Wow. Yup. At early ages, we were all geniuses. Ballerina's start at age 4 and get scolded to get better. Just look at Michael Jackson. Would he be so good if he never got hit by his dad?
There is a price to pay for greatness.
Remind me of kids of Steve Erwin, or Crocodile hunter. They
are were like 8 years old, and just play around with crocs and stuff... and survive it.
Or the excellent marksman the stolen childs are that are drilled to become soldiers. At age 10 they really can hit a target from far far away.
That is why you never talk to a child in baby talk. They 'get' it more than you think, even harder concepts like death.
At age 10 I was learning technical english, binary code (well, more binary math, really), by myself, to understand the zx Spectrum my mother got for herself. I beat her in all courses (which were magazines with boring exercises, but I did them anyway). (of course, now I know, as a parent, that the house does not clean itself, and the fridge doesn’t fill itself, and that you need to plan ahead for things, and the time you have is very limited as an adult).
I could do binary math better than normal math, and never understood why these were two different words.
Finally in midschool, I got "computer" classes, BBC Micro's, underpowered, greenscreen only. Very boring compared to the zx spectrum. And the stuff they taught... meh, all things I knew more than 2 years already. At that point I was poke and peeking on the commodore. Had a cartridge with assembler on it. and started learning a little assembler (and gaming, of course). But I reached a plateau, where nobody could do what you did, so I had nobody to hone my skill with. Sure, I spurred on that all kids in the neighbor hoods also got C64's but they used it differently. By then I could type blind (also because there were lots of programs at that time for the computers). Never got as good as my mother, she blazes when she types... well did, as we get older we get slower somehow. And typing was not my forte, as the zx Spectrum has all these green and red shift then 1 letter will print a whole command, thus it did not help to learn typing, only to know where each command is. The commodore was like throwing chicks in the water. You must learn to swim. Where are the commands... what are the commands? and if you make an error... mwahahah, good luck. I guess that is why the prompt feels so familiar now, although it was a hard master.
Back on topic.
Here in the Netherlands, we had a kid that sailed the world. I would be terrified at sea, but she felt at home, and at peace there. Stuff we "landrotten" will never "get". And she got it from her dad. So if anything, kids are destined for greatness, but only if they have role models around them they can reach out to, and look up to. It takes a village....
edit:
I wish I had though about doing this with my own
He is now too old. Ho well
Never too old man.
