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?

Who on earth labels a child ‘gifted and talented’ and how the feck is it measured?!!
Do you get a certificate?

I don't know CaptainButtock but I was labelled it in English and whilst most kids were pleased it made me very uncomfortable and like I needed to perform more or I'd get kicked out of it. I am really against them!

Howyoulikemenow....yes I can’t imagine this being terribly good for anyone (prepared to stand corrected)

And op, YANBU. Your friends are an aberration. Most kids are average....because..you know, averages 😉

If it helps I was classed as ‘gifted’ in early primary school because of my interest in Art and Creative Writing, my spelling and grammar were atrocious but my imagination was pretty good so I focused on those areas because I liked that I was fairly good at it - but that’s because I spent hours and hours at home practicing. I’m now a pretty normal adult :) my Grandad used the same phrase when he felt I was being praised too much for the Art/Writing -

“A Jack of all trades, but master of none, but still preferred to a master of one.” Or something like that 😊

Kids develop at completely different rates.
In a year or two your kids might have out paced them. Don't worry

I agree with the PP poster who says raise your kids to be hard working. I was the 'bright' one at primary school, coasted through everything. But as school got harder, I struggled in some areas and didn't have the work ethic to handle it. I'd only do stuff that I was naturally good at.

Your children are still really young OP, plenty of time for them to develop their interests and strengths. DS is a very able reader with a strong vocabulary, but at age 5 he struggled with basic reading books - it was a year or two before reading clicked for him.

Raise kind and hardworking child and you will have done a good job.

G&t s have an early burn out rate especially if hothoused.

Dont dwell on it OP, I was on a 'gifted and talented' programme at school, I read very well, from a very young age, and wrote very well, had a flair for literacy and creative writing, remember facts very well, very good at general knowledge, was quite talented in art and graphic design (took some GCSE's a year early), I was also fairly sporty particularly with swimming.

I do nothing related to any of that now, my true talent seems to be people and relationship building and I have instead done very well in human resources in various industries.

My daughter was assessed by a behavioural psychologist as moderately gifted and talented. I went down this route extremely reluctantly, but the school was giving her one word to a page readers, and she was reading chapter books at home. It was a fairly rigorous assessment of a number of things, in a number of ways.

This is not something we've made a big deal of, with anyone else, or with her.

She has been raised to understand that everyone has strengths and weaknesses, it just so happens that her strength is in academia - but we've also made sure she's done other things where she's not naturally gifted, which means she learns what it's like not to be in front, and to fail, and to have to put in the hard graft.

She didn't actually find out the results of the assessment until she came across the papers as we were packing to come here!

Her sister, we didn't have the same need to get her assessed, as we'd put a grenade up the teacher's butt with her eldest, by the time her time came with that teacher at that school. However a family member who is also an educational psychologist said that if anything, she's possibly even more so.

They're just kids. Who happen to be academically able.

Because we didn't do the 11+, they're at a bog standard comprehensive academy and doing very well there, but I don't think that's so much their smarts (although it helps), but about their attitude and behaviour.

I think it's possible to hothouse and encourage an average child into extraordinary academic achievement ( as regards school curriculum/exams) to about 18 years and IB or A'level time, if they are compliant enough to put many, many hours in. Also parents will need to start them very young on a rigorous programme.

Most will agree this isn't prudent or healthy.

We tend to think, in UK, that we are all endowed with different levels of academic ability and that's that, you can't do much to change attainment because of it and nor is it wise to try.

What's interesting is when a child that has had this early, rigorous input is then happy, well balanced and insatiably intellectually curious further down the line.

Especially when such a child is enthusiastic enough to continue to really independently strive and aim incredibly high in whatever it is they choose to study or in which star they choose to follow, later on.

When that happens the 'tiger parenting' has possibly been positive and really hit the mark.

One of my proud mummy momnets from the primary school years was picking up DD and 3 of her friends to have a baking playdate. DD was (and is) ridiculously musical, one of the other girls was equally talented at art and the other two were incredibly clever (scholarship to St Paul's clever). However, what all the mothers in the playground commented on was what a great afternoon we would have as they were all such really lovely girls.

One DD is just a dynamo. Was G&T at primary school and was moved up a year. All Level 6s for her SATs. She did competitive gymnastics for years and trained for 9 hours most weeks. She's now a maths & sciences mentor to younger students at her selective school and predicted all 8s and 9s for her 12 GCSEs. She gets up at 6am to hit the gym before school most mornings and does an 8 hour shift in a cafe every weekend. She's also already revising and creating colour coded revision notes for her GCSEs next year. And on top of ALL that she is fund raising for a charity trip to Borneo where she will volunteer in rural schools for 4 weeks! She is like a machine, so so driven and desperate to experience everything and anything. She is astounding but also exhausting.

Other DD is also very clever, but just the polar opposite. Dreamy, ditsy, chilled to the point of being half asleep most of the time. She was capped to play 2 sports at county level but was too lazy to train, so it didn't last long. Got all 6, 7 and 8s in her GCSEs but hardly did any revision really. Buckets of charm but such a lazy little madam if truth be told.

Both raised by same parents in same household but with totally different attitudes to the world. I think it shows that being gifted is very often just a very pro active attitude and desire to work hard, rather than an innate ability. Both DCs are equally happy, but one only happy when she's racing toward a new horizon. The other happiest snoozing her way through Netflix.

They are always interesting issues - are children born or made how they are etc. We do however often come back to white working class boys from Sunderland (where much of my family is from ) doing much worse at school than British Indian and Chinese pupils and many impoverished immigrants in London and elsewhere ... I suspect hard work and a supportive family play a massive role in it.

None of these things are impressive if along with them they are not polite and have not mastered simple skills such as eating properly, dressing themselves. I see way too often kids who can read, write etc, but cannot use a knife and fork or pit their own shoes on. These things are the most important so focus on them and remember that they all shine in their own time!

I suspect hard work and a supportive family play a massive role in it

^This, and parental aspiration and expectation.

Firstly your kids are normal. Secondly, don’t be surprised that kids from families who are immigrants are bright quite often people who come from countries where you pay for education value it more and appreciate it more as they have often had to work hard to just be in the country.

Kids mature at different rates in different areas. Comparisons at 5 are meaningless. As long as they are happy and growing and learning don't worry at all about it. These super talented kids may or may not be the stars of their classes on the other side of their teens, and the whole doesn't need to be composed of all geniuses anyway.

We’ll all specially in our own way, some people‘s gifts take longer to be exposed than others. That said I hear where you are coming from, I remember when a (no longer) friend told me that her son was a highly sense to individual and should be treated as such. I Thought she was completely barking.

Honestly, please don’t worry about it. What’s more important is that they’re decent, kind and compassionate human beings that grow up as such.

Not to mention: They’re only young and will probably surprise you a lot as they grow in various ways! My son is 8 and a half - one minute I think his forte is English, the next I think it’s Maths.
Then he tells me he hates both 🤣
He’s not remotely musical or sporty - but clever academically and arty with a pencil. He’s sociable but extremely weird (love that) and keeps his circles small.
You just don’t know how they’re going to develop!
Keep encouraging and praising - and you’ll be so happy to see children who are thriving emotionally rather than academically, and trust me
There is nothing wrong with being ‘average’! All kiddos are different and unique and wonderful! Xxxx

Your friends are the ones with a superpower rather than their children. They sound like they are all excellent braggers who are prone to exaggeration.

There is no such thing as natural talent. A lot of scholars are now agreeing that sheer hard work and effort gets results. Ok so some children may have the patience to learn that others don't but the potential shoukd be the same.
Your children are very young. If you want to nuture and mould them into what you percieve are 'gifted' children now it will be at the cost of...well...being children.
Our son is 16. Lovely child, altho quite. Had unfortunetely poor gcse results in some subjects which has prevented him pursuing them in 6th form. I regret not pushing him more with learning and esp revision. He sits playing pc games most nights. He has friends and sees them at and after school now and again, it seems they all had poor results too. I wish he had a quirk or hobby other than the pc, played a musical instrument, football, skateboard...anything. I have come to realise that my trust in him has been his undoing, he has got comfortable doing what he likes.
What I am trying to say is...soon you may like to get your children into sports, music, other hobbies. They have plenty of time but its something you should be aware of sooner rather than later.

And everyone, just everyone seems to have their children on the "gifted and talented" register at school.

So that nobody is really gifted or talented.

I suppose each person can be very good at one thing in their lives if they focus enough on it. But just for the sake of being on a school register that ends up being meaningless, I don't see why.

My DS excels at banter with me. That's good enough in my book.

There is no such thing as natural talent. A lot of scholars are now agreeing that sheer hard work and effort gets results.

Actually, the last study I've seen said the opposite. That the really good ones don't do that much extra work in relation to the average ones. Sure, to get to the top, they have to do more than the ones also at the top, but there is natural talent.

I was classed as gifted and talented at school, always worked well ahead of my years and was reading chapter books before school age. I’m very very average now, in an average job earning an average wage 🤷🏼‍♀️

Been there, thought that too. My kids are average normal mainstream and I say good on them. I’ll bet that many of those gifted & talented kids are actually way out of their depth thanks to pushy parents. Relax, enjoy.