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

Sorry nokissmum - they miss out on one mainstream year, so by the time they are in yr 8 they have done yr 8 subjects with the older children.Their last year is called scholarship class, so they do scholarship exams at the same time as mainstream are doing year 8. So they go to big school at 13.Public schools would not accept them below age requirement.

?? I'm not sure why it doesn't answer your question, nokissymum? The children go up to year 8 with children older than them, then move on to a scholarship class instead of year 9 in another school. When they go on to year 9 in the other school, they have therefore returned to a class of their peers, rather than being younger than everyone else - they've just had a year or even two years of being enriched and extended in other ways at prep school, first, after finishing the traditional prep school curriculum. I guess it's like waiting until the end of prep school before you really focus on extending sideways, rather than pushing relentlessly forwards.

Clearly if your local school and the other pupils who attend are not worthy to be in the presence of your son then HE seems to be your only option, OP.

Oh, and have a very large too.

goldmedalmother the relevance of being an only child is purely that the company of others at school may be even more important to him than it might be for a child with siblings. Nothing to do with social skills at all.

Iamnotminterested - why post if you are not interested? Just to say you are not interested?
Not interesting :)

The two chldren we know won scholarships a year early too as they were already in the scholarship stream by yr 7 Even though theywhat been out up a yr I don't know how this happened as I too am aware of age restrictions for scholarships but this was quite a long time ago!

Is this some elaborate social satire?

If it's not, I think you have already got rather 'tosspotty' in your views. I hope you don't pass on your obvious feelings of superiority to your DS as you will be doing him a great disservice.

Here we go , poor jabed.

Rabbitstew - So what you are saying is that at your school the accelerated children do yr 8 and then an additional yr on top called "scholarship class" but not yr 9 ? at our prep, scholarship classes are run alongside yr 8 so we have some children who have already been made conditional offers but now do not meet the age criteria and the senior schools have now deferred their entry, they are now having to repeat yr8 all over again including the scholarship classes. The children are quite devasted.

It's not my school, it's my dh's experience. He was accelerated by 2 years, but always on the understanding he would spend 2 years in a scholarship class at the end of prep school, so not a surprise or devastating at all. The scholarship class was a separate class which he joined after completing year 8 and he had two very happy years in that class not repeating what he had done in year 8. I don't know if this was the norm at his school or if the school had to pull out any extra special stops to cater for children with 2 extra years to kill, but his memory is most certainly not that he had to spend two boring and devastating years repeating what he had already learnt. In many ways, putting him in with children considerably older than him was not a great thing to do, but the two scholarship years were the best time he had at the school.

MNHQ can we have an eye-rolling emoticon, please?

Wider society doesn't deserve your horrible, prejudicial attitude. I'd send him to school so he could escape some of your views...

Poor jabed. He did have stinking headache and was up at 3 in the morning worrying about his childs education.

He would have been better off saying that his local primary is c**p which it probably is .

But I'd sent DC to school for all sorts of reasons.

The are moments when I wonder if Jabed Xenia Seeker and Peternas are one and the same!!

Colleger and Iamnotinterested - you are not going to convince jabed he's horrible and prejudiced with comments like that, nor will you persuade him to send his child to the local school, so the remarks are really rather wasted. You don't change peoples' views on life by telling them you think they are tossers.

May be HG is right and this is all a wind up.

I do secretly feel my DC are sooo precious , special, wonderful, talanted, good looking etc etc , dont we all?
Even though some of our DC might be the case of "only mother could love"..

Jabed, I too have a very gifted DS. He was identified as such at preschool and much discussion took place with regards to private versus state. You already know some of my views on this topic from other threads so I don't want to add anything to that debate.

However, like yourself, we too wanted our son to have a 'normal' childhood and decided on the local primary (which, by the way, is designated as a 'failing' school). The levels of SEN at the school were very high, which could have been offputting, but actually meant that they had a very individual approach to each childs education. I can't say I was always happy, because I wasn't, but DS has just left this school in Y6 with very high levels - we have been told that he scored the highest maths L6 in the county. He is well grounded, as he was never treated as the 'special' one, as I believe he would have been treated at the local 'school of choice'. He is very sociable, very popular, well adjusted and ready for life at his new secondary. Yes, sometimes he got bored, but he learned independent coping strategies (ie taking the work off at an appropriate tangent) which has got recognition from the vast numbers of Local Authority inspectors who regularly visit our school. Choosing this option has enabled our son to build up the social skills and independent learning skills necessary to make a really good go at an excellent secondary school. I would make the same choice again.

This is the problem all parents and particularly mothers feel their child is special and different its normal and necessary to feel like this and IMO home educating your DC must compound this view.
Jabed you are conspicuous by your absence not responding to any of the suggestions made above. The problem is that no one on MN is going to come up with a completely original idea that you yourself have never considered because when it comes to education and for that matter life in general even if you have all the money in the world there are always going to be a finite number of options for any child.
Try something you know what they say about "he who hesitates" if it doesn't work try something else children IME are very resilient hopefully with a bit of luck you will find something both you and your DS are happy with.

Gosh he really is special isn't he?

I think the problem is there is not really an option which will tick all the boxes.

As much as this is a predictable thing for me to say, if it's desirable that DS has a 'childhood', by which I'm assuming Jabed means one as 'normal' as possible, and that he isn't accelerated against his parents wishes, then surely the local village primary - naughty children and imperfections notwithstanding - is the obvious choice.

If th children there are too badly behaved to be countenanced, and his apparent brightness isn't being catered for in the way you wish, then the prep is the obvious choice.

If neither, I can only see that you could continue HE, find another prep less keen on acceleration, or move. There's no other answer that I can see, and that's discounting anything I feel personally about any of those options.

Whichever, though, I do agree that a post peppered with sentiments about schools 'not deserving' the boy, or pausing to underline that you are an 'able guy' do not especially convey a sense that the childhood of normality you seek is being acheived right now. If being a child and having a childhood is the most desirable thing right now, it might entail the whole family revaluating some of its ideas about things.

jabed - on a more serious note I would be careful calling a 6 yo a gifted musician etc. A lot of kids progress very fast at young age but do not become musicians. My DS is 10 and has done pretty well so far in music and academically, but we are being very very careful about it. It is really easy to do a lot of damage by raising wrong expectations/mis-judging ability etc.

Jabed you are conspicuous by your absence not responding to any of the suggestions made above

Good morning to you too. :)

Give me chance. I did manage to get to bed. Got up slightly later than usual.
Morning coffee and reading through.

Thanks to everyone for the responses. Back soon. Have to do some kitchen duties first.

I think it's a wind up too...

I just wonder if anyone or anything will ever be good enough for jabed's son. I pity his wife (or husband) to be...

on a more serious note I would be careful calling a 6 yo a gifted musician etc.

I dont. My DW does. She should know. Our problem is that whilst we love him to bits, and he loves music (like his mum) neither of us want him to be pushed in that direction this young. He was put to the piano because he was interested and wanted to learn and had the capacity for it (and it was better than us listening to plonking) There is little doubt he is good . Even I can tell he plays well. Not that I necessarily see concert pianist as his future. My DW is a talented musician and classically trained pianist herself. She was/is very gifted too.

We are being very careful not to push too much. Its a hobby for the moment.

jabed as you posted at 17 06 but say good morning I have to assume you are not in the UK unless I'm missing something! Or the alternative this is a wind up.