TVScope: Child Genius - Channel 4, February 8th, 9pm'What's the point in a life if you can't make it a happy life?" This query from 11-year-old Dante, whose genius comes with depression and low self-esteem, highlighted this riveting documentary's message that being gifted can be a burden rather than a gift for some.
Review by clinical psychologist Olive Travers
Life is also a nightmare for Dante's parents as he constantly challenges and outwits them.
This, the first in a new series following 10 of the UK's most gifted children, was salutary watching for all the doting parents who believe their little Oisín or Emer is a budding prodigy. None of the kids featured enjoyed the normal friends, fun and games of childhood. Their lives are a constant round of competitions and pressure.
While the average IQ is 100, several of these children went off the scale at 170+. Mikhail, aged three, can multiply five-figure numbers and is the youngest ever member of Mensa, while 10-year-old Amy is the youngest person ever to be admitted to the Royal Academy of Music.
The most exceptional and happiest of the children was 11-year-old Michael, who was reading Shakespeare and learning Mandarin at the age of five, and now, seven languages later, is a talented musician, gourmet cook and successful children's author.
Interestingly, his sensible- sounding Oxford Don mother was the only parent who seemed to enjoy her child's talents and encouraged him to spread them over a wide range of interests.
It was hard not to feel sorry for the children whose parents live vicariously through them, giving up jobs to home-school and hothouse one talent. Peter's parents ignored psychologists' advice to send him to school. Peter, his father believed, was like a race horse, "easily put off and needing to be looked after carefully to bring out the best".
Most disturbing were the scary Grafton-Clarke parents, in their isolated house, who have earmarked their four gifted but robotic children to be future leaders in politics, medicine and religion.
The series will revisit the children every two years right into adulthood. Only time will tell how the children will use their ability and figure out their place in the world. Some, the physiologist suggested, may opt out and take the "low road" in order to experience the normality we take for granted.