Super Babies Continued

Continuing from the last post, I found a website that discussed the topic of gifted children in great detail.

Source: CartoonStock.com

ERIC Clearinghouse on Handicapped and Gifted Children (1985) cites three types of characteristics of gifted children: general behavioral, learning, and creative characteristics.

General behavioral

Gifted children's behavior differs from that of their age-mates in the following ways:

Many gifted children learn to read early, with better comprehension of the nuances of language. As much as half the gifted and talented population has learned to read before entering school.

Gifted children often read widely, quickly, and intensely and have large vocabularies.

Gifted children commonly learn basic skills better, more quickly, and with less practice.

They are better able to construct and handle abstractions.

They often pick up and interpret nonverbal cues and can draw inferences that other children need to have spelled out for them.

They take less for granted, seeking the "hows" and "whys."

They can work independently at an earlier age and can concentrate for longer periods.

Their interests are both wildly eclectic and intensely focused.

They often have seemingly boundless energy, which sometimes leads to a misdiagnosis of hyperactivity.

They usually respond and relate well to parents, teachers, and other adults. They may prefer the company of older children and adults to that of their peers.

They like to learn new things, are willing to examine the unusual, and are highly inquisitive.

They tackle tasks and problems in a well-organized, goal-directed, and efficient manner.

They exhibit an intrinsic motivation to learn, find out, or explore and are often very persistent. "I'd rather do it myself" is a common attitude.

Learning

Gifted children are natural learners who often show many of these characteristics:

They may show keen powers of observation and a sense of the significant; they have an eye for important details.

They may read a great deal on their own, preferring books and magazines written for children older than they are.

They often take great pleasure in intellectual activity.

They have well-developed powers of abstraction, conceptualization, and synthesis.

They readily see cause-effect relationships.

They often display a questioning attitude and seek information for its own sake as much as for its usefulness.

They are often skeptical, critical, and evaluative. They are quick to spot inconsistencies.

They often have a large storehouse of information about a variety of topics, which they can recall quickly.

They readily grasp underlying principles and can often make valid generalizations about events, people, or objects.

They quickly perceive similarities, differences, and anomalies.

They often attack complicated material by separating it into components and analyzing it systematically.

Creative

Gifted children's creative abilities often set them apart from their age-mates. These characteristics may take the following forms:

Gifted children are fluent thinkers, able to generate possibilities, consequences, or related ideas.

They are flexible thinkers, able to use many different alternatives and approaches to problem solving.

They are original thinkers, seeking new, unusual, or unconventional associations and combinations among items of information.

They can also see relationships among seemingly unrelated objects, ideas, or facts.

They are elaborate thinkers, producing new steps, ideas, responses, or other embellishments to a basic idea, situation, or problems.

They are willing to entertain complexity and seem to thrive on problem solving.

They are good guessers and can readily construct hypotheses or "what if" questions.

They often are aware of their own impulsiveness and irrationality, and they show emotional sensitivity.

They are extremely curious about objects, ideas, situations, or events.

They often display intellectual playfulness and like to fantasize and imagine.

They can be less intellectually inhibited than their peers are in expressing opinions and ideas, and they often disagree spiritedly with others' statements.

They are sensitive to beauty and are attracted to aesthetic values.

BUT identifying gifted children is not an easy task. Some gifted are realised straight after they were born while some had shown later on in their lives. Below are the examples of the latter:

1. Einstein was four years old before he could speak and seven before he could read.
2. Isaac Newton did poorly in grade school.
3. When Thomas Edison was a boy, his teacher told him he was too stupid to learn anything.
4. F.W.Woolworth got a job in a dry goods store when he was 21. But his employers would not let him wait on a customer because he "didn't have enough sense".
5. A newspaper editor fired Walt Disney because he had "no good ideas".
6. Catuso's music teacher told him "you can't sing, you have no voice at all".
7. Leo Tolstoy flunked out of college.
8. Verner Von Braun flunked 9th grade algebra.
9. Admiral Richard E. Byrd had been retired from the navy, as, "unfit for service" until he flew over both poles.
10. Louis Pasteur was rated as mediocre in chemistry when he attended the Royal College.
11. Abraham Lincoln entered The Black Hawk War as a captain and came out a private.
12. Fred Waring was once rejected from high school chorus.
13. Winston Churchill failed the sixth grade.

Super Babies

In comparison to centuries ago, the continuing of developing world has witnessed people (talking about you and me here) accessing to sophisticated technology, abundant entertainment and not forgetting to mention the basic necessity of cleaner water, finer food and better health care and clothing. Because our standard of living has improved tremendously, we now have witnessed a minority group of women in this world to deliver super babies; something like these would have been called supernatural incidents if happened centuries ago. Below are just some of the articles that I have come across lately:

A Russian baby started talking minutes after being born. Baby Stepan pronounced his first word right after he was born, distinctly saying "papa" and "mama". According to the obsetrian, the fetus can learn while still in the mother's womb, "if a mother talks to the fetus, entertains it as if it has been born already, the baby is usually born gifted". The baby's mother is just 17 years old.

If you think the above is pure coincidence, then read this. The very next day, when the baby's mother was telling him that his dad was about to visit them at the hospital, he asked: "who? papa?". I wonder how the mother reacted to this circumstance; for certain, i would have dumb-folded. But at least we now can justify that all those silly pre-natal education work does miracles.

Source: telegraph.co.uk

Next, karina Oakley is not a baby anymore but she certainly has a remarkable talent. A two-year-old girl has been found to have an IQ of 160, making her among the top 3% of the population in Britain. While the mean population has IQ of 100, it has been reported that a score of 160 was rare but was not unheard of.

Source: mensa.org.uk

A similar case, a two-year-old with IQ of 156 is the youngest Mensa member. Elise Tan-Roberts was five months when she spoke her first word, she was walking three months later and running two months after that. Before her first birthday, she could recognise her written name and by 16 months, she could count to 10. She is now able to do the same in Spanish. A written report stated that Elise was more than very bright and capable - she is gifted. Only those with an IQ of 148 and above, the top 2% of population, qualify for Mensa; Elise was recommended and accepted to Mensa, making her the youngest Mensa member to this date.

Source: modernbarbarian.blogspot.com

Lets move on to a physical-wise super baby, I am dead jealous of those mentally gifted babies. The above baby who was born in India, name being unknown, weighed at 52.5 kg is just 11 months!! Take a deep breath before you read this. His daily consumption is 1 kg of rice, 2 kgs of beef and 5 litres of milk!!

Overreacted peeps

Mommy and daddy are in town; I showed these to make them laugh.