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?

dh got "a" s for every exam in the world( 11 o leveles etc)
including a distinction at "s" level english for gettign the top mark int eh counrty

then he got a third at university
he dicovere there was mroe to life

arf enid

arf enid

arf at enid and dh being inlove

I would def have been labelled g and t - I taught myself to read and write, the school had no idea what to do with me and spent huge amounts of primary ed in the school library reading on my own. By the time I went to secondary (girls' grammar thank god) I was playing dumb in class to avoid being teased especially by the boys.

It did level out though and although I got a good degree has been no idicator of exceptional academic promise or ability.

dh good a sport to
in fact dh is really good at everythign but knwos nothign abotu historya dn cannot cook

you don't need to be a social misfit, no, you just need to contain quinine and go well with a twist of lime

The entrance exam used to allocate kids to the direct grant grammar school I went to was said to be aimed at the "exceptionally gifted". It wasn't the 11+, as they'd phased that out the year before, but I suspect it was the same format. I passed the exam but never felt gifted, let alone exceptionally gifted. To me gifted implies children that come top without trying rather than bright and hardworking, and exceptionally gifted would be the calculus at primary school type thing. Evidently this isn't how everyone, or even most people, use the terminology.

Not sure whether I would have been labelled G & T, but by the time I started school i had a reading age of 11. Passed GCSEs easily even though had missed nearly 50% due to glandular fever. All went arse up after that though and ended up dropping out of university a few years later. Now gone back though and am on course for a first.

I think the comments about people who were unusual at school but not so later on (so that giving them extra help is a waste of resources) rather misses the point. What matters, surely, is children's experience at school at the time it happens. It's not a question of identifying race horses for some future Cheltenham Gold Cup race, but of responding to the needs children have at the time. I was bored, unhappy and bullied. I felt a misfit. The school did nothing about this. As it turned out, I did continue to perform well academically at university, but I think what's relevant here is the lack of support at school making so many of my school years unhappy.

That's why I asked the question snorkle.

From what I could understand from googling it, a percentage of each year of a school should be categorised G&T.

I went to an academically selective school from 8 and was probably somewhere in the middle in ability once there.

Had previously been in top group at primary school (3 out of 30 in my class).

So would I have been G&T at primary? I assume so.

But I was never exceptional at anything, wasn;t a straight a student at all - and that is what I would perceive G&T to mean.

Playing the violin at 3, taking maths GCSE at 8, that kind of thing.

I'm guessing in fact it is just saying the top 10% of any year group in terms of - IQ? Academic achievement?

for me and in my experience as a secondary teacher i don't think g&t is necessarily about being top of the class. it's more about what Callmemadam was describing with her ds and that's why i think schools are asked to look out for it, as these are the type of kids who might 'get lost' on the way to somewhere extraordinary if they're not supported.

but it's so hard to know how to do it. when teachers are asked to identify g&t kids in their form groups for instance, many of them will come back with a list of the 'brainiest', brightest and hardest-working. and i think this is wrong. these kids obviously need support (as do all the others in their class) but they are usually the ones who achieve well anyway - they know how to graft, how to communicate and survive in social settings.

however, a 'g&t' kid might be one who doesn't set the world alight academically but who is a brilliant lateral thinker or problem solver; or a fantastic dancer and responds fantasically to music, but who has never been identified before because they've never had music or dance lessons, etc. these are the kids who can easily slip through the net in a climate where academic achievement is seen as the benchmark to success because of bloody league tables and all sorts of shit like that.

its kids who create a spark in certain unexpected situations, in my opinion.

When I went to primary school I had read all the books they used, my mum was told to stop me from reading them as I had to learn at the same level as all the other children. When in junior school I was put up a year as I was so advanced, then they told me I would have to repeat the year as I couldn't go to secondary school early. Eventually thought what's the point in trying to excel as you only get held back to make you 'normal' like the other children. I will encourage my daughter if she is gifted.

Yes, I think I was. I passed every exam I ever did with a good grade and absolutely no revision - I only discovered revision just before my final degree exams with a panic attack at about 5.30 am! However, I was totally disinterested, bored and fed up at school. I hated it with a vengeance. I soon learned that being in the top group for everything was boring as there was no fun, so I deliberately did badly at end of year assessments so that I could drop down to the group with the nice teacher. If I asked questions or showed any interest, the teacher would slap me down and give me a detention for being cheeky. I think I had about 40 detentions in my time at secondary school because I used to ask things at inappropriate times, or I used to get bored and yawn, yawn, yawn!

I can see all this in my youngest dd. She is like a hyperactive maniac who can't be kept busy enough and it gets harder and harder the older she gets. We thought that the grammar school she is now at would help to challenge her mentally, but she is starting to go down the boring route too and it does worry me. However, she has got more ambition than I ever had, so I am hoping that this will help her to stay on track.

Reading the first post again - there is no way at all that I was a girlie swot. Quite the opposite really - I was a total rebel.

I won an academic scholarship at 15 (without trying particularly)...to go to a school with boys

...academic achievements went downhill from then on...

Yes probably in a never had to try to be top of the class sort of way. Unfortunately I had a brother who was the opposite and parents who didn't want a girl in the first place, let alone one who could do better then the boy they did want. I'd get punished if I ever wasn't top in anything, but also if I was but dared to say so. So it was always something to be ashamed about, not proud of, and the constant criticism ended up knocking my confidence so much that I've proably never made of it what I should have done.

I think I was 'g+t' but only in English. I was well above average in everything else but nothing exceptional. When I was at primary school my unfortunate nickname was 'dictionary' (hmmm!!! too young to object!)

Since then I have trained as an English secondary teacher (altho not teaching ATM) and when I read anything I wrote at school, at any age, I am genuinely astounded at how good it is. I got a £500 prize for coming top of my yr for uni exams (my mum was v. proud! ), and my most exasperating meory of 'A' levels was getting 59 out of 60 for my extended coursework essay (48 was an 'A' grade). I found a long rap in rhyming couplets that I wrote for GCSE the other day and I'd be proud of it now.

I do feel a bit ashamed that I'm not using my talents more. I think about this quite often really. My dcs are still small tho so as they get older I'm hoping to get more time to develop my passions for such things!

I object to the G&T label. It sounds terribly naff and Blairish. People are good at different things. Some have a high IQ and others are good at sport or whatever.

If I read what I wrote as a child it does seem pretty good and I won prizes and at university and when there when I was 17 etc. But I also worked hard and was interested in what I did so it was probably a combination of both. I think it carried on into adult life in terms of what I've done too. I want to be the best in the country at what I do and know more about it than anyone else. It's fun.

I was, but I was also very angry and unmanageable. I went to about 6 different primary schools and had a very rocky primary education - I remember wonderful teachers who worked with me a lot individually and genuinely cared. I also remember being sat on a pile of magazines on a chair with the 11yos when I was 6 for some lessons, and I remember educational psychologist assessments and being a totally wild and difficult child at school (at home I was petrified most of the time and never lost my temper). I went to boarding school on a scholarship when I was 13, mainly because my home environment was intolerable. The teachers there were very caring and dedicated and they did well to put up with me and not expel me over the 5 years I was there. I was a raging, unhappy PITA and being clever made it worse. I did get four A-grades at A-level and 2 S-levels, and I went to Oxford, but tbh my unhappiness and emotional instability caught up with me and I've had to deal with it all slowly and pretty much start again anyway. So the G&T label makes me chuckle, and also worries me a bit. It's not necessarily the right way to regard an exceptional/unusual child IMO. People are not two-dimensional.

g&t hadn't been invented when I was a kid. I barely got a thing wrong at primary school. won scholarship to fee-paying girls school. then parents got divorced and so I spent several years screaming and shouting at teachers and smoking instead of going to classes. still took a couple of o levels a year early and got As. but then pushed it all too far and ballsed up the rest of my o levels. I then declared that i wanted to go to Oxford (which wasn't news at all to me, I had virtually assumed I would). One of my teachers did the best thing she could have done and laughed. the combination of needing to show her where she could stick her laughter and the fact that the work for the Oxford exam was actually interesting - unlike anything else I'd done previously - I decided to pull my finger out and got a 2E offer. (at which point finger went firmly back in again and I lounged around the common room for the rest of the 6th form).

Did my 11 plus at 9 but transferred to private school at end of 2nd year secondary. I never fitted in anywhere and at the grand old age of 42 it's still a problem for me. If I'd been encouraged to live a little by parents I may have been happy by now.

Haven't read whole thread = too tired!!

All I know is that my DH lousy primary school put him up from 3rd year (yr 4) straight to year (6) and he stayed there for 2 year (you do maths). My 4 year old can count to 20 in english and french, recite his address, ask about evolution, play dominoes and do basic memory games.

am I a div - 0r is he clever - (playschool seem to think so)