From the author: Published in the magazine "Crib for Parents" Psychological Center "Albatross" Child prodigies The word prodigy is not a scientific term, so this concept includes a fairly wide range of children. Translated from German, prodigy means “wonderful child.” In this case, miracles are understood as abilities, gifts, and talents. To outline the subject of conversation, we will divide child prodigies into three large groups: 1. Children are carriers of talent; 2. Gifted children;3. Savants. Prodigies are children, bearers of talent (genius). These children have outstanding abilities in one area. Their talent needs to constantly manifest itself, as if they cannot live otherwise. Let me give you a few examples: The childhood genius of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is well known. His musical abilities manifested themselves at a very early age, when the boy was about three years old. Wolfgang's father taught him the basics of playing the harpsichord, violin and organ. Everywhere Mozart aroused surprise and delight, emerging victorious from the most difficult tests that were offered to him both by people knowledgeable in music and by amateurs. Nika Turbina. She was born under socialism into a famous Yalta family. She suffered from asthma, and according to her family, she hardly slept at night. From the age of four, during these insomnias, she asked her mother and grandmother to write down poems that, according to her, God told her. When Nika was 9 years old, her first collection of poems, “Draft,” was published in Moscow. At the age of ten, Nika was able to take part in the international poetry festival “Poets and the Earth”. There she was awarded the main prize - the Golden Lion. Nadya Rusheva is the daughter of an artist and a ballerina. Nadya started drawing at the age of five, and no one taught her how to draw. At the age of seven, as a first-grader, she began to draw regularly, no more than half an hour after school. When Nadya was in fifth grade, her first personal exhibition took place. Over the next five years of her life, fifteen personal exhibitions took place in Moscow, Leningrad, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and India. Nadya's drawings were born without sketches. She always drew blankly and did not correct what she drew. “I see them in advance... They appear on paper like watermarks, and all I have to do is outline them with something,” said Nadya. Daniil Bulaev, at the age of five (in 2009), became a diploma winner at the sixth international competition for young performers in Moscow. He plays the violin and piano. It’s interesting that Daniel’s parents have nothing to do with music. It’s just that, as my mother says, from the activities provided, my son chose music. Such genius is a gift from above. Enormous, adult talent is invested in a child's body. It requires a lot of resources from a person - physical, mental. During childhood, we go through natural stages of development that are necessary for adulthood. Genius children have a large share of their resources taken away by their talent. Parents should know this, take it into account, and, if possible, correct it.. There is another category of child prodigies. These are gifted children. With the advent of tests to determine mental abilities, it became possible to identify children with a higher IQ than the average (IQ = 100). Today, there are five categories of gifted children: “Bright”, enlightened: IQ above 115, or 1 in six children, (17%) Moderately gifted: IQ above 130, or 1 in 50 children, (2%) Highly gifted: IQ above 145 , or 1 in 1,000 children, (0.1%) Exceptionally gifted: IQ above 160, or 1 in 30,000 children (0.003%) Extraordinarily gifted: IQ above 175, or 1 in 3 million children (0.00003%) Rate intelligence is calculated for each age group and shows the development of a person corresponding to his age. That is, children of different ages can have the same IQ, because the development of each of them corresponds to its age group. There is another type of child prodigy - savants.Savantism is a rare condition in which individuals with developmental disabilities (including the autism spectrum) have an “Island of Genius” - outstanding abilities in one or more areas of knowledge, contrasting with the general limitations of the individual. The phenomenon may be genetically determined or acquired. An intellectual feature common to all savants is phenomenal memory. Specialized areas in which the abilities of savants most often manifest themselves: music, visual arts, arithmetic calculations, calendar calculations, cartography, construction of complex three-dimensional models. In addition, among the registered manifestations of savant syndrome are the ability to learn foreign languages, a heightened sense of time, fine discrimination of smells, etc. At the same time, in areas that lie outside the manifestations of the syndrome, such a person can demonstrate obvious inferiority, even mental retardation. I would like to take a brief historical excursion that allows us to take a broader look at the problem of giftedness. In our country, the intellectual elite had a hard time, to put it mildly. First a revolution, then repressions, purges, periodic “brain drain” to the West. After the revolution, when a huge number of illiterate people came to power, the question arose of how to train specialists? Western science was involved - pedology (literally - the science of children). This direction in science combined the approaches of various sciences: medicine, biology, psychology, pedagogy. Pedology was at the peak of its development in the 20s and 30s. Testing and recruitment of classes were actively carried out. When test results showed that the country's population was illiterate, pedology was banned as a pseudoscience, and its leaders were declared enemies of the people. At the same time, persecution of genetics began. The fact is that studies by geneticists of fruit flies and garden crops have shown the undeniable influence of genes on the resulting material. These studies were very dangerous for our country, because... the intellectual gene pool was on the verge of destruction. Instead of the influence of genes, they began to study the influence of the environment and growing conditions. For plants, this meant a change in yield not depending on the variety, but depending on the soil, watering, and lighting. If the result is positive, one could say that the country’s gene pool does not matter – the main thing is the conditions created for the people. During Soviet times, great attention was paid to education. Illiteracy was eliminated and classical school education was created. It was possible to avoid dead-end educational systems: if a student studied well, he could enter a university from any school. The USSR became a forge of specialists. During perestroika, the state and the population as a whole needed to survive and values ​​changed again. The quality of education has faded into the background. Now the state is faced with the issue of preparing intellectual resources. In modern society, there is an interest in gifted children as the future intellectual and creative elite, on which the “corridor of opportunities” for the further development of the country will depend. This makes it necessary to broadly discuss the problems associated with the identification and development of gifted children; with the ability to build competent forecasts and effective ways to correct problems that are possible in gifted children. Special schools, lyceums, and boarding schools for gifted children are being created. Teachers at a specialized Russian boarding school for gifted children at Moscow State University, which is called a “reserve for young geniuses,” founded by Academician Kolmogorov, believe that working with gifted children is more difficult than with children from difficult families. According to experts, giftedness has many side effects. Young geniuses are quick-tempered, demanding and impatient. Peers seem boring to them, teachers in regular schools seem insufficiently educated. Child prodigies correct teachers and make comments to adults. They usuallyhave difficulty building relationships with the outside world. A talented child must be constantly loaded. He needs constant nourishment, food for thought. Left to their own devices, they greedily absorb everything that comes their way, but are unable to form their own worldview from the chaotically acquired knowledge. Unclaimed geniuses often begin to destroy themselves with drugs and alcohol. Being among ordinary peers, a gifted child feels different from everyone else and may develop an inferiority complex: “I’m different from everyone else, which means I’m worse.” And from this point of view, it is useful to send a gifted child to a specialized school. Here he will find a congenial circle of friends, and professionals will develop his abilities. Specialists at the boarding school for gifted children at Moscow State University note that among their graduates there are not only doctors of science, academicians and corresponding members, but also owners of banks, insurance companies, top managers of well-known companies and large businessmen. The knowledge they acquired in one area helped them to realize their potential in another area. Of course, raising talented children is not easy, but the effort spent is never in vain. Is giftedness a gift, or something that can be developed? There is no clear answer to this question. There is a correlation (statistical connection) between the intelligence of parents and the intelligence of children (according to the proverb - “Oranges cannot be born from a pig”). This connection is not rigid, i.e. we can talk about trends rather than a one-to-one relationship. Gifted parents may have an “ordinary” child, and vice versa. At the same time, there are studies that show a connection between the richness (diversity) of the environment and human development. In life, these two factors usually complement each other. For example, in a family of musicians, a child hears music in the womb, and after birth musical instruments are available to him. Sometimes, of course, unusual things happen; a musical child may appear in a family of non-musicians, for example Daniil Bulaev. And so, we approach the development of children. Parents interested in this issue, of course, know such names of supporters of early development as Maria Montessori, Glen Doman, Masaru Ibuka, Cecile Lupan. The Montessori system is based on the individual approach of the teacher to each child: the child himself chooses the didactic material and duration of classes. The technique is based on maintaining the child’s natural joy from learning. Montessro has developed its own educational material focused exclusively on the child’s sensory perception. Initially, the technique was designed for children with developmental delays and gave excellent results. The Montessori method helps develop attention, creative and logical thinking, memory, speech, imagination and motor skills. Glen Doman is an American doctor who began treating children suffering from mental disabilities. He was looking for an opportunity to activate the mental activity of sick children through education. Children were taught to read by showing them cards with words written in very large red font, and these words were spoken out loud. The entire lesson took 5-10 seconds, but there were several dozen such lessons a day. The result exceeded all expectations. Before training, these children lagged behind in all indicators of children’s physical development, and some time after the start of training, they were 20% higher than ordinary children in weight, height, head and chest circumference. The children not only became healthy, they learned to read. The brains of sick children were so activated that they easily mastered reading, and immediately fluently. Glen Doman used this system in his work with healthy children. Such training is effective only during the period of brain growth. The human brain grows up to seven to seven and a half years, but it grows the most in the first three years. At the Glen Doman Institute, children two, three, four years old began to read, master mathematics excellently, became real scholars, andat the same time, they were well developed physically: they swam, ran, and climbed well. The creative possibilities of these children were so wide that Glen Doman himself called them children of the Renaissance. Masaru Ibuka, director of the Talent Training organization in Matsumoto, is currently enabling thousands of Japanese children to study according to the program he described in the book: “After three, it’s too late.” He believes that what they learn without any effort at 2, 3 or 4 years old is later given to them with difficulty or not at all. In his opinion, what adults learn with difficulty, children learn through play. Masaru Ibuka proposes to change not the content, but the method of teaching a child Early development. The development of a “child prodigy” is all wonderful, but I, as a psychologist, would like to warn parents against being too eager. Lately, due to the nature of my profession, I have increasingly come across preschool children who are focused on mastering and demonstrating knowledge. They are aimed at an adult, constantly waiting for his assessment. Children seem to say: “Look what I can do, evaluate what I know.” Such children are not interested in being with their peers, and their peers are not interested in them. Instead of spontaneous play, they aim to surprise and delight. It feels like they are “puffing up.” Quite an unpleasant sight. When such children do not find confirmation of their uniqueness, they become depressed and sometimes get angry. Such children do not have the opportunity to simply be; they are forced to constantly give out evidence of their uniqueness. During childhood, very important processes take place in the child’s thinking and mental life. It is very important that what constitutes the “tasks” of childhood is successfully completed. And this is more important than developing the child’s abilities. According to the famous psychologist Erik Erikson, in the period before early adulthood, a person needs to go through five stages of psychosocial development. Soviet psychologist Elkonin D.B. identifies the leading activities during these periods of development. The first stage from birth to one year is called “Trust or Distrust.” The leading need for a child during this period is the need for attention and affection. By the way a mother cares, children learn whether the world is trustworthy. This stage affects the individual's ability to subsequently build close, warm relationships with significant others. The leading activity of this period is direct emotional communication with adults. The second stage is “Independence or indecision.” In the second and third years of life, children discover the capabilities of their body and how to control it. The kids enjoy and are proud of their new capabilities. The leading activity at this stage is object-manipulative. When a child manages to do something on his own, he gains a sense of self-confidence. If the child is pulled back, criticized, or rushed to do things for him, the child will emerge from this stage with a great deal of uncertainty. This will adversely affect the independence of both the teenager and the adult in the future. The third stage is called “Enterprise or guilt.” Play is especially important at this stage. It is the leading activity. At 4-5 years old, children transfer their research activity far beyond the boundaries of their body. They gradually learn how the world works. Ingenuity is manifested both in the child’s speech and in the ability to fantasize. It depends on how the parents react to the child’s ideas which of the qualities will prevail in his character. The content of the crisis contradiction of this period: “I’m interested in this, but my parents won’t like it, because... I'm doing everything wrong." The negative consequences of this stage in adulthood manifest themselves in the habit of feeling guilty for many of their actions. The fourth stage - “Skill or inferiority” - age from six to eleven years. The child goes to school. His circle of contacts expands sharply, friends and teachers appear. Now not only parents, but also.