Learn How To Tell If You Have a Gifted Child
Any truly gifted child will develop his or her own special interests as they grow up. Everybody does. As we grow, the expertise with which we enjoy our own personal interests often grows, too. But sometimes a truly gifted child knows things without ever making much effort or devoting enough time to master the subject.
The exceptionally gifted child of this category is often said to be a child prodigy. There are no exact specifications defining what makes a prodigy a prodigy but there are some generally accepted characteristics of them all.
Perhaps one standard of measure for distinguishing between a gifted child and a child prodigy is that the prodigy is clearly capable of performing in some capacity at the same level of skill as an adult who has trained a lifetime for the same achievement. Child prodigies are usually identified before their 13th birthdays.
One very famous child prodigy was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the prolific Classical composer. During his life, from 1756 to 1791, he composed 600 works and his work maintains the status of masterpiece, even today.
It may be that Mozart was born a gifted child but it may also be that his childhood environment shaped his musical genius into that of prodigy status. Mozart's father was involved extensively within the world of music - deputy music master at the Salzburg court orchestra, composer, music teacher, and music textbook writer.
Three-year-old Mozart watched with fascination as his father gave piano lessons to Mozart's older sister. Before long, Mozart was playing music, too. Flawlessly. Shortly thereafter, he taught himself to play the violin and he began composing his own music. The music of the gifted child was so obviously superior to that of the learned father that the father stopped writing music altogether, in favor of his son's outstanding compositions instead.
This, and more occurred, early in the life of the gifted child Mozart, the prodigy. He accomplished all these things before celebrating his sixth birthday.
We'll never know which side, if either, of the nature-versus-nurture debate provided the biggest impact on the boy Mozart. Perhaps if he'd grown up in a family of talented but not musically inclined people, the gifted child might have proved his gifts in other areas but the strongly encouraged musical environment in which he grew up may be what was needed to boost his innate musical talents into that of a prodigy.