Shitty shite: Gifted & Talented

[MamaG]

shite

and don't overlook subjects like history or geography. or literature. and grammar.

There are 2 things that I'm really pleased that ds2 has achieved this school year. One is that he's started to draw (although he still hates it- would much rather write but at least he's doing it) and 2 he's started to swim (with arm bands)- when he's been terrified of the pool up until now. I tell him well done when he does well in things he's good at, but he gets extra praise for trying with things he finds difficult or scarey.

It's shite.

I was in 'gifted and talented' all my life and you'd be hard-pressed to find a bigger loser.

What would you want them to do though kerry? If he's that far ahead the only way of teaching him would be to isolate him (which is what happens to children with complex SN in mainstream- it is not an ideal situation at all- ds1 spent 4 terms in mainstream and didn't have a single lesson with his peer group; he was a very lonely little boy). I went to the same college as Ruth Lawrence, her life was not ideal and she has now turned her back on a lot of it. She apparently has not lived up to her promise, she is estranged from her father (I think!) and says that being a mother is more important for her (good for her!)

Look at the things he can access outside school though, that's far more than a child with SN!

I used to write novels and compose music- I don't think that needs to be actively taught, he can just enjoy that.

expat my love you are not a loser, you are balanced, you know what's important in life and you write better than anyone I have come across

I so agree with gess and fillyjonk. while i don't have a child with the complexity of needs of gess's ds1 - i have ds2 on the g+t register, member of NaGTY and tbh it's a breeze - he loves work, i send him off to do stuff, he will revise on his own productively, I can print off sheets for him and he gets on and does it - i taught him subtraction at just turned 3 in minutes,- yes he can be disruptive at school, even in his selective academic school but his life is so much easier than ds3 who has dyslexia, who has to work so hard at anything work related - even maths because he cannot read the questions - his extra work involves full on 1:1 supervision and intervention from me - there is no comparison between the two variants.

He sounds properly G&T then, not just fairly clever. I don't think anyone really knows the best way to deal with those children. They usually need to be with children their own age as much as moving up to work with the 17 year olds. I have worked with teenage boys who have founded businesses and done all kinds of things at young ages and often they've done it outside of school or alongside school.

if it's a musical talent of the genius type order then the specialist music schools like Chethams are obviously the place for those children but they are residential. If I had a really clever son I'd probably send him as a day boy to one of the very good academic day schools we have around here (London is lucky to have so many) and they would cope. They'd fit him into extra lessons but keep him in the right year group and I suppose I'd try to do things out of school with him too. There must be internet chat rooms for advanced physicists to join where age is no barrier etc. I would probably join the National Association of Gifted Children may be not that I know anything about it. If he likes to write let him write. I wrote books as a child. I sent them to publishers. I won some prizes and things. I wrote music. It was performed in school. Not I was anything particularly special. Just let him get on with stuff and most of all let him enjoy it. Really getting into academic subjects can give you so much pleasure. It's got to remain fun.

That may be sensible though kerry. I think that when giften programmes are looked at its found that children identified as gifted often underachieve (pressure of expectations too high?). There was quite a bit about it a few years ago. The only person I know who was identified early and placed on a specialist programme (in the US) was a drugs dealer by the age of 16.

My god I'm agreeing with xenia again

I'd only send a child who lived breathed and couldn't cope without music to a specialist music college though. That would have to be driven by them. Too many disadvatages to attending otherwise.

Agree one million percent with gess.

Think twiglett's wrong about setting- all the schools I know of have streaming.

Furious for your daughter, sobernow. What an utterly vile woman. Your daughter sounds so bright and sweet and eager to please. I take my hat off to you for having such a great kid and for restraining yourself from punching the nasty so and so.

I've known children at Chethams and my ex worked sometimes with children at the Purcell School and they are very very special children who want nothing more than to play music most of the day and they are often terribly happy to do it but even then your interest is fixed at such a young age, same with ballet and stage schools. I think it's often better to remain in a school but say one with brilliant music or drama provision and excel at that whilst doing other subjects too. You don't want to get too much into anything too young. My daughter's friend was going to be in the Olympics for gymnastics. It was virtually her whole life, after school every day etc and then she hit her mid teens and just changed her mind. It was really hard to let down all those parental expectations.

I went out with someone who was incredibly bright (*yeah yeah no jokes please! ). He got the top first at Oxford in his subject (and stopped revising the week before finals and spent the last week realaxing- bastard!). He had his first paper accepted by a journal when he was 13, and has published many many papers. He is recognised as a world expert in his area.

He went to a bog standard comprehensive; his best friend from there (who is still a friend) is a builder. They spent an awful lot of time outside school just hanging around. He didn't have extra lessons, he was just fascinated in one particular area and persued it, and still does. It's the (academic) area he works in now. I don't know whether he was ever bored at school, I'll ask him when I next see him. I do know he was removed from playschool because his mum thought it was too academic (they were teaching reading she thought that should wait until school).

Really really bright children don't necessarily need constant input - that's what distinguishes them, they just do it because they want to.

I have a theory that how well a kid does in school depends at least as much on their personality as their brain power. I think people who are both bright and stubborn/shy/prickly tend to have some toughish times at school whatever type they attend because we still don't really buy into the idea that education isn't about moulding everyone to fit into round holes.

But we all know very very clever people who did really badly at school. I know lots.

What happened to them?

Kerrymum A slight digression. Are you from Kerry. I noticed the gaelic football reference earlier.

Sometimes they are made to feel like shit so thoroughly that they really believe it. After that, it's difficult to get back on track.

Get him to write them down, kerriemum. I bought my kids notebooks (cool ones with skulls on) so they could start diaries about their days and daydreams of evil and they are truly hilarious. I was really surprised by how engagingly they write actually. Very irreverent. I'm planning to steal them and keep them forever. And mine are not gin and tonics.