Were YOU gifted and talented? What's your experience.

[morningpaper]

Just interested really, bunch of bespectacled girlie swots that we are on Mumsnet. Were you "G&T" before it was cool?

Yes academically - a year ahead alot of the way through school. 5 As at A level and 1's at S level tpo in entrance exam to Cambridge (enjoyed myself too juch while there though!). Top at most subjects.

However I can't say I'm a high achiever now. Success is a lot more about confidence than results.

It's good that the emphasis in schools is about higher and lower achievers. Next though there'll be grants and special names for the average kids!!

Yes, I kept getting put in the next class, so when I was 7 I was in with the 11 year olds in a pushy academic school..my parents moved and I was put with my real age and never had to do anything again in eg maths until I was 12

I hated it I had loads of homework and my dad used to do loads of stuff with a slide rule when I was trying to do long division how they showed me at school

It's only writing and art and languages that have interested me ..so I found the maths hard

I loved art but got 0 out of 10 for my drawings at that school from the beginning

sally!

On a happier note, I'm hoping the weather is better week after next re camping.

North Wales....so chances are we will see some rain

I've just spent two days in south wales and boy did it rain!

Not sure about G&T but was way ahead of my class in primary , slowed down to top in secondary, disovered horses and boys in my teens, got v. good GCSEs without trying but that didn't work at A levels and I didn't go to uni, keep starting OU but am too esily distracted to finish my degree.

They had a scale at my school but apparently I was so different that I dropped off it! Wrong direction unfortunately!

My brother, now 35, was identified as gifted at around 7 (have no idea of the criteria applied then or now). It was suggested that he should transfer from state to private sector (free place) and after brief deliberation my parents said no. Both my parents went to private school (for completely different reasons) so I assume had informed reasons for this choice.

He continued to do exceptionally well at school until he was about 16 (12 O levels in all, 3 gained at 14 and all bar one, at A and B grade). Then he became a 'real teenage rebel'. He was as outspoken (ie, self opinioated) as they come and some of his teachers didn't like it.

They tried to quash the very person they wanted him to be - and even tried to expel him because of his 'attitude'. But they couldn't becasuse he was doing so well academically and had an excellent attendance record. He hasn't changed a bit but he has matured!

Sorry for rambling, I could go on and on! But that's how it can be for some very bright kids.

Hope this makes sense!

FWIW, I have one of(of 4) offspring who is 'G&T', and it is now very obvious that it doesn't mean exceptionally bright academically - the sort of child who learns quickly, tests well, reads, calculates etc way ahead of his /her age. My ds often fools around, fails to concentrate, or just does plain mediocre work, but his giftedness shows in the extraordinary leaps he makes to connect facts, the way he doesn't need explanations to learn something, and the way he questions everything. he is absolutely the sort of person who would push the big red button to see what sort of bang it would make . Academically he is usually top without trying, but hates learning by rote: he more or less studies what he wants to find out by himself. I gues Martianbishop probably knows the sort of kid I'm describing. There are no guarantees that he will float to the top, but my guess is that I've bred a mad scientist

I was G & T, definitely a misfit, which wasn't helped by being moved up a year - took 11 plus just before my 10th birthday. Madness. Also a "gifted" musician - Grade 8 distinction at 12 etc. It hasn't really got me far - the thing I'm best at now is being a mum. I never fulfilled my academic potential much to the horror of my parents. It has made me deeply critical of the education system - which I still sort of work in.

I probably would have been labelled G&T, had the label existed in the 60s. I started school at 3 (not for any academic reasons, but because my parents needed my mother to go back into teaching - my father was unemployed for a few months, looked after me, but then found another job). Childcare didn't seem to have been an issue. I enjoyed the first few years of primary school, but, in retrospect, must have got bored and demotivated in the last few years. I found an old school exercise book a few years ago - lots of unfinished pieces of work where my attention had wandered. I was delighted to move to secondary school, but then spent five years being bullied for being a 'swot'. I finally started to enjoy school in the sixth form, when I won a scholarship to an international sixth form college and finally had peers I could relate to and a much more interesting syllabus to follow (the IB). When I was about 12, I badgered my parents to let me apply for a scholarship to a private, very academic girls school, but they were afraid I would be subjected to social snobbery (I was from the Valleys and the School was in a posh part of Cardiff). I think they made a mistake - I would have been much happier there. In my mid-teens, I did my best to find my own sources of stimulus - haunting the local library, Cardiff bookshops, museums etc and my parents encourage me to read and go to the theatre, but I would have enjoyed school a lot more if I had been given some more challenging work and some more support. I'm not sure that would have stopped the bullying, though. I am absolutely determined that DD avoids being put in this position.

If the label had existed I would possibly have been G&T. Always achieved between 92-100% in tests certainly at primary school/early secondary. What didnt help was that I was the youngest in our year and always came out top. To be fair I didnt realise I was particularly clever but the teachers were always banging on about it to my parents much to the horror of my normal twin sister. A few of us were jumped ahead a class from second year infants through to the end of our primary education - I think if I was my parent I would have been happy with the school attitude to encouraging learning. On the downside, I was picked on a bit/teased about it and certainly at secondary school as I was in the top set and my sister was in the bottom set, her group just didnt like me especially (in addition to the rest of the class who were deemed "snobs")

If you went to an academically selective school, do you think it would automatically put you in the G&T category?

I was consistently top of my classes in primary and secondary, but G+T, no.
I had a good memory and loved knowing things - I wonder what a bit of encouragement could have done for me, but I think G+T is quite a different thing, isn't it?

I probably would have been - although all this means is that I was unusually good at schoolwork and passing exams, rather than anything useful.

Had a range of experiences as a result (I went to rather a lot of schools, for unconnected reasons). On the positive side, I went to a rather eccentric school (v small, 30 people a year and international) which coped brilliantly and just gave me extra work and tuition but kept me in my own class. They taught me English Lit so well at age 13/14 that I was still using it for my A Levels.

On the downside, was put up a year at private school as I already had maths and English O Level - ghastly experience which completely knocked my confidence, I was bored and disruptive in several places, and was bullied horribly at comprehensive school for turning up having taken 4 O Levels before the fifth year (and having a soft southern accent). That was definitely the worst place, because it wasn't 'cool' to be clever.

Not sure what I think about all of that now that I write it down - I wish I'd been encouraged to read around a bit more at school, rather than just pass exams early and get out of sync with everyone else.

oh yes, i was the real deal, IQ off the scale, intensive secondary school, everything.

What a load of pigswill the whole thing is, eh?

its done one thing and one thing only for me-convinced me to keep my kids out of school if i possibly can.

Probably. I had various teachers who disliked me because I was brighter than they were (but then they quite obviously weren't the sharpest tools in the box). However, I suspect my childhood misery was also the result of being posh, foreign, fat and ugly.

Another probably here, if such a label had existed at the time. Won a scholarship to a private school due to my academic achievements where I spent eight thoroughly miserable years. I was terribly shy so found it hard to make friends and was made to feel very conscious of the fact that my parents were poor. Felt under constant pressure to live up to the expectations of my parents and the school. Ended up horribly depressed in my early teens. Not than anybody really cared just as long as the A grades kept coming. A rather desperate time.

I really, really feel for G&T kids. Very often the social and emotional develpment for G&T children suffers in this push for academic success. I'm rather pleased to report that dd1 and dd2 are exceptionally average so far at school!

yes

I was in the Daily Mail for being so brainy

do you have to be a 'misfit' to be g and t though

in that case I wasnt as I was supra cool as well