The way children understand.

Children are wonderfully open to experience. They allow themselves to do and see things few adults would do. 

The other day, Tiarnan started to explain a children's programme he had been watching on a DVD to his mother. With great animation and excitement he detailed for her, the plot of this film. He even accompanied his explanation with special effects sounds and gestures to illustrate the pictures he was painting. She listened intently.

What was funny about all of this, however, is that the DVD was in a language Tiarnan does not know: Thai. He had watched a Thai film and understood the plot of the film, enough to explain it to his mother, without having any access to the language at all. Few adults would, I feel, sit through an unsubtitled foreign language film, in an unfamiliar tongue. Fewer still would actually understand much of it or find it watchable, in any way. Tiarnan, however, was more than happy to watch it and more than able to focus on its strangeness and extract meaning from the, to him, "wordless" images. 

I am struck by this, how open Tiarnan is. When I compare him to adults I see closure in them, and openness in him. I would like to see him retain this openness, as he grows up, though I know it is customary for people to close down as they get older. In some ways, every adult should be like a child. I feel we would all be deeper, more learned, flexible people if that were so. Sadly, most adults are like adults - with all the limitations that implies. I wonder how this special quality of openness is lost along the way? Is it really necessary that we should all close down? 

Not only did Tiarnan watch the Thai film - but he later requested it repeatedly. He enjoyed it to the point of deliberately seeking it out. That indication of openness impressed me. 

Sadly, I don't think I could sit through a Thai film several times, without understanding it. Oh dear...I must have "grown up". 

Thank you, Tiarnan, for showing me a better way to be. 

(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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