Stolen Childhood: The Fate of Russian Prodigies

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Today the call for early development is heard from everywhere. Still, after three it's too late! And it is better to do mathematics right in the cradle, so as not to work all your life as a janitor.

We dream of talented, successful and happy children. But only for many geeks their gifts and talents, alas, could not bring simple human happiness.

The real fashion for geeks appeared in the USSR in the mid-eighties, at about the same time as the fashion for drumheads.

Sadly, nature is arranged in such a way that everything "given from above" has to be paid for. Now in the press, stories of grown-up geeks are very popular - about how life has treated them.

There are, of course, examples of the happily formed destinies of gifted children, such as, for example, the fate of the great Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose abilities manifested themselves in early childhood and did not fade away all their lives. But more often there are articles about how brilliant children break down and even die.

Consider this a continuation of the conversation about whether it is worth so emphasizing the originality in raising children.

Nika Turbina

In 1984, Nika Turbina's book "Draft" was published.

It is believed that he discovered the eight-year-old poetess Yevgeny Yevtushenko. The duet Turbina and Yevtushenko was often shown on TV: a little girl was sitting on a high chair, swinging her legs and touchingly pronouncing the phrase "my work", and Yevgeny Alexandrovich spoke of her as "this poet."

The young poetess, who was predicted a great future, could not withstand the trials and temptations of the adult world. Nika's first nervous breakdown happened at the age of 16.

By that time, the girl, although she was still a talented poetess, had already lost her status of a "little miracle". Public interest in her faded away. Having managed to get used to fame, Nika experienced it very hard. In addition, her mother remarried and gave birth to a second daughter - it seemed to the girl that she was also losing her parental warmth.

Nika married an Italian professor of psychology who was 60 years her senior …

She temporarily left for Switzerland: the official reason for leaving was indicated "to study", in fact, she went to a psychiatric clinic in Lausanne.

Abroad, miraculous healing did not take place, moreover, the girl began to drink out of boredom and melancholy. A year later, Nika came back. Upon returning to Russia, the matured Nika could not find herself. She tried to study at a theater university, establish her personal life, took up film projects … However, the girl threw all her undertakings: by that time, her psyche was pretty shattered and signs of chronic alcoholism appeared. And in May 2002, Nika (by accident or intentionally, it is still unknown) fell from the window sill of the fifth floor, crashing to her death.

Pasha Konoplev

In the 80s of the last century, newspapers admired the phenomenal abilities of the boy Pasha Konoplev.

The boy was equally enthusiastic about reading a book about the adventures of Winnie the Pooh and his mother's university textbooks. At the age of 5, I taught my mother to calculate logarithms in her head.

Yes, at the age of 3 he could read and even made complex calculations in his mind, at 5 he mastered playing the piano, and at 8 he mastered physics!

From the 1st, he went directly to the 4th grade, the program of which suited him better. Pavel turned into an excellent student, but the problems at school did not diminish: the boy began to have serious difficulties in communicating with his peers. Ten or eleven-year-olds did not want to accept a toddler who was old enough for second graders to join the company. “The guys are driving me away, I don’t know their rules,” little Pasha worried.

At the age of 15, the young genius was already enrolled in the capital's university, and at 18 he entered graduate school. But a brilliant future did not work out … Phenomenal abilities entailed an equally phenomenal load, which literally drove the young man crazy.

Pavel was among the first specialists who developed the very first programs for the domestic home computer BK 0010. He became known throughout the country.

But suddenly, like Nika, Pasha fell into mental illness. He began to have nervous breakdowns, outbursts of despair, he cut his hands, as if trying to drown out moral pain with physical pain. His parents took him to the Kashchenko Hospital; psychiatrists were able to only somewhat alleviate Paul's condition with drugs, but not eliminate the cause of his suffering. In addition, the young man's brain, stunned by drugs, could no longer work at the same level.

At the age of 29, he died in a psychiatric clinic.

Nadya Rusheva

Genius is often accompanied by diseases, about which for the time being nothing may be known. Nadya started drawing at the age of 5: the girl illustrated fairy tales for children, and then the classics. At the age of 12, her first exhibition opened. But everything was cut short in an instant: at the age of 17, the artist suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, the cause of which was a congenital defect in one of the cerebral vessels.

Polina Osetinskaya

Pauline was taught music by his father, who dreamed that at least one of his children would become famous. On the third attempt, he succeeded: his youngest daughter Polina became a young celebrity. But when the girl was 14 years old, everything came to an abrupt end. Polina refused to go on tour in the United States, where she was expected to receive a fee of 50 thousand dollars for each concert. The transitional age played a role, the girl left home, and since then she no longer communicated with her father.

As it turned out, it was he who made Polina spend hours and days studying music, leaving no time for anything else.

Andrey Khlopin

Unfortunately, the successful implementation of a child prodigy in adulthood is rather an exception to the rule. But there are also such cases.

They started talking about Andrei Khlopin in 2007, when he got into the Guinness Book of Records as the youngest author of three scientific hypotheses - "The third hypothesis of the origin of the asteroid belt", "Phaeton was inhabited", "Tunguska meteorite - space iceberg". At that time, the boy was only 10 years old. Now he speaks of astronomy as a child's hobby.

In high school, Andrei began to engage in boxing, became interested in history and law, entered the Faculty of Law. “And the Guinness book only helps me to improve my personal life,” says Andrey. “It’s interesting for a girl to find out that among the celebrities there is a guy whom she sees in front of her.”

Zhenya Kisin

Evgeny Kissin became famous at the age of 10, having performed the 20th concert of Mozart with the orchestra.

In the early eighties, it was solemnly presented to the world community. A small Jewish boy composed a large-scale symphonic work about Khatyn, and they began to promote it with all the sovereign pomp. The work of the ten-year-old composer was performed wherever possible, accompanied by a symphony orchestra, and a picture of the eternal flame and a monument to the victims of Khatyn was projected on the backdrop of the stage. In Russia, they admired the young talent, in the West, in all seriousness, there was a debate that maybe the boy did not mean Khatyn, but the Holocaust, and the USSR showed the whole world that it did not clamp down on the Jews at all.

A year later, he gave his first solo concert. In 1985, Kissin went abroad for the first time with concerts. Now he is 45 years old, he lives in Paris and conducts intensive concert activities in Europe, Asia and America, invariably collecting sold out.

Akrit Yasval

Akrit Yaswal is recognized as the smartest person in India with an IQ of 146. From early childhood, the boy was interested in medicine, from the age of five he was well versed in anatomy. He performed his first operation at the age of seven, restoring the mobility of the fingers of a neighbor's girl - she could not unclench her fist after a severe burn, and her parents did not have enough money for a real doctor. As a teenager, Akrit entered medical university, becoming the youngest student in his history. Now the brilliant Indian is about 20 years old, and he directs his efforts to find a cure for cancer.

Pablo Picasso: draw before speaking

The most famous artist of the last century, the founder of Cubism, Pablo Picasso began to paint almost in infancy, even before he learned to speak. Already at the age of 12, he was considered an accomplished master with an individual style. He passed the exams for the art school in one day, while the rest of the applicants took a month to complete this work. The first exhibition of the young Picasso took place when he was 16 years old, and by the age of 20 he had already won worldwide fame. During his life, he created more than 20 thousand works. His paintings are estimated at tens of millions of dollars each. But for all his achievements in the artistic field, Pablo had difficulties with learning for a long time: literacy and numeracy did not want to be given to such a creative person.

Okita Souji: The Invincible Child

Okita Souji lived in Japan in the 19th century and was not very intelligent or creative. His genius was different - by the age of 12 he had become an invincible swordsman, having perfectly mastered several types of cold weapons. He was officially recognized as a martial artist at the age of 18. This legendary young man is one of the founders of the Shinsengumi military police, the story of which Japanese cinema and comic book creators still pay attention to.

Kim Ung Yong

Korean Kim Ung Yong, born in 1962, is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the smartest person alive today - his IQ is 210 points. At three, he entered the University of Physics and graduated at six. When he was seven years old, he was invited to America to work at NASA. By the age of 15, the young man received his Ph. D. from the University of Colorado. At the age of 16, he returned to South Korea, where he defended another doctoral dissertation related to civil engineering and construction. After that, he refused to offer cooperation with the best university in the country, preferring to work at a university in a small town, where he still works.

Gregory Smith

Gregory Smith, unlike most geeks, has no problem communicating with anyone. Entering university at the age of 10 to study the exact sciences, Gregory organized an international movement to promote understanding among children around the world. As its head, he spoke with Mikhail Gorbachev and Bill Clinton, and also made a speech at a meeting of the UN Council. From the age of 12, he was nominated four times for the Nobel Peace Prize. Now the young man is 23 years old, and his career is clearly just beginning.

Katya, "Born in the USSR"

The documentary series Born in the USSR tells the stories of the heroes throughout their lives! The first shooting took place when the heroes, who were born in different republics of the Soviet Union, were 7 years old, then 14, then 21 and finally 28 years old - the fourth episode was released in 2005, and now another part of the project is being prepared for release with already 35 summer heroes. The creator of the series is convinced that the shooting will take place until the heroes reach the age of 70, in order to show a person throughout his life, as Tarkovsky dreamed.

Girl Katya - one of the heroines of the project - was born in Vilnius in a Russian family. At the age of 7, she was already known as a little sage: she answered that she had no friends, but only one-planetary and one-planetary women. At the same age, her stay in a regular school ended: the girl switched to home schooling, because her abilities could not be overlooked against the background of her peers. When asked what she knows about God, seven-year-old Katya replied: “The Hindus represent God in the form of Buddha. Ancient Romans and ancient Greeks had polytheism. Christians have Jesus Christ. Muslims have Allah. The book "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery says that a drunkard has a god - wine, a businessman - money, an astrologer - numbers, a king - power. Like this. Each person has his own god inside. He even predicts fate in the palm of his hand."

At the age of 14, the girl graduated from school as an external student, studied Italian, Japanese, French and, of course, English. It was clear that ahead of her was the “brilliant future” that teachers at school love to prophesy so much.

By the age of 21, she had already managed to study at the university at the Faculty of Psychology, but dropped out, unable to find the desire to continue along this path. Katya also talked about her own psychological problems. At the age of 28 (2012) Katya still lives with her mother, studies English philology and works as a telephone operator. The miracle did not happen: the young girl could neither make real friends, nor meet her beloved man, nor simply find her place in life. Perhaps that is why she is trying to escape from reality into an imaginary world: Katya writes books with fantastic plots.

Diana and Angela Knyazeva

Sisters Diana and Angela Knyazevy became students of the Institute of International Economic Relations when the first was 10, and the second was 11 years old. The girls mastered the school program at home with the help of mom and dad. They graduated from the university in three years, but it turned out that specialists in international economics for 13 and 14 years are not needed. The sisters went to get a second higher education - legal. And again, not a single office needed child lawyers. Then the Council of Rectors of Russia sent the girls to study at Stanford University in the United States. They overcame the program for two years in a year. And again, at 16 and 17, they were unable to offer PhD knowledge to any employer. Only after receiving doctoral degrees, already adult girls began to lecture to American students at one of the universities of New York State.

On Internet forums, some of the girls' classmates shared their memories of the Knyazev sisters.

“The Knyazev sisters studied with me at the Financial Academy. They graduated from the institute in 3 years. But behind such impressive indicators are not smart, developed personalities, but completely asocialized children, withdrawn. They were "brought by the handle, taken away by the handle", communication with fellow students was reduced to zero. And this applies not only to communication at the institute. They had no friends at all outside the university."

“I took part in the program“Press Club”together with the Knyazevs. The girls there talked about their dreams. Their speech was similar to that of schoolgirls who had memorized their answers to exam questions well. Basically, the Knyazevs quoted textbooks, including those on economics. In their monologues, one did not feel their own point of view, zest, intelligence. The girls easily manipulated the unlimited possibilities of human memory, but could not process this information outside the box."

The Knyazevs studied excellently, both graduated with honors. Their homework was always ready. Despite the fact that the girls' socialization was impaired, they did not suffer from this at all - they did not go first to contact, they were closed and ambitious. The weather girls always went in pairs and seemed to be pleased with the communication with each other. They came to the prom night with mom and dad, posed on stage while their parents took pictures of how they received their diplomas, and left with their parents in the same way.

Today they flatly refuse to communicate with Russian journalists. According to rumors, the girls were offended that they were not understood and accepted in their home country.

In the media, you can find dry interviews with the Knyazevs 5 years ago. They say about one thing: "the main thing in life is study and career." As a rule, the sisters went to the dialogue only with the consent of the mother, who warned the press in advance: “The conversation will take place in writing by e-mail. Not to change a single word."

Savely Kosenko: "Thank you for being alive"

“At the age of 2, the Muscovite Savely Kosenko read, at the age of 7 he compiled programs on his home computer. When it came time to go to school, he passed exams in five grades as an external student. At the age of 10 he graduated from the school curriculum. At the same age, he wrote a physics textbook. Hit the Guinness Book of Records. And he became a student of one of the most prestigious universities - the Technical University (formerly the Bauman Moscow State Technical University). The teenager studied at two faculties at once. Savely graduated from the Institute at the age of 16”.

In the early 90s, similar materials literally filled the front pages of printed publications. Every month, large-circulation newspapers threw out a note about the genius boy-girl on their pages. Russia seemed to be churning out geeks.

Each of those children at the age of one already clearly expressed their thoughts, at two they read, at three they read-divided-multiplied multiple-digit numbers, at five they mastered almost all classical literature, at 10-12 they graduated from school.

It wasn't until years later that we learned how the geek myths were created.

… The talented Savely Kosenko seemed to evaporate after graduation.

He is not on the lists of Russian scientists.

And as a resident of the Mother See, he is also not listed.

Kosenko's search ended in Canada.

- Thank you for being alive, - Savely joked. - Otherwise I have heard that many so-called prodigies of my generation have long been in the afterlife …

“Previously, in Soviet schools, talented children were ridiculed as if they were holy fools,” Kosenko continues. - I went through almost the entire school as an external student. I remember how terrible it was to see the incompetence of teachers in their own subjects. As a child, I noticed the incompetence of my teacher. This left an imprint for a lifetime. In an ordinary school, I survived only a year. I was 7 years old when I was admitted to the 6th grade. At school I was bullied and humiliated by the students at the suggestion of the teachers. Therefore, my parents preferred to study with me at home. The teacher immediately explained to her classmates that I was a Jew and that they could "ride" me. After that, I heard only this all year. Fortunately, I studied a lot, and I did not have time to bother communicating with classmates. At the age of 11, I entered the Bauman Institute and felt like I was in paradise. There were gathered smart and developed guys, to whom I needed to catch up intellectually. 17-year-old children entering Baumansky wanted to study more than to walk. The attitude towards me was friendly, so I have good memories of fellow students and professors.

- The schedule of my day was as follows: wake up, study, go to bed. I learned to read and write when I was 3 years old. By the age of ten, he had overcome almost all Chekhov, Balzac, Pushkin and others. Since then I can't stand Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Lermontov. After 13-14 years old I can hardly read fiction. This again refers to "overdoing". Now I read technical literature, news, press. I ignore fiction.

How did you end up in Canada?

- After graduating from university, the army was shining for me, where I categorically did not want to go. This is the first reason. And we also left because in Russia at the end of the 90s I did not see any opportunities for personal and career growth.

What do you do in Canada?

- I own and operate several internet marketing companies. I am a fairly wealthy person. I live in Montreal. What happened in Russia is one part of life, now I live a different, adult and meaningful life.

Do you often visit Russia?

- I have not been to Russia since my family emigrated from there. Although he often visited other republics of the former USSR. But it was to Russia that he did not want to return. At first there was fear of the army, and then a kind of paranoia developed. But I follow the news and events in Russia, I have many friends there.

Alexey Sultanov

Alexey Sultanov was born in Tashkent. At 6 months old, he first touched the piano keys. At two years old, Alyosha had not yet spoken, but was already playing melodies. At five, the boy composed music and by ear wrote down his transcriptions of Beethoven's works in a music book. At the age of seven, he masterly performed Mozart's concert rondo with a symphony orchestra.

The music teacher convinced Sultanov's parents that only exhausting work would lead to the success of their brilliant son.

So Alyosha was deprived of his childhood. He spent days and nights at a musical instrument.

At the age of 9 he performed Beethoven's First Piano Concerto.

Apparently, the boy's body could not physically withstand such loads. The child has developed bulimia.

At the age of 15, Sultanov was enrolled in the Central Music School at the Conservatory. In 1986 he became a student at the Moscow Conservatory.

“Alyosha grew up as a kind of boy. It was difficult to teach him to discipline, - wrote in his memoirs Professor of the Department of Special Piano Lev Naumov. - His psyche was shattered. Once he broke an expensive drum, which was the property of the institution."

Sultanov resisted the system as best he could and on the eve of the international competition smashed his fist against the wall, broke his little finger. The turning point forced Sultanov to refuse to participate in the competition.

In 1989, Sultanov was recognized as the best among the 38 strongest pianists in the world. After that, he began touring concert venues in Europe. But as soon as he had a free minute, Alexei ran bungee jumping, roller coaster rides, and playing video games. As if he was making up for what he had missed as a child. Later, when Sultanov did not receive a prize at one of the competitions, a feeling of resentment for the lost childhood overwhelmed him. He reproached his parents - why did they turn childhood into a source of suffering?

In 1991, Alexei had his appendix removed. A trifling operation unsettled him. “I can die. From a stroke! This disease mowed down many of my relatives,”Sultanov decided. The fear of death progressed every year - the musician began to take a pressure measuring device with him on tour, and studied medical literature at night.

And as if he was calling trouble. In 1996, in Tokyo, he suffered a microstroke.

And since then, Alexey Sultanov has become paranoid. He no longer doubted that not today or tomorrow he would be paralyzed.

In 1998, Sultanov did not qualify for the finals of the prestigious Tchaikovsky Competition. This was Alexei's first defeat. At that time he was 28 years old. The musician has already emigrated to America. Sometimes he came on tour to Moscow. But this was a completely different Sultanov - lost and exhausted.

In 2001, the pianist was struck down by five strokes in a row. One could forget about the phenomenal motor abilities of Alexei forever. The doctor who examined the musician threw up his hands after the operation: "The picture of the death of a genius is obvious."

Sultanov went blind in one eye. He couldn't speak. The left half of the body was paralyzed.

After a while, the musician's physiotherapist brought the patient back to life. As far as possible. Alexei again sat down at the piano and began to play with one hand. His wife accompanied him. Only the auditorium was now housed in hospitals and nursing homes.

In the summer of 2005, Alexey Sultanov died.

According to psychologists, the fate of this man is typical of a genius. The body of a man could not withstand excessive stress at an early age, therefore it failed early.

Diana Sadovnikova

Many parents are so eager to create an idol from their own child that they go on cruel experiments. 10-year-old Diana Sadovnikova sued her father. She could not stand her father's efforts to make her perfect. Maxim Sadovnikov raised his daughter to be versatile: she performed at the Moscow gymnastics championship, sang with Gurchenko and read many smart books. But what price did she have to pay for these achievements? In a year, the father kicked out the daughter's mother so that she would not interfere with his pedagogical project. Diana's regimen from an early age was scheduled by the minute: getting up at six in the morning, jogging 12 kilometers, gymnastics for several hours, then reading smart books chosen by her father. For the eaten candy - additional cross. To harden his character, the father put his daughter on bread and water, beat him with a rolling pin …

"Poor you are mine," sobbed Galina Gavrilovna, hearing the cry of her granddaughter, whom her father beat with a rope. "Yes, if I could get up, I would save you from this monster." Over time, the father forbade his daughter to communicate with her grandmother and decided to single-handedly raise his daughter. He had plenty of time for education. He worked as an emergency electrician at the local DES. The work schedule is two days a week.

Every day, Diana got up at six in the morning and ran a 12-kilometer cross. No "reluctance" was accepted. After school, a few hours of gymnastics training. For secretly eaten candy - several kilometers of cross. And so every day - not a minute of idleness. He watched his daughter's athletic form scrupulously. From time to time I arranged measurements: how many centimeters are the waist, how wider are the shoulders.

“Yes, I am self-actualizing in this way, you know?” Sadovnikov says. “What's wrong with that? I put so much effort into Diana! I quit an interesting job. Before that, I was a lighting engineer in a company that organizes concerts. I traveled all over the country on tours.. So that Diana would not be left alone, he became an ordinary electrician."

Maxim Alexandrovich did not limit himself to sports. The spirit also trained. An ideal person should read several million good books - all the classics, should not eat meat (this is immoral), should not live by lies and in accordance with Christian concepts of goodness and forgiveness. True, in real life, the latest attitudes failed in the form of constant scandals with the girl's grandmother and the need to "physically influence the daughter for educational purposes" - this is his own wording.

The last straw was a candy wrapper, which grandmother secretly slipped in again. He was found by Tasya, Maxim's girlfriend. A terrible scandal flared up: screams, tears and grandmothers and granddaughters. A couple of days later, the grandmother and granddaughter decided to report the family lawlessness to the guardianship authorities. "Give my granddaughter to the orphanage!" - asked Galina Gavrilovna by phone to the inspector.

The local guardianship collected material on the deprivation of parental rights and submitted it to the court. Diana in front of all the commissions repeated: I will not return home. Maxim was deprived of parental rights. The girl went to the Solntsevo orphanage.

And Maxim Alexandrovich was not going to give up his daughter, who abandoned him: he wrote complaints to various authorities. The court once again rejected them, "taking into account the child's desire." However, at the trial in public, Diana, trembling, whispered: I do not want to live with my father. And when my father ran to her shelter almost every day, she happily ran to meet him."

A week after another court refusal to restore her parental rights, Diana fled from the shelter. When, three days later, the police raided the Sadovnikovs' apartment to take her daughter back, Diana grabbed her father. Confused policemen and guardianship officials threw up their hands. Father and daughter did not care about any legal problems. But they went to meet them. They found some loopholes, made my father write a receipt that Diana would live with him.

Maxim Alexandrovich was not going to give up his daughter: he wrote complaints to various authorities.

Soon Diana ran away from the shelter and returned to her father. I continued my morning jogging, reading books, playing the piano until exhaustion …

We tried to find this family.

The Sadovnikovs seemed to be gone …

William James Sideis: The Greatest Genius in History

He is considered the smartest person who has ever lived on our planet. His level of intellectual development is estimated at about 250-300 points (despite the fact that the maximum value that can be gained on modern tests is 180 points). William was born in the United States in 1898 to a family of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. He learned to read at a year and a half, by eight he mastered seven foreign languages (more precisely six - he invented the seventh himself) and wrote four books. At seven, he passed the exams at Harvard Medical School, but due to his age, he was admitted there only four years later after numerous demands from his father. Saidis received his professorship even before his twentieth birthday. In his life, he mastered more than forty languages, wrote a number of outstanding works in mathematics and cosmology.

But genius weighed heavily on him. William led a reclusive lifestyle, avoided communication with the opposite sex and the press, worked in ordinary positions, changing jobs as soon as people around him began to suspect of his abilities.

It became obvious that golden children's heads are intended not only for the knowledge that gifted children have a very delicate nervous organization, and it simply breaks down under the weight of fame and mass psychosis that reigns around them. In addition, due to an overabundance of attention, such children very quickly become egocentric and perceive the dulling of attention to their person as a tragedy. Evgeny Bunimovich, Nika Turbina's class teacher in ninth and tenth grades, recalls that at the age of 15-16, Nika was acutely worried that the poetic youth environment rejected her, and for the masters she remained a “miracle child”. She did not want, and often could not, study. The girl, who received a bunch of world awards, whose book was translated into 15 languages of the world, experienced a decline in popularity in an already difficult adolescence and practically nothing else attracted her attention.

According to Yevgeny Bunimovich, the responsibility for the broken lives of the children is borne by their parents, who encouraged their children to take off from the stars, not thinking about the problems they will face in the future, and the master producers who were ready to pay for the reputation of the “discoverer child prodigy happiness, health, and sometimes the life of children.

The fate of the geeks strongly resembles the legend of the "golden boy".

In 1496, the New Year was celebrated in the castle of the Duke of Moreau. The Duke was about to show his guests a wonderful performance that celebrated the "golden age" of peace and general well-being that followed the "Iron Age" - many years of devastating wars. The golden age was supposed to be depicted by a naked boy, covered from head to toe with gold paint. After the holiday, the child was forgotten, and they found him only three days later - he was dying of paint poisoning and lack of oxygen.

Maybe the "golden boys" will be enough already? Maybe it's time to part with such a beautiful, but such a destructive tale of child prodigies?

For many years, the country followed the experiment of the Nikitin teachers. Their seven children at 4 years old knew the periodic table, wrote poetry, read physics textbooks instead of fairy tales, walked barefoot in the snow. Who have become the children of popular teachers? Alexey is an electronics designer based in London. Anton is a laboratory manager, a chemist. Olga is a lawyer. Anna is a nurse. Julia is a librarian. Ivan is a businessman, he distributes educational games of the Nikitins. Love is a housewife. There is nothing particularly outstanding in their careers, you might say. This is true. But all families have from two to seven children. This is wonderful.

We all want happiness for our children. Happiness is health, a strong family, respect for others. This is often absent in the fate of geniuses. If your child is an optimistic C grade, maybe this is happiness? Scientists, in any case, are sure of this.