A child who pulls.

There is the widespread view...and a poisonous view it is, too...that the parents of gifted children must somehow be pushing the child. Now, this view is based on nothing but people's assumptions, but it is a view that does great harm throughout the gifted community.

I have seen some very worrying comments, on the internet, levelled at the parents of gifted children. Some of the commenters were clearly angry at the parents. They assumed that the parents were somehow bullying the child into high intellectual performance. Some even threatened violence towards the parents. It is really quite mad.

Now, in an effort to understand why people often think such things of the parents of gifted children, I can only think that the accusers are trying to understand the situation from their own limited experience. In their experience, it is impossible for a child to do the things that the gifted child or prodigy is credited with. Those things simply cannot be. Therefore, they conceive that the situation must somehow be "forced". They think that the child must be under some kind of huge pressure to perform, from the parents, and that is why they are able to perform in this way.

I find their view and understanding quite horrifying. In my experience, I just don't think it is remotely possible to force a child to perform at a high level intellectually. Either such performance is in the child, or it is not. Either the child will naturally gravitate towards such a level of performance or they will not. There is no possibility of force in the situation. Indeed, I think force could only be counter-productive in that it would produce resentment by the child, of the parents, which would lead to resistance to co-operation.

The only situation, in my view, in which a child will perform at a prodigious level, is if the child is not pushed, but PULLS. It is the child who pulls the parent towards their own, inner objectives and not the parent who pushes the child towards theirs.

If the child exhibits a pull towards a subject which arises naturally in themselves, then that child will, naturally, perform at a high level in that subject. It is possible that such a child will become a prodigy. However, when that child does become a prodigy, many people will assume that the child was pushed into achieving what they achieved. So, instead of receiving approval from others, for being a supportive parent who has enabled the child's interests to flourish, the parent of a prodigy, will more often receive hostility, sometimes very extreme hostility, from people who believe, without any evidence whatsoever, that the child has been pushed into it.

Of course, this is all very sad. The more the parent helps the child achieve their goals, the more others will insist on misunderstanding their support and malignly characterizing their nature. The more the child is parented successfully, the more others will come to be unfriendly towards the parents. It is really quite bizarre. What is happening is actually very different from what people assume. What is happening is that the parents are being better parents, in enabling their child to grow, than parents typically are. The parents are being MORE caring, MORE supportive, MORE present for their child. It is, in fact, a scenario opposite to the one people assume. The parent of a prodigy, or any gifted child, is, more often than not, making more of an effort to be a good parent, than the parent of a typical child. A prodigy demands more support. If that prodigy is flourishing then, usually, the parent is providing that support.

It seems to me, that no parent should be censured for having a gifted or prodigious child. They should be accepted as the caring parents they almost always are.

There is an irony in this, of course. The ones who accuse the parents of gifted children of pushiness, are the ones with poison in their hearts. The parents are being what the accusers are not: supportive of their children.

(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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