<p>The profoundly gifted kids I’ve met were all homeschooled. One memory I have is of an 8 year old girl who joined a class for math-lovers aged 13 to 18 and which included some who had qualified for USAMO. She was so happy to be there that on the first couple of sessions, she was frenetic, as if fearing that the candy was going to be snatched away from her hands. Her parents were in the back with tears in their eyes. She eventually settled down. A year later, her dad told me she was studying for her A-levels through distance learning.</p>
<p>So sad. Obviously he has rare, but very limited, talents, and his parent(s) seem oblivious to the fact that he has a form of PDD. I’m not very impressed with the piano piece. It’s technically not that hard and rather monotonous. There are kids who can play much more sophisticated music at a young age.</p>
<p>Again, the family website mentions music theory studied at the college level, which was omitted from the article. Deep involvement with music theory by a small child signifies more than whiz-kid performance tricks would (which I agree he doesn’t show). If a seven- or eight-year old masters the material in Kostka I’m perfectly willing to call him a prodigy.</p>
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<p>Some people have said that what Magnus displays amounts to high functioning autism, and also that this kind of thing is in the genes. I would not be surprised if the father is socially abnormal too. This is not the writing of a typical father, not even the writing of a proud father of a child brainiac. The style here is definitely odd. It’s awkward and indescribably childish, in a way. I don’t know. I guess this isn’t really for me to say. But I wonder why none of the broadcasts on Magnus say anything about high functioning autism. I guess the parents did not want that information discussed. I wonder if he’s even every been diagnosed with anything, or if the parents simply see nothing wrong.</p>
<p>And I agree that the piano performances did not stun me. The pieces chosen were somewhat difficult for a boy his age, but his performances were technically and emotionally underwhelming from the perspective of someone with a music background. Little mozart he certainly is not. However, some of his math work is posted on his site and it is really college calculus. Much beyond AP Calc BC curriculum. His math is far more advanced than his musicality. But media is really so typical, everything is blown out of proportion by people who have no understanding about music or math.</p>
<p>Two peas in a pod. A/As need to be taught social/communication skills the same way other folks need to be taught to learn the piano. Simply, they must learn empathy. They can not see through some one else’s eyes. </p>
<p>We had to teach my son to not pick his nose in public, to not stand too close to other kids, to avoid being too honest (“why are you so fat?”), to pick the right time to continually rock, tap, twitch, hum, and crack knuckles etc. etc. etc. </p>
<p>Dad’s communication is coming from years of memorizing the right thing to say and do in various situations. I am sure the whole family has not been diagnosed. It is quite common in the math field so, in their circles they may be within the normal range of behavior.</p>
<p>The savant skills displayed by the child are not particularly surprising considering that both parents are mathematicians. Over 50% of savants have autistic disorders and the other 50% suffer from developmental disability or brain injury. Several studies conducted at Cambridge University showed the prevalence of autism to be at least ninefold greater among mathematicians than in the general population. Other studies among engineers, physicists and computer scientists have shown similar or greater prevalence. With both parents mathematicians the likelihood of a child with some form of autistic syndrome are greatly increased. </p>
<p>[Does</a> Autism Occur More Often in Families of Physicists, Engineers, and Mathematicians? – Baron-Cohen 2 (3): 296 – Autism](<a href=“http://aut.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/2/3/296]Does”>http://aut.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/2/3/296)</p>
<p>There is also increased evidence the disorder has a strong genetic component. During the twenty years I spent in Silicon Valley I witnessed an explosive growth in the reported cases of autism, especially among children whose parents worked at companies such as Intel, Hewlett Packard, Sun Microsystems or Silicon Graphics. Silicon Valley is a virtual magnet for people somewhere on the autism spectrum. Microsoft even provides insurance coverage for the special care of its employees’ children. Some of the children I knew displayed savant skills not unlike the boy in the story, mostly advanced musical and mathematical abilities. There was a special school for such extremely precocious children right next to our house in Burlingame. They had a five year waiting list for admission. Unfortunately, more often than not the kids were on the other end of the autism spectrum with severe learning disabilities. </p>
<p>[Wired</a> 9.12: The Geek Syndrome](<a href=“http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers.html]Wired”>The Geek Syndrome | WIRED)</p>
<p>I am no psychiatrist but just reading the web site, it seems quite apparent that the parents themselves display at least some of the obsessive traits of AS patients. Maybe they should treat their own disorder first before they completely ruin their child’s chance for normal childhood.</p>
<p>'There was a special school for such extremely precocious children right next to our house in Burlingame. They had a five year waiting list for admission.<br>
hold the phone cellerdweller!!! My son DID go the school for gifted kids in Hillsborough that you are refering to for 9 years and I don’t know where you get this idea- "Unfortunately, more often than not the kids were on the other end of the autism spectrum with severe learning disabilities. " Sheesh. What a sweeping generality about some gifted kids that you obviously don’t know much about. Yeah, you AREN’T a psychiatrist.</p>
<p>menloparkmom, since cellardweller is in Connecticut and may not be able to respond till tomorrow, let me say that I interpreted his/her comment about the children with severe learning disabilities to apply to a largish subset of all of the Silicon Valley children who were somewhere on the autism spectrum, not to the subset who were gifted (but probably had Asperger’s).</p>
<p>This article originally appeared in the Southlake (Texas) Journal. It contains so many inaccurate quotations and incorrect assertions about Magnus and his education that it is little more than a caricature. The editors of the paper have recognized this and removed it from their web site.</p>
<p>You have succeeded admirably in setting up a straw man, toppling him over, and pounding him to a pulp. Had you bothered to do more than take some sloppily written article as your gospel, you might have discovered the real Magnus entertaining at community centers and retirement homes.</p>
<p>But why bother? It’s so much more entertaining to continue pounding away on that defenseless straw man in your own little world with reality Schorn away.</p>
<p>for better or worse, once you have had one of these special kids in your family, it becomes quite easy to spot them … from how they carry their body to speech patterns etc. etc. Menloparkmom, I know of the school you speak. My son was turned down from the school because of his undiagnosed aspie behavior. They were the first to point out the issues to come. Any population of smart kids has unique challenges and this school is no exception but I would never describe the population I encountered as severely learning disabled… maybe just a bit quirky … and thank goodness for that!</p>
<p>MQD, I think cellardweller is asleep now, and no insult to the students at the school was intended at all. I understood cellardweller to mean that an unfortunately high fraction of all of the Silicon Valley children with autism-spectrum problems had learning disabilities, not at all to characterize the group at the school as learning disabled.</p>
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<p>I agree that much of what is learned in school has little to do with academics, but not that it’s difficult to learn socialization and such if not enrolled in a traditional college. Indeed, I think it’s easier to learn such things if <em>not</em> in a traditional school environment as you have more time in the world as it more typically is as your world is larger than one building, one or a few teachers, fellow students who are usually within a year of your own chronological age, etc.</p>
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<p>This implies that kids who are scoring high on math exams early on were <em>all</em> pushed by parents to learn so quickly, and this is not true. Our son scored higher than about 9 out of 10 college bound high school seniors on the SAT I he took at age 8 with no prep other than taking the practice SAT that came in the booklet sent to all who registered for the SAT, and when he was given academic testing by a psychologist at age 7, he scored post high school level across the board (not just in math) even though he wasn’t considered a high schooler let alone college student to us and so we were giving him far lower grade materials (though he himself had used his book gift certificate for being the top fundraiser in the MS Read-a-thon to buy a calculus book as we had refused to buy it as we saw no reason for him to have a calculus at age 7, so he was sort of supplying himself with higher level materials). I have pushed our son to do certain things, like write thank you notes for gifts he’s received, and I make no apologies for having done so, but I haven’t pushed him to do advanced math or enter competitions (and he’s entered few due to that, but done well in most of the few he’s entered, like he won the grand prize of two computers in a national essay contest for 5th graders when he was 7 and $300 in US savings bonds in a national essay contest for 4th-7th graders when he was 6, and first place in a statewide business plan contest for undergraduate and graduate students at age 10 as well as the cash Most Valuable Employee award in that contest, and $50 in a comedy contest and an all expenses paid trip to Disney World at age 8 for his volunteer work and so on). Indeed, if anything, I’ve held our child back, as he wanted to start college at 6, applied at 8 and was accepted to start at 8, and we wouldn’t let him start till he turned 9, and did that reluctantly. We also convinced him to take a year between college and graduate school even though he wanted to go straight from college to graduate school. He also wanted to join the college crew team at 9 when he was first invited to join, but we held him off till he was 11 and a stronger swimmer (should the shell capsize) and I had come around to the notion of waking up early to get him to practices M-F at 5 AM (luckily, I only had to drive him a short distance to a rower who volunteered to give our son a ride to the boat house and thus I could go back to bed).</p>
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<p>I think our son learned this very well without any traditional school before college. He had group work while being in a homeschool handchime/handbell choir, for example, and in Destination Imagination and other such activities. And he must have functioned in groups well as he was an intern at age 9 for a tech company and at age 10, was back at that company to work on the Loebner Prize with others at the company, and at age 11, was back again to work on a team to help develop a device to help the blind read labels off cans at the grocery store and such. Plus, he was on a group project in an upper level CS course at age 12 where the self-proclaimed team leader was a complete jerk and all the other members wanted our son taking that guy’s place and it’s a long story, but how he helped out in that group was remarkable to me and other team members (as they expressed their gratitude by doing things like buying our son’s art work and treating him to dinner, etc.). And in graduate school, even though he was only 15 when in a class where the students were to help one another learn, several of the students wrote on the teacher survey at the end of the class that our son was more helpful than the official TAs for the class and should have been paid (and thus, the following year when that course was next taught, our son was made a TA for it). Our son has also been elected to his graduate dorm’s executive committee and won a cash award for having given so much to the dorm the year prior the first year he was eligible for that award. I get the impression from what I hear from people that he’s a rather decent group worker for whatever groups he joins.</p>
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<p>I mentioned our son’s dorm leadership above, but he also was nominated and elected to co-direct a summer educational program at his university, elected by both the current SGA members (his first year when he applied after the school year had begun) and the student body to be a member of the SGA in undergraduate school, a coxswain on the crew team, a teacher, and likely some other leadership things that I’m too tired right now to have come to mind.</p>
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<p>In the business plan competition, he <em>very</em> much wanted to have the role of business owner/CEO, but agreed to be an employee instead (I think the title was CTO) and still did well. There are lots of other times where he has followed rather than led.</p>
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<p>Again, our son has done this. He had lunch on Sunday with a friend he made in a Moms and Tots group back when the kids were only 5 months old (the friend thinks of our son as a cousin as he’s known him all his life, and this is a likely person for our son to pick to be in his wedding party should he ever marry, along with a friend he made when he was 8 and a current apartment mate),</p>
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<p>I can only think of one person our son dropped as a friend, and I think he had reasonable cause in that instance. I think he does pretty well in picking his friends such that he doesn’t typically see need to later drop them.</p>
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<p>He’s also done that quite well, though not in a PC way 100% of the time (though even here, the only time I can think of where he has shown a lack of tact was when he was 9 and first told he could use a Power Point presentation at this conference in Germany and then told by a director that he couldn’t even though every other presenter could as he wanted everyone to be watching him speak and not watching slides, and then the director wanted to ditch our son’s prepared talk and replace it with his own political message, and our son said right in front of the director and other higher ups at the conference table, “I feel like I am being used.” But to have only stood up for himself without proper grace once at age 9 seems pretty good to me).</p>
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<p>Again, our son learned this quite early, even if it was “learned” rather than just known. At age 6, he came to the aid of a 6-year-old classmate when the tap teacher was teasing the boy (saying she was going to strangle him or hand him by his toe nails if he didnt behave). Our son felt the boy’s reaction was that of a person truly frightened and said to the teacher, Dont tease him. That isnt nice to do to people (or something like that), which he later told me took some courage to do as she is the teacher and he didnt want to correct a teacher, but he also didn’t feel it right for a teacher to say such a thing to a child, especially one who didn’t seem to understand she wasn’t serious about the “punishment” for the behavior.</p>
<p>Over and over again, we have heard from people how incredible our son is with other people (and if you heard some of the retirement home stories, trust me, you’d agree), be they other kids or old people or kids much younger than himself or middle-aged people, educated people, the janitors at his university, you name it. Honestly, I have some doubts that he would have the <em>people</em> talents that he has had he not been homschooled before college.</p>
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<p>This unfortunatey perpetuates some of the misunderstandings about autism. “ASD patients”? “They should treat their own disorder first”? This is not the kind of medical condition where one goes to a doctor or psychiatrist, receives a prescription or treatment, and then becomes miraculously cured or fixed. This is a lifelong, neurologically-based condition that never goes away and an individual with an ASD will spend their entire life struggling with this disorder. This is such a broadly defined spectrum and each individual with an ASD is very unique, and may require very different kinds of treatment.</p>
<p>“Normal childhood?” Most high-functioning A/As are not even diagnosed until after they have begun school when they are well into their childhood. And even with “treatment” it may be several years before they come close to what this world apparently considers “normal.” And in high functioning individuals this is very much an invisible disorder that can easily go undetected or can be misdiagnosed as other conditions, which may or may not be (but often are) present - ADD, LDs, OCD, sensory disorders, etc.; this can result in failing to get the correct services for the autistic characteristics. </p>
<p>But more importantly, how exactly do (or, “should”) we define “normal” especially when talking about a highly gifted child??</p>
<p>StrawMan …</p>
<p>I know you are new to this thread and it has become quite long but there are a group of us who are/became quite sympathetic to the situation and did not pound the strawman to a pulp. </p>
<p>This thread has actually turned into a very interesting discussion amongst folks who have raised or been around very gifted kids and I think we have all come a long way in our understanding. No need to bash. This has become a place of learning and reminding us that not all things are as they appear at first. The editing of the written piece and the video were both poorly executed and a disservice to Magnus and his family … putting the family in a bad light. I think they treated the family like a circus act and edited for the strongest effect. I’ll bet the media bet is pleased with their readership/viewership numbers.</p>
<p>QuantMech … I understand. </p>
<p>Having an aspie son, I always considered his NLD to be the AS … not separate from it ( maybe I misread the posts …it is getting late ;)) and of course being so close to it, I never considered it to be a “severe” learning disability. I prefer to think of it as a variation that has brought us some very interesting members of the human population who might just help the neurotypical find the “cure to cancer” … I do believe A/A just might be mother natures half step to our next big leap … 
… it is up to the rest of us to help tease out the great gifts. </p>
<p>Cellardweller provided some great articles … thank her/him for that.</p>
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<p>Actually, I think it needed to be said as it shouldn’t be assumed. Our son started graduate school at age 14, and his lab group includes at least one post doc in his 30’s and a guy who is 30 (I know as our son attended his birthday party at his home), and he’s gone on business trips with both of these men and got along very well with them (the lab even asked our son if he was okay sharing a room with at least one if not both of them and I suspect also asked the guys if they were okay sharing a room with him on the trips where he wasn’t just a travel companion, but sharing a room with one of them). I’ve never gotten the impression that our son has had people feeling uncomfortable, nor is he uncomfortable around the other students (or post docs) in his lab. If classmates or lab colleagues were uncomfortable, I wouldn’t think they would invite him to their parties like they do.</p>
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<p>And I think our son’s are pretty decent (not perfect, as he still does bite off bread rather than break it into a bite-sized piece to eat, for example). At age 8, he took a manners class at a local mansion and the teacher told me that she felt she should give me my money back as our son could have taught the class on his own. I did try to teach our son proper manners, and this is why when he does something like hold a door open for a man with a cane approaching a restaurant even though our son was mid-bite and not near the door but just seeing the man approaching outside the restaurant window, I am proud of him…I feel I was somehow a contributor to the manners exhibited. Unfortunately, the time I more often hear, “You must be so proud” is over his doing academic things (like earning two B.S. degrees at 13 or an M.S. at 16) for which I am happy he reached his goals, but don’t feel I have any right to be <em>proud</em>.</p>
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<p>So glad. :)</p>
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<p>Yeah, that article had some interesting points, but I didn’t think the plumber one particularly good. Our son would observe people who came to our house to work (a furnace repairman and a man who remodeled our basement playroom in particular come to mind; both remembered our son years later when they happened to see him at other places, like a bowling alley and a community music event) and ask questions if he felt he wasn’t distracting or disturbing the worker and seemed very well liked.</p>
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<p>Our son had highly educated people suggesting he should skip undergraduate school when he was 8 and admitted to college and go directly into a graduate program, which he did not. He recently told me he wishes he had, and yet I think (and hope) that in time, he will be glad he didn’t. He had a good time in undergraduate school, but seems to like his graduate school experience all the more.</p>
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<p>I hear/read this is a very common experience for MIT students. Our son is currently at MIT and <em>really</em> digs the school (he wears his Grad Rat proudly and gave me his undergraduate school ring as he both was never that wild about it and has long since outgrown it as he was only around 11 or so when he got it).</p>
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<p>True. One of our son’s mentors (a first place winner in the Westinghouse competition before Intel took over the science talent search) had no friends till he was 18 and went to MIT, and yet he is right up on the top of my list for “best social skills” of people I have ever met.</p>
<p>‘Mark said his son’s current curriculum does not include English, history, science or foreign languages, as these subjects do not interest him at present. Although they realize that it is unorthodox, Magnus’ parents are pleased with the results.’“I’m very good at advertising him,” Mark said.</p>
<p>and they don’t plan on sending him to college until he is 17 or 18. </p>
<p>Now, even for homeschooled kids, wouldn’t teaching english and history and science be a must? </p>
<p>How ignoring those subject is acceptable is astonishing to me. And how supposedly educated parents thinking its okay to not work on the other basic subject areas is cruel to the child, and to think he will succeed in college without those courses, even at this point is irresponsible, naive at best and neglectful.</p>
<p>And he will be doomed if he parents track their little genius in such a fashion.</p>
<p>Thanks for the post and the reminder of your son’s great experiences.<br>
What made the older members of the group uncomfortable (perhaps an exaggeration) was his lack of fit with their concerns that included wives and girlfriends, for example. I remember my H mentioning that the group wanted to go and celebrate someone passing his Ph.D. exam by going out for beer and being reminded by the 17-year old “I don’t drink” There was nothing major. But he was seriously lacking in the manners department; he was not impolite, just oblivious. Still, he was accepted enough for someone from the group to look him up years later.</p>
<p>"Owlice and Zoos, is it really all that much more tasteless and intrusive than parents posting their child’s athletic accomplishments? </p>
<p>I’m not arguing. I’m asking: if this child were a top-ranked chess player or a prodigy gymnast, would listing their stats be also bad taste?"</p>
<p>To make a passing mention of it in the Christmas newsletter? No.
To set up a website to that effect? Yes, that would be poor taste.
And the father’s phrasing (“you can guess …”) and talking about how his son worked his way through the five review guides is very odd.
But hey, takes all types.</p>