Let’s say that child-prodigy Harry was in the top 0.01% of demonstrated intelligence. There was a kid of comparable aptitude per every 10,000 children. If anything, this measure is setting the bar for “child prodigy” too low. He is smarter, and thus in some sense superior to other children. This is especially true since intelligence is the axis that he has been taught to value and to measure people by.
You say he has trouble with normal relationships, but I feel like that just sort of happens when you’re out in the tails of the distribution. Harry’s emotional life is tied up in different values and different problems that the emotional life of his peers. He is from a different culture and has a fundamentally different worldview. I wasn’t a child-prodigy by any stretch of the imagination, but I know exactly what it’s like to be reading Feynman at 12 years old and wanting to share it with someone and realizing just how impossible that would be. And so Harry gravitates towards the adult world, who may have higher status, but are also more his peers in some sense than many of the people in his age group.
Additionally, Harry is essentially home-schooled. His tutors and parents, most of his social group is older. It’s not really surprising he doesn’t quite know how to relate to large groups of 12 year-olds. And he’s still an awkward 12 year old himself. “Er, can I take it from this that you have been through puberty?” is in my mind more a symptom of Harry being an awkward teenage boy than it is some condemnation of his long-term ability to feel empathy for others. I can think of similarly cringe-inducing statements from my own personal history, especially when trying to talk to girls. Reread the whole scene with the idea that Harry is a 12 year old boy terrified of girls and romance and afraid that in entering the brave new world of love and romance he’s going to lose this one childhood friend that he feels like he can actually talk to. That is the interpretive lens I get out of statements such as:
Harry Potter’s breathing was starting to scale up toward hyperventilation. “Very good friends! Extra-special friends, even! Best friends forever, possibly! But not that kind of friends!”
This whole bit about love hormones and everything is just Harry making things up. Little kids have crushes all the time. They fall in love have their 3rd grade boyfriends and girlfriends and it’s cute to us, but it’s pretty serious business to them. I’m not aware of any science that says that children aren’t capable of love or strong affection, or that some hormone produced in adolescence enables people to love.
I’m really not sure that parental narcissism plays a role in this. I think that Harry’s eclectic education doesn’t sound particularly satisfying to a narcissistic parent. Harry is just another home-schooled spelling bee champion in the eyes of most of the world. There’s far more opportunity for vicarious achievement and the sort of educational attainment valued by the not particularly bright if Harry stays enrolled in school and aces all the tests and finishes at the top of the class in everything. If Petunia wants to see her son be better than everyone else, it seems weird she wouldn’t put him in a classroom situation where he could demonstrate that. I don’t see Petunia imposing goals on Harry in the book at all.
Let’s say that child-prodigy Harry was in the top 0.01% of demonstrated intelligence. There was a kid of comparable aptitude per every 10,000 children. If anything, this measure is setting the bar for “child prodigy” too low. He is smarter, and thus in some sense superior to other children. This is especially true since intelligence is the axis that he has been taught to value and to measure people by.
You say he has trouble with normal relationships, but I feel like that just sort of happens when you’re out in the tails of the distribution. Harry’s emotional life is tied up in different values and different problems that the emotional life of his peers. He is from a different culture and has a fundamentally different worldview. I wasn’t a child-prodigy by any stretch of the imagination, but I know exactly what it’s like to be reading Feynman at 12 years old and wanting to share it with someone and realizing just how impossible that would be. And so Harry gravitates towards the adult world, who may have higher status, but are also more his peers in some sense than many of the people in his age group.
Additionally, Harry is essentially home-schooled. His tutors and parents, most of his social group is older. It’s not really surprising he doesn’t quite know how to relate to large groups of 12 year-olds. And he’s still an awkward 12 year old himself. “Er, can I take it from this that you have been through puberty?” is in my mind more a symptom of Harry being an awkward teenage boy than it is some condemnation of his long-term ability to feel empathy for others. I can think of similarly cringe-inducing statements from my own personal history, especially when trying to talk to girls. Reread the whole scene with the idea that Harry is a 12 year old boy terrified of girls and romance and afraid that in entering the brave new world of love and romance he’s going to lose this one childhood friend that he feels like he can actually talk to. That is the interpretive lens I get out of statements such as:
Harry Potter’s breathing was starting to scale up toward hyperventilation. “Very good friends! Extra-special friends, even! Best friends forever, possibly! But not that kind of friends!”
This whole bit about love hormones and everything is just Harry making things up. Little kids have crushes all the time. They fall in love have their 3rd grade boyfriends and girlfriends and it’s cute to us, but it’s pretty serious business to them. I’m not aware of any science that says that children aren’t capable of love or strong affection, or that some hormone produced in adolescence enables people to love.
I’m really not sure that parental narcissism plays a role in this. I think that Harry’s eclectic education doesn’t sound particularly satisfying to a narcissistic parent. Harry is just another home-schooled spelling bee champion in the eyes of most of the world. There’s far more opportunity for vicarious achievement and the sort of educational attainment valued by the not particularly bright if Harry stays enrolled in school and aces all the tests and finishes at the top of the class in everything. If Petunia wants to see her son be better than everyone else, it seems weird she wouldn’t put him in a classroom situation where he could demonstrate that. I don’t see Petunia imposing goals on Harry in the book at all.