Child Genius distorts the truth and treats kids like performing poodles . . .
Three years ago, Aliyah starred in Channel 4’s controversial quiz. But today her parents launch a blistering attack on the hit show
FeW bright children would be happy to collect not just one Grade C in their exams, but two. When you have been identified on TV as a child genius, though, the shock of such ‘failure’ — particularly after a lifetime of straight As — must be devastating.
How odd, then, that Aliyah Garfield, former star of the controversial Channel 4 series Child Genius, seems so at ease with being — on paper, anyway — rather mediocre.
‘Now I realise it doesn’t matter,’ Aliyah says. ‘They [the two grade Cs] were not in subjects that were important to me. In the ones that are — english and Art — I did well.’
Those of you who remember Aliyah, her mother, Shoshana, and her stepfather, Sasha, may be rather surprised by such equanimity.
For Shoshana is one of those jaw-dropping parents who allowed, nay supported, her child when she appeared on the show.
Aliyah, then nine, appeared in the 2014 series — something her repentant mother now likens to ‘being thrown in the lion’s den’.
Indeed, while Aliyah had an extraordinary talent for mathematics, Shoshana was the true star. This was a mother (a psychologist no less!) who brought her own blender to filming, so that little Aliyah could have some brain-boosting cabbage juice after each test.
She timed her coaching sessions with her daughter with a stopwatch and subjected her to cyberkinetic kinesiology sessions, which apparently use vibrations to rebalance the body’s energy levels. Bonkers or what?
Shoshana claimed she and her husband were
even smarter than Aliyah. ‘We’re technically all three of us geniuses — that’s not bragging, that’s just the way it is,’ she said, prompting viewers to throw things at their TVs.
Her husband Sasha then declared: ‘Raising a child is like raising a well-bred racehorse.’
Reasonable to imagine, then, that under such seeming pressure and after showing such stupendous promise, Aliyah would spend the following three years aceing every exam paper.
In reality, her ‘failure’ — and, more pertinently, her quietly mature contentment with it — brings with it a warning to the pushy parents of this year’s series, which concludes tonight. Garlands galore, even on a nationwide TV show, will not necessarily make your child happy.
Undeniably, this year’s Child Genius series has been gripping — if often very uncomfortable — viewing. All too rapidly, it’s descended into something more like a gladiatorial spectacle than a jolly kids’ contest with spelling tests and memory quizzes.
So far there have been accusations of cheating, copious footage of children crying in corridors, and a parade of parents openly boasting of being out to win at all costs.
THefact Shoshana won’t be watching tonight’s finale is telling. ‘I can’t do it,’ she says. ‘I can’t put myself back in that place again. I feel for those parents because I know what a sham it is. I can’t watch reality TV any more because I know you can’t trust a word of it.’
Shoshana admits she hoped the programme would kickstart a TV career for Aliyah, who had expressed a vague wish to be a TV presenter.
So what did happen when the programme aired? Did the phone ring? Oh, yes — but not with offers from Harvard or showbiz agents. ‘It was social services,’ says Shoshana. ‘ I had been reported by someone who had watched the programme and thought I should be prosecuted for child abuse.
‘ Of course, they had to investigate. When they said they had something sensitive that they needed to talk to me about, I said: “Is it to do with one of Aliyah’s friends?” Then they said “It’s about the programme. You have been accused of emotional abuse.”
‘They hadn’t even seen it, so they phoned back once they had — to their credit they seemed embarrassed. No further action was taken. They didn’t even need to talk to Aliyah. It was horrific, though. I was so shocked to even be in that position.’
Little wonder Shoshana rues the day her family got involved with Child Genius. She also claims her business as a psychologist was adversely affected.
‘My reputation was in tatters,’ she says. ‘I had to give free sessions because people thought: “Oh, we’ve seen her on TV. She’s that crazy woman.” ’
One can imagine this year’s families eventually experiencing similar regrets. Indeed, Channel 4 has already faced criticism for exploiting and manipulating children’s emotions for entertainment.
even on air, psychologists have had to step in to comfort weeping children. Shoshana makes some devastating claims of her own, claiming the series she was in was unfairly edited, ‘making our family appear to be the complete opposite of how we were.
‘We actually went on because I felt strongly about the problems families of genius children face, and I wanted to highlight it.
‘But our ethos has never been to push Aliyah. We value happiness over achievement, and always have, but not a word of that was used. I’d say 90 per cent of the footage was not used. They only latched onto the parts that made us out to be these terrible draconian people. They edited what we did and said.
‘That comment about raising a child like a racehorse was a joke! We all laughed after it. But they cut it so it looked as though Sasha was serious.’
She adds: ‘I did watch some of the show the year after we were on it — and it was devastating, because I felt it happening again.’
Sasha says he doesn’t blame the people who reported them to social services (they never discovered who it was) — but blame Channel 4, for portraying them the way they did. They [the complainants] didn’t report us. They reported the evil people they saw on TV. Those people are not us.’
The editing process is a complex one, but these are troubling claims. Yet no one put a gun to their head and forced them to say the things they did.
Shoshana says: ‘No, but they called the shots. We didn’t see an advert and apply, they approached us because they’d seen us on another programme about gifted children. Aliyah was headhunted.’
SHeadds: ‘ When they explained the format, Aliyah wanted to do it — and our approach was, “OK, if you want to do this, let’s take it seriously. We’ll be your coaches”.
‘It was presented as a challenge, a project. We played along. That wasn’t how we lived before the cameras arrived. It was a game show. It is a game show.’
What of the obsessive juicing and the impression poor Aliyah was being force-fed green gunk?
‘There was no way Channel 4 can be held to account for that,’ she says. ‘I had breast cancer at the time — I’m in remission now — and Aliyah didn’t know I was ill. We were doing a juice detox, as a family, but hadn’t told her the reason. But it was twisted to make us look a certain way.’
She details the application process, which involves families being handed the material their children must study.
She says. ‘ We were handed thick study guides. There were about ten thick books, like encyclopedias. We were told the general knowledge questions would come out of there, and we should pay attention to, say, pages 100-200. They were testing the child’s ability to cram.’
Ditto with the spelling tests. ‘We had lists of words, maybe 400 of them to study. The kids would
only be asked ten. We were shocked at how much studying was expected. I’d say some of the tasks themselves were too much, because of the amount of studying involved. The kids were turned into workaholics, then asked to perform like poodles.’
She says it’s hardly surprising so many of the contestants end up in tears. ‘ They did in our year too. Some were in a terrible state. They were comforting each other. But I didn’t see any sign of the psychologist when Aliyah was rushing to comfort another child.’ However, Shoshana and Sasha
were there. Why, why, why, would any parent allow this to happen in front of their eyes?
They claim they were naïve and trusting. ‘We did raise concerns,’ says Shoshana. ‘ We saw the show before it was aired and were horrified.
‘Channel 4 asked us to go on breakfast TV to talk about the show. We agreed, but I said I wanted to talk about how we felt happiness should trump achievement. They wanted us to be stereotypical pushy parents and I feel that’s why they dropped us.’
The Garfields are undoubtedly a couple with an alternative lifestyle, whose parenting choices would not be everyone’s.
Shoshana, in particular, is a complex character with a dark history of her own. She knows all too well about real child abuse, and has written in the past about her own hideous childhood.
Born to a drug-addict mother, she was taken to drug parties where she says she was preyed on by paedophiles. She later spent 20 years in therapy.
So if her approach to parenting seems a bit hippy-dippy, perhaps there are deeper reasons for it. But surely Channel 4 would have been aware of at least some of the background, since a quick Google search lays it all bare?
Whatever, for a victim of child abuse to be accused of harming her own daughter must have been devastating. ‘It was horrific,’ she says. ‘No one deserves that.’
A spokesman for Channel 4 says: ‘We are assured the programme was a fair and accurate representation of all the families, in compliance with the Ofcom code.
‘Participating families are able to view episodes before they air and any concerns are taken into consideration — no concerns were raised by Aliyah’s family when they viewed the programme in 2014.
‘Child Genius is a celebration of intelligence and the amazing young people who enter the competition. Each round and any suggested revision is designed in conjunction with experts and any revision materials given to the children are of an appropriate level.’
So have other families had similar experiences? This week the Mail spoke to parents who have taken part in the show over the years.
Some, like Kobus Cilliers, whose son Joshua took part last year, say they were entirely happy with their portrayal, and the programme was the making of their child. Kobus has no regrets about letting Joshua, now 13, take part, and says crying children are to be expected in this environment.
‘I believe in competition,’ says Kobus, a university course director. ‘It’s our duty as parents to teach our children how to win magnanimously, and to lose graciously.’
DIdJoshua cry on the show? ‘After he lost, they wanted to stick a camera in his face because they always do, but he did not want to talk. I asked them to give him some time, and he gathered his thoughts.
‘I noticed other children under pressure from the show, but the producers were amazing towards the children. There was not a box they had not ticked.’
Joshua has since done his GCSE in maths (he got an A*) and is now enrolled to start a maths degree. ‘The show helped him. It’s done so much for his self-confidence.’
But there are enough parents who have very different stories to warrant questions being asked about how the show is put together. One of the most troubling chapters came in 2014 when Tudor Mendel-Idowu, then eight, broke down in tears.
This week, Tudor’s mother, Gold, a 39-year-old NHS administrator, told us she, too, had regrets about taking part. ‘I would not do it again,’ she said. ‘The programme was edited. We did not like the way we were portrayed.’
She has not been watching this series. ‘It would be too traumatic. It brings back memories I do not wish to replay.’ She suggests Tudor coped better than they did with the repercussions of going on the show. ‘ He’s dealt with the aftermath.’
Her husband Tolu, 43, a pastor, says he ‘would not do it again’.
‘There’s a kind of child who can take to this environment, who has confidence, and you will still have a child at the end of the programme. Tudor was fine. But too many other children would not be able to come out all right,’ he says.
It would be wrong to say that Aliyah was adversely affected by her stint on Child Genius. She seems bemused by it all.
So would she do Child Genius again, were she asked?
‘I would say no,’ she says. ‘I enjoyed some of it, and I made friends, but I have more interesting things to do now.’
Her mum says they were asked to take part in a more extreme version of the show.
‘The makers of a similar U.S. version got in touch after seeing them on British TV.
‘We said the biggest, fattest No you can imagine,’ she says.
AdditionAl reporting Stephanie Condron and Rebecca Evans.