Gifted? underachiever

[Vi8]

Hi, we have always believed our daughter, now 8, to be 'gifted'. She was a breathtakingly bright baby and toddler - friends and family who are pediatricians and teachers used to comment and tell their colleagues about her. She is learning two instruments and both music teachers always say she is extremely talented and intelligent. At school, her teachers say she´s clearly very bright, but could be doing so much better. She seems to be too interested in her group of friends in the classroom, and is in the second set at Maths, when she should really be in the first. She´s in the first set for Literacy, but her handwriting leaves a lot to be desired. Her teacher has spoken to us about this, and seems concerned that DD is not pushing herself enough, and this could create a pattern into secondary school. I have been quite upset by all this, can anyone advice me?

It might be that she developed early in certain areas, but has now plateaued. Which year is she in at school? What are her NC levels?

She´s in year 4, not sure about her levels, but I know they are good but not exceptional. She clearly could be doing so much better if her priority wasn't chatting to her friends...

Her teacher worried me saying this could create a pattern of not working hard, that could have serious repercussions in her future education... I also have a son in Reception who's equally bright but being a boy, I suppose, does his own thing and only plays only in the playground... he's in the G&T program, etc.

Ime moving up in school can make work a lot more interesting for bright children, especially moving up to secondary: they get specialist teachers and there is a lot of project work where the level of the work depends on what the individual child chooses to do with it. Ds atm is writing his first history project on An Important Medieval Person- now knowing ds, this will probably be rather a sparse effort with a few paragraphs paraphrased from the internet, but when dd was doing the same thing I was getting books out from the university library for her. Any lazy habits she might have acquired earlier were left behind because there was so much to interest her.

Well, there's a difference between being intelligent and being academic. To be academic you need a reasonable amount of intelligence but a lot of drive and focus. To be intelligent, you just need to find certain things easy to achieve, you don't need to find them interesting or worth pursuing. If your dd is intelligent, that's no guarantee she will ever be academic.

Of course making things as interesting as possible for her will increase the chances of her working hard, but when it comes down to it, she has to find the interest and drive from within herself and be willing sometimes to work at things that have a long term benefit/reward in terms of what they are leading to, rather than always being immediately fun in themselves - just as when learning a musical instrument, you don't start out being good at it straight away, you need to put in a lot of work, but the better you get, the more rewarding it is, so the more you are incentivised to practise. If you don't enjoy the academic journey and don't aspire to the end goal, then why bother to do it in the first place?

If you are the sort of person who enjoys academic endeavour, then you can lead by example. If you aren't, then unless you are a dragon-mother type, you might find it hard to convince a young child that she has any need to work hard at school and stop chatting to her friends when she's doing just fine and enjoying herself behaving the way she is.

what rabbitstew said.

has she been told she's clever her whole life btw? some kids who have been taught that it is results that matter, and not effort, apparently do often end up like this. (read some carol dweck, i think)

if it helps at all (probably not) ds1 is just like this (yr5). we are contemplating home education. it's a bit of a culture shock, as it actually requires recognition of the fact that school defines a very narrow set of options and insists you achieve them (in a very boring and prescriptive manner) and isn't really interested in whether you can excel in any other direction. and doesn't really care what your interests are.

i should add that we are extremely conservative, academic, and will still have two g&t kids in school. but ds1 is wired differently and probably isn't going to ever reach his potential in school (ok - he's consistently top of the class/ whatever, but the trauma of getting him to hand work in and the constant battle to keep him rigidly adhered to the curriculum/ paying attention are soul destroying for him, us, and the teachers. and it won't fly in an exam environment.).

considering taking a child out of school feels a bit like treason.

i'm fairly dragon-mother and i'm banging my head against a brick wall. his teacher describes him as 'attention-diverse' rather than deficit. and every teacher he's ever had has said 'wow, isn't he bright?' and then 'but how on earth do i motivate him?' you can't. something will either inspire him, or it won't. the yr 4 teacher essentially let him do his own thing, (or not, as he saw fit) she said he had an einstein temperament and would do great things one day.

cory - that's really interesting, one of the ideas was to move him up again.

we are still pondering.

Hi, Vi8

I'm faced with a similar dilemma with my ds, also 8, he is very bright, on the gift list etc & tbh his teachers are very happy with him is school (he's currently about 2 years ahead of average). But out of school its a different story, he's obsessed with playing nintendo games & football. He is limited to 1/2hr computer games a night but that doesn't mean he does anything constructive with the rest of his time. He's just really difficult to motivate & I truly think he has far more potential than he's showing his teachers, (despite the fact he's doing really well,) because he has to put such little work in.

However, having said this, we have to remember they are only 8 & I have come to the conclusion that while he is still young I should let him be, (with a few provisos; that he's happy, hitting his targets in school, doing his homework & still doing plenty of reading).

If your Dds teachers feel she's under achieving then see if theres a way you can incentivise her. Find out her current grades & promise her, that if she manages to go up 2/3 this year, as is expected, (I'm assuming she's in yr4,) a day trip to a theme park or an over night stay in a hotel with a pool or a bowling trip with a friend, (Im sure you know what your dd would consider special,) & make sure she know it's the effort you're encouraging/rewarding.

Well, the handwriting you can sort out yourself. At 11, my writing was appalling after being told to start from scratch and re-learn the preferred script style at each of my 5 primary schools. My mum bought me a handwriting book (where your letters are on the guidelines) and I practiced and practiced. Within a term it was extremely neat.

Dear V8
There is of course another side to all this - namely, that academic success does in no way predict success in life, whilst being a friendly, social person as your daughter seems to be is a much better indicator of future happiness. Maybe if you took a long term perspective it would be a bit easier...at the moment, she is concentrating on building up and developing her social skills and personality - at one point hopefully she will concentrate on academic success!