The joy of recognizing and encouraging your child to develop his or her gifts . . .

We've been astonished at our 2 1/2-year-old granddaughter's obvious artistic bent. Her sense of color (she has demanded to pick her own clothes--very creatively, yet with astonishing sense of color coordination--for over a year) and her musical ability (turn on some music and she is in a reverie almost immediately) have jumped out at us from very early. But she has some astounding facility with language as well.

So her parents and we, her grandparents, try to encourage the development of these traits as much as possible. Her mom intends to take her to her first ballet class tomorrow morning if the weather will permit. (It's been snowing rather heavily here!)

Anyway. With Natalia's unique giftedness in mind, I was astonished to see the following video of a budding musical conductor . . . at three years of age!



Think of how well he has to know the piece in order to anticipate the changes in tempo and dynamic range. As someone commented: he is not merely reacting to the music; he is anticipating the changes. He really knows this piece.

I first saw the video here at the American Choral Directors Society website. Allen Simon, who posted the video to the ChoralNet blog, noted, Jonathan, the conductor in the video, "could give us all lessons in enthusiasm." --There is a page full of admiring and thoughtful comments about his conducting style and understanding of the music. Lots of accolades to his parents, too!

One guy wrote:

I believe a major symphony orchestra could easily follow his direction (except for the finish [Where he falls off his "podium" and lies on the floor giggling from the pure joy of conducting such a fine piece of music--JAH]) and audiences would love his style.

I also think that this video would serve an excellent training tool for conducting students--it teaches music expression using the whole body (including conducting with your feet), unbridled enthusiasm, and how to deal with emergencies without dropping a beat (or a baton).

In the comments section to another video, one of his parents comments,

Since before Jonathan was walking he was trying to conduct and at 19 months he had picked his instrument. He fell in love with the violin. His passion is for classical music. We found him a wonderful violin instructor whom he adores. He has been playing now for a year.

You can find that video (also of him conducting) here.

And then there's the very recent (he's now 4 years old) Jonathan performs "Humoresque" by Antonín Dvořák.

Memory games

I couldn't believe it. Last Sunday, Sarita and I went up to Boulder to attend Jonadab's dedication. After church, then, we spent the afternoon with Phil and Amy's family.

To the children, Sarita and I are "Grandma and Grandpa Far Away." Their other grandparents are "Grandma and Grandpa Super Far Away."

Grandma and Grandpa Super Far Away have been visiting for the last month or so. At one point late in the afternoon, their grandparents were talking and I was told that Jadon, 6 years old and Amy and Phil's oldest, is a master at the Bob the Builder^® Memory game.

"Oh!" said Grandma Super Far Away, "he beats me all the time at that game. I don't have a chance."

I thought, "Can this really be?"

Jadon to happened to walk by shortly after. "I hear you're very good at Bob the Builder^®," I said.

He smiled at me in a humble sort of way. And then, quietly, "Yeah. . . ."

"You want to play?"

"Sure!" he grinned.

He took me down to the basement. And, as we prepared the game, he explained how to play it.

We poured out the pieces. We placed them face-down on the floor, mixed them up thoroughly, and slid them into a nice, rectangular matrix with a few left over. That was odd! Indeed, so odd, I counted them: 68 pieces in all, 34 matched pairs of images. [According to the manufacturer's description, a set should have 72 pieces.]

We began taking turns flipping cards face upward, two at a time, seeing if we could find matched pairs. If we found a pair, we would get to keep the cards and go again until we didn't make a match. If we didn't find a match, we had to turn the cards back over, face-down, and let the other player have his turn.

Jadon got the first pair. He got the second pair, too. And the third. I think he had about eight sets before I got my first.

Final score at the end of the first game: John, 20 matched cards; Jadon, 48.

I thought, "Okay, he has some advantages. For example, he knows all the characters by name. I had never seen them before in my life. Another advantage: each character seems to have two or three unique cards. Thus, while I am looking at 'the orange truck with lots of tires,' he already knows that character's name is, say, Muck, and if there is a big picture of Muck and a smaller one."

But even ignoring these advantages, I realize he was doing things I would never dream of achieving. At the moment when I am realizing, "Oh! We've seen that particular card before," Jadon is chuckling, reaches down and turns a card over whose location I couldn't remember for the life of me.

Over and over this happened. I would be barely remembering we had seen the card before or, at best, I'd be thinking, "Oh, it's somewhere over here"--yet with no real idea of which one of six to nine cards it might be, and Jadon would be chuckling and turning the card over with confidence. Those are behaviors not of luck but of memory. And my memory was failing me . . . or, at least, compared to Jadon, my memory was failing! He was doing brilliantly!

Oh. One more thing. Several spaces would open up in the middle of our matrix, and there would be a few cards sitting on the periphery. Without warning, Jadon would pick up the peripheral cards, and place them in the center, to fill in the gaps. I could never remember whether we had looked at those cards before. I don't know whether Jadon knew. But that kind of rearrangement didn't seem to bother him.

We played a second game. Final score: John, 26 matched cards; Jadon, 42.

In the third game. Final score: John, 22 cards; Jadon, 46.

How did he do it? I have no idea! But I think he has a gift, a gift of memory. I hope he will use it as a blessing for the world!