Conquering insurmountable difficulties

I learn much from simply being with my children. I learn about people, about life, and character. I learn about what makes people what they are. All these lessons are there to be had, if one would only open one's eyes to them.

Two weeks ago, on the 12th November, I was in a playground with Tiarnan. He had climbed onto a horse, on a carousel and pointed towards another horse, beside which I stood, indicating that I should mount my one. My horse was taller than his. It was also not meant for adults. So, I was reluctant to try its strength with my inordinate weight. Therefore, I pretended to an inability to reach this taller horse. I lifted my right leg, in an effort to climb onto it, and strained to reach it, failing, to do so.

Tiarnan looked at me, silently, evaluating the situation.

I tried to mount the horse, again - and failed, again, my leg unable to go over the high horse.

Tiarnan took in this scene and made a decision. He climbed off his horse, taking his leg around and off its back and dropped down onto the floor in a fairly fluid motion. He then hurried over to my horse and reached up to it, with his arm, his hand grasping the "saddle". He began to pull himself up with one hand. Then he flung his leg upwards and hooked it over the top of the horse and using the force of hand and hooked leg combined, he levered himself up onto the horse - one built for a much older child than him, for it was essentially unreachable to a toddler - at least, one would have supposed so. After some effort, he managed to pull himself into the saddle.

He looked me straight in the eye, then and, there being no need for words, he pointed back over his shoulder at the shorter horse he had vacated.

His message was clear. "I am small," his eyes said, "and you are large. I was able to climb into that smaller horse, so you can, too. By the way, I climbed into this one, too."

I suppose, if I had really been unable to climb onto the horse, I might have felt a little shame. As it was, my bluff had been called. I could hardly now pretend to be unable to climb the horse he had so easily climbed, himself.

I said nothing. I moved to the smaller horse, threw my leg over it, and pretended to settle my weight upon it.

He was satisfied. Daddy had joined him on the carousel.

I wonder what he thought, however, that Daddy could not mount the horse, but he could? Did he think less of me, or more of himself? There was no indication that he had thought any such thought, at all - his actions were those of a pragmatist. "I can do it, so I shall do it.", he said, by his actions...now you do the other one.

All of this leads to a thought, however. I had proven, to him, that a man my size couldn't mount the larger horse. What made him think that he could do it, where I could not?

There is a confidence, in him, I feel, at his physical abilities. Either that, or he has a good understanding of his own capabilities and knew that the taller horse was within his ability.

On show, I think, is an interesting character: one not afraid of challenges and one determined to overcome them. It should stand him in good stead for the life to come. An appetite for challenge comes in handy in all walks of life - whichever he chooses for his own, in time to come.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and no months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and five months, and Tiarnan, twenty-two 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, 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.)

A preference for challenge

Yesterday, I took Tiarnan to a playground. There is nothing unusual in that, of course, but in the course of play I did notice something interesting about his choices.

The centrepiece of the playground was a conglomeration of slides, stairs, overhead bridges and a climbing wall. Many kids were buzzing around it, in high speed play, running, crawling and sliding.

Tiarnan looked at the structure and decided to climb up the inclined wall to get to the frame, itself. The wall had footholds and handholds but was steep enough to be far from easy to climb. He had either to use both footholds and handholds, at once, to be able to climb up it. He did so, using all four limbs where he thought appropriate, finally reaching the top like some little mountain climber.

Then he ran across a suspended bridge, holding onto the chains to make sure he didn't slip, crawled through a tube and slid down the slide.

At the bottom he stood up and circled round to where he had started: beneath the climbing wall.

He looked at the wall and then to the left to a flight of stairs. It was as if he had noticed the stairs for the first time, so he ran over to it and climbed up the steps and went through the same circuit: across the suspended bridge, through the tunnel and down the slide.

So, nothing surprising there. But what he did next was. He immediately ran around to the climbing wall and climbed up it, laboriously, toehold by toehold, fingerhold by fingerhold, until he reached the top - and then went through the circuit again.

He did this tirelessly, time and time again, always choosing the climbing wall and never again using the stairs.

I found this most revealing of his character. The stairs was the easy option. He tried it once and never tried it again. The hard option was the climbing wall - which was, I am sure, meant for much older kids than twenty-one month old Tiarnan. (The stated age group on the slides was 2 to 6 years old). Yet, he never succumbed to the temptation to take the easy option, given a choice between the two.

What was really telling though was that the climbing wall was always free for Tiarnan to use - for the simple reason that none of the other kids used it at all. They were of all ages - some older than the upper limit of 6, seemingly. None were as small as Tiarnan. Yet, no other kid tried the climbing wall as a way to get up onto the frame.

I didn't expect to learn anything about Tiarnan at a playground - but I did. There is something in him that really prefers a challenge, to the easy way of doing things.

The other lesson of course is that there is something in the other dozen kids or so, that prefers the easy way out, to the challenge. It was a double lesson, therefore.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and eleven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and four months, and Tiarnan, twenty-one 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, 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.)

Tiarnan shows his athleticism

On August 31st, Syahidah took Tiarnan to the playground. Like many nineteen month old kids, he rather likes this.

Tiarnan climbed up the stairs to the "castle" as I like to call it: the set of play features that are embedded in the ground of every playground in the world, that I have ever seen, (in one form or another). This particular one included a slide, which could be reached by quite a number of steps, up from the rest of the "castle".

Tiarnan duly climbed up each and every step until he got to the top of the slide - and then he launched himself into the air and slid all the way down. He thought this was great and as soon as his feet touched the ground he was up and running and back clambering up the stairs to make his way back up to the top of the slide again. Once there, again, he launched himself into the air - and so on.

Syahidah watched him do this with growing amazement, for what seemed at first an everyday matter, became ever more remarkable as Tiarnan's non-stop run-climb-slide-run-climb-slide...just went on and on.

He must have done this over twenty times - which is one hell of a lot of steps and considerable running - before she decided that it was time to go. Tiarnan, though, was yet abuzz with energy.

It was in seeing him do this that Syahidah came to realize quite just how much stamina is hidden away inside Tiarnan's little body.

Sometimes, it seems, athletes come in small packages.

(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, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

Tiarnan in the playground

Today, Tiarnan, sixteen months, was in the playground. It was early evening and, while playing, he noted something which drew his attention.

Across the playground, some ten metres or so, away, there was a newspaper on the ground. Curiously, he stopped playing and ran towards, bending down to pick it up. His mother, who was watching, assumed that he was going to play with it, and worried about him getting dirty, for it was an old paper. But no, Tiarnan had other ideas.

He took the paper and ran across the playground to where a tall, metal bin, stood. Then he stretched up and threw the paper into it.

This rather surprised his mother, for she hardly expected a boy of sixteen months, to start tidying up his environment.

He then surveyed the playground, in the growing gloom, for further detritus to remove, spotted some and set about doing the same thing with this new rubbish. He roved about the playground picking up rubbish and throwing it in the bin (which he could barely reach).

As I write, I am beginning to think that it is rather refreshing, for any parent, to have a toddler who actually TIDIES up a space. As anyone who has ever been a parent will know, they are usually excessively gifted in the "making a mess" department.

Let's hope he makes a habit of it!

Cowardice in the playground

Two days ago, I saw something remarkable in its power to disturb.

Fintan, three, was in the playground and I was about fifteen to twenty metres away (it was a generously sized play area), near one of my other children. Fintan was standing by an area of low lying plants looking over them for reasons that were not clear to me, from where I was. There was a Singaporean boy behind him who looked to be ten to twelve years old. Were they playing?, I wondered.

Then the boy did something strange. He put his hands under Fintan's arms and tried to lift him. Comically, he failed, for Fintan, though only three, is very heavy: a solid boy indeed. Then he did something else - he tried to push him forward into the patch of plants in front of them. This, too, failed for the same reason of bodily mass and solidity. All this while I had been approaching them and now was close enough to speak:

"What do you think you are doing?" I asked him, not pleased at what I had seen.

He pointed into the patch of plants, where I could now see a football about one and a half metres into their midst.

"They are prickly..." he explained of the plants.

I was flabbergasted. This boy was trying to throw my three year old son into a patch of prickly plants to get his football back! I could barely believe what I had just heard. What a coward! His plan had only failed because of Fintan's unexpected mass.

"Why don't you get it yourself?" I asked rather sharply.

Something in him was shamed by my tone and he gingerly stepped forward into the prickly plants, trying to ensure that his shoes would step down on the offending prickles - and took the ball. He went off without saying a word to Fintan or myself.

I have seen many things in my life - but never have I seen a boy try to effect such a cowardly idea as that.