Gifted and talented.

[jabed]

Its three O clock in the morning. I have a stinking headache which is why I am up and I would like to get contentious. Do you mind?

With no holds barred, my DS is by any definition gifted and talented. I am a fairly able kind of guy myself and DW is extremely gifted, so no prizes for guessing where he gets it.

The thing is, I have been pondering what I am going to do with him. We currently HE. This is because he is young- He is a late August born and would, were he at school he going into year 2 now. Many a couple of weeks younger would just be going into year 1.
He is gifted as I said, which is another reason for not putting him in school. he has a generally high IQ and academic giftedness and if SW is right he has musical talent.

I don?t want him accelerated. I don?t want him messed with. I want him to be what neither DW nor I were - a child with a childhood. My experience of the local school, which would have been our first choice (and was in fact where we sent him) for his primary years do not deserve him. The teachers cannot deal with gifted children. He does not deserve his peers in that school - disruptive and largely ill socialised with a large percentage at the other end of the spectrum to DS. But there is no other local school.

There is my own school which has a prep but they want to put him a year up.

So, what do you do in that situation? I am at a loss. I have looked at options and got bogged down. We have to make a decision before year 3 as I seriously believe he needs to be in formal education at some point there.

Just a general throw out to see what others would do with such a DS. I reserve the right to get toss potty if people get rude about my DS or my feelings about being middle class etc.
This is my DS not an abstract. Thanks

Seriously seeker, I'm not sure that's appropriate.

Although DH is a scout leader, so I can't say I'm thrilled by it...

That is a totally outrageous thing to say!!!

What's not appropriate? Challenging ignorant bollocks like that?

I think strange-men-altar-boys-etc is a fairly funny comment, as long as it was meant as a joke.
DS is in scouts & loves it & I think I'm increasingly a fan of his GSL/group leader, but doesn't mean I've lost my sense of humour.

jabed made it clear he wasn't up for discussing scouting. Now, it might just be bloody mindedness. It might not. If it's not, perhaps coming back to find a discussion like that would be unwelcome.

Ignorant bollocks notwithstanding.

Funny? Jesus wept!!!!!!

Fallenmadonna- he's refusing to engage in any sensible debate even though people have tried. I'm really sorry if he feels his thread has been derailed, but we really can't let sohia's comment go.

It's about as funny as when someone asked me if my brother was a paedophile because he's a primary school teacher.

And yes, I know I said we shouldn't continue on that topic, but honest to god!!!

How do you get a nun pregnant? No, I better not tell that one.

Sorry, I am bored of this thread. Time to finish it up with pisstake.

Nevertheless mini jabed has generated more attention on MN then a pictures of certain young Royal..

I'd call that a result :)

I think there have been a number of instances and allegations over the years. I can think of a number I have seen in the news over time, but what concentrated me was a case in our paper this evening.

Link to them please.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scouting_sex_abuse_cases

This is from wiki and it lists a few cases. Plymouth Evening Herald had a case in tonight.

There are paedophiles everywhere. Occasionally one will rock up in scouts. It's not rocket science. Two of the adult leaders in youth organizations I attended as a kid (well one youth org, one school) have subsequently been locked up. It hasn't put me off either school or scouts, tbh. And dd1 has just decided to go to a catholic school. (schools have put me off schools, tbh. I still send my dc to them)

I quite like the scouts discussions on mn. It gives a good glimpse into who the frothers are. That said, I have no issues if jabed doesn't want to discuss it. It's interesting to ponder why (in a sense that it's often more revealing to ponder what people don't say than what they do - ie what they are deliberately avoiding or leaving out) but I can't be bothered to wonder in this respect. Happy to give Sohia a hmm face, obv, as she felt it necessary to share her own feelings.

There's no way I'd ever persuade dh into scouting. I find it really sad that young people are missing out on some great role models because of the stupid military/ paedo ridiculousness though. And that's leaving out the folk who are convinced it's religious brain washing... It's actually the folk who go round propagating such rubbish that marginalises scouts further. Hey ho.

Anyways, I'm betting jabed probably caught the tail end of the scouts stuff over here, if he's been here all summer. I thought he was bright enough to get through media frenzy, but maybe not. I'm not really interested enough to mull it over.

TW2K - thank you foryour thoughts and suggestions (a couple or so pages back). Quite interesting things there. Thanks. I will look into them.

Thanks too , to all posters who have made useful suggestions.

Madwomanintheattick - you seem very negative about Canada?
PIE is where I have a home at the moment. We would not be using public schools.

I get absolutely furious that any men who want to work with children are viewed with suspicion. So many men are put off by youth work because they think their motives will be suspect. The Scouts are desperately short of leaders. Most men are perfectly normal, they like children and want to put back something into the community.
Meanwhile women moan that men don't work in childcare and it is hardly surprising when you get ignorant comments. I know a few men who are reception teachers and they are excellent-we need more.

Sorry PEI - got distracted on the spell check there :)

Rabbit, re earlier - yes, it is, in many ways. The kids are pretty much identikit, despite there being no school uniform. They all wear jeans, hoodies, sneakers. There isn't the desperation towards individuation that you (often) get with youth in the uk. So, no outrageous personal styles, no statements. (I say no, I'm sure there are, but I haven't personally seen any teens that appear to be pushing any sort of boundaries.

It's kinda depressing, in an individual sense. But strangely appealing in a 'Truman show' sense of order. For about five minutes.

There are geeks, obv. I mean, the annual science fairs, and spelling bees and whatnots. (and yes, mine do take part ) but it's very much all expected. Dd1 v quickly slipped into being the school rep for regionals, and there's a boy who wins the science fair year after year. Even that is completely formulaic though - you just google science fair projects and replicate the best ones. There's no original thought, per se. Dd1 made the mistake of coming up with her own hypothesis, and designing her own experiment. She had a great time and found it v interesting, but there are no marks for originality. even the geeks just have 'clever' as one of their accomplishments though.

It's one of the reasons that he would suit ds1 better - he needs to be working out the whys, and getting hands on and understanding, rather than learning by rote. We've had a few instances where he was mad keen to extend a project, and school were so adamant that it was not in the rubric that he was massively put off even to do it at home. (and again, this is a kid who is coded gifted, with an ipp saying he requires differentiation).

I don't mean to turn this into a discussion about jabed's hopes for Canadian schooling though, just to point out that although it is different to the uk, there are still the same issues for gifted kids. Culturally it's interesting. A friend confided to me yesterday that her dd ended up in therapy after three months of moving here, because she tried to keep up with the expectations in terms of extra curricular.

Not negative at all jabed. I love it. I just don't have any rose colored glasses about the education system, and find the youth culture interesting in comparison to the uk.

PEI.

Bright lights, big city eh?

V beautiful.

[Irrelevant aside]

If PEI stands for what I think it does, I now have jabed + Anne of Avonlea in some very bizarre mental storyline.....

When my cousin's children went to school in Canada they had to develop a Canadian accent pretty quickly to avoid ridicule.