OUR STORY When Octavian was almost ten he stumbled upon a passage in a book that said that a prodigy is a child under the age of ten who is doing the work of an adult. At that point he had spent six months reading an average of 8 hours a day about black holes and quantum physics and could carry on a good conversation with any adult about such matters. He had drawn sketches of many inventions, mostly for the creation of “free” sources of energy and he had written Stephen Hawking at Cambridge University in England to discuss some of Hawking’s theories about black holes. While all of this achievement sounds prodigious, Octavian was devastated to realize that he would never qualify as a true prodigy, according to that book’s definition. He spent several weeks literally crying about his failure. During this period of time he became withdrawn and quiet (when he wasn’t talking about his distress). He went through a depression that genuinely frightened me. I have since read of the highly gifted child’s drive to perfection, especially personal perfection. From an early age they form their own internal standards of excellence and from that point on, drive themselves toward that standard. Perhaps more than the normal or moderately gifted child, the highly gifted will find their lodestone at an early age and seem to be driven towards its development.
I spent many sleepless nights fretting over Octavian’s depression. Countless hours I talked to him and listened to him. He willingly shared his torment with me and I comforted him. My own experiences as a child enabled me to empathize with my son but such empathy did nothing to diminish his pain. While he was grateful for my understanding and knew that some gifted children never receive validation or empathy in such a manner, hugs and loving could not fix what was wrong with him. Around this time we began attending a church in a nearby town. A satellite of our home church in Texas, there we viewed videos of our pastor, Robert Thieme, Jr., teaching Bible Doctrine and our children began attending “prep school” designed to teach them the basic doctrines of the Word of God. Our family had spent many years listening daily to audiocassette tapes of our pastor, Thieme, teaching Bible Doctrine prior to finding the new satellite church. Berachah Church, in Houston, Texas, affectionately calls folks like us “tapers.” For years we learned alone and our family of five focused on the core tenets of Christianity such as salvation, grace and orientation to authority. At our new satellite church the children began learning things we had never taught them. Their teacher outlined for them the plan of God for humanity. He helped them memorize and understand scriptures so that those scriptures could be recalled later. In the first year of his instruction, Octavian memorized over sixty scriptures and Antony and Scarlett both memorized many also. They gradually developed a repertoire of doctrinal principles that began to provide an underlying framework for their adjustment to life. I saw huge changes in their behavior and attitudes. Many of the changes I saw were related to their willingness to cooperate with one another and me. But, the change that seemed the most remarkable involved Octavian’s serenity. Octavian no longer cried and worried about his academic progress. He became much more prosaic about life and his goals. Without losing his desire for excellence, he acquired a relaxed attitude about his work. When we serendipitously found a physicist for him to meet with weekly, his focus became relaxed discourse rather than frantic acquisition of advanced mathematical or scientific skill. When that wonderful physicist moved away he directed us to the local university’s physics department and they recommended a tutor who became Octavian’s mentor/kindred spirit. She continues to keep step with his needs and remains his most loyal advocate. © 2001, Smart Kid At Home. World Rights Reserved. |
