My child is sixteen months old, and already he has been given various labels due to the fact that he is developing slower than the average. In response to these labels we had him enrolled in four different kinds of therapy every week. Call it new-parent naivete, but I thought that if 'experts' were telling me he needed this much therapy at this age then there was something clearly very worrying about how he was presenting.

Not so. We got some second opinions and as it turned out they all concurred that he was fine, normal, healthy, just slower than the average - which is just that, the average, and that his rate of development had statistically absolutely no bearing on his outcomes. More than that, 'he has a good feeling', they all said. ie he presented well - meeting your eye, laughing appropriately and sharing jokes, etc.

We decided to withdraw him from early intervention for the moment - at which time they told us he wasn't eligible for any of it any more anyway, and that anyway before two years old the rvalue of it is questionable.

So, what was all that about? Simply the colonisation of infancy and childhood, I believe, and the colonisation of parents. I'm sure these therapists and experts meant well when they raised the alarm and encouraged us to dive into therapy. But I'm also sure they have many hours to fill and many dollars that needed to be earned by their services.

And in the mean time we were encouraged to parent our child as though something was wrong with him that needed to be fixed. As though it was up to us to ensure he made progress.

Since we've stopped all of that he has continued on his merry way, learning to crawl, babbling and generally developing like a perfectly normal baby.

If this is any sign of what's to come I am exhausted already. The idea that unless he is bang on the average we will be expected to take steps is madness, and when I ask 'who benefits', it certainly isn't the child. It's the industry that may have grown out of the genuine need for certain children to be given special therapy and assistance, but that now needs to be fed with enormous numbers of children to keep it growing.

The author says how many more children are now being diagnosed with learning disabilities, as well as ADHD. To this I would add ASD as well as ,of course, giftedness.

I will be sending my child to a Steiner school for the first ten years at least because there they leave a child alone to 'incarnate'. Why fix something until you know it needs fixing? And until then, I think children deserve respect and love, and primarily to for therapists and other well meaning but power tripping experts to leave them alone.

I have made my living as a novelist for many years, and I don't think that certain arts, such as the writing of novels, are really areas of child-giftedness. In fact I remember often being bored as a child--and as a result of that boredom, I would think up something to do. Even if it was just reading a book over that I had already read before, or going for a walk to the candy store, still it was something I thought up on my own, and while I was engaged in those utterly prosaic activities, I contemplated things in an idle way. As a result, I developed habits of mind that have promoted productivity and mental independence. But novel-writing doesn't demand the sort of technique that music does. I have also known a few prodigies--one of them was an Olympic equestrian at a very young age, another one was a violinist. Both rebelled against their disciplines as soon as they could, and seemed to have felt that they had run through the possibilities of what they were trained to do very quickly. I suspect that intense training followed by burn out is simply one of the hazards of learning to do some very physical things at a high level. But novel-writing? Boredom is good, free mental time is essential, and parental encouragement is a bad idea.

Sorry to be serially posting but this article touched a real nerve.

I was a 'gifted' child. Surprise surprise I come from a middle class family of bright and well educated parents. My reading and writing was at some amazing level at some amazing age and my piano playing likewise.

So where and what am I now? I am still a good reader and writer, but whether or not I am so much better than anyone else remains to be seen. If my writing succeeds it will be at least as much due to diligence and extraordinary amounts of time and effort devoted to it as to any talent. And whether or not this talent had been identified at an early or later age it wouldn't have made a jot of difference. I was still bored at school. I still had to learn to make a living. I still had to contend with all the true challenges of growing up - of which reading and writing and piano playing is a very small part.

Finding my partner at the relatively early age of 25 and settling down with him has had a far more beneficial and profound effect on my talents than any educational efforts to develop them. Leading me to the following conclusions: there are conditions conducive to growth for all living beings. Security, love and encouragement provide optimal growth conditions for all. In addition, development happens inconsistently, and it never ends. I'm a better person now than I was in my 20s. Since meeting my husband I've had more opportunity to shine than previous to that.

Quite predictably, long range observational studies have concluded that class has a far greater effect on whether one's child will have a white or a blue collar job eventually anyway. The best thing any parent can do for their child if they are concerned about this is to ensure they fall on the right side of the ever widening chasm opening up where the middle class used to be.