When advice, is not advice.

Long ago, my brother Josh was starting out on his career in the financial world.

(I have referred to him elsewhere in one story that told of his savant-like gift for mental calculation. As I noted then, he has the gift, but he does not have a savant's impairment - but is, in fact, profoundly gifted.)

It was at this time that he was given what I have recently come to regard as a mischievous piece of advice. This supposedly helpful adviser was aware of Josh's ability to do complex calculations instantly and instinctively, in his mind, without reference to a calculator or computer. In the financial world, at that time, there were many roles which involved the manipulation of numbers, the analysis of numerical data and the ability to understand all things mathematical. There would seem, therefore, to be one obvious piece of advice that Josh could have been given...but what he was actually advised to do was something altogether different.

This adviser told Josh, as I heard the story, many years ago, to steer clear of any role that involved direct interaction with numbers. He argued that it would become unbearable, for one such as Josh, with his innate understanding of number, to be surrounded by numbers, all day. Josh, as a young man, just out of University, took this advice at face value - and duly steered clear of any role having such direct and considerable daily involvement with numbers.

Think about that for a moment. Josh had a unique gift for instant calculation and interpretation of numbers. He could do what no other could, numerically. The possible implications for effective outcomes for one such as that, placed in a situation which allowed the interpretation of numbers to have a real world effect, are boundless. Truly, he could have done something very interesting indeed. Yet, he was advised not to become involved with numbers. I wonder at the mischief behind such advice. Josh was being advised to avoid playing to his greatest strength, being advised to hide his talents, to operate in an area in which they would have no direct use. Such advice could only have been meant unkindly, I think - unless the adviser truly misunderstood the situation - but I think that unlikely.

Josh never did apply his numerical gift, professionally, as far as I am aware. He took the advice and let his calculatory gift lie dormant and rarely called upon. That is, I feel, a pity.

I tell this tale for an obvious reason. You or your children may have unusual gifts. At various times others, in a position of authority, may advise you or your children as to careers and courses. I would evaluate their advice with the story above in mind - and ask these questions:

Does the advice take note of the innate strengths of the child? Does the advice play to the strengths of the child - or does it ignore them? Is the adviser someone likely to be in competition at the organization with your child? If so, then look more closely still at the advice that is being given.

The gifted are not welcomed everywhere. Sometimes people feel threatened by their gifts - and do what they can to hide them, obstruct them or otherwise interfere with their expression.

Had Josh become directly involved with numbers, in an area in which the rapid understanding of their meaning and possibilities had real world implications, he would have become, in all probability, the best in his field, in the world - for no other could compete with him, in the matter of mental calculation.

In taking the advice he was given, he turned away from his most unusual strength, and played to others, instead - but I can't help but wonder what would have happened had he exercised a gift that no-one else could challenge him in.

Ensure that your child is never left to wonder such a thing, too: play to their strengths, whatever they may be.

(I should point out that Josh has led a fulfilling and interesting career, since. Yet, the point remains that there are applications for his unused gift that would have been truly remarkable.)

(If you would like to read about Ainan Celeste Cawley, Josh's nephew, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and six months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, three, and Tiarnan, sixteen 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. Thanks.)

Gifted isolation or gifted community?

Most gifted people, children or adults, live fairly isolated lives. This is because of the statistical reality of their gifts. If you are more gifted than one in a thousand people, not many of the people you meet in life will be comparable. If you are more gifted than one in ten thousand, you may not encounter any in your life who are as gifted as you - except if you frequent those places where gifted people concentrate. If you are more gifted than one in a million people, it is almost certain that you will never encounter anyone "on your level" in your lifetime. Giftedness can, therefore, be a lonely affair.

Yet, not all is as it seems. One can have a conversation with anyone, on your level, or not. Furthermore, the "gifted communities" that might be available may not be supportive at all. I encountered one, or should I say one encountered me - an American message board, devoted to the extremely gifted - and too many of the comments received about me and my family were highly unpleasant. This would have been poor behaviour coming from anyone - but from a "gifted community support group" it was entirely inappropriate. However, it taught me a lesson: gifted community is not all that it should be and not all that it purports to be.

Before I go on, I should say that some boards do appear to be more friendly places - so there is great variety in the "gifted community support groups" out there. Some will be supportive, some will be jealous, hostile, embittered places that no-one would want to be.

The question you need to answer is: are you happy in your isolation - or do you need "community"? For many, who are honest with themselves, will discover that they have found happiness without the need for "community". Many gifted people express their talents through some complex productive activity - be it creative or not - and it is in this activity that their giftedness is manifest. There is less need for them, therefore, to have a "gifted community" to relate to. There is another issue which you should note. Contact with the gifted community can alter some parents' perspective on their children in ways which are negative. For instance, what if a gifted parent of a moderately gifted child encounters a support group for the profoundly gifted? How is that parent going to feel when he or she learns that their child is not only not so gifted after all, but, in comparison, seemingly not gifted at all? Are they going to be disappointed in their child? Are they going to expect less of them? Before such exposure to the wider gifted community, such a parent may have been happy with their smart kid and have looked forward to a bright future for them. Afterwards, they may not be so happy, nor have such high expectations. Yet, they are wrong to do so, for what it is very important to realize is that how your child will fare in life is NOT dependent on their relationship to the gifted community - but on their relationship to the NON-gifted community. You see, a moderately gifted child is going to become a moderately gifted adult - and, as such, will be smarter than almost everyone they meet. They will be smart enough to succeed in most occupations - and will be able to make a very good contribution in life, in whatever endeavour they choose. In fact, the moderately gifted child may grow into a better adjusted adult, who is consequently more productive, than their more gifted fellows - for the more gifted one is, the harder it can be to adjust to the world as it is.
(The ideal range of giftedness is an IQ 125 to 150 according to one estimate. This is the range of best fit to the environment, that allows most effective use of one's talents, without communication problems between the gifted person and their environment. A moderately gifted person, at IQ 130, say, fits into that range. So does a highly gifted person, at IQ 145.)

A parent must not lose sight of the reality of their child, in comparison to the wider world. Comparison to the gifted community is misleading. You see, the gifted community comprises a very unusual group of people. They are not the wider world. How successful your gifted child will be is dependent on their merit relative to the wider world - and not in comparison to the gifted community. If your child is smarter than the average person, then they will have better opportunities than the average person. It is irrelevant to know that there is some kid much smarter than your own - because that kid is not really the competition for your child, in most endeavours. There are too few extremely gifted children for them to be considered competition for most endeavours - there are just not enough of them to go around.

Contact with the gifted community may produce a lack of appreciation of your child's specialness, by confronting a parent with many children who are as gifted or more gifted than your own. In such an environment, you may UNLEARN an understanding of how special your child is. Your child is special in relation to the average child. In the wider world, it is the average child that your own will encounter most often. It is the average child who will fill many workplaces. These are the ones to measure your child against. Measurement against a child who is one in a million is laughably irrelevant - because there are so few such children and they cannot, in their numerical paucity, ever be competition for your child, in any real sense. Measurement against them, therefore, can only have negative effects - for it may reduce your appreciation of what is special in your own child.

Any gifted parent of a gifted child, therfore, should cherish the specialness of their child in relation to the world as a whole. Gifted community is for those who feel a need to be among those like themselves - and that is an understandable motivation. But if you do venture into the gifted community, choose well among those available - some are positive places, some are not. Furthermore, understand that no matter where your child is on the gifted scale, they remain special in TRUE terms, because they are unusual in relation to the wider world and the typical human. Any gifted child is equipped to do something special in the world, given a chance to grow and show themselves. That some are more equipped than others, does not alter the fact that all gifted children are more equipped than is usual.

We are not connected to a gifted community here, in Singapore - but we are quite happy in our isolation. We have each other and we have an understanding of our children in relation to the wider world. Our children are accepted by the non-gifted community and we have not had hostility on the personal level. On the whole, that is a lot better than what we encountered on that "gifted community support group". I would say, therefore, in conclusion that gifted isolation can actually be superior to gifted community - it really depends on which community you encounter and what you need from them. We enjoy our quiet lives, here, with no actual direct contact with a gifted community: you can too.

(If you would like to read of my scientific child prodigy son, Ainan Celeste Cawley, seven years and one month, and his gifted brothers, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

The mathematical savant who isn't a savant

I believe from the evidence of my life, and from the evidence of science, that great gift is a gift of the genes. It flows through families by inheritance: it is not something made, laboriously in a life, toiling day by day. It is there, or it isn't. It shines or it doesn't.

I have posted before about the inheritance of IQ, in Genius IQ and Genetic Inheritance at:
http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/genius-iq-and-genetic-inheritance.html

However, it is not just IQ that is inherited - all our mental gifts are - especially the unique gifts that show themselves to a wondering world every now and again, in people we know as geniuses or prodigies. This blog is about my children and their gifts - but occasionally I will also post about their relatives to show what is very clear to me: a pattern of genetic inheritance of gift flowing through my family. You may very well see the same pattern in your own family - and if so, please comment about it, to expand our understanding of this issue.

I have many relatives, but I shall focus on one, who shall not be named. He doesn't know I am writing of him, so I will not reveal any details of his life, except the one that pertains to this post. He has shown a very special gift, that he has never thought much of, since he was a child. You see he is a "lightning calculator". He has a savant-like gift for number. He is a very intelligent man. When tested by his employer on an adult IQ test, he maxed the test. So he is not a savant for only one reason: savants usually display some form of mild retardation. He is not retarded. He is profoundly gifted. However, he shows the gift of a mathematical savant, too. I find this interesting, for it shows that savant type gifts can exist in people of normal or even extraordinary intelligence.

Ever since he was a young boy he could do something very strange with numbers. If you asked him a calculation, using the normal mathematical functions, he would be able to give you the answer straight away, without hesitation and without error. What was strange about this was that he could do so quicker than you could type the question into a calculator. He could do it for large numbers - and he was always right. In earlier days, this gift of his would have been much prized, but in the age of computers, it is something that is not valued, despite the fact that he could beat you on your calculator to the answer. Whether or not our society values this gift, it indicates a special quality of the mind, that is very rare.

When he was training in London for a financial institution, the lecturer noticed his gift for numbers and gave him a very long, multifunctional calculation to do, which he wrote on the board. As he finished writing it, he gave the answer. The lecturer then asked if anyone in the audience had a calculator and got them to check the answer. He was right. The lecturer observed that in the twenty years he had been training the entrants to this financial institution, most of them with strong mathematical backgrounds, he had never encountered anyone so fast with numbers as him.

When he was at school, there was a child mathematical prodigy there, whom the press had hailed as "the brightest boy since the middle ages". This boy challenged my relative to an arithmetical duel. He duly accepted. A third boy chose two very large numbers for multiplication and called them out. It was not long before the prodigy shouted out an answer. My relative said, at once: "You are wrong!", then a moment later gave his own answer. The calculator was duly set to work. My relative was right. Upon being pronounced the winner, he then turned to the prodigy and told him exactly which step the other had made a mistake in, what the mistake was, and how the miscalculation had come about. While working out the calculation for himself, he had followed the other's miscalculation and worked out the solution of which step, out of all possible steps, and which error, out of all possible errors, would have resulted in the answer the other had given.

There was an embarrassed silence. My kin had won.

(If you would like to learn more of the Cawley family, in particular, my son Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged six, and his gifted brothers go to:
http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html )