To think everyone's children can't be "very bright"

[DrinkFromMyFountain]

Because a good 80% or posters/people in RL seem to refer to their kids as "very bright", surely 80% of kids can't be above average?

As the proud mother of a three month old I'm not fussed if my DS is "bright" or not, if he isn't academic I'm sure he will have other talents!

I hereby declare I shan't constantly boast about how bright he is unless he is a full in genius . As my mother always said, there is nothing wrong with being average.

My eldest is a slow learner but gets there in the end. My middle son is bang on the national average. My youngest has this huge brain that I find absolutely terrifying because there's no way I'm going to be able to keep up.. never mind brag about it.

Every mother thinks their kids are brilliant but I find its usually the ones that bang on about it have kids who are average but mega push them to reach their full attention. Nothing wrong with that I suppose.. just tiresum to listen too.

mrsdevere You are very obviously clever!

And you are also the first person I've ever "met" to admit to scoring below 100 on an IQ test! Actually, I think 130 is the lowest actual number I can remember anyone claiming.

I've been told my daughter is bright . . . But we're in anarea of mainly non graduates and many won't have seen a book etc . . . I worry they won't work with my daughter at her ability as their idea of average is lower.

Mrs DV - 80? Really? Just shows what a pile of tosh IQ tests are. mine is nearly double , but my posts aren't even half as intelligently written as yours are.

I think this is an epidemic, really.

I'm so tired of having to listen to people bang on (IRL) about how smart their kids are. I would never presume to think anyone would want to hear about how my kids are doing in school, apart from their grandparents.

I agree Crowler, I can't imagine anyone else being interested in my DCs test scores etc, I am not interested in other peoples. Should I be?

Little Never seen a book? Surely these non graduates went to school - where they have books?

I know lots of intelligent non graduates who read and are generally very knowledgable. I know lots of graduates who don't really know anything at all and proudly say they don't follow news/politics/current events or read.

Going to university isn't the benchmark of all round intelligence. Some people simply aren't academic but are still very bright. Some simply didn't want to go at all.

Sometimes I think on MN all that matters is A Grades and going to University Alis*.

Not the parents, the headteacher (who is lovely) showed us around and was very proud of the library as she explained most kids come from families with no books in the home, aren't read to etc. I doubt they've literally 'never seen a book', especially if they've been to nursery but apparently 1 in 3 children have no books according to the literacy trust (although surely they'd have bookstart books, or even a cheap charity book?) in areas like ours (high social and economic deprivation) the proportion will be higher. The ofsted is outstanding, and the school does well, but at the beginning it states that pupils enter with well below whatever it is they state at the start of the ofsted!

I really like the school and staff but really found the difference in backgrounds quite startling.

I completely agree a degree isn't the ad all and end all. After all, I've a silly high iq, fantastic degrees and still seen to have 'failed' at life by many measures. I'm in the ex council house on an estate, whereas I'd imagine expectations from the average leafy middle class mumsnet school would be quite different.

I think the point, badly expressed, was it depends on the cohort. My daughter entering reception knowing letter sounds and numbers is seen as 'bright' as its unusual. Mumsnet threads abound of children entering school already reading or able to sound out letters etc. Against a group of mumsnet kids my daughter would be distinctly average!!

Of course, if all children are bright it becomes average.

No idea. They score well on the value added and Sats tests, and she's well regarded in the community. They bend over backwards to explain you don't need the logod tops, don't need to buy things from school shop, asda is fine, explain about fsm, very aware of the differing backgrounds and have above average achievement by the time they leave . . . So I don't think its lowered expectations as such.

The head is lovely, the conversation was in context of discussing the new library and wasn't at all sneery, more aware of the area they're in I guess and doing what they can to raise standards.

I'm probably not explaining myself well. I don't live in an area I'd choose to live in if I had money at all and do often wonder if that will affect my child's education. The school seems fantastic, but has a very different intake to a leafy middle class area.

We're in Scotland, so my DS is 'highly able'

Brillso

op. 80% of posters on here [not sure about rl] might say that their offspring are bright. Everyone else, well virtually!, keeps schtum.

Terrible grammar and punctuation above I may not be as bright as all that!

My brilliant one is off to university next week. We will take him and drop him into the arms of someone called Katie. Katie will be supporting him for 35 hours a week. She will escort him on the bus trip from his accommodation to lectures. Remind him to eat, help him cross the road, take him to the right person to deal with his anxiety. I love him so very much, but I do wish, every so often that he could make friends more easily, that he could cross a road safely, that he could be really free of all the anxieties he has.
In two years time I will go through the same with twin dds.

I've seen parents insist that their child takes really academic GCSEs which the child cannot cope with, because they aren't realistic about their child's abilities. I teach History and a child with a reading age of 8.4 is not going to be able to cope with even reading the questions in the exam. We can differentiate in lessons but there isn't even a foundation paper in History, so he was stuffed. He was told by his parents he was going to be a lawyer or a doctor. The child wanted to do construction, but was not allowed to by the parents. It's great to have high expectations for children but by the time they are 14 you have to start getting realistic.

My kids are bright.

Not very bright

But bright enough. Bright in the sense that they will do well academically, go to decent universities, and get good degrees.

After that i don't know. Brightness is not a big driver after that point - it's all a question of how driven they are.

I agree, MrsDeVere. High academic expectations are the problem when they can't realistically be met - that's when you get children feeling like failures. The boy I was referring to would have made a good builder, but he wasn't given the opportunity by his parents because they were convinced that he was going to be an academic high flier, despite all the evidence. He ended up leaving school with very little qualification wise, whereas he could have been set up for the next stage had he been allowed to follow his talents.

I do rather think that we need to go back to a more old fashioned type of schooling. I was at High School in the seventies, and if you weren't cut out for uni, then you got an apprenticeship or whatever. There were people who were going to be builders, plumbers, etc. Then along came the politicians who said everybody should have equal opportunity. However, I really don't think pushing everybody toward uni is equality of opportunity. Surely equality of opportunity is an acceptance that not everybody is academic and therefore providing options in the world of building, carpentry, etc is a better choice for all concerned.

The school I work at provided those options. We had our own construction centre, but Gove decided that vocational qualifications counted for nothing so it had to close in the summer due to lack of funding.

However, some parents refused to allow their children to follow a vocational path because they were convinced that their children were academic high fliers, when in all honesty they were not. That was doing their children a terrible disservice.