The Flawed Genius 3: Channel the ability

The summation of my last blog is that behind every autism or learning disability may be a genius of legendary proportion, but the burden is on the people closest to such an individual to help channel that ability at such an early age. Derek from our last story had 0.5%  of  ability to comprehend or communicate with anybody, but that enhanced 99.99% of his appreciation of music. He remembers every note he hears even if ten individuals in an orchestra were playing the notes. No normal human brain can handle that, because we naturally use less than 1% of our brain, this means that the 99.99% appreciation Derek uses is more cognitive than the average brain usage of an average person. But it took his nanny to channel that innate ability.

Unfortunately, I come from  a country where children with learning disabilities are discriminated against and seen as either a curse or a burden. For the avoidance of doubt, I have been trained to understand and care for children with learning disabilities for more than three years in England, I have even had very difficult children get close to me. In all these, I noticed from their care plans that whenever they get into behaviours challenges, there is always something that got them quiet, maybe a puzzle,a computer game,music  etc. So children’s care homes always have facilities for playing, puzzles, books, they have artists come to evaluate their inclination towards the arts. In all these, the carer wants to find out the language the nonverbal child is inclined towards.

If many parents imbibe this practice with such children at home, by giving this kids a universal language like playing music for them at tender age, exposing them to puzzles,patterns,maths, construction or arts (I consider these universal languages), their genius might be revealed. Derek's Nanny understood this and started singing to him at a tender age and later brought a piano for him, when his brilliance in teaching himself became apparent, the father brought him a piano teacher.These were all acts of channeling fueled by love.

There is a story of an individual who had asperger syndrome, Gary McKinnon. He hacked 97 US Military and NASA computers, he said he was looking for evidence of UFOs and energy source that was beneficial to mankind. The truth of the story was that in 1987 when he was just 17 years old, he went to his local cinema and saw the movie of a whiz kid who hacked into Pentagon secret computers and nearly caused a war, but the intriguing part of the tale for the Derek must have been when the Pentagon congratulates the boy in the movie for his intelligence, and believes when he grows he will be an asset for NASA or Ministry of Defence. (See http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2005/jul/09/weekend7.weekend2 viewed 20/10/2013)

This kind of encouragement is also seen in the American film of “Catch me if you Can” where a serial bank fraudster is later employed by the government to help stop bank fraud. The truth is, every government needs to find every genius, even the ones who have shown their ingenuity by acts of criminality. Reform and put them to good use. I am not a supporter of crime, but the best thing for misguided geniuses,  is for the government of his country to help him channel his genius properly. May be by helping his country fight cyber espionage which is the next Third War going on now, he can help his country from an offensive angle or help them tighten their cyber thresholds.

In all, my thoughts on today’s blog is that on no account should a child with learning disabilities be seen as having nothing to offer. Maybe they have more to offer than we can imagine. Every responsible government should release funds to investigate, educate and help children with learning disabilities, because in doing so, such countries may be close to the next technological breakthrough.