Prodigy? Child with Autism? One and The Same?
For the longest time, I thought my son was a prodigy. Then I began reading about kids who wrote and passed around newsletters on how truly un-nutritious their cafeteria food really was -- in fourth grade! And won spelling bees by correctly spelling kneidel (a Hebrew word for matzoh balls but who knew?). And invented a test for breast cancer (she was in high school, but still). And my son began getting B's. Christie McNicholson reports at smartplanet.com that there's actually a child who spoke his first word at three months (mine's first was "squirrel" -- go figure!), learned the entire alphabet by eight months, went to college at nine, developed a new form of mathematics and by age 13 had written a research paper accepted by a math journal. Now that's a prodigy. Apparently there's just one trait shared by all prodigies . Guess what it is? Sounds a little too crazy to be true but it's a good working memory, not IQ. And it's actually one...