Individuality through verbal expression.

Ainan, 12, has his own characteristic style of expression. At times he is markedly associative, in his writing, linking ideas sometimes logically, sometimes elusively. This creates stories unlike those written by anyone I know. At other times, however, he is pithy, in a memorable sort of way. For instance, on the 4^th June, 2012, he remarked: “Yes is just distilled maybe. Yes is the part that doesn’t evaporate away.”

Now, these two sentences might sound poetic, but he had a serious point in there, too...he was stating his understanding that “maybe” contained an element of yes in it (and an element of no, too). He was counteracting my frustration that he wouldn’t give a yes or no answer to a question I had asked him (now forgotten). He did so in a mild though pedagogical manner, as if he sought, gently, to enlighten his father with what seemed obvious to him. It was also, of course, his way to win the “argument” of whether he should give a yes or no answer.

I enjoy talking to Ainan. He is resourceful in his argumentation, when it comes to debating a point – and somewhat unexpected in his means of expression. He is also decidedly determined to maintain his point, in the face of any counterargument. I think this is a strength, in that he will defend his ideas, in future and speak on their behalf.

I do wonder at his creative writing though. It takes a certain kind of open mind to appreciate the way he constructs sentences, thoughts and observations. His peculiar combination of logic and association, makes for an unusual and challenging read. There is also a lot of humour in his work – both plays on words, and absurdities in the situations his characters encounter. It is not at all like anyone else’s writing that I know of...not even mine.

Anyway, it is in this individuality of verbal expression that much of Ainan can be found. Those privileged enough to read his creative writing, encounter an elusive thinker, laughing at the world, and its ways. Those who hear his pithy remarks, sense the beginning of an aphorist. So there are two competing means of expression in him: the logically condensed and telling and the diffuse, associative and elusive. It is as if there are two different types of writer in him, fighting for the right to “speak up”. Perhaps there are. Perhaps the secret of Ainan is that he is a chimera of opposites, each tugging him in a different direction simultaneously. The net effect of all these differing intellectual and dispositional forces, is the young, somewhat enigmatic, Ainan himself.

The question is: will one of these multiple influences prevail? Or will they always commingle? Will the associative or the logical win out, in Ainan?

I shall watch his writing and heed his words in the years ahead, to see how he develops.

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.) 

Clint Eastwood is not the only one.

Fintan, 8, can be a rather cool kid, sometimes. By this I mean, cool in the way that certain iconic film stars have been, in my lifetime – with their pithy lines and their meaningful expressions, saying so much more than the words they have used. I mean the kind of cool that makes an impression on the viewer that is still remembered many years later. Fintan has that kind of cool, without really being aware of it.

A week or so ago, Fintan was playing Team Fortress 2 – a “shoot em up” style computer game.

He played with an easy flair of one accustomed to such things. At one point he shot a rocket at the feet of an opponent, which blasted the intact man far into the air.

“You don’t want to have a dead man’s body falling from the sky!” he remarked to his elder brother Ainan.

Then he fired again at the man, in mid air, catching him in a direct hit.

“You want pieces of him!”

The man exploded scattering chunks of redness everywhere.

His action and attendant words were so deft, so skilled, so well timed, that Ainan laughed to see him do it. When I heard the story, it immediately called to mind the pithy sayings of Clint Eastwood’s, or Arnold Schwarzenegger’s filmic alter egos, in which they would, in a few words, make comic what is, in fact, disagreeable to anyone of any sensitivity.

I don’t expect that Fintan is aware of what he is doing when he speaks in such a way, but actually he is being quite comically skilled. He creates an expectation with one statement – in this case that he disagreed with the idea that a dead man should be falling from the sky – and then follows it up with an even worse fate for the dead man. That is a structure which evokes laughter in the unprepared. What strikes me about it is that a young boy can be aware of and make use of such a structure, without perhaps being conscious that he is doing so. Comedy seems to emerge spontaneously in child development, humour being one of the more interesting manifestations of a developing personality. What is particularly interesting about it is that it appears spontaneously in some children, but not, it seems, in all children. What is it, I wonder that allows for the development of humour in some but not others? Why are some children simply funnier than their fellows? One aspect, I believe is the ability to consider the unexpected and the unlikely and bring them into the conversation. Some children do that readily, it being, perhaps, a property of imagination. Other children are stuck in the real, in what is, and what is before them, and cannot readily do this – so they are not funny.

All three of our sons are funny in their own ways. This humour often depends on the bizarre quality of their thought. In seeing them in action, I am often moved to consider the nature of their parents, and the origins of such a tendency to the bizarre. In that, I would say both their parents are to blame to some extent. It is funny though, to see these attributes reincarnated in the next generation and see them manifest in different ways. Few things in life are more interesting than observing how elements of oneself are reborn in the subsequent generations. My children’s style of humour is one of them. I look forward to much enjoyment to come.

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.)

The discerning logic of a child.

Before I became a father, I was unaware of the wonderful, often deliriously enchanting logic, that children use. To be able to witness such logic, now, on a regular basis, is one of the more refreshing and rewarding aspects of fatherhood.

Today, Fintan, eight, made some remarks about food.

“Fish is seafood.”, he announced, to no surprise.

“Chicken is meat.”, he continued, again, in the same deliberate manner, with a slight air of puzzlement.

“...but birds are AIRFOOD.”, he concluded, with perfect logic.

I exploded with laughter. It was such an unexpected categorization – yet so apt, that I had no choice but to laugh. Why, I wondered, had no-one else, in all my life, so described birds? They WERE “Airfood”. Yet, no-one speaks of them as such.

The perfect, ineluctable logic of children, often leads us to understand the hidden truths in the world around us – the things which are always there, but which we are not able to see. One of them is “air food”...it is a thought that has been implicit in the structure of the English language, since the very first day someone described fish as “seafood”...but, until now, perhaps, no-one has ever said it. Fintan is the first, to my knowledge, to describe birds as “airfood”.

It is intriguing to observe that, although the logic is clear and implicit in the words and their relationship to each other, in English – that no-one actually uses the term “airfood”. This seems to suggest that we don’t, as a society, think too logically about what our language is suggesting. We don’t see what is implicit within it. Today, it took a young boy to see that logic and remark upon it. Fintan saw what no adult, to my knowledge ever did – the implicit categorization lying in wait in the language itself, waiting to be spoken.

Thank you Fintan, for your description. From now on, in our household, birds shall be known as “airfood” in honour of Fintan’s uncannily appropriate thought.

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/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 athttp://www.genghiscan.com/

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

Syahidah on Steve Jobs' death.

Today, I informed Syahidah, my wife, of Steve Jobs' death.

She remarked: "An apple has lost its core."

I thought this rather witty, and apt - for the image and meaning summed up the situation very well.

Mr. Jobs was only 56. This is rather young to be dying in the modern age - however, his life, though shortened, could not have been more influential, nor have touched more lives than it had. RIP Mr. Apple.

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/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 athttp://www.genghiscan.com/

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

Strange questions of a curious boy.

Perhaps the greatest pleasure a parent can have, is to watch their children surprise them. My three sons seem to have decided to specialize in this activity, as if born to it.

Many years ago, Ainan began asking strange questions. These strange questions grew into his own preoccupations and finally an absorbing interest in science. So, I have come to look out for strange questions as a herald of things to come. It is a sign that a young mind is beginning to consider the world.

The other day, Tiarnan, just turned five, asked his mother: “What does parallel mean?” Now, this is not a particularly strange question, but it is an unexpected one, in the sense that it is not the kind of topic one expects from a five year old.

His mother duly answered, showing him what parallel meant. He grasped the concept, at once and seemed quite content to learn something new. That, for him, was one less mystery in the world.

Of course, Tiarnan’s question creates another little question: where had he heard the word “parallel”, in the first place? I certainly hadn’t said it to him, nor his mother, Syahidah, either. Yet, somewhere he had noted the word, remembered it and thought to ask us about it later.

I see, already in Tiarnan, a liking for words. He has, on occasions, used surprising ones, since he was very young – words rather too long and rather too complicated for his age. It reminds me of what he said once: that he was going to be a writer of “story books” when he grows up. Perhaps he will, if not in this Universe, perhaps in a parallel one!

(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

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, 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.)