Aibu to think most "gifted" children come from well off, affluent families?

[Blueballoons1]

Eg start instruments or sports very early, can afford top tuition, often a parent has the skills to teach the dc at home, they have the time & money to travel around the country for events.. Parents oversee practice is done at home.. Whereas they may well be quite medicore compared to a child with raw talent whose parents just cannot afford what it takes..
I just feel for music, sports or academics money & an affluent background is part of the parcel for the majority of "gifted kids"..

Parents willing to spend time with their kids to nurture their talents and affluent are two very different things though.

Think you need a real definition of gifted

Genius level gifted is so rare and cuts across classes

High achieving can be naturally cleaver plus teaching or teaching plus tutoring - hence why there are far more middle class families in this realm

Sport wise -
Opportunity to try and train the sport comes with wealth a lot of the time along with music

I think also with very high iq usually comes a level of mental health / ASD

I have a reasonably high IQ - in the 130's but have adhd which probably has enabled me to do well at the tests.
I excel at certain things but struggle with others and my heightened awareness / intelligence has resulted in a lot of anxiety.

However, the adhd has also made me naturally good at sport and I compete still age 40 at a high level- due to the energy and drive the adhd gives me

What you describe where I am is called gifted - 2e (for twice exceptional- gifted (to the right of a bell curve) and some ‘special needs ‘ such as adhd (to the left of the bell curve))

Very interesting debate. I was classed as gifted as a child, put up a year at primary school and got into a highly competitive grammar school. Did well in GCSEs, ok in a levels and never really realised my potential at work. I’m doing ok but feel frustrated I’m often supporting less intelligent senior men and making them look good (I don’t consider myself particularly intelligent and don’t actually think I was gifted but definitely feel more intelligent than other people in my work setting which is full of over achievers/privately educated/privileged people).

my dad was/is hugely intelligent - in maths in particular - but never fully realised his potential professionally as mental health and confidence issues held him back. I’d say he is definitely undiagnosed ASD. But I also grew in a household that valued books, learning, extra curricular activities and academic achievement. Emotional support and validation, not so much.

my daughter is very similar to what I was like at her age and also going through an ASD assessment. I worry she’ll have similar challenges in realising her potential and not sure how to support her.

I went to private secondary school, and I still value education, so i’ll do my best to support my kids at home.

None of my friendship group from my private school are rich enough to afford private school for our own kids though. So the good attitude is there, but we are not as affluent as our parents/grandparents were.

It’s purely because they have the available finances to plug into the lessons or they’re already fluent in whatever it may be themselves because their parents were affluent and can teach their children. I don’t think being ‘gifted’ comes into it, it’s just about having the time and money to put into your children.

Some things don’t require much of either so naturally gifted children can still flourish e.g football, writing or art.

YANBU. I can't speak for music but have a lot of experience with kids sport. It should be available to all but isn't. I am from a sporty family and consequently my kids/nieces/nephews all do sport. In my experinece football is the only one that allows kids from all backgrounds to participate regardless of family finances. I was willing to give up my time to take them and I did. The drive has to come from the individual but money is a barrier if they do want to go that extra mile. One of my children is at a high level and wants to get further but money is a huge obstacle.
There should be more funding available for sport and music. Not juat for equality and health benefite but also Occupied children would surely lead to less crime too

The occurrence of "giftedness" is equal across economic groups.

The opportunities to develop the giftedness increase with wealth.

My Dc went to a S London comp that used setting and streaming.

The top sets of top stream were very diverse: lots of mc kids including the offspring of someone quite famous to kids whose brothers were in prison, living in care etc. And ordinary struggling families living in council flats.

The school runs an excellent music programme. Individual instrument lessons £125 for the whole year, free if on FSM, school provided the instrument. Free lessons for any pupil doing GCSE music. Loads of school ensembles, bands and orchestra.

The kids who went to on to BRIT, ELAM, The Kings Maths School (?) for example were representative of the social diversity of the school.

Such is the power of an ordinary but good comprehensive school. (It doesn’t offer any ‘scholarships’).

One of my boys is a good footballer and It costs hundreds a month, 5 nights of the week and all weekend. It’s not something all parents will do and I tend to mix in the same circle all the time. I often think about the kids whose parents don’t pay for their talent & refuse to take them to clubs. My parents for example would have never taken me anywhere or paid for any extra activities for me

Oh yes, anyone who can’t/won’t devote 7 days of their time and hundreds of pounds a month to their child becoming the next Wayne Rooney (except the reality is that even most talented footballers will never make money from it) is simply “refusing”

Good heavens.

And of course having every lesson and piece of kit going will only get you so far. Plenty of parents will spend a lot of money on say maths tutoring or music lessons and it isn’t going to make the kid a genius or a star. True talent tends to find a way.

Op, you seem to be talking about 2 different types of advantage. In your post you say money and affluence is part and parcel
of it but then when people respond saying they weren’t rich, you say yes but you had supportive parents. These are two different types of advantage, and yes of course it is easier to be supportive of some things when you have money but they are not synonymous. My son does a competitive sport at an advanced level which requires a lot of time, some of the most elite (in the sport) at his club are from not at all well off backgrounds, having to use bursaries / fee support etc.

for academic excellence I think support is less important, I was categorised as gifted at school and excelled academically with no real encouragement or support or extra resources.

It also may be easier to be supportive of something with a huge time commitment if you have more time to invest, which might actually be less affluent people where one parent is not employed/one parent works part time.

No matter how talented my children are at sport, I would not be able to devote 7 days a week to it, because both of us have full time jobs. We’d be able to swing it financially though.

No, well I can’t say about the UK, but in Asia, the gifted in maths and academic subjects are all just at or below the poverty line. Back in my day, this is going to sound weird, but my clothes came from the uk (all the way from glamorous tescos and matalans ect) and I’d bring in suitcases of stuff for the girls with me and lunchboxes and everyone was forced to eat what my mother deemed healthy. Which to the other girls was exotic at the time. (Cheddar sandwiches?) Anyway, they would.. there were only about two scholarships a year and if someone got 99/100 they would meltdown. Their parents couldn’t help them some of their mothers were illiterate and fathers worked as fishermen ect. They used to catch me and attempt to tutor me because they felt grateful to my mum. They were so serious about education I have never seen the equivalent now my kids are in private school

There was a thing on channel 4 about 11 years ago about gifted children. By the looks of it, most of them did seem to come from affluent backgrounds.
Also, this thread reminds me of that episode of the Simpsons when Lisa couldn't get into the advanced school because her parents couldn't afford the fees.

I think children are gifted due to natural talent and that's not related to wealth but I think the children who are bright but not exceptional from wealthier homes always do better throughout life
it's all about who you know - getting an internship at daddy's firm ( or a friend of your parents firm etc)
being able to accept an unpaid internship as you have financial support
better schools in affluent areas with better standards of behavior meaning bright children can learn undisturbed etc

I think the migrant experience is probably relevant here, generally Chinese and Indian kids outperform white kids academically. I think families have become increasingly affluent but the academic achievement has been inching its way forward for decades. The academic achievements came before the material achievements. Clearly money was not the thing that made a difference otherwise materially deprived migrants wouldn’t have been able to make substantial gains in a relatively short period of time.

I really don’t think that money is it for academic success. You could have tutored the living daylights out of me and I would have still been bewildered by chemistry. I just don’t have the potential to do a chemistry degree. Theres this fallacy that you can teach any child anything with enough resource and I just don’t think thats true.

I really don’t think that money is it for academic success. You could have tutored the living daylights out of me and I would have still been bewildered by chemistry. I just don’t have the potential to do a chemistry degree. Theres this fallacy that you can teach any child anything with enough resource and I just don’t think thats true.

I agree with this. Also, ‘you can be anything you want to be’ is another fallacy. I enjoy playing the piano but even if I’d practised 10 hours a day every day of my life, I couldn’t be a concert pianist. I’m simply not musical enough.

There are many brilliant/exceptional people who do not come from a privileged background.
Steve McQueen, the film director,
Alexander McQueen, the late
Samantha Morton
Tom Cruise
Damian Hirst
Paul McCartney
Tom Daly

Samantha Morton is truly exceptional. Absolute star of the BAFTAs too.

I went to piano lessons for 7 years, practiced every day for 30 minutes and never even got to grade 1. I can confirm this is correct.

My son is gifted (IQ of 130 when he had cognitive assessments at age 6 because the people assessing his neurodiversity suspected learning disabilities). We aren’t wealthy at all but he’s our only child so gets a lot of our time, attention and resources. He’s not the kind of smart that would amaze anyone, but tends to surprise people (see above suspected learning disabilities, proven wrong 😂). He’s quick to learn but can also be lazy, like any other kid really. I’d say he is bright but if he loses the love of learning he is unlikely to stand out amongst his peers.

being gifted at something like maths or chess often seems pretty random and not connected to family background
A child from a poverty stricken background is unlikely to have the opportunity to even play chess and discover they’re gifted at it. If they do manage to learn to play, they’ll have nobody to play with, because the people around them won’t know how and won’t be interested.

I say this as someone who taught myself to play chess from a book when I was 8. I didn’t even have a chess board, I had to draw one. The people around me could barely read, never mind play chess with me.