Are my children "ungifted"?

[Puzzledbyart]

Please be kind, it is a stupid thread, but it does nag me somewhere deeply inside.

Just audited my friendship circle's offspring (children ranging in age from 2 to 12), and it looks like all of them have some special "superpower" in terms of abilities / interests. There's a fully fluent reader at 3y.o. A child aged 9 with highest grades in two musical instruments + a chorister at a famous choir. A sportsman competing at the national level. A math whizz, who is attending classes in secondary school now as he is way way ahead of the primary curriculum. A trilingual child, fully proficient at a native speaker level in all three languages. And everyone, just everyone seems to have their children on the "gifted and talented" register at school.

My children are 4 and 5, and are distinctly average in everything. Most of the time I am counting my lucky stars that they are just healthy and happy, but there are occasional days of doubt when I feel like I failed them in everything. Well, like today, when we had a playdate with a young friend similar to my oldest in age (5), and she created a comic book with a clear and engaging storyline, beautiful art and not a single spelling mistake, including expressions like "conifer trees" and "butterfly".

AIBU to ask you if you think that some children can be just naturally average, and there's no amount of effort that can make them excel at anything? Or did I miss something in their upbringing terribly?

I went up 7 grades in Spanish (grade 2-9 so D-A*) in 2 years due to pure hard work. I did the impossible, talent doesn’t matter hard work does :)

Is this “gifted and talented” stuff an English thing? I’m in Scotland and never heard of it 🤷🏻‍♀️ I don’t much like the sound of it if I’m honest. Bit wanky.

I know a young many who has been regarded as gifted at maths all his school years, easily got top grades in GCSE, A levels in Maths and FM and various other maths qualifications along the way. He went to university to study maths alongside another subject and got great grades in the other subject but struggled with the maths in the first year and in the second year completely failed the maths half. It was so much harder on him because he had always felt maths was his thing.

I was reading a thread about the amazing things 2 year olds can do because the OP experienced one counting to twenty. Cue lots of parents wading in with what theirs could do including count to 100 I'm exaggerating and name
colours. And smug comments such as "have you never met a 2 year old?" The comments did even out eventually but I lost interest.
My two year old can do many wonderful things but not count to 20 or identify colours. I still think she's a bloody genius though!
I agree with pp, you are your children's advocate! Celebrate the wonderful things they can do. Ignore the boring boasters

They are still very young.

There are plenty of articles online which “expose” the very underwhelming backgrounds of very successful adults. E.g Einstein was told he was stupid and would never achieve anything. Walt Disney was told he lacked imagination etc etc.
Growing up my sister was always “gifted and talented” she has gone on to get a good job but never excelled in anything outside of work and it hasn’t served her anywhere near as well as everyone in our childhood said it would. She never went to uni and didn’t do anywhere near as well at A-levels as predicted. I think the pressure gets too much for lots of “gifted” children and it can often be very difficult for them when they do face things they aren’t naturally good at as they have limited experience of struggling with tasks (especially academics).
You sound like you’re doing brilliantly and I would focus on them being happy and healthy well rounded kids!!

To be "average" there have to be people with a much lesser ability in the count.

Be grateful, average is great.

If it makes you feel better, my sons most talented moment of today was telling me he had a vagina, and waddling round my room with his penis tucked between his legs. His best friend just got signed for a championship football team, and my son is running round with a mangina.

Being the best, the genius, amazing as a child tends to make children think they are above others, smarter than others and very special. It causes their world to cave in when they grow up and everyone else catches up-and they aren't so special anymore. Very few become astrophysicists. Can you imagine one telling a boss "But I was a child genius" and being told, "That's great. Now get back to work". As disappointing as adulthood was for all of us "normal" kids, I would think it's a real shock to the gifted.

Ms Average here, with an Average child who is about to get an MA through academic persistence and hopefully find a badly paying job in a field they're interested in. As long as they're happy and healthy, stuff the rest of it. And aged 4 and 5 - far too young to judge!
I've just remembered when I was in my final year at uni, I was in a phone-box with graffiti reading "Oedipus, phone your mother" (ET had just come out!) calling my parents in tears because I was worried about failing my degree exams. (I managed an Upper Second in the end.) My father just said "As long as you're happy, and you've done your best, that's all that matters." That has stayed with me for the last 40 odd years and I hope I passed it on to my child.

The language thing... We are bringing up our ds to be bilingual. It's motivated by the fact that he is half English and half Spanish. He needs to be able to access both cultures and to communicate fully with all of his family.
He finds both languages easy because he knows no different.
It doesn't make him some kind of genius. Most children would be the same.

Mmmmm - I think there's a bit of competitive boasting and over-exaggeration going on.
There's a fully fluent reader at 3y.o
What does that mean? What's their reading age? Fully fluent reading a book meant for a 7 year old or child is reading The Times?

A child aged 9 with highest grades in two musical instruments
What does "highest grades" mean? Two grade 8s at 9? Possible yes. + a chorister at a famous choir.

A sportsman competing at the national level
Yes ok, I'll give him that.

A math whizz, who is attending classes in secondary school now as he is way way ahead of the primary curriculum.
I've known a few children like that.

A trilingual child, fully proficient at a native speaker level in all three languages.
This could be an exaggeration. How old is the child? "Fully proficient at native speaker level" - the level of an adult? or native speaker level of a 5 year old if the child is 5.
There's quite a lot of evidence to suggest that in many cases a bilingual or trilingual child has a slightly lower level of language in each of their languages than a monolingual child has in their one language.

I think you should ignore all of this and just let your children get one with being children.

I was the gifted one in the family - now I am the "drop out" that everyone looks at and thinks "What the fuck? She could have done anything". What I am doing is exactly what I want to be doing - making enough money from a few different strains of self-employment - but only enough money so that I can afford to disappear into the wilderness at regular intervals and roam about where there are no people.
Without exception, all of my cousins have done better than me in a conventional sense - larger homes, more money, better paid jobs, higher status jobs etc. I just didn't want that.

So try not to worry about your children - they'll be ok.

I know a few children who were incredibly gifted at primary - talented swimmer and coached up to try out for team GB for future - got yo Secondary School and aged about 14/15 just dropped it all. Sick of it. Sick of the training. Now he doesn't swim at all. Nice boy, fairly bright still hasn't found another 'talent' so yes, average.

Another friend of mine's ds won an Engineering Award for a product he'd invented for 'Young Inventor of the year' (or something). His parents were ecstatic and declared he definitely wants to go into Engineering, when it came to it he failed all his maths and Science GCSE's and dropped out to go to Art college. Couldn't have been less interested in Engineering. After a few years surfing around Australia he's now at uni doing product design.

My own dd was a little star of Primary. Found everything incredibly easy and was into everything, interested in everything. All the clubs etc. Now she's 15. Still gets fairly good grades but nothing that stands out. Found it increasingly hard as she progressed up the school. The only thing she still is interested in and good at is Drama but won't try out for any auditions this year because she's "meh" and wants a break.

My dcs are definitely 'average' and I'm just relieved they seem happy most of the time. I think deep down every parent wants their child to excel and stand out but honestly, it would be exhausting living in that bragging world.

Life is a journey not a race.

Your dcs sound fine and normal OP. They're really young anyway!

Life is a long game. At 4 and 5 years old, it's far too early to know what your children might become or what they might achieve. Also maybe reassess what you'd like them to be gifted at. What if they were exceptionally honest, unusually kind or had a gift for seeing the good in everything.

I think it might have something to do with them coming from immigrant backgrounds...ime people who emigrate tend to be very driven.

I will probably be pushy immigrant DM myself, my friends may be secretly judging me already as my 3 year old went to tennis today

It gets on my wick when people use the expression "gifted" anyway to be honest. I find it so pretentious and I don't think it does children any favours to believe themselves to be "gifted."

It's great to be proud of your DC's achievements but I do think a lot of parents exaggerate and are a bit deluded sometimes!

My DS (age 6) doesn't particularly shine at any one thing. He's a good all rounder. And the thing I am the most proud of was when one of the other school mums thanked me for raising a lovely boy as DS always takes the time to play with and include her DS (who has SEN) when a lot of the other children are unkind to him.

Most people vastly exaggerate how good their kids are at things. Comes from a sense of pride I guess, but anyway, take what parents say about their kids' accomplishments/abilities with a truckload of salt.

DS is average in areas, except lego, give him a few bits of lego and he will build you anything you ask.

That doesnt get measured in school

OP, your job as a parent is to love your children and guide them to become a rounded, capable adult. I’m a granny and saw my sons’ friends grow up...the ones who were hot-housed grew into rather unpleasant and sanctimonious adults. By all means take your children to activities in which they show an interest, whether they are good at them or not, but at 4 and 5 I can tell you (from a professional viewpoint) that these are very important years emotionally where children internalise messages about themselves and the world that they hear from others, especially their parents so, as another poster has said, just be their cheerleader.

Gosh, well maybe all these precocious kids are peaking a bit too soon

I have 2 kids, eldest is bright enough, does v well but but not talented especially. He is the kindest sweetest child who just knows how to make lovely friends.

My youngest is extremely gifted in every area but he's autistic and has no mates.

Who is happier?
Who keeps me awake at night?

I'd swap the square roots and the classical music and the anxiety for a kid who can play football with some pals. Or get a joke... So to me average sounds OK!! You don't know what your pals are dealing with behind closed doors, it all sounds v intense.

Where on earth did you find your friends?

It depends on your perspective OP. I have a DD aged 5 who has autism and is significantly developmentally delayed. I would give my right hand sometimes for her to be 'average'. There's nothing wrong with being average, and, by it's very definition, that's where most kids are at.

I don't mean to be cruel to those (any!) children, but I'm pretty sure that being very good at something before you are 10 in no way guarantees that it continues into teenage years and/or adulthood.

most people I know seem to have been either 'very goo' pianists, or swimmers, or footballers etc whilst they were young, but very few have carried on the talent or interest into adult life.

And remember that it's rarely the captain of the football team or the homecoming queen who turns out to be the happiest or the most successful - you don't want to peak whilst you are at school!

Personally, being averagely good at everything strikes me as a very comfortable place in life. I was fairly good at some things (English, languages) and utterly, utterly rubbish at others (PE, Art - which were deemed far more important at the school I endured).

I can't remember what it was advertising, but a few years ago there was an ad that basically said "What's wrong with the middle, anyway? It's the most comfortable place to be!"

So, just for fun, here are a few people who were what would, today, be regarded as "late starters":

• Ray Kroc started McDonalds when he was 52. (Yes, I know, it's McDonalds, but if you're ever in a strange place, you can pretty much guarantee their loos will be the cleanest you can find.)
• On the same track Colonel Sanders was 65 when he started KFC.
• The American painter Grandma Moses was 76 when she painted her first picture.
• Churchill didn't become PM until he was 62.
• Laura Ingalls Wilder, who wrote the Little House on the Prairie books (get your hankies ready), was 65 when she was first published.
• Susan Boyle was 47 when she plucked up the courage to try for Britain's Got Talent.
• Judi Dench didn't have her first leading lady role until she was 34 and she didn't become world famous until her 60s. She's a fabulous example of someone who has found success relatively late in life.

On a personal level, I had an aunt who chose to do an OU degree when she was well into her 70s; a cousin who changed career in her late 50s; and due to health issues I've had to change career unexpectedly in my early 50s. At uni I was friends with someone from a terribly high achieving academic family, full of professors and teachers and other smart folk - the younger brother was regarded as a right black sheep because he'd dared to drop out of academia and go and do "environmental stuff"....

My favourite anecdote (this was a friend of a friend though, not a direct friend) was a lady in her 70s who went abseiling for the first time when she visited Pakistan on holiday.

I could keep going, but you get the general idea! Personally, isn't it better that someone is good, and kind and thoughtful (though not without discrimination), and as honest as they can be, and full of integrity, and makes other people feel good about themselves than that they're terribly, terribly clever?

Maybe, in the end, that's your children's special gift.