 80 % roughly. About 14% are Malay and the rest are Indian with the merest sprinkling of Caucasian (rare enough so that in most circumstances I feel the odd one out). There are, of course, Eurasians, but not that many. My children come into this category.

Asians generally have straight black hair. Thus Singapore, being almost exclusively Asian, is dominated by an almost universal possession of straight black hair. This may seem like a minor matter, but visually, if you grew up in a culture with a more varied genetic heritage - such as London, where I did - you would find this uniformity strange. In my childhood, everyone seemed to have subtly different hair, across a wide range of possibilities. Here, in most cases, it is black and straight.

Fintan, three, however, is different. Being Eurasian, he has a mix of influences, and in his case, this mix has produced markedly curly hair. My hair has a slight wave. So does my wife's (unusually, for here). However, Fintan seems to have got a double dose of it - and has ended up distinctly curly.

How do the other children relate to this? Well, in one sense, not well. Fintan took to using a word about a year ago, that he had obviously heard at school. I didn't know what it referred to for a long time: but it seems it refers to his curly hair. He had clearly been called this. At first, he repeated the word, without any due gravity, but later it seemed to bother him. Curly hair is rather rare here and Fintan is probably the only child his school friends have encountered who has such hair. It might seem like a small matter - but it seems big in a country where everyone's hair looks the same - except Fintan's.

A month or two ago, I saw Fintan, after he had had a shower, patting his hair down. Clearly, once it is wet, the curly headedness abates until it is dry: it seems flat like everyone elses. I saw this and said: "Your hair is nice Fintan...it is different."

He shook his head.

"No. I don't want curly hair...I want to be handsome."

He is handsome, the poor boy. His mixed heritage has given him a rugged beauty few boys possess - and one day he will, no doubt, be a very handsome man.

I felt sad to see him so concerned about his hair. I cannot be with him, throughout his day, as he encounters people who have never seen such hair - but I can try to build up his view of himself so that he accepts his difference and, perhaps, one day, finds comfort in it.

Yet, each time he showers, he flattens his hair and is content with it for awhile - at least until it dries. Why can't people accept each other's differences instead of making an issue of them? Fintan wouldn't even be aware of his hair if other kids had not made it an issue. It is all quite sad.

(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 three months, or Tiarnan, thirteen 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, adult genius, baby genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)