Poor Health in the High Ability Child

This week I have had conversations with three different women concerned about the poor health of their children.   Was it the Asthma, the Allergies or the Epilepsy that was holding them back at school?   Surely something must be causing their poor academic results.   It certainly got me thinking about the early health of some of those very highly able people who ultimately seemed to rise above their various problems and do very well indeed in life. 

       

Many had significant physical problems as children or were said to be delicate in some way. A number such as Churchill, Voltaire, Isaac Newton, Charles Wesley, Victor Hugo and Anna Pavlova were very premature and not expected to survive. Others were born after difficult labours and their outlook was considered to be poor - Rousseau, Chateaubriand, Robert Stephenson, Samuel Johnson, Picasso and Thomas Hardy.

Descartes was said to be a sickly boy who rarely left his bed, Blaise Pascal had tuberculous peritonitis as a toddler. Christopher Wren’s delicacy caused his parents much worry but he lived to be ninety. Thomas Gray was the only survivor of twelve children so naturally his parents worried about him. Jonathan Swift was always preoccupied with his health, as were his family. Horace Walpole’s mother was told that her puny baby would not live to be one year old. The Earl of Chatham was said to have suffered from childhood gout. Mozart’s early years were punctuated by lung infections and fevers and he had smallpox at the age of nine or ten. Sir Walter Scott had poliomyelitis. Chopin and Liszt were both repeatedly struck down with a variety of childhood illnesses. Charles Dickens seemed to suffer from wheezing, possibly asthma and Albert Schweitzer was more often ill than well throughout his entire childhood years.

A number of the children suffered from various forms of epilepsy – Alexander the Great, Pythagoras, Julius Caesar, Peter the Great, Napoleon, Pascal, Paganini, Swinburne, William Morris, Van Gogh, Mohammed, Lord Byron and Dostoevsky. Some were more afflicted than others, Edward Lear having up to twenty fits each day.

Samuel Johnson was deaf in one ear, William Cowper partially lost his sight at the age of eight, Edison became almost deaf at twelve, and Kipling had ongoing problems with his sight. Helen Keller became both deaf and blind as the result of an illness as a toddler, possibly meningitis. Louis Braille lost his sight as a result of an accident. Both Goldsmith and William Penn were horribly disfigured by smallpox.

Some of the children grew very slowly and never reached average stature – Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Nelson, Wren, Alexander Pope and Lawrence of Arabia. And most people know of the particular physical problems experienced by twins Chang and Eng.

Despite their handicaps all the above children went on to do extraordinarily well, the story of Helen Keller, in particular, being astonishingly inspirational.   It seems to prove that there's no holding back some people.