“I don’t want to be an ordinary kid,” says 10-year-old Rhea, in the TV show Child Genius. And it’s clear she’s not. She knows how to spell “eleemosynary” – the answer to the question that earned her the title of Child Genius 2016. The runner-up, nine-year-old Saffy, is also clearly not ordinary. This week, in the Channel 4 programme – essentially a show that poses graduate-level questions to mostly primary school-age children – her specialist subject was “The premiership of Margaret Thatcher: monetary policy and tax reform, 1979-1990.” Saffy wants to be prime minister.
Apart from being astounded that people who are so small that they need to stand on boxes to reach the podium know obscure answers to questions about spider mimicry or Russian ballet, and can do mental arithmetic within seconds, it was a fascinating glimpse into the families who raise gifted children, and what it takes to get them into a competition such as this. About five or six hours’ work a day, says Rhea.
After the final was shown on Tuesday, Rhea’s mother, Sonal, was criticised for querying why one of her daughter’s answers was considered incorrect and called “pushy” on social media. Saffy’s mother, Sophie, didn’t come across as any less ambitious. “You don’t really know how much she can achieve unless she’s pushed,” she said of her daughter. While the fathers of the girls worked, both mothers had given up successful careers – Sonal was an obstetrician; Sophie an accountant – to devote their time to their children’s education and development.
We like to hate pushy parents, and pushy mothers in particular. When Amy Chua, the most famously pushy parent of recent times, published her memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (no sleepovers, A grades, hours of music practice), she received death threats and accusations of child abuse. But is there anything wrong with wanting your child to reach their full potential?
“What is important is not what parents do, but why,” says the clinical psychologist Linda Blair. “If a parent is doing this in order to further their own time in the sun, I’m not so keen. If, on the other hand, they’re responding to something their child really wants to do, I don’t think it’s necessarily bad.” Blair advises parents to encourage their children to try a wide range of activities, within time and budget constraints, because “the more things they try, the greater the chance they will find their passion and talent. When a child hits upon their talent, then you can’t stop them – they’re so happy doing it because they’re going to be good at it.”
Although, she adds, “you won’t find many children who want to work that hard. If they want to be good at something, sometimes you have to appear pushy to get them to stick with it. We all reach plateaus, we all have times when it’s not much fun, and that’s something that is a very difficult thing for a parent to evaluate.” Should you push them to get their grade 6 piano, or let them give it up? Let them give up tennis or stick with it? Blair says she has sympathy for parents making such a decision. “Our culture is about instant gratification, so it’s hard for parents to feel they aren’t being pushy if they ask a child to stick with something. You may have to be unpopular, both with your kids and with other parents, if you detect a talent and a passion.”
Making demands on children can be damaging – one study found that the children of affluent parents had twice the average risk of developing mental health problems. Suniya Luthar, professor of psychology at Arizona State University, suggested this was because of the relentless pressure for high achievement.
It can also be counterproductive. “Child prodigies rarely become adult geniuses who change the world,” writes Adam Grant, professor of psychology at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and author of Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World. “What holds them back is that they don’t learn to be original. They strive to earn the approval of their parents and the admiration of their teachers. But as they perform in Carnegie Hall and become chess champions, something unexpected happens: practice makes perfect, but it doesn’t make new.”
Peter Congdon, an educational psychologist who assesses gifted and talented children, remembers one child who was made to go to swimming lessons in the early hours of the morning. “She didn’t want to be a champion swimmer but she was doing it to please her father,” he says.
He warns against the “helicopter” style of childrearing, where hovering parents regiment every moment of their children’s day – “nor should parents convey the impression that it is because of their ability that the child means so much to them”. Social and emotional development is as important as intellectual growth, he says. Clever children “should be challenged according to their ability, but not overstretched or [be put under] too much pressure.” But how do you know where to draw the line? “It’s a matter of common sense,” he says. “The best preparation for growing up is to have lived normally as a child, not staying in and being taught maths – you should be able to go out to play.”
