What we can learn from child prodigies...

Time and again, we hear of children who do exceedingly well beyond all expectations of parents and peers. In a country where parents push the children sometimes too much, to achieve the dream they never could, we can understand and marvel at such child prodigies who stand out for an unusual degree of intelligence.

Sho Yano is one such child prodigy who recently became the youngest student to be awarded a medical degree at the University of Chicago, USA. Sho Yano started reading at age two, writing by three and was composing music by the time he was five years old. He entered the Loyola University in Chicago at age nine and in mere three years, graduated summa um laude.

He was just 12 when he enrolled at the prestigious Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago where bright students can study up to PhD.

He says he met with some discrimination when he entered college so early but the quiet young man never gave up on his dream. He was rejected by several medical schools due to his relatively younger age but he never deterred. Sho who is of Japanese descent, has also inspired his sister aged 15 to study - she is currently enrolled at the John Hopkins University.

Asian cultures

Sho doesn’t seem to be the only child prodigy around - 14 year old Indian American Snigdha Nandipati recently won the US National Spelling Bee, going on to become a champion of spelling in the country. Her father says that she was spelling from the time she could read. Snigdha who says she wants to become a neurosurgeon also said that spelling was tougher than qualifying to be a doctor.

There’s something for us to learn here as parents, aunts and uncles. Each of these children, both of whom came from Asian cultures to the land of opportunity, the USA where they could be truly recognised for their outstanding talent, was encouraged and nurtured by their parents in a way that did not push them to their limits.

They were not pushed beyond their limits - they thrived because they were given the room needed to achieve remarkable skills. They were loved and encouraged and their talents focused in the right direction.

Whether your child is a prodigy or not, each child has some talent and skill that goes unnoticed if it is not encouraged. Children thrive best on quiet but persistent discipline, focus and being nurtured, like a well-watered and tendered plant, in the right direction. It is our duty as parents to recognize and watch out for their talent and encourage them to develop that talent instead of forcing them to achieve a dream we as children could not.

Academic excellence

Children who are pushed into classes and more classes in pursuit of academic excellence and professional qualifications may do well in them but often as adults lack social skills and empathy. They have not been taught how to love, how to express love, to share and to develop warm and solid relationships with others; in the pursuit of academic excellence, parents often forget to let their social skills develop and mature.

As a result, you have a generation of qualified young men and women who will not hesitate to abandon ageing parents by way side or to obtain the material wealth owned by the parents. Of course there are exceptions to the rule but this is the result when we do not equip our children with values and moral skills even though we encourage their professional skills.

Whenever children who have achieved outstanding results at exams have been interviewed in media, they have often said how they were encouraged by their parents to pursue a rounded lifestyle - they studied hard yes but they also played and engaged in other activities such as sports. We can learn a lot from children both in Sri Lanka and elsewhere who have achieved outstanding academic excellence. And hopefully apply the same set of guidelines to our children so that they can become well rounded human beings who are not qualified robots but well balanced individuals with academic and life skills intact.