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EXCEPTIONAL
CHILDREN
Easing the pressure on prodigies
In the months leading up to Natalie Lambert's
historic crossing of Lake Ontario, her mother says she never heard her
daughter complain about her gruelling practice regimen that consisted of
three-hour swims in the frigid and choppy lake.So when the 14-year-old
reached shore in Kingston yesterday to become the youngest to complete the
marathon swim, Christine Lambert wanted to know two things: Was her child
safe and was she happy? She says the answer to both was yes.
"You have to ensure that whatever it is your
child is doing, that it is what the child wants and not what you want,"
said Ms. Lambert, whose 16-year-old daughter, Jenna, also completed a
marathon swim last year.
"I think anyone can judge by the girls that
this is something they wanted to do," Ms. Lambert said in a telephone
interview yesterday from a Kingston motel room where Natalie was sleeping
off her exhaustion.
But recent international events suggest that it is
often not so easy for the public to discern whether children whose
exceptional abilities and prodigious intellects are on display are driven by
enjoyment or the desire to fulfill the wishes of parents and coaches.
This week, eight-year-old Zhang Huimin's
3,560-kilometre run across China sparked accusations of child abuse against
her father, who followed the girl on a motorized bicycle.
And in India this month, the coach of
five-year-old marathon phenom Budhia Singh was arrested after the boy
accused him of torture.
Throughout history, children with remarkable
physical and mental gifts have often inspired and aroused suspicion, said
David Henry Feldman, a professor of child development at Tufts University
and the author of Nature's Gambit: Child Prodigies and the Development of
Human Potential.
"It's very difficult to judge [the
motivation] from the outside," Dr. Feldman said.
"Extreme cases wouldn't be extreme if what
the kids were doing wasn't unusual, and that arouses a whole array of
responses and reactions."
What is more recent, Dr. Feldman and other experts
said, are the difficulties modern society imposes on children with
extraordinary promise.
"In a very complex society with very high
expectations for kids ... where talents are clear and rewards of fame and
fortune very attractive, [it is] very compelling" for parents to
attempt to nurture a child's ability, Dr. Feldman said.
At the same time, psychologists said, exceptional
children who are on display are, in most cases, testing the limits of their
own abilities.
Wayne Gretzky and Tiger Woods are examples of
child athletes whose talents garnered national media attention before they
were out of elementary school. Yet both have publicly described practising
their respective sports for hours on end when they were children as
something they chose to do and their parents supported.
Psychologists say it is sometimes difficult even
for parents who do not push their children to know whether the child truly
enjoys exercising his or her talent or is attempting to please the parents.
"The kids who are incredibly talented
generally are pushing themselves and pulling their parents along," said
Ellen Winner, a professor of psychology at Boston College and the author of Gifted
Children: Myths and Realities.
Dr. Winner said the best thing parents of children
with accelerated abilities can do is recognize that they have atypical
children and enable them to master their talents without turning family life
upside down to accommodate them.
"Most parents don't find the balance,"
Dr. Winner said. "Sometimes you can't make the distinction between
where the parent ends and the child begins."
Case studies of prodigies suggest that pushing
them to excel can leave them feeling even more isolated than many already
feel, living in a world where their abilities are sometimes regarded as
freakish.
And making predictions of greatness is especially
dangerous for prodigies, experts said, because it places them under extreme
pressure to live up to expectations.
William James Sidis, who, it was reported, began
reading adult books at age 2 and entered Harvard in 1909 at age 11, was
hounded by a press corps eager to follow his path to a stardom that
ultimately failed to materialize.
Alan Edmunds, an associate professor of
educational psychology at the University of Western Ontario who has worked
with remarkable children for more than 20 years, said it is critical for
adults to not place too much pressure on precocious children.
He said such children have a hard enough time
coping with being viewed as different without shouldering expectations such
as teachers deferring to them in the classroom, or adults holding them up as
examples of how other children should be performing.
Taking the pressure off exceptional children is
the reason Dr. Edmunds said he shies from using the word
"prodigy."
"The problem with 'prodigy' is it comes laden
with a requirement for a continuous upward trajectory of a child's
capabilities," Dr. Edmunds said. "There's only been one child
prodigy who lived up to the term, and that was Mozart."
- by David Andreatta GLOBE
& MAIL 2007 August 2007
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