Such children, as all children, need to be affirmed in his/her natural uniqueness by families, communities, and those in the educational system. In doing this, we will leave no child behind, except due to insufficient resources, lack of opportunity, and/or motivation. Within such a perspective, there is no room for "normal;" that with which all are expected to conform, except a general morality of no harm and mutual affirmation. All else estranges the potential.

Hi John:

What I was also wondering was, whether they would experience a kind of depression when they grow up to be a 'normal' adult.If so, what should facilitate their re- adaptation to their new 'normal self? Some might not even realise that they are seen 'normal then. But some might face the awful truth that they lead a life like all the others.

Dear Leyla,

We do live in a world in which most are pressed to be normal or above normal. To me, this is sad, as I have said, in reality, there is no normal. We are each individually and collectively naturally unique. With this perception, our uniqueness can be celebrated and affirmed by all. As you say, we live in a world in which reality is perceived as separate and disconnected in a cause and effect relationship. With this perspective there are automatically certain relationship issues that come into play. Those are power and control, rich vs. poor, male vs. female, right vs. wrong, good vs. bad, free vs. slave, normal vs. abnormal, the list goes on forever. These become our major social issues. As long as we perceive reality in this way, instead of perceiving it as intimately interconnected according to natural individual and collective uniqueness, there will be hurt, harm, and discord.

To me, it is time to start teaching and behaving with an awareness that separation is a social construction imposed upon people and the world around us. We need to teach and measure meaning by our natural uniqueness as an ongoing creative process of mutual affirmation. To the extent we do this, we will have a healthier world and healthier relations.

The place to start is within. We cannot change others, but we can change ourselves.

John.

Thank you John, my parents tried to do that with me, I had almost been put in a 'gifted children' school, but luckily, my psychology/philosophy graduate mom did not allow. Not only I went to a normal elementary school, but also to a public one, which is a huge difference in countries like my home country Turkey. However, playing piano with a pacifier still in my mouth and having 147 IQ (the highest in the district at the time) and possessing artistic skills and a soprano voice, made me automatically stand out and receive an extraordinary education later and pursue a brilliant show career which made me an "enviable" celebrity !!! . On the other hand the same condition left me 'immature and attention addicted' could not function as mother or even friend or wife, until I came to Canada and 'took out' my show biz self and transferred my communication skills to a different area. That was a professional/psychological suicide but it was necessary. God knows how much I suffered and still hurting a little being far away from that recognition and attention, although my new career opened my eyes and I started to see 'others finally'. But I had to wait for that until I became 57 yrs old and leave everything, family, fame, name behind. Now I am wondering whether there is research about that kind of cases. (by the way, you deserved a psychiatrist fee now :) and my IQ fell down to 124 (thank God :)

I heartily agree with John Tracy that it is important to affirm both the uniqueness of each individual and their natural relatedness to others. On that basis, I hope that gifted individuals such as Leyla Tekul can find a way to develop their natural talents, abilities, and interests in a way that helps them relate in a more, not less, psychologically mature, healthy, appropriately responsive, and caring way to others. A psychologically healthy creative process involves a dynamic balance between being attentive to the needs and concerns of others, and being attentive to one's own creative insights and urges naturally seeking expression. Genuine self-understanding and self-expression, and genuine understanding of others, with appropriate caring responsiveness to their legitimate needs and concerns, can be mutually enhancing rather than mutually exclusive and opposing processes. If we let our creative talents make us excessively narcissistically self-involved and immersed in incessant mind-chatter, that can undermine our ability to empathically tune into other individuals and be appropriately responsive to their legitimate needs and concerns, whereas if we focus on how our creative talents can benefit others, and how learning from others and being empathically open to their insights and experience can further enhance our own creative development, that flexible dynamic oscillation between creative introspection and creative empathic attunement with others is a psychologically healthy way of relating to ourselves and others, and can produce enhanced rather than diminished levels of adjustment, creative insight, and productive functioning. Intense cravings for attention and recognition often reflect a psychological anxiety involving a compensatory attempt to escape from the illusory experience of inner emptiness and lack of self-awareness evoked by not receiving favorable attention and recognition from others. The ego subconsciously equates lack of recognition, attention, and self-awareness as being tantamount to psychological non-existence or nullification, but it is actually the key to awakening a more real, substantial, and psychologically healthy self, a relational self rather than a separate sense of self. If one accepts this experience of inner quiet and lack of self-awareness, and does not try to escape from it by seeking constant attention and recognition, then a more real and substantial self emerges from that lack of mind chatter and separate self-awareness, an intrinsic, enduring self that does not depend on attention and recognition and separate self-awareness to validate and affirm itself. In two books which I have recently published, I and the other authors discuss psychologically healthy ways of developing creative insight/creative talent and also relating to other individuals in psychologically healthy ways, which enhance rather than detract from our own unique individual creative development and authentic experiential understanding. For more information about my books, please contact me, or see my ResearchGate profile, or see my author/publisher webpage, http://sbprabooks.com/MaxHammer

I should have read you or met you a decade ago Barry. I would have definitely felt better, thank you for your insightful input !

I'm really delighted to be helpful, Leyla!!! I intuitively feel that you are meant to gain insights into the psychological self-healing process through your own painful experiences and setbacks, so that you can reach your greatest possible level of creative development, develop psychologically healthy, satisfying, relationships with other people, and use your experiences to help other creative people overcome similar obstacles to reaching their fullest creative and co-creative/synergistic/relational potentials. I, too, was an emotionally wounded, insecure, highly gifted child prodigy, and I have great empathy and compassion for highly gifted people (adults as well as children) who have difficulty learning how to develop their gifts in ways that are truly beneficial to themselves and others. In the final Appendix of both of my two books, I discuss how society can and should be compassionately helpful to emotionally wounded, insecure-feeling, creatively gifted people.

Perhaps you may wish to view the following YouTube videos that discuss how we can use our own emotional pain to heal, take psychologically mature and constructive self-responsibility, develop true experiential self-understanding and insightful creative abilities as the key to liberating self-transformation, and help others to do the same, as a "Wounded Healer"

http://youtu.be/Yv7pFUm2gS0

THE WOUNDED HEALER

http://youtu.be/Eg_bnBabkvI

The Chiron Codex - Integrating the Wounded Healer

http://youtu.be/70JcWu6nabQ

7 Embracing the Shadow - The Wounded Healer Archetype (Trailer

http://youtu.be/ba3uVJr44sg

Christine Downing - Only the Wounded Healer Heals

Here are some related videos about Heyokas, Native American Wounded Healers, filled with powerful "Foolish Wisdom"

http://youtu.be/xUv9URaeTzw

Heyoka: Sacred Clown

http://youtu.be/sM8yGVbq3mE

How to know if you are a Heyoka

http://youtu.be/W8Dbu40eqc8

Rich castro tells "The legend of kokopelli"

Dear Barry,

Your words remind me of my former teacher and friend Matthew Fox (Creation Spirituality) and his pathways. To follow what you say, I write that while we are all naturally unique we are likewise intimately interconnected as members of the creative process. Each brings to the sacred circle their uniqueness as it is developing and once it has developed. Unfortunately, society places such a great emphasis upon expertise and perfection that it tends to stymie and disqualify the natural uniqueness of many. Every person's uniqueness is essential to all of the rest of us, no matter how perfect or not it may be. Without it or with it diminished, it weakens the circle and diminishes the rest of us as well. I tell my students we are all artists, musicians, poets, dancers, singers, painters, writers, etc. If and to the extent that we do not see this, we not only lessen oneself, but we lessen what we bring to others and in the same way fail to see or affirm the uniqueness of others. When and to the extent that we perceive individual and collective uniqueness in this way no one is diminished or estranged.

John

Leyla,

You are wonderful and amazing. Your openness is great to see. I love the pacifier! Obviously, you are multi talented and seeking the joy of inner meaning as well as to understand. You express much insight and wisdom already. To me, everything is positional. The only position in which we can gain wisdom or insight is in the I Don;t Know, but I am seeking and open to find out. Then, we create the possibility (with no guarantee) of gaining insight. You have taken much risk and made great changes to reposition yourself. Think about how there is nothing that any of us need to prove. We just are (individually and collectively). The more we can avoid falling into judgment and simply affirm our being and celebrate our uniqueness with others as well as our natural interconnections, the healthier we are in our relations. We can change our perceptions. We cannot change the perceptions of others... only they can do that.

John

Dear John,

I completely agree with everything that you say in your latest comments, as well as your earlier comments, and I am deeply touched by the heartfelt, sincere, beautiful way that you express your experiential insights, particularly, your insights about the intrinsic uniqueness and preciousness of every individual and collective, and the importance of being open to uncertainty, flexible repositioning, the sacred circle of relational connection, and embracing natural aspects of our being and functioning that do not conform to idealized, presumptive, conceptions of productivity, order, and perfection, but which, paradoxically, are an important, indispensable part of the greater holistic process of life unfolding its intrinsic productivity/playfulness, order/chaos, perfection/imperfection.

Dear John,

I should add that I, too, very much appreciate Matthew Fox and his theology of Original Blessings. I believe that the key to changing societal rejection and marginalization of those who do not conform to conventional definitions, rigid standards, and judgmental expectations of "normalcy" is for us to serve as exemplars or emissaries of the true vision of love, which sees everyone as inherently beautiful, precious, lovely, lovable, and potentially loving in their own uniquely special way, inclusive of their natural struggles, idiosyncrasies, and seeming imperfections, which, paradoxically, are an integral aspect of the greater wholeness and blessedness of reality, or life, and its intrinsic unfolding relative perfection and imperfection, which are non-dualistically not other than one another, like two sides of the same indivisible whole coin. By modeling our own appreciation of the intrinsic uniqueness, preciousness, blessedness, interconnectedness, and interdependence of all living beings, we are being and creating the change that we wish to see in the world.

Dear Barry,

Well put! It seems we have much in common. I will be checking out some of the works you suggested. Thanks

John

Ok gentlemen, we will have to build a prodigy support group :) No, seriously, every single word you are sharing here is valuable to me and I am sure to many children, "grown up children" teachers and parents. From "being not like the others" to being "confident and comfortable with others" is a huge and important step. Especially actors have been known for their self centered mannerisms and I(not surprisingly) had chosen that calling first. There was a very well known joke being told ,while I was studying acting in Vienna : "Mr. Burgschauspieler ( that's how the state theater's actors were being called) I have seen you in sky-train yesterday", " Oh really, how was I, was I good? " :))) That anxiety followed me too all my life. Now, being rather 'normal' I am still pursuing achievements such as, trying to obtain a Master's degree despite my bibliophobia and 'non-academic brain :) ,but at least I am no longer "that "vain" .

The " wild bold ego" of prodigy children should be 'filed' and manicured on time , I guess.