precocious children: tragic or punchable?

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tragic exiles trapped in kidworld rewarded for adult-lite behaviour by prodding parents or coddled lil knowitalls? (thinking about royal tennenbaums, salinger & the "what was the first record you ever bought" thread on ILM)

― fritz, Friday, 4 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I believe that children are the future new answers

― fritz, Friday, 4 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Tragic exiles, because they don't know any better. I felt really sorry for the kids in "Franny and Zooey".

― Trevor, Friday, 4 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Oh yeah, and I'm thinking about that kid with the receding hairline that was supposedly a child prodigy antiques dealer. He was basically a puppet of his parents who forced the publicity onto him in order to supplement the income of their ailing business.

He got so much flak for that, even bricks through the window. Can you imagine? Not surprisingly, after a number of operations, he became a she. Symptomatic of a desire to get as far away from the past as possible.

― Trevor, Friday, 4 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Tragically punchable, because they OUGHT to be out throwing rocks at stop signs and imperfectly tying their shoe laces and child-labouring in welsh coal mines instead of suzuki-methoding violins and saying, "Oh, Mother, how pedestrian!". There's nothing wrong with smart kids but parents who train their kids to have affectations of sophistico adulthood are just as bad as those who give them mullet haircuts and earrings.

― fritz, Friday, 4 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

In which case, surely it's the parents who are eminently punchable.

― Trevor, Friday, 4 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

yes, exactly - but their peers will settle for punching them, i think.

― fritz, Friday, 4 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

If I have a five-year-old that spouts stuff like, "Oh Mother, how pedestrian," I'm going to be eternally entertained.

― Dan Perry, Friday, 4 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

If you have a five-year old that says, "Oh Father, *must* you?" then we'll all be entertained. Depends on context, though.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 4 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

um, ok. but anyway...

1. Do precocious children turn into childish adults? If childhood is not lived at an appropriate point in one's life will it be lived at an inappropriate point?

2. Despite my earlier comments, is it just as hard on a kid to make him/her "act like a kid" and scuff up their shoes when they'd rather be sitting around the house writing haiku and mixing bloody marys for mom?

― fritz, Friday, 4 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Do precocious children turn into childish adults?

I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, look at me. (Although I wasn't nearly as precocious as some kids out there were.)

― Dan Perry, Friday, 4 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I thought ILE would have more to say on the pros and cons of precociousness, given that you're all so young, bright and clever.

― fritz, Friday, 4 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

It's the unravelling of precocious childhoods into washed-up early adult dysfunctionalism (and the contrast with the idiot neighbor child's later success) that makes "The Royal Tenenbaums" palatable. They're rich and famous but emotionally a-shamble! HaHa!

― felicity, Friday, 4 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I was only being facetious about the young part, by the way (except for the actual young amongst us.) ILE are pretty uniformly bright and clever, so I imagine a number of you were precocious kids to one degree or another.

― fritz, Friday, 4 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I, sadly, identify with Lisa Simpson too much.

― Samantha, Friday, 4 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

i was tremendously precocious but no one noticed until i hit my 40s and started winning ile awards by the GALACTIC CRUISER LOAD: by then, in a bitter irony, decline had set in and my best days were certainly past me

― mark s, Friday, 4 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

mostly i hate children fullstop but my little australian niece is very precocious and i love her to bits. i think maybe in a narcissistic kind of way cos i see myself in her.

― di, Friday, 4 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

As someone who's had to spend the last 30 years or so living down the hype of being featured in the press as a "child prodigy" (fact!) I have to agree that one ends up being a childish adult - intellectually of age, maybe, but emotionally stuck at the age of 12.

The Daily Mail tend to 'phone me up every ten years or so and then run hilariously inaccurate "where-are-they-now" features branding me a failure for not assuming the presidency of IBM at the age of 16.

Although my dad was an RAF man, so if I had said "Oh Father, how pedestrian" at age five they would have needed to send Clodagh Rodgers to intensive care to sing me out of my coma.

― Marcello Carlin, Saturday, 5 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

And it doesn't help either when you go home for Xmas and everyone, including your mum, continues to go on about what a nice and clever boy you were when you were four years old, which (though well meant, of course) nevertheless puts me in the same category as Syd Barrett, i.e. useless after 1968.

― Marcello Carlin, Saturday, 5 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm all washed up at 18. I think it makes for a disappointing adulthood to be a "genius" as a child. Where I used to be able to impress teachers and relatives and other children, now I have...a blog. It's an inevitable feeling of failure once you're too old to impress anyone and you realize you have *no other talents*.

― Melissa W, Sunday, 6 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

My cousin isn't precocious at all. But he has baaaaaad moodswings. It really put me to the test. However I love him so much. When he told me his father has smacked him, I wanted to cry. In fact in bed I cried.

― helenfordsdale, Sunday, 6 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Thank you, Marcello.

Not having been home in 9 years is no fun, but at least I'm spared the downcast eyes and mournful tone of voice - "You could've gone so far, you know, you had it all going for you." When I was six, they mean. Now I'm 32.

― dave q, Sunday, 6 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

OK I'm in full-on rant mode now. Do you know how shitty it is when you're talking to the folks about something completely unrelated, when apropos-of-nothing they come out with, "It's that goddamned unstructured class for 'gifted' children you went to that messed you up, we shouldn't have signed you up for that." Like, what the fuck are you supposed to say to that?

― dave q, Sunday, 6 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

And these are the same people who used to intercept all my phone calls (so I wouldn't be distracted by friends or GURLZ instead of homework), constantly telling me that those sort of activities were for the plebs (intellectual snobbery - another fine genetic legacy to make social intercourse even more difficult), and then wondering years later why my retarded 'social life' for ages consisted of nothing but drugs and abusive relationships that usually lasted for about a week. Enough, I'm going for a spliff and a hot bath.

― dave q, Sunday, 6 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Depends. Former friend of mine was featured in the press just like Marcello, became total bitch nightmare as a result. Was weird because she said yes to an opportunity which I said no to, because I knew I'd become a pighead bighead weirdo as a result of accepting the offer.

In my case I had a lot of attention from about the age of five, both as freak of medical innovation and also as writer kid. I was also World's Oldest Five-Year Old but haven't become too childish in my old age. My parents were too busy bickering to hothouse me, I would just march into the kitchen when they were fighting about bills and shout 'stop this IMMEDIATELY!' and used lots of large words due to dictionary-reading. I was also oldest child, grandchild, great-grand and oldest in my neighbourhood and therefore got to be an adult socially quite early.

People who have this kind of attention lavished on them tend to want to keep it going. At least I've accomplished some of the ambitions I've set out for myself and don't see much problem with doing the rest.

― suzy, Sunday, 6 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Wasn't featured in the press or anything -- good deal -- but had the reputation of being a bit of a brain or something. My mom completely surprised me the other day when she said that when I was six I was essentially ten. This logically explains why I now feel like a combination of fifteen and sixty.

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 6 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Parents telling you to get off the phone cos girls and drugs are for plebs? But it's SO TRUE! Those things are for plebs! I wish my parents could have conceived of such distinctions! Instead I have to make them all up for myself, now. I had the opposite childhood - 'where are your friends, Maryann? Here, have a glass of wine, or two or three' ... now my fantasy life is a joke even to me, a joke about conformity being rebellion! I am sick of the joke of wearing straight clothes and watering plants while my friends shoot up, but I don't have any other joke to make.

Duane had a fantasy childhood, if you ask me; in a big old farmhouse with oldish parents who lived in a sort of sun setting on the empire dreamworld; his parents were polite and had regular meals and read Strunk and White and the Guardian.

― maryann, Monday, 7 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

yeah & look at me now.

― duane, Monday, 7 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

it's all my fault!

― maryann, Monday, 7 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

ps - ha, ha, ha.

― maryann, Monday, 7 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

shut up & water the fucking plants!

― duane, Monday, 7 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The most shocking thing my dad had ever said to me was "Don't be ridiculous, you're 10 years old!" in response to my saying "Don't patronise me Dad."

― N., Monday, 7 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

That is the best Dad line ever. I must use it when my genes get spliced.

― Pete, Monday, 7 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

At the risk of sounding mildly controversial, is it not the very fact they're tragic which makes them punchable? From the perspective of other kids, I mean.

― Trevor, Monday, 7 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

its just so painful being a tortured genius you insensitive bastards

― Menelaus Darcy, Monday, 7 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Yeah, but what kind of a tortured genius would you be without the torture? You should be grateful. Now get back in your bubble.

― N., Monday, 7 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

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