Gifted or 'just' bright?...

[bubbleymummy]

As they've gotten older, what has set your child apart from their peers? I think that when they are young it is easier to notice children who are doing things earlier/to a greater extent than other children their age, but as they get older skills such as numeracy/literacy etc obviously don't stand out as much. While my son seems gifted in these areas at age 4, he may not seem so in a few years! So what do you think it is that 'defines' your child's giftedness as such?

I like % better. I'd say dh and I were both in top 10% and I expect ds1 and ds2 are too - too early with dd to tell. we might all be top 5%. clever but not exceptional =not top 1 or 2%. the gap really widens between top 5% to top 1% of population in terms of intellect. so for me, top 10% is bright, top 5% is a school defined 'gifted' and top 1 or 2% is the truly gifted.

For some reason, known only to the powers that be they decided to keep a register of children in state school who showed potential to achieve and wanted to try to track these children to address the problems of state schools letting them down. That was my understanding of it when I received a letter from secondary school declaring DD was on the 'Gifted and Talented' register. It wasn't supposed to be sinister or making out she was a genius. DD was probably a model child that could have easily underachieved without a bit of encouragement. She isn't from an academic background.

It gave her the confidence in her abilities and she ended up getting the top GCSE grades in her reasonable state school, she has just started A levels and is she works hard enough should do very well, remains to be seen, So it has been a positive thing for us.

Could have been called 'bright and talented', 'clever and talented' 'intelligent and talented' 'able and talented' but they chose 'gifted and talented'. Nothing sounds right really.

As a younger child she didn't shine, perhaps in Maths SAT's but didn't read fluently until aged 8.

Percentages are fine, but I don't think I would describe the top 1% as truly gifted - most of them will just be very bright.

Maybe more like the top 0.1% in my view. Or 0.01%

Even if people could agree on the figure, it would still be a woolly concept. Would you really say if the threshold was 0.01% that someone in the top 0.011% wasn't gifted, but the 0.010% child was? IMO it has to be viewed as a spectrum type thing like autism with some children more affected than others. Any hard cut-off point just seems abitrary and a bit daft (even assuming IQ tests can be that accurate).

abouteve, sorry if I sounded negative about the G&T scheme. I do think it is a good idea to give support and encouragement to children and provide opportunities that will stretch them. I just think that by assigning the term 'Gifted and Talented" to the top 10% of every class/school it weakens the definition of 'gifted' for truly gifted children iykwim. It seems a bit strange to put a child who can read before starting school under the same label as a child who was writing piano concertos or solving mathematical equations at the same age. (extreme examples I know but I hope you know what I'm getting at!) :)

Problem with percentages of course is 0.01% of what?! The general population is one thing, but if it is a percentage of any given cohort of children, then you end up with the same problem that you have now.

My dd is at a state primary school but it's very academic - at least half of her classmates are the children of academics at the local university and associated research institutes, so on the whole, they're pretty bright. There are a few very bright kids in her class who haven't even made it onto the "top table", let alone any G&T registers. Inevitably, they would shine much more at a different school with a different cohort of children.

No magic the top 0.01% are genius! They wouldn't need any encouragement or an eye keeping on them, which was really what the G&T programme was about. It was initially the top 5%. I'm going back 6 years ago to when schools were told to prepare the register, initially just in secondary school, then later in primary.

As I said before, it's all semantics I suppose. I know that I was in the top 0.5% at a fairly high-achieving secondary school, but wouldn't regard myself as having been "gifted" - and to be honest, I didn't really need to be on a register either.

I think I'm sceptical about the G&T register because

a) it is so arbitrary because lots of very bright children will get left off the list and lots of not-so-bright children will get on it, purely because of the composition of their particular cohorts and

b) because it doesn't actually seem to mean a lot anyway, and they don't really do much for the G&T children other than giving them an arbitrary label.

So I can't really see the point.

DD was identified via various measures as top 5% nationally but that was a while ago. It changed then changed again. TBH school haven't done much with the register but it raised her goals to go to uni etc which hasn't been a bad thing.

magic, that sounds very impressive, would you have considered yourself 'intelligent' if so they could have called it that then. I know you didn't need to be on a register to tell you that you were intelligent but some children don't know the extent of their abilities, really they don't, think a child from an underpriviledged background.

It was those children that the concept was meant to help. Not sure what's going on with it now. As with everything it ends up getting messed up.

just think the whole thing is dangerous ground
labeling children young - who may just happen to have pro active parents
i know too may who burned early and burned bright but then evened out
my eldest has done very well academically ( just left school) and was a bit of a dunce until 7 or 8...
certainly not regarded as 'gifted' at primary although they did not categorise then...
i would never get my kids tested by psychs etc unless they were struggling - or socially inept etc
Social skills can often go by the wayside in these children and a great university education often requires great social skills - not least at interview
i digress

Yes, I suppose I always viewed myself as intelligent, but didn't ever think I was particularly special in any way - and I suspect that was probably quite healthy. I do get what you're saying about raising aspirations etc, and it's fab that being on the register had such a positive impact on your daughter. I guess I just worry about the bright kids who don't quite make it on to the list - who is going to raise their aspirations?!

If kids who are bright don't make it onto the list, doesn't that mean that the level is quite high in that particular school - which might in itself serve to raise everybody's aspirations. If you are in an environment where your mates do their homework and talk about interesting careers, that becomes the norm.

My understanding of the G&T register was that it was meant to encourage children who do not come from that kind of background, who do not attend that kind of school and who would never have got the idea of developing an interest in studying, because people just didn't talk about that kind of thing around them and there was nobody in their family who was able to notice that they were potentially university material. And to discourage the kind of teacher (admittedly getting rarer) who finds it difficult to spot talent in a school full of children from a lower social class.

All these definitions are a bit spurious and woolly, too. After all, you could be a gifted poet, for example, without being in any top 1% at school.

Top 1% is actually quite a lot of people, however.

She said that a truly gifted child self-starts and has a thirst for knowledge

I agree with this. IMO a gifted child stands out and is insatiably curious and self starting. You are unable to hold them back.

My own ds is driven to seek knowledge and learn all there is to know about a given subject.

Speed of learning is another, transference of knowledge and the ability to see realtionships at an early age.
They seem to form hypothesis independently with no input at all.

They just seem to "know" things with out being taught. My ds is fascinated with physics and maths. He seems to have been born knowing this stuff.

Also a very early interest in existential matters which may or may not be appropriate for their age.

Difference between a bright child and a Gifted child

Cory, agree with what you have said. That was the original idea. I've noticed that if one or two in a group of friends are working hard and setting their sights on going to university others will measure themselves against that, in a positive way, and aim higher themselves.

Most of the DC's I've watch grow up are staying in school with a view to going into some sort of higher education and wanting to do well.

It wasn't about the top 1% which I certainly wouldn't put DD in, it's a very small amount, It was 5% then widened to 10% to make it more inclusive. If 20% of school leavers make it to Uni then stands to reason that they keep an eye on top 10% who should be aiming to get into the Russell Group's with high grades regardless of their background. AFAIK there is a shift with G&T to place more emphasis on recognising underachievers. I guess they then went onto looking at toddlers/primary to catch them younger.

It seems to me like some sort of social experiment and it's a shame they didn't do a bit more with it. It hasn't been mentioned for years in our school so don't know what is happening atm in other schools.

Singers, the example you gave with a Poet is why they were asked to idenify pupils by subject. Our school did this and one child might have been listed for English only and so on. I can remember a couple of pupils being taken to meet an author etc.

I like that definition list posted by Nobody, sometimes younger children displaying these traits are judged to be non-compliant and distruptive/different and overlooked. Often they astound the teachers when it comes to tests. Speaking from experience here. Memories of a yellow table (below average), warned about a struggle with the tests, then afterwards declared a whizz at Maths.

Sorry if it comes across as I'm talking to myself here but had a couple of cross posts.

Agree with most items on the list, but would suggest that it is possible to tick all the other boxes and still be able to enjoy equally the company of adults and that of your peers, and to understand that you must not hurt the teacher's feelings by showing up her ignorance. I have known some highly gifted people who have also been emotionally and socially mature. It is possible to have quite a young child who comes home and says "well, of course I never talk about X, Y and X with Emma because she wouldn't enjoy it, but I like playing with her because she's great fun". Not saying that I reached this level of maturity in my younger days but it is possible.

My db was not particularly good at school, but he was definitely gifted at all technical things: mending household appliances while he was still in infants and setting up the school computers when he was in secondary (in the days before ICT lessons, evidently- he just taught himself programming). He started making and selling his own computer programmes after he left school and is now running a successful computer firm. But he was easily overlooked at school because he was not particularly good at either literacy or formal maths and never willingly tried to find anything about those subjects.

nobody My dd1 (5.5) fit the description of "gifted" in your link (I know she is still young). But I don't agree that she is gifted (may be I am wrong). For me gifted is being a genius. Agree with the mozart comparison he was gifted.

magic it sounds like you have my DD's twin (early posts).

People are always telling me our children are "gifted" but I disagree and over the years I did wonder but now that they are mixing with more school children (ie at bigger school) they do seem to be doing well easily but are not exceptional or the brightest but people still tell me they are "so bright" even when I ask them why they are still saying it they still just come out with weak reasons.

liked the link. reminded me of my sister. failed most of her gcses, got crap a levels, got a first at uni. it wasn't til she got there that her answers to the questions were appreciated. she just thought far far too deeply for gcse and, in a bit of a 'clever but daft' way, couldn't see that all they wanted was a regurgitated answer that matched the script, not an inventive and new take on an old idea

mamaloco - nice to know she has a twin. Around the same age, too!

As you say, she fits all the "gifted" criteria given in the link, with the possible exception of the fact that she enjoys her peers and adults!.

I agree, Mozart was gifted. My dd is not!