Prodigies often excel as young children, performing at levels comparable to gifted adults. But this off-the-charts talent may seem as mysterious and inaccessible as a profound disability. “Prodigiousness and genius are as little understood as autism,” writes Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree, a book about children whose experiences differ greatly from their parents and social milieu. While autism, Down syndrome, dwarfism, and other conditions are viewed as clouds that only later reveal silver linings of meaning and beauty, Solomon says prodigious talent “looks from a distance like silver, but it comes with banks of clouds.” In previous times, he notes, prodigies were believed to be possessed, and genius has often been associated with madness; today we’re more likely to suspect Asperger’s, ADD, or OCD in cases where a child is obsessed with an instrument or game. But while such syndromes may exist in conjunction with talent, there’s no automatic connection. And many child prodigies do grow up to be largely happy and well-balanced.

It Takes a Village

The classic stereotype of a prodigy son of boorish parents isn’t always born out by reality. Many child prodigies had parents who were themselves experts in that field: Mozart’s father was a musician, Picasso’s father an artist, Jascha Heifetz’s father a violinist. Hungarian Jewish chess prodigies Susan and Judit Polgar were the daughters of a chess coach, and many of our gedolim identified as child illuiyim had fathers who were distinguished Torah scholars. While clearly these people were born with tremendous natural abilities, the presence of an adult capable of cultivating those gifts allowed for their maximum expression. “A prodigy is a group enterprise,” comment David Henry Feldman and Lynn T. Goldsmith, in Nature’s Gambit, a now-classic 1966 study of child prodigies.

Dr. Abraham Tannenbaum, a frum Teachers College professor who wrote widely on education for the gifted, put forth a five-pointed model of developing a gifted child (called a “sea star”). Tannenbaum, who was niftar last year at age 90, acknowledged that giftedness cannot flourish on its own without the proper environment to nourish it; it needs environmental supports, nonintellectual traits like dedication and self-esteem, general intellectual abilities, and a healthy dose of good mazel. A musical prodigy born into a Taliban village stands no chance of becoming a concert pianist, while the less-gifted child of piano teachers does stand a chance if he or she is motivated and psychologically healthy.

In the absence of a parent who shares a child’s talents, the next best thing is to have parents who support their child’s development despite being relatively unendowed themselves. Take the Antals of Montreal, Lubavitcher chassidim whose son Pinchas has given piano recitals and competed at Carnegie Hall while enrolled in yeshivah. Mr. Antal cheerfully admits his musical abilities are limited (“I play the guitar badly — I took about ten lessons when I was 15”), while his wife can’t hear at all (she has had a hearing impairment since childhood, and now uses a cochlear implant).

For some reason, Pinchas never approached the family piano until he was about nine, when his mother’s young cousin came over with some friends from yeshivah for a barbecue, and one of the boys showed him around the keyboard. After that, Pinchas managed to start playing so well that his Russian grandmother, in the manner of Jewish grandmothers, couldn’t resist bragging about him to a family friend, pianist Vladimir Krassov. “He came over and said our son had near-perfect pitch and tremendous talent,” Mordechai Antal says proudly. Within a few years, under Krassov’s tutelage, Pinchas was playing at the level of master’s degree students. “This came out of left field,” Antal says. “If Pinchas had started earlier, he would have been on stage already. But we know there’s a right time for everything.”

A teacher by training and the president of the Federation of Teachers of Jewish Schools in Montreal, Antal has his own idiosyncratic approach to education. Pinchas has been skipped a grade into mesivta to accommodate his piano schedule, and his school work continues to be modified for him. “But I worked that way with all my kids,” Antal says. “I made sure they had high school diplomas by 16 and did a couple of semesters of college while finishing mesivta. I never worried about their grades, because as a teacher I know that some of grading is subjective.” Pinchas was accepted into the Conservatory of Montreal, but the practicalities of attending led the family to opt instead for continuing with mesivta and private lessons in piano, violin, and music theory.

Skipping grades (“acceleration”) is one approach to accommodating a gifted child, while providing supplementary material and/or lessons (“enrichment”) is another. Some parents end up homeschooling, or providing a combination of school and individual instruction at home.

Joshua Meier’s mother, Elizabeth, spent many sleepless nights worrying about where to school her gifted, energetic son Joshua. Josh, who has won over $100,000 in prizes at prestigious scientific competitions sponsored by Intel, Siemens, and Google, in addition to winning the US National Bible Contest (Chidon HaTanach) in seventh grade and the international Bible Contest in Israel the following year, started out miserable in school at Yavneh Academy in Paramus. “By fourth grade he was so bored he didn’t want to go any more,” Mrs. Meier says. “We’d buy him learning games, and asked the school to provide more enrichment for him, but they couldn’t always accommodate him.”

By sixth grade Josh, now 18 and a student at Harvard, was becoming an angry, frustrated child. After he won the US Chidon and expressed the desire to win the international Chidon, his parents decided to homeschool him. He learned secular studies half a day with the Florida Virtual School, and Rabbi Menachem Meier [no relation], formerly of the Frisch School, tutored him in limudei kodesh for four hours a day. (Josh also continued piano lessons, which he’d begun at age four.)

Although Josh enjoyed his year at home, he wanted a more social environment for high school. (When he and I spoke by phone, he came across as an extremely positive, personable young man.) After much mental anguish and rabbinic advice, the Meiers decided to enroll him at an elite school for gifted students in Hackensack, New Jersey, a public magnet school for top math and science students (Josh continued to learn limudei kodesh two hours daily with Rabbi Meier, and continues sessions with him by Skype from Harvard). “He was the only frum kid in the school,” says Mrs. Meier. “He had to overcome a lot of religious obstacles, but in the end I think it made him stronger. I give Rabbi Meier tremendous credit for working through all these issues with him.” At Bergen, Josh encountered an intellectual energy that pushed him forward, and began a course of stem cell research he was able to pursue both in school and during summers at Machon Weizmann and Johns Hopkins.

Rivka H.* finds herself with a different educational dilemma. Her extremely gifted ten-year-old daughter Ruchi*, who at age six wrote and illustrated a book about a little girl who shrinks and passes through someone’s digestive system, is enrolled in a Jerusalem Bais Yaakov where she is “bored to tears.” Rivka feels that socially her daughter needs to remain at grade level, but struggles to find kosher outlets for Ruchi’s talents, worrying where her daughter will find expression for them as she grows into chareidi womanhood. “My sister is a doctor and I see how demanding her job is,” Rivka says. “I want my daughter to lead a full life free of that hypercompetitive pressure. I want her to marry and have children, but I also want her to be able to use her talents.”

To Push or Not to Push

For parents of megagifted children, the question is always how much to push. Is it worth pushing a child to become, say, a top musician if he doesn’t share your motivation? Pianist Lang Lang told the New York Times that while his father’s brutal training hinged on the abusive, it allowed him to become one of the world’s top performers, and he is grateful for it today. But most children will not reach the top even if highly gifted — or browbeaten.

When the Helmreichs realized their son had exceptional talents, they began reading about raising prodigies, and concluded that meticulously cultivating his prodigy status wasn’t a healthy way to raise a child. For example, Dr. Helmreich was told his son would have to give up playing ball, because it could be harmful to those precious piano fingers. “I thought, he needs to be normal,” he says. “It’s not like being a doctor — the poorest student graduating medical school is still called ‘doctor.’ With music it’s boom or bust — either you’re world famous, or you’re struggling to make a living.”

Rabbi W., a child illui who is today a rosh kollel, heard a similar sentiment when he was 18: “If you’re an illui at 15, then by age 50 you’ll be a gaon or a gornisht.”

Dr. Helmreich was working on his book The World of the Yeshiva when Jeff was young, and since the book required him to interview quite a few roshei yeshivah, he took advantage of the opportunity to ask daas Torah about the chinuch of his son. While most cautioned him not to take his son away from Torah, Rav Yitzchok Hutner ztz”l — himself a musically gifted baal menagein — had a different warning: “The child is only three. Whatever you do, don’t take him away from the piano at this point — it’s his soul.”

But in the end, Jeff himself didn’t have the patience, discipline, or drive to spend hours practicing; his piano teacher sometimes had to chase him to make him sit through lessons. It brings to mind an incident cited by Andrew Solomon: English lawyer Daines Barrington had gone to observe the eight-year-old Mozart, and later wrote: “He had a thorough knowledge of the fundamental principles of composition. He was also a great master of modulation, and his transitions from one key to another were excessively natural and judicious… whilst he was playing to me, a favorite cat came in, upon which he immediately left his harpsichord, nor could we bring him back for a considerable time. He would also sometimes run about the room with a stick between his legs by way of horse.” Jeff, like Mozart, was still very much a child.

But his trajectory played out differently; the Helmreichs concluded that if their son didn’t have the passion to pursue music single-mindedly, it wasn’t worth sacrificing in so many other areas of life. “I am not a tiger mom,” quips Dr. Helmreich. “I’m a gefilte fish dad.”

Compare this to Pinchas Antal, who loves playing the piano and happily devotes four or five hours a day to practicing and sacrificing some time with his group of friends (although he still swims and occasionally goes skiing). But his father maintains, “We don’t push. We told him, if you’ll do the work, we’ll get you the lessons.”

Children who are pushed too early and too hard may later regret the sacrifices they were urged to make in the name of high achievement. Alissa Quart, author of Hothouse Kids: The Dilemma of the Gifted Child, was pushed hard by a father “hell-bent on bettering my lot — and by extension my family’s lot.” She writes, “Having been built in the fashion I was as a child — created and then deflated — has left me with a distinct sense of failure… the overcultivated can develop self-esteem problems and performance anxiety.” She cites the example of Brandenn Bremmer, a prodigy who entered college at age ten. When Quart interviewed him for her book, he told her, “America is a society that demands perfection.” Despite — or perhaps because of — his tremendous potential, he committed suicide at age 14 in 2005. “Many children who were told they were destined for greatness end up disappointed and unhappy if they don’t live up to their early promise,” Dr. Helmreich notes. “Any middle level of achievement feels like failure.” Fortunately, many frum parents — who usually have more than just one designer child and a vision of achievement in which Torah life and learning hold pride of place — are less likely to become stage parents exerting crushing pressure on their children.

Then there are the geniuses sabotaged not by parents, but by their own gifts. Some children who show early promise may later fail to develop their talents fully because they were never obliged to develop the kinds of work habits and discipline that less brilliant peers need to achieve. Daniel Coyle, author of The Talent Code and other books about giftedness, says that studies show that the majority of prodigies do not become world-class performers despite their head start in the game. “The modern parental response to having a prodigy — which is well-meaning — has an unfortunate side effect,” he claims in his blog. “It cuts the prodigies off from the humble, stepwise, self-motivated process that grew their skill in the first place.” Instead, he advises that parents emphasize the prodigy’s similarity to other children, not his specialness, and highlight the intrinsic rewards of the activity the child shines at.

Piano prodigy Jeff Helmreich ultimately chose a more conventional career path than music. His father speculates, “When something comes so easily, there’s no sense of accomplishment. Jeff needed something he could feel he worked at.”

Little People, Big Brains

How does an eight-year-old who reads at college level relate to peers who are just getting interested in chapter books? The American stereotype is that child geniuses must necessarily be kind of geeky. In the public high school I attended, the brother and sister rumored to have achieved perfect SAT scores were completely out of the social loop, sporting horn-rimmed glasses in an era of wire rims, and bushy hair that always looked in need of a wash.

“Child geniuses can seem out of whack, out of proportion,” says Rabbi W. “The contents of their heads are too large for the kli. This is aggravated by the fact that their advanced minds cause them to spend time with people much older than they are, so they’re always the junior person. That can encourage a certain emotional immaturity.”

With growing recognition of the importance of social skills and interaction, parents are more hesitant to simply “skip” the gifted child into a higher grade. Rivka H.’s daughter is intellectually many grades ahead of herself, but Rivka feels that socially, she’s still just at grade level. So Ruchi remains with her grade, but finds herself on a different wavelength from her peers. “When she wrote her chapter book about the digestive system, she thought her friends would be interested, but they weren’t — they just wanted to trade Hello Kitty stickers,” Rivka says. “She still comes across as quirky, and I try to help her with social skills.” Ruchi does get frustrated, and spends a lot of time alone reading, writing, and thinking. “She has a very rich inner life,” her mother says. “She can lie awake for hours at night in bed, and when I ask why she’s not sleeping, she’ll say, ‘I’m busy in my mind.’ ”

Rabbi W. also admits to having been under-stimulated in school. “The system is not geared for outliers,” he maintains. “It holds them back. I used to learn by myself.” He didn’t always show up at yeshivah; as a teenager, he went through a rebellious, antiestablishment-type phase, even started smoking. Although his parents had difficulty controlling him, he says his father learned with him a lot, which was very beneficial, and the wildness passed. Now he advises parents, “Leave well enough alone. Don’t ruin the child, and try to keep his mind engaged when he’s in school.”

Jacob (Melech) Berlove, a child prodigy now in his 30s who has recently achieved fame for being the world’s most accurate predictor of Supreme Court decisions, agrees: “Parents have to know not to overreact,” he says. “My parents were open-minded and allowed us a lot of independence. They did keep their eyes open — I remember I once went to a friend’s house where there was a smoker in the family, and when my mom picked me up she smelled smoke and asked about it right away. But it was clear that what mattered most to my parents was avodas Hashem.”

Whether a child has a disability or great talent, his native personality will color his relationships with others and his path in life. Marcia still remembers the parent-teacher conference when David’s kindergarten teacher took her to task, telling her she’d “ruined” him and made him uncooperative and hard to teach. “I came away distraught,” she says. But the truth was that his stubbornness was an inborn trait, and even today he still struggles with developing emotional maturity.

Because David was small and physically uncoordinated as a child — although nothing that seemed to concern their pediatrician — Marcia and her husband didn’t allow him to skip grades, even though elementary school was “dreadful.” It was always a struggle to find age-appropriate reading material for a boy who read at a seventh-grade level in kindergarten. He had little to do with his siblings until they were all grown up (they are now close), and was socially isolated.

His parents were stressed until he entered Yavneh Academy for high school, where David was fortunate to find a group of “science geeks” who shared his interests. But later his first marriage failed, and Marcia feels he still has too little tolerance for people not at his level. “He was always smart enough to stay out of trouble, but he had a subversive side,” she says. A rebbi he was close to as a teen passed away, and Marcia painfully admits that since then David has veered away from observance (although he joins his parents for holidays). She now derives a certain schadenfreude watching him try to deal with his own gifted children, who are every bit the bonditt their father was — the four-year-old has a frighteningly photographic memory, and is able to recite books back verbatim, but doesn’t care to learn to read (why should he, when he remembers everything he hears word for word?).

Melech Berlove, according to his mother Janet, was also a highly opinionated child, and quite outspoken. “We often felt we should hang a disclaimer sign around his neck that read, ‘The opinions expressed by this child are not necessarily the views of his parents,’ ” Janet jokes. At age eight he refused to admit his imaginary friend didn’t exist, and at age ten, when he decided the family shouldn’t recycle, he’d take the soda bottles and throw them into the roof gutter. But he wasn’t socially isolated; he was close to his gifted sister, 14 months younger, and had friends in school. “He settled down a lot with age,” Janet says. “As a child he often found it hard to sit still — although he could sit a whole day in shul for long periods as a very young boy, bringing a belt for ‘tefillin’ and a cloth diaper for a

‘tallis.’ ” Rabbi W. likewise avows that he had difficulty sitting still as a child — in fact, he still has difficulty as an adult, leading him to joke that the same way Hillel is mechayev the aniyim and Rebbi is mechayev the ashirim, he’s mechayev the batlanim: “Even if you’re a batlan, you can still learn when you’re not battel-ing.”

Jeff Helmreich, on the other hand, negotiated his social and emotional development with apparent ease. It helped that his classmates at Ramaz were bright kids from educated families like his own, and he had bright siblings. He was elected president of his senior class, handles professional relationships with ease, and is now married with a child and active in his local Jewish community. Similarly Josh Meier, after some early years where he was frustrated and bored in school (“I’d be learning multiplication in kindergarten and not understanding why the other kids weren’t into it too”), found his niche at an elite school for gifted students and later at Harvard, surrounded by other bright, motivated  students.

The Jewish parents we interviewed professed to value all of their children, avoiding showing special pride or favoritism to their “prodigy.” In most cases, fortunately, the siblings were also extremely bright, which helps keep a prodigy from feeling too full of himself.

Mordechai Antal has found another way to prevent his talented son from getting arrogant. Once a week, Pinchas gives recitals at the local nursing home. Besides for the opportunities to get used to performing and altruistically share his musical wealth, the weekly recitals provide the talented young man with an ego check. “At the nursing home, people are talking and moving around during his recitals,” Mordechai says. There’s no gushing audience, no appreciative silence, no awe or humble reverence for the young pianist. “They’ll even tap him on the shoulder as he’s playing. It’s a reality check for him.”

*Names have been changed.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha Issue 554)