Few human phenomena seem to stir up a wide range of emotional reactions in people quite like child prodigies. People express everything from admiration, jealousy, respect, mistrust of the children’s parents, wonderment, and maybe in some cases fear. Because, let’s face it: people fear what they don’t understand. To some people this much talent and skill this early in life is a little alien, a little freaky. I came across comments about this video mostly denouncing this girl’s skill, and I made myself stop reading before I got sucked into the sinkhole of negativity. (Comment fields under internet articles attract net-jerks like bees to flowers.)
I am always amazed to see child prodigies in their element, but these sorts of blessings can be curses, too. I wonder if their little personalities can take the extra heat they’ll feel in other competitive areas, or if they’ll be able to absorb harsh words from their own peers uttered in a misguided attempt to tip the power balance their own way. Will they become jaded, or arrogant? Will their parents help them be well-adjusted or end up exploiting them? People can be cruel, they can bully, and I wonder if sometimes child prodigies wish they could trade in their gift(s) to be just like everyone else.
I remember years ago when I was in Australia going to the cinema to see the film Little Man Tate by Jodie Foster. That movie stayed with me a long time, and not because I thought I was a child prodigy — not at all! I saw it with my friend Catherine and we both agreed it made us feel uncomfortable because we could both relate with this child at some points in the film. Maybe it doesn’t happen with everyone, but it’s probably quite common to have a perception that you don’t fit in with whole groups of kids, that everyone else is “normal” and you are not. Childhood is a sensitive time and acceptance is a very abstract notion to grapple with. If you’re not acceptable as you are, if everyone thinks you’re weird and unnatural, then what do you do? Ignore everyone? How do you make friends?
Like child prodigies who are born with a talent most other people don’t possess, anyone who struggles with an identity that’s conspicuously different — a high IQ, a photographic memory, unbeatable in sports — will likely have social issues to contend with. Society has a strange way of both rewarding and ruining the exceptional. Some people will laud, some will discriminate, some will vilify. Meanwhile, you hope for the best for these kids, that these prodigies have parents who remember what it’s like to be children, who won’t get too caught up in the success and the fame. You hope these kids stay grounded and happy, but most of all accepted by their peers and the rest of society.
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