I am the mum of a gifted child. AMA

[mumof2andimtired]

My son is 8 years old and is considered gifted. I usually just browse on mumsnet but I decided to make a post cause so many people in real life have so many questions!

I also have a 12 year old daughter

And will you also work to help your daughter feel special? There are many different kinds of gifts, not all quantifiable by testing.

That sounds like a good career. I would hope that someone as good as him would transfer to that kind of arena. We need people who are invested and whose lives are involved in their work with knowledge and who know what they are doing.

sounds like he could be next Albert Einstein 🤓 well done 💙

i would suggest you try and not double teach what school will. There is no route for him to get GSCE or A levels earlier, and university isn’t really a place for young teens. Learning to play an instrument, encouraging art, will serve him better. I was a gifted child, and like others who have posted, have spent my life feeling I’ve ‘wasted’ my gift (despite actually having done well in my career).

Lots of us do.

It's not rare, hun!

Again, I think you'll find that many our gifted kids are!

DS's highly competitive all boys grammar school is absolutely rife with high-functioning autistic kids.

Any normal school should be able to provide extension work, even if the kid is more advanced than usual.

He sounds profoundly autistic. There was a child similar when my son was a baby. Sorting, loved numbers etc. amazing! But he struggled socially as he got older. I didn't think gifted was still used

The AI thing is interesting. It’s interesting that we still value “gifted” as academic rather than social. Whereas social skills and human physical jobs will become more valuable because of AI.

My child's intelligence level is quite rare...statistically speaking

You can be as “gifted” as you like academically, but without social skills, you will struggle to do well unless in very niche jobs. Ofc those niche jobs do exist.

Every workplace I've ever worked the highly intelligent people are stuck in technical roles with no progression because they can't manage or influence people to get into powerful roles.

I think we can hope that AI potentially has more trouble replicating a ND thought pattern perhaps?

Hi OP, I have a “twice exceptional” 7 year old girl. She’s “gifted” … we found this out via an EP assessment for an EHCP. Her highest scores are in verbal reasoning and non verbal reasoning where she’s in the top half a percent.
She’s also autistic with a pda profile. This side of her is where I’ve had to focus most attention since it has made traditional schooling impossible. Basically I don’t do anything to explicitly support her giftedness. Because we are just trying to survive the school system really and find something more pda friendly.
So my question is do you relate to this and am I making a mistake? Do I need to learn more about giftedness? Giftedness and PDA is a challenging combination but my daughter is the most amazing kid and I adore her.

Autism can have very uneven profiles so that one area can be very advanced while,at the same time, everyday skills can pose huge hurdles. Navigating all that is tricky even when things are going fairly well.Extremely able academically but being overwhelmed in a classroom situation can lead to the scenario you describe. That doesn't mean there isn't another school that could meet his needs.

Forget the gifted label and look for some practical support, both academically and for the particular aspects of his autism which are a challenge. He saw an educational psychologist, so what advice were you given after that?

I could speak two languages fluently by the age of 3 and read and write in one of them. My nursery teachers would often leave me alone in the reading area on my own as they didn’t know what to do with me. I remember looking out of the window at the sand and water table, I asked my nursery teacher if I could play with it - she said yes of course but I thought you’d rather read.

It’s a world full of high expectations, I would say really work on the social side. I find myself sometimes constantly analysing social interactions.

@mumof2andimtired i just posted above but then I read all your posts on this thread and see you’re in a similar situation with schools. We are between schools now. Definitely being bored was a problem for my daughter but so was the inequality and inequity in schools especially being PDA. It is so very challenging to find the right place for twice exceptional kids. I’ve been focusing on finding a pda friendly school in but reading your posts has reinforced that it does need to be able to work with her giftedness too.

The main reason I have learnt more about my son being gifted is because he was negativity impacted at school due to the school not being able to support him academically. So my son was bored every day and he would act out and have meltdowns in class. This fully affected his social life. But he also wanted to learn and be challenged. So I had to support the fact he is gifted because he was struggling mentally.

Every child is so different. You have to do whats best for your daughter.

Finding the right education for twice exceptional kids is so difficult 😭 because not getting academic support leads for boredom, and boredom can lead to many issue for children who are neurodivergent. Which ends up affecting their social life too.

Thanks, yes. Same here with the meltdowns. And she would also rarely engage in “learning” I imagine as she was so bored/not motivated. I suppose I always put it down to pda but it is also going to be her cognitive ability. I’ve spent so much time learning about pda and my other daughter’s various disabilities I have not got round to learning about giftedness. I need to find out how to help a gifted pda-er!

See ghosts or tell the future?

I think boredom is a comforting thought but a bored child can be given a longer book to read, take their own books in, write 10 pages not 2 etc. Clearly this is far more complex than that.

They told all the parents at ds's school as they were always banging on about how gifted they were and there was special summer camps for them.

You sound like you're doing everything to support him OP.

It's not as simple as that. A bright child can read early and if exposed to books and read to from an early age they definitely can just develop the skills. Usually, by 5 or 6 some mathematical ability becomes clear. 'Gifted' with autism might look like this but it's more than just being academically bright as I'm sure OP will tell you.

Mine only did things on his terms too and was completely unworried about any pressure from school. Was quite polite about it but felt he knew best :-). I let him do him, my husband was more concerned about things like formal qualifications but it all worked out OK.

Yours will be fine I'm sure.

Why couldn't the school support him - do you believe they are not equipt to educate very intelligent children, or was it the combination of his autism and intelligence that meant he struggled?

Most schools ought to be able to meet the needs of a wide ability range, including very high achievers. Is your local school a particularly struggling school?

Would private education be an option for you? (Full disclosure - my daughter who is fortunate enough to be academically really able attends an academically selective school - though not because I don't think a state school could meet her needs. I teach in the state sector myself and firmly believe we can meet the needs of very intelligent kids. But the small class sizes are beneficial, of course, so as it's something we could afford to do, we did it) .