G&T in Sport?

[princesscc]

Posted this on the end of Were you G&T with no response, but I would like your opinion - pretty please!

My dd (year 6) has just been classified G+T for her ability & potential in sport. Is this a naff classification in your opinion? Should I take it seriously? I've never heard of a phys ed T&G child. I have a feeling the government are clutching at straws for the forthcoming Olympics in 2012, as DD will be prime age by then. My family & friends don't seem to be that bothered by the news and I'm not sure if I should be or not? Help! She's been invited to Junior Athlete Education day which will be practical and theory and it all seems to be really exciting, but I can't help thinking its a 'white elephant'. What do you think?

My honest opinion? I think there are too many labels out there. And I have never heard of a G&T in sport classification before. There seems to be a new one every few months.

HOWEVER ... DH and I are both sporty and encourage our children to be into sport. If someone approached us and told us DS was exceptional in sport (he is good at all sports but not necessarily exceptional) we would definitely encourage it and channel it.

Yes, the govt may be clutching at straws in view of the 2012 olympics but if someone says your DD is good at sport why not encourage it? You don't have to build it up or build her up but you could at least see if she is into the idea of getting into some kind of sport.

I think it is clear by looking at the successes of most World Class athletes that in order to be exceptional at a sport they all started young (Didn't Tiger Woods start playing golf at 3? What about the Williams sisters? Steffi Graff was playing tennis at 4 etc etc) I don't think you will find many world class olympic athletes that only took up their sport in their 20s.

I don't think it is a bad thing for the British Govt to be on the look out for talent at young ages. Personally I think it is a good thing and about time - this is what happens in the US and in Eastern European and Communist countries surely?

It would at least give the Brits a bit more of a chance of getting more Gold medals in the Olympics and people would moan less about the Americans and the Russians getting all the medals.

Of course, you could argue the point that young children would be under too much pressure when training/they would lose out on childhood/they could burn out early etc etc and then you would most probably be accused of being an awful pushy parent because your child is good at something (which is something I can't stand about society) but you can't have it both ways really can you? If you want more world class athletes you need to start them young.

But I digress - only you can know whether you want to persue this or not. I would go to the Junior Athletic Education Day and take it from there if it were my DD.

Sorry for length of post xx

I am with ghosty and would encourage your dd to go to the Education day. We are a very sporty family. Sport has done so much for our dss - built their self esteem, team work skills, energy levels and concentration etc . I don't think the govt are clutching at straws. They seem to be drawing on the Aussies' experience.Several years before the Sydney Olympics, they worked with schools to identify children with potential and made sure that they were directed to the sports they most enjoyed and to which they were most suited eg. good upper body strength - encouraged to row, anaerobic fitness - sprinting etc. IMO this is a great opportunity for your daughter and she will have nothing to lose by attending the day.

I'm a bit concerned about G&T in sport, and sporting "leaders" seem to care more about the sport than the kids.
Sports leaders want to encourage "an elite" which is great for the success of their sport, but of course does nothing for the way kids get less exercise these days.
I know of far too many cases where the sport people leant on kids to put the sport above school work, and where they used emotional bullying that would get a teacher sacked on his first day.
My MIL is a short nice person, but as a teacher she had sports "teachers" up against the wall for telling girls to skip lessons during exam time to do practice.

Also G&T is sport is very different to G&T in other areas. Kelly Holmes has made a good life out of running, during her time who was #2 in British running ? Name a shotputter ?
Unless your child is literally one in a million, elite level sport is not going to get them anywhere.
I'm not in the global top 20 of anything I've ever done for a living, but I get by. The 20th best female 100 metres swimmer is a "success", but let's not pretend that's a career.
Note this is not the same as taking your kids to sports practice, joining some club etc.
DS has karate, swimming and soccer lessons, but that's general firnessand fun, not his life.
Elite level sports is an obsession. The competition requires that pretty much everything else is sacrificed, and your kids will be exposed to highly articulate and forceful coaches who will tell them this, and enmcourage them to screw up their lives.

Short version :Bad news, run away.

oh god my dd got the same for drama - bloody stupid

my ds2 is abotu 2 years ahead of himslef ins port
whats hte issue
i just let him play

just the label I hate - so bloody what just let them get on with it. dd is only 7 - what they going to do give her extra acting lessons - i think NOT

agree

princess cc - I posted on the other thread

Agree with ghosty mainly but how can you identify talent if you don't have a 'label' to say as much ??

Love to address some of the other comments here to just to add a balance to the view...

DC you talk about the highly driven coaches in sport..it's unlikely that any identified G & T youngster will get exposed to the top coaches until they reach top level if that makes sense - we have over 600k registered sports coaches in the UK with the vast majority being those that work at a local level for the love of sport and for the kids involved in it (yours truly being one of those 600k!!) Can often be the case that the driven, obsessed personbehind teh child........is the parent Tiger woods, the Williams sisters and steffi graf all had what would we would probably define as pushy parents.

My experience leads me to be believe that if you reach the top level in any sphere of life (business & industry, music, art, academia etc etc) the qualities you need are the same - steely determination, very self obsessed, highly driven being just a few. And for every one person that gets to that level there are 100's that have a similar ability that never make it, 1000's that have the determination but not quite the natural ability and millions who would love some of each !!

Take the positive from whats on offer - the ability to learn about failing, the ability to learn that to achieve a goal you have to work at it, the wonderful taste of success, learning that when you're competing you rely on nobody else but yourself...and the physical enjoyment of being able to push your body onto another level.....Disagree with DC - GO FOR IT and provide all the encouragement and support. If she has a real talent she'll absolutely need that from you her parents, that's for sure.

lol

\link{http://www.youthsporttrust.org/linkAttachments/jae_info_sheet.pdf\have you seen the agenda for the day - it looks great]

\link{http://youthsporttrust.org/linkAttachments/jaeinfosheet.pdf\have you seen the agenda for the day - it looks great]

try again !!

I agree that about not reaching "top" coaches easily, and they are such a small % of the number that they aren't really the problem or solution.
Labelling a kid as G&T in sport will encourage the other 99% of coaches to go over the top even further in pushing kids far too hard. Giving them more money will make things worse, not better. Whilst starved of funds, they focus upon the few kids who genuinely might make it, but more money means more kids who in the real world stand no chance but will be bullied into "trying harder".
I'm not saying it's all coaches, might not even be a majority, but I've seen and heard fat too much for it to be isolated incidents, or bad apples.
DC has former premier league footballers teaching him, and they are actually gifted.
I teach arcane mysteries myself, and I can appreciate ability here.
They are great with the kids, and frankly I wish DC's main tutor was teaching something useful because he's wasting a great teaching talent. Great personality for the job.
I've pushed my body hard, sadly that's not very far, and yes I can appreciate that as a feeling.
But I pushed my body hard, but that's not the same as being bullied until I drop.
Recall when I was a teenager being in a gang of Air Cadets up some shitty hill in the slush and wind. We had loads of layers of clothes, even you weren't allowed to go until they had passed an exam in map reading etc, and half of us were qualified first aiders.
Was horrible.
I was hurting, cold, and since I'd been trained, a little voice in the back of my head was saying "those bursts of energy you're getting are bad news".
But we kept seeing football boot prints.
And then we found a gang of school kids in thin shirts.
We heard shouting, and wandered in that diection. Yep it was a sports teacher doing a "tough" cross country, bullying kids into a life threatening situation.

They were a bad colour, and so were we. Except our colour was pure rage, the bloke leading us was clearly restraining himself from killing the game teacher on the spot.

The aggression he was showing to "encourage" the kids vanished really quite quickly in the face of people who he couldn't bully and who without thinking had moved into the sort of position blokes do when they expect to fight.

Extreme case, but not outside the envelope of the PE teachers I had at school.

bullying is very different from professional coaching and probably very sterotypical of how sports coaching used to be and still might be in some isolated instances.....and (waits to get lynched !!) mainly a profession run, organised and driven by men. The problem is that the British attitude towards coaching has always been second rate with "sports" being run by mainly PE teachers, ex Army PT instructors and the occasional very enthusiastic parent who finds that they are spending more and more time supporting their offspring so decide to do a couple of courses.

Until recently there's been very little funding to support sports coaching across a whole range of activities and I'm sure that the recent injection has political undertones because of the Olympics - the great thing with this is that it will mean that, at last, there will be support for young athletes across a whole range of sports who have and show potential (maybe we should use that phrase rather than G & T'd !) and, maybe just maybe, we'll finally see sport (and whole range of preferably !) given some of the profile that it deserves and this should have a knock in effect for our DC to lead a halthier lifestyle - the attitude of princesscc family and friends is probably a rather sad reflection of our rather blase attitude, in particular, towards womens sport (no offence intended PCC!) and I for one look forward to that changing.

PS I WAS a T & G athlete - at 12, 13 and 14 I set Aged Group Long Jump records - the girls aged 12 record (later ratified as a world record) still stands today some 30 years on, it was that exceptional. The support our family received was nothing - every ounce of my success was down to the sacrifice that the rest of my family made both in terms of time and absolutely in finance. I started at 10 when dad took me to a local atheltics track and I just loved it , from the age of 11 I was training 3 times a week then at 12, 5 times a week, I never once felt that I was missing out, was being pushed, or being bullied (and, looking back the training was fecking hard !!!!) II was doing something that I loved...and being good at it and the best in the country at that time felt fantastic. I think we underestimate the strength and determination that children DO possess and if it means that identifying their potential early means they go on to greater things then that's fantastic...

btw, am loving this debate !!!!

I don't agree - a friend of ours was picked up at uni and is now a full time althlete.

Also at the school I teach at we have some one who is on the g and t register for gym. The whole point of being gifted and talented is to identify childrne who are talented in an area. Woud you be asking the same question if it ws art or music? It should not just be acedmeic. I would love to be really good at something - but I am not I am medicore at everything (but bad at spelling ).

The school have identifed your daughter's talented and are encouraging her to develop it. It might lead to something later in life who knows....

...and you CAN make a living at it (short term) as an athlete then, long term in various opportunities now that are connected to sport.....

If she enjoys it and is good at it, why shouldn't she be encouraged and helped to pursue it? Even if she doesn't become a top athlete she will learn some very valuable lessons and life skills along the way.

I never shone at any sport so am not speaking from personal experience but my dh was a world class athlete who trained hard from about aged six all through his teens. Sadly he had no support whatsoever from his family or country's government so ended up giving up at about 20 because it was just too hard to carry on. However, the one thing he is clear about is that sport made him what he is today and helped him achieve everything he has despite some fairly major obstacles. He is adamant that our children should be very involved in sport.

I think this could be a great opportunity for your dd and that if you as a family are measured in your approach (it sounds as though you definitely are) there is no need for anything other than positives to come from it.

well said Sari - Your DH's story is probably typical of many of the talented young athletes that this country has 'lost' in the past.....I really do think that to beceom a top athlete in the UK it's very much despite the system rather than because of it...i really do hope that the 2012 Olympics will leave a lasting legacy for sport for children of the future...absolutely agree. btw, with your DH's comments about sport being a major factor on what he is today........

Well I think I will encourage as much as I can. The other point I didn't make was that although she didn't pass her 11+, the school she is going to in September specialises in Maths, Science and is asports academy! All three of her favourite subjects - me thinks it was meant to be! Also she has often said to me, mummy what is my talent and now she has one! I'm going to look at that link now, bgs, thanks.

I encourage DS in his sports, tomorrow I'm standing in the rain for 2 hours whilst he does soccer practice. For me that's worse even than it sound because I have despised football for over 40 years. Some of my earliest memories are hating soccer, but not to encourage my kid would make me a crap dad.

DD & I were walking through the school campus this week when we bumped into one of the junior school regular gala swimmers. I asked her how her swimming is going and she was telling us about how often she trains, etc.

She's a bright girl and also plays a ocuple of instruments (ditto DD).

After she'd gone, I said to DD that to that girl swimming is like reading is to DD - something she loves and is happy to spend hours doing. Like Boobsgonesouth mentioned, there are some things that children just love doing and to put in more and more effort really isn't something they mind doing.

DC that is a sacrifice.

Every Thursday I spend two hours bored stiff because DD does an activity. Too far away to get back home and go out again; everything except Sainsburys closed around.

Thankfully I have discovered the library close by is open until 7.30pm so I can spend time in there although last time was awful with someone bringing in a very unhappy baby and a strange man wandering around making odd noises and disturbing people

A phys ed classification would be an excellent example of the T part of G and T.

G and T is supposed to pick up the generaly very clever....the gifted bit. But it is also supposed to pick up the Tallented....those children who are excepetional at one part of the curriculum. So classicaly this could be kids who are exceptional at sport, or art, or music or a single 'academic' subject.

My 12 year old has been labelled as G & T in sport. Currently all it means is that she takes part in a special sports club once a week and gets to try lots of different activities. She really enjoys it but would be far too lazy to become a total sports fiend!

Every dept at my school have to identify kids who are G&T in that subject. This includes EVERY subject, so PE is part of it.

It is all co-ordinated by a central G&T person at the school, AND the lists are sent to the LEA.

Junior schools will have to do same. She should benefit from it. Our GT pe kids are always doing special stuff

Can't seem to get on YouthSporttrust.org, but I will keep trying! It seems that they had a 'scout -like' person go into the school and asked the kids to do various things and she was picked along with only 6 boys! (Including the David Beckham of our school, so she is 'well pleased'! I'm actually thrilled for her because as I said she didn't get a selective place and this has really given her a boost. So if nothing comes of it, at least it softened the blow of not going to a grammar school!

She did excel at the Odd Squad "It's a Knockout" in Scotland two years running.... can't understand why we didn't pick up on it them.

Here come the Belgians....