Mark Wright’s Blog

Most of my friends are married with children or divorced with children.  The common denominator is they have children.  They all think their children are geniuses.  That is good in a way because you don’t want to think that your child is a dunce.  Anytime the kid does anything even remotely interesting, they claim that the child will be the next Einstein. 

My parents did the same thing with me.  At the age of 4, I could remember numbers.  My father used to write down a series of five numbers, each with four digits.  He would show it to me for five seconds and I could recite them back, verbatim.  I became a parlor trick for my parents’ friends at cocktail parties.    My parents thought I was going to be a math whiz.  They were wrong.  It turned out to be nothing more than an odd ability to remember numbers.  I still have it to a degree.  If it is a random number or statistic, chances are I can remember it  I have a pretty good brain for Trivial Pursuit and business, but calling me a genius is a bit excessive.  As a matter of fact, in all of my years, I have only been called a genius in sarcasm.   But this isn’t about me.  It is about your kids.

A recent article written by Paula Spencer for Parenting.com dispelled many of the myths about genius children. 

Only about two to five percent of children are gifted or geniuses.
 Educators agree that it is not necessary to enroll your kids in academically oriented pre-schools.
You can’t build giftedness.

The bottom line is that for most of you, your kids are not geniuses.  They are probably very smart but it is doubtful that they will be splitting atoms anytime soon.  Now I know what you are thinking before you even say it so let me stop you.  Your kids are probably not in the two to five percent category.  A true prodigy, say a Mozart or Einstein comes along about once every one to two million people. 

It is ok though.  Chances are your kids are probably very smart and will be just fine.  There are a lot of things that you can do to help your children reach their full potential.  It is ok to use the flash cards and all the other learning tools but it probably won’t make them a genius.