They have obtained information which few people will give to their doctor, lawyer, or even clergyman. These workers - interviewers, mental testers, statisticians, physicians, and psychologists - have investigated some 1,500 of these prodigies and have checked with their parents, teachers, relatives, friends, wives, husbands, and children. Recently a small army of workers has been conducting a study to determine once and for all whether infant prodigies really do “get over it” or whether they will maintain their mental superiority in adulthood. The typical precocious child, they believe, is the one who learns Greek at the age of 4, calculus at 6, and nuclear physics at 8, is graduated from Harvard at 12, and at 30 is an addlepate who can barely hold a job selling crockery in the local department store. To many people, precocity in someone else’s child calls for heartfelt sympathy. So That’s What Happens to Child Prodigies Determinedness may, in fact, be a stronger determinant than IQ of their future success. This character trait enables them to keep practicing 6, 7, 8 hours a day, seven days a week. They must possess a fierce desire to master the challenge of performance. The last quality is particularly important for musical prodigies. Unless precocious children show “curiosity, doggedness, determinedness,” they may never realize all the potential of their intelligence. According to Malcolm Gladwell, a successful adult genius is the product of habits and personality. Researchers now see that achieving success as an adult involves more than simply being born smart. It is probably unfair to set such high expectations for children with elevated IQs. A page on the Mental Floss website even describes “ 9 Child Prodigies (Who Actually Ended Up Doing Something),” as if most prodigies normally accomplish nothing. Many pursue and often find their own happiness, even if it doesn’t involve creating a masterpiece or finding a valuable cure. Not all of them live up to the high expectations, but they are far from failures. That belief has persisted among the general public, which believes that children with extraordinary intelligence should achieve great things. He believed prodigies should become the leaders of America’s future. He promoted the idea of testing the IQ of all American schoolchildren, so the precocious few could be discovered and properly nurtured. His findings prompted many people to label him undemocratic. In his conclusions, he wrote that child prodigies not only didn’t develop into sickly, lonely losers, but generally grew into well-adjusted, healthy, highly successful adults. Lewis Terman released his 30-year study of 1,500 child prodigies. The myth was still very much alive in the 1950s, when Dr. So a myth began that prodigies were doomed to lives of obscurity and ill health. Believing all men were born equal and enjoyed equal opportunities in life, Americans were uncomfortable with the fact that some children were born with far greater intelligence than most. They believed that child prodigies grew into sickly, awkward adults who usually failed in their careers.Īccording to the authors of “So That’s What Happens to Child Prodigies,” reprinted below, this myth of the handicapped prodigy was born in the 1700s when the idea of universal equality was born. It wasn’t very long ago, however, that parents worried whether their child was too smart. "I'm having a good time wherever I go.Parents eagerly look for signs of brilliance in their offspring because they believe that high intelligence, exhibited at an early age, means a promising future for their child. But I'm making up for it now," she says with a wide smile. But she took time to chronicle his horrific abuse in her autobiography Forbidden Childhood. "And that was what I did eventually, but I was 19 when I did it."Īfter Slenczynska's father died in 1951, her career flourished without him, as she made well-received recordings for the Decca label beginning in 1956. "I dreamed of running away from home," she recalls. "My only thought was to please my father and escape the magic stick." That "magic stick" was an 18-inch wooden shovel handle that Slenczynska's father used to beat her. "I wasn't allowed to think of myself," Slenczynska says. Slenczynska absorbed much from the great European pianists but her most consequential teacher was her father, a failed musician hell-bent on making a star out of his daughter even at the cost of her childhood. At 97, she can still make Chopin's chords shake with thunder. "The most important thing I learned was how to make the music carry a long, musical line," she says, moving over to the piano to demonstrate how to measure out those lines in terms of the climax points in Chopin's dramatic Ballade No. But that's not the only advice Slenczynska picked up from the famed Russian.
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