Raising a genius

A gifted child often lives with the pressure of high expectations. While parents and teachers need to encourage his 'gift', it should not be at the cost of his childhood

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Abhijeet (name changed to protect identity) and his parents would be considered "lucky" by most people. The adolescent has an IQ above 130 and has invariably performed brilliantly in academics. He is what is called a "gifted" child. But one day, he declared he did not want to study any more. Along with accolades, his performance in class had also earned him the attention of the school bullies who would invariably gang up during recess and punch him. "I hate everything about being a gifted child," a traumatised Abhijeet told his parents who finally took him to a psychologist. "It took me several sessions to help him become stronger emotionally and overcome the phobia of studying that he had begun to develop," says Seema Hingorrani, a clinical psychologist in Mumbai.

To an outsider, being gifted would appear to be a trait worthy of envy, with a child having the apparently unlimited potential to succeed and outperform one's peers. But for both parents and the child, that "gift" comes with its own challenges. A gifted child is different from a prodigy. Definitions vary slightly, but while gifted children are those who demonstrate outstanding levels of aptitude or competence (documented performance or achievement in top 10 per cent or rarer) in one or more domains, prodigies tend to have a more focused, specialised and domain-specific form of 'giftedness', says K John Vijay Sagar, associate professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences. According to David Feldman, a renowned expert on child development at Tuft's University, a prodigy is "a child, who before the age of 10, performs at a level of an adult professional in some cognitively demanding field." While prodigies are rare, gifted children are less uncommon. Samindara Sawant, a clinical psychologist in Mumbai, says while 3 to 5 per cent of the 70-80 children on whom they conduct IQ tests every year are found to be gifted (with an IQ above 130), prodiges are rarer.

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The biggest hurdle gifted children and prodigies have to deal with is asynchrony, or the problem of the child's intellectual and emotional ages being disjunctive, says Andrew Solomon, writer and lecturer on psychology and politics, and the author of Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity. "A child of this kind is either spending time with adults who understand his intelligence but aren't much interested in the inner life of a five-year-old or with other children who can't understand any of his interests. It's as hard to have the mind of an adult in the body of a child as it is for disabled people to have the mind of a child in the body of an adult," says Solomon, through email.

Shylaja Shrikanth, mother of Kishan Shrikanth, who directed the award-winning film C/o Footpath when he was nine and holds the Guinness World Record for being the youngest director of a feature film, would identify with this. "Kishan always preferred the company of older people - his best friend was my father-in-law, an aeronautical engineer! But at the same time he was also a child, such as when it came to fighting with his older sister for something," says his mother at the family's residence in Bangalore. Kishan, now 16, is completing his master's in animation with special permission from the state government and is also directing his second film. There could also be monetary issues to deal with. "Imagine how you would feel if your nine-year-old child tells you he needs equipment worth lakhs and lakhs of rupees," says Shylaja.

Similarly, in his book, Solomon recounts the instance of a seven-year-old prodigy who asks his parents for a new piano because the one they had was inadequate. "It cost more money than we'd ever paid for anything except a down payment on a house," the mother told Solomon. The dichotomy of being child and adult can also lead to loneliness. "While moderately gifted children tend to be popular with their classmates, children with unusually high levels of ability sometimes have a more difficult time finding compatible peers," says Sagar. "When efforts to be accepted fail, a highly able child may withdraw from social interaction." Gifted children may also get easily bored in class because the lessons would be tailored for the average child and this under-stimulation could lead to hyperactivity, says Sawant, the Mumbai-based psychologist. This could be particularly difficult to resolve in India where, unlike in some other countries, there are not many schools or programmes tailored for gifted children.

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For parents, the challenges are many. "At times, parents tend to go overboard and pressurise the child. There can also be pressure from the school, since it would be a matter of pride for them when the student does well," says Sawant. One of her cases was a mother who said her son in the ninth grade had a learning disability. On probing further, Sawant realised that the child had been consistently scoring above 90 per cent since kindergarten but he was now refusing to study because the pressure was too much. "The child was burnt out," she says. Parents can also make the mistake of making the child feel that he is loved for his accomplishments rather than for who he fundamentally is, cautions Solomon. "Children need to be encouraged and supported in their talent, but not to be made anxious about it. That balance can be a very tricky one."

An already complex situation becomes even more complicated if the gifted child has a sibling who is "normal". There is a very real danger of the child who is not "gifted" being reduced to a mere shadow of the sibling. "I know it's easier said than done but the two children should never be compared," says Sawant. Shylaja, who also has a daughter, says that although she took care never to compare her son and daughter, their teachers in school used to. "She used to come back home depressed," she says. Ideally, parents should act as "scaffolders," advises Sagar. "Scaffolding involves highlighting critical aspects of the task, recruiting the learners' interest and guiding their attention, controlling frustration, demonstrating activity paths to them and reducing their choices."

Since gifted children require intellectual challenges both within and outside school environment, parents also need to effectively liaison with school authorities to facilitate an appropriate learning at school, he says. If possible, parents should talk to other families with gifted children and share experiences and ideas with them. There are also instances where the parent feels inadequate to cope with their child's intellectual capacity. "This is especially true when the mother is a housewife, but we tell parents that they just need to be sensitive to the child's needs," says Sawant.

The trick is to maintain a balance between enabling the child to develop his "gift" or gifts and ensuring he is not deprived of his childhood. "To achieve a life in which the child's exceptionalism is celebrated and in which he nonetheless develops sound mental health is not easy, but it is crucial. Children who don't have some degree of "normal" childhood will become neurotic and unable to exploit their gifts, while children whose gifts are tamped down will lose the chance to be extraordinary and make a better or more beautiful world," underlines Solomon.