Saturday, May 2, 2009

are toddler geniuses real?

I just watched a documentary thingy about how this family had their 1 year old painting abstract art...and then by the age of 4 the kid was selling a load of paintings, and everyone was going crazy over it. But then it came out that really her dad who was like a wannabe artist was helping her do all of them.
Then everyone was angry and she went totally milli va nilli and never sold another painting.


Then earlier in the week I saw this thing about how in England this little 2 year old kid joined mensa because they determined she's a genius because she knows all these countries and capitals and what not.
There also was a 2 year old who could read words off of a flashcard and her parents were like..."SHE's a GENIUS!!!" and acting really crazy every time she read a word off a flash card. And they kept saying how they show the flashcards to her all day so she will remember them. She was like sitting in her high chair, and they were showing her a flash card, she was laying down, and they were like..."Now what does this say?" She looked like she was going to punch one of them.

I just wonder if a child genius is more about the information that you present to a child and train them to respond to, then the kid just popping out nuggets of genius wisdom spontaneously. I mean, if you think about it under 5 year olds are memorizing a humongous amount of information just from daily life. Just learning how to speak requires a large amount of memorization. Most people just don't worry about teaching their toddler to memorize what the word "Hippopotamus" looks like on a flash card. Or memorizing the capital of Sri Lanka.

It's like when Addie was about 3 she always wanted me to sing this song I learned in 5th grade about the fifty nifty united states. I think I sang it to her in the car one day when she was grumpy. After a couple of weeks of her requesting me to sing that lovely tune(rolling eyes) she would sing the song, which is the fifty states in alphabetical order. So I would brag to all the grandma's...Addie knows all fifty states in alphabetical order...and then she would proudly belt out "fifty nifty". So I probably could have like had people pay admission to come meet the child genius right?

so the message of my post is: child geniuses usually have crazy parents that are trying to get rich!

at least that makes me feel better.

2 comments:

Rachel H said...

AMEN sister! I think you are totally right!

first lady said...

I agree :)