ever seen one before?

bow down GChatters!

...Invariably, though, it’s the parents rather than the children who are of most interest.Take Shoshana and Sasha, parents of nine-year-old Aliyah (IQ 135). “We’re technically all three of us geniuses,” explained Shoshana, matter-of-factly. “That’s not about bragging. That’s just the way it is.”

Although Aliyah’s intellect does not quite match her mother’s, at least by her mother’s account (“I’m smarter than her. She’s not profoundly gifted, as I was”), her parents work ceaselessly to help her make the best of what she has.

Shoshana: “We never, ever, ever lie to her. Not even cultural lies, like Santa Claus or the tooth fairy.” Sasha: “It’s like raising a well-bred horse.” As well as timing her on her homework, they feed Aliyah on smoothies made of cabbage [YUM! YUM!], and pay “alternative therapists” to “rebalance her energies” through “vibrational medicine”. This involves getting her to lie on her back wearing enormous rubber boots wrapped in plastic and attached to electrodes.

Both Shoshana and Sasha, incidentally, work as psychologists. Which must be handy, because if they ever run short of case studies they can always use each other...

i agree with the reviewer about the wrongheadedness in all aspects.

i used to be a member of mensa when i was a teen : i never encountered any geniuses, i met quite a few bright people but no brighter than many people who weren't in mensa.

i met plenty of f*ck-ups tho' - probably i was one of them.

jimmy savile was a member of mensa - i guess he could be called some kind of genius for the sheer chutzpah with which he conducted his life.

one newspaper pundit said jimmy must have had a fantastical inner life.

• ( http link ) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/tv-and-radio-reviews/10988069/Michael-Deacon-The-hothoused-kids-of-Child-Genius.html
[Anonymouse]