Perception of the parents of gifted children.

Sometimes, the world thinks strange things about the parents of gifted children, particularly prodigious children. I would like you to imagine what you would think, if you were a University administrator, and someone you didn't know wrote to you about their child – say 8 to 12 years old – and asked about whether the University would accept them, on a degree course – and pointed out that they were already on a degree program elsewhere. What would you think? Be honest.

I have had this experience. I have written to Universities enquiring about whether they would accept my child prodigy son onto their courses, giving them some detail of his achievements. Indeed, I once wrote to the American University of Beirut, Lebanon and asked them that very question. The reason I did so, is I was looking for somewhere for Ainan to continue his studies, at tertiary level. At the time, he was already doing tertiary studies somewhere, but we were considering where he might go for his next step after that. The reason I looked at AUB is because it is the only place I found that offers a full range of American style education, outside of the United States. Not only that, but we know people in that city – and the University states, on its website, that it “supports gifted students”...whatever that means.

Can you guess how their admissions office responded to this attempt at contact? Give it your best shot.

The answer is they didn’t reply at all – despite me writing to them twice, over a five or six week period. Given their long silence after the first attempt to contact them, I assumed they thought I was joking, and so, in my second email, I gave them more details about Ainan’s achievements and needs – and actually said, “This is not a joke. It is a serious admissions enquiry”. Again, no reply was ever received.

Now, I talked this over with my wife and from their silence to what should be a very interesting enquiry, we concluded that the American University of Beirut admissions staff believed one of two things: either that we were joking, or that we were mad. If they at all believed that we were in any way serious or truthful, they would have replied, probably quite quickly.

This kind of situation is a definite problem for the parents of prodigious children. The difficulty is that prodigious children are rare enough such that many academic administrators and professors, have never met one in their field, in the course of their careers. Being unacquainted with prodigies and unfamiliar with what they are able to do, it is quite easy for them, therefore, to doubt the parents, when they are contacted by them. We had that problem, too, long ago, in Singapore, when we first tried to alert the education system to Ainan’s particular gifts, when he was six years old. Their response was not to take our word for it, but to subject Ainan to a several months long assessment and testing period. The Vice-Principal of his school actually SCOFFED at us, when we told him about our son’s gifts, saying, in reference to the tests to come, “We’ll soon see about his so-called giftedness.” I thought their response was bizarre. Rather than give the parents the benefit of the doubt, they assumed, immediately, that the parents were wrong – and set about not to prove them right, but to try to prove them wrong. It was a very unsettling response to witness.

So, again, with the American University of Beirut, I saw this strangeness in their non-response. If they gave us any credit at all, they would have replied, but they didn’t. Thus, it seems they assumed that we were either lying, joking, or just plain bonkers. This, of course, tells me a lot about them. It says that the American University of Beirut had probably never had a child prodigy, in living memory, certainly not one as young and accomplished as Ainan is, for his age. They just didn’t believe me.

This is all very telling and may explain something that I have observed, in the lives of the child prodigies I have become personally acquainted with either directly, or via correspondence. All the ones we have been in contact with, have eventually ended up in the United States for their education. That is right: they all follow the pattern of trying to find local solutions to the problem of educating their child, but ultimately, they end up in the United States. Why do they do this, you might wonder? Well, the American University of Beirut provides an answer: they do this, because they get stonewalled elsewhere. They are either ignored by Universities, or “given the run around”, in their own countries and others they try, nearby, so eventually they give up trying to find a local education – and they try the United States. The USA, on the other hand, usually says “yes, please”, to such children – and so the families relocate for the education of their children. We, personally, know three cases of Asian prodigious children, who have emigrated to the United States, for a tertiary education. We don’t, personally, know of any others who have stayed in their home countries, for such an education. (As you probably know, we left Singapore for Malaysia, at the behest of a University place for our son, here.)

The United States is very familiar with coping with prodigious children. It is a highly populated country, so there are quite a few prodigious children across the nation. The Universities there are accustomed to accepting the occasional child onto their programs. In fact, some American Universities seem specifically prepared to do so. The USA is open to prodigious children in a way that many countries are not.

We have also contacted American Universities about Ainan, over the years. Every single American University replied to us, with positive interest – and usually quite quickly. Even prestigious Universities responded with prompt interest. This is in sharp contrast to the silence of the American University of Beirut, and some Universities in Asia (tactfully unnamed, for reasons of discretion – since we are still in Asia).

So, should you be the parent of a prodigiously gifted child, or know such a parent, I would urge you (or them) to be aware that not everyone will greet your requests on the behalf of your child, with interest or enthusiasm. In quite a few countries, you will be greeted with puzzlement, or disbelief – or even worse. That being said, there are establishments that will take on such children – though you may have to move countries or even continents to find them...after all, we did. Good luck.

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.) 

Does Ainan Cawley exist?

This might seem like a strange question for the father of said child to ask…but it wasn’t me who asked it. An Internet surfer arrived on my blog a couple of weeks ago, using the search terms: “Does Ainan Cawley exist?”. Amusingly, for me at least, they only read one page. I think the existence of this blog, alone, was enough to answer their question.

Now, it would be interesting to be able to discuss where this person was from – but their visit record notes their country of origin as “unknown” and their continent as “unknown”. This sometimes happens, though it is more usual for complete details to be available. So, I can’t make any anthropological observations, of any kind, in this regard. Yet, I can say this: that someone would be led to wonder whether Ainan Cawley exists, does lead me to think they have a very limited understanding of the possibilities inherent in humans.

“Humanity” is a very broad category, in some ways. There are those completely incapable of speech, or coordinated movement, of intelligence more rudimentary than some other animals, that we would still call human. Then there are those whose capabilities so far exceed the norm, that some people, like my unknown surfer, are led to question whether they are merely legendary.

In most parts of the world, these days, the expectations and requirements of children at particular ages, are standardized. Education has become codified and “set in stone”. We come to know what to expect of children of different ages. Differences between children, in such a regime, can end up being hidden, because nothing new is demanded of children capable of delivering more: they are all required to do the same and so, in some ways, end up looking the same. In such a world, it is easy to overlook the huge differences that exist between children, in their innate abilities. Then again there is the question of rarity. A child like Ainan has occurred but once, to my knowledge, in Singapore, a city of five million people. Now, very few Singaporeans, for instance, have had the chance to meet Ainan…perhaps only hundreds, to the low thousands, have personally encountered him, in the course of his life. Were it not, therefore, for the media, having covered him, in his native country, it would be unsurprising, if some of the millions of Singaporeans who had not met him, might be led to wonder if his story was true, or some kind of modern fable. In fact, funnily enough, in the early days, I did see rather paranoid comments on forums from Singaporeans positing the idea that Ainan was some kind of PAP propaganda campaign. It never occurred to them that the PAP would never choose a NON-Chinese boy for such a representative role, thus it is quite impossible that such should be the actual circumstance. However, it is interesting that these commenters thought it more likely that Ainan was a PAP fabrication, than that they thought him real. Nowadays, however, I see no such comments, so it seems Singaporeans have come to accept his reality.

The essential problem with children like Ainan is that they are so rare, in the human population, that the typical person will NEVER meet such a child, in their entire lifetimes. They will only hear of them second hand, as rumours, or press stories. They will never have any real, verifiable, personal contact with them. Instead, their experience will be defined by the more common varieties of “giftedness” that they meet. Everyone, for instance, we will meet many moderately gifted children, in their lifetimes (rarity 1 in 44). So, it is understandable if people’s view of what a gifted child is and can do, is formed by what they observe that moderately gifted children are and can do. Yet, the difference between the category of child that Ainan fits into, and a moderately gifted child, is much greater than the difference between a moderately gifted child and an average one. People, however, having no experience of this distinction, have no insight into just how different children like Ainan are from the typical “gifted” child that they have met.

My blog traffic is very informative as to how people view prodigious children and geniuses in general. For instance quite a common search to arrive on my blog is the question: “Did Leonardo da Vinci exist?”. It may startle you that people can frame this question, despite the plethora of physical and written evidence of his work and life, that still exists today. Yet, people question his reality, because they cannot personally conceive of anyone so much more gifted than a typical human being. The same kind of thinking is applied, by some, to Ainan – because they personally know of no child like him.

The fact that people can doubt the existence of the more gifted members of society and history does suggest that gifted people have much work to do in creating awareness of their nature and capabilities. This skepticism as to the reality of gifted people is a problem – for those who doubt the existence and capacities of such people, can lead to frustrations for the gifted people, in gaining access to the resources they need to do what they can do, given the chance. Quite simply: if gatekeepers don’t believe in the existence of such children, why on Earth would they open the doors to them? The parents of such children can end up being ignored or dismissed, without any proper checking having been done, as to the truth of their statements, being done.

This is a very big problem in some countries as far as I can observe. In Japan, for instance, there is a phrase used to describe parents who think highly of their children and who describe them in terms reserved for the gifted. I have actually seen this phrase used to describe the parents of a prodigy, who had been met with doubt by the Japanese. Guess what this phrase translates as? Well, it essentially says: “Stupid parents”. There appears to be a resistance there, to believing that such children can be. They prefer to think that there is something wrong with the parents. It is not hard to imagine the difficulties the parents of a prodigious child would encounter when faced with such attitudes.

There is a remedy to this reflexive disbelief that some people have when they hear tales of people whose gifts surpass those they are personally acquainted with: public discussion. The more people speak of such people, the more familiar people become with their capacities, the more comfortable people will become with them. The appearance of such people in the media, will gradually educate the masses as to their existence, and abilities. In time, they will come to be accepted – as happened to Ainan in Singapore. The doubters on forums, vanished after a few appearances in the media. Yet, I must say, it took a couple of years to reach that point: there was a lot of paranoia on the way, on the part of some forum commenters.

In a way, therefore, the fact that some people doubt the existence of Leonardo da Vinci, and Ainan Cawley (and no doubt, others too, of a similar ilk), is a failure of communication. The more gifted have not done a good enough job of communicating to the wider public. In that sense, this blog is serving a useful purpose, in that the more I write, the more people become acquainted with what I have observed of Ainan. This is a help to all prodigious children, everywhere, in that they are less likely to encounter the sheer disbelief that they could ever be. Oh. That reminds me. More than once I have received searches for the terms: “Are child prodigies real?” and “Are child prodigies just a myth?”. It is clear that there are people out there, who not only disbelieve in the existence of particular prodigies or geniuses, but who disbelieve in the entire concept of child prodigies. For them, no such children could ever be.

Better understanding of prodigies, can only make their lives easier and make their access to educational and other opportunities less problematic. Thus, I shall continue to write what I see and understand, in the hope that it leads others to understand, too.

(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 at http://www.genghiscan.com/

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