Why do people say "they'll all catch up eventually" when it's just not true?

[HailSatan]

If it were every child would come out of school with straight As. Theres always different tables or sets. Some kids just aren't academic either. So why do people lie?

Because development isn’t the same as learning.

As an adult your capacity to learn things and at what rate is pretty much down to your general intelligence which is mostly genetic and even more mostly fixed (even environmental aspects of adult intelligence are mostly either too late to be or never were changeable).

But a child has a whole other thing effecting them which is the maturity of their brain.

And the rate of brain maturation is not dependent on intelligence (nor is it a constant factor, someone could have a faster rate of maturation as a toddler than average and then a slower than average as a teenager - depends on their individual developmental program).

So you get very average intelligence folks like me who mature fast before puberty then stagnate and we seem like some kind of prodigy only to live mediocre lives as adults. And other people just don’t get maturation dependent things at a young age but turn out once they’ve matured to actually be much more intelligent than average.

Do people say that? I've never heard it.

Not true they will all catch up. But neither is ability/not at a very young age a guarantee either way.
Some kids sit still more/have better concentration/better hearing/speech.
I think the reason things seem to change a lot is because the skill of say learning to speak/read/write is only needed once. Then it is pronunciation/spelling/grammar/comprehension/and creativity. Which are completely different skills.
At the moment my one dc seems a lot brighter. But then the other more physically able. The bright one has got there in the end with cycling /swimming etc.
Possibly dc2 may be more artistic/creative and better writer.
However learning things easily may show that dc1 has a very good memory which is of course almost the most important thing (or will get you a long way for up to gcse level and is very useful for alevels).

I agree with pp that in uk a lot of the difference in first several years is due to month of birth. So this will make less difference as they get older as 4/5 to 10/11 plus as the work in maths and science focuses less on english and more on maths.
Starting a stage of the race behind means you have to work twice as hard to overtake. You have to get to others starting point first.
Also attitude and belief make a big difference. Dd isnt as good at maths and says she is rubbish. But that is because others are faster. She is actually very good for her age. But if she ends up not wanting to do it...

Also attitude and belief make a big difference. Dd isnt as good at maths and says she is rubbish. But that is because others are faster. She is actually very good for her age. But if she ends up not wanting to do it...

I'm wandering off at a tangent to the OP here, but I wonder why it is still the case that more girls than boys are put off doing maths. Naty1, it seems with your dd to be a confidence thing. The more she tells herself she cannot do it, the less she practises and so the less she can do it. Are the others faster at arithmetic or understanding the concepts? Does she know that maths depends on practice and the more she practises the better she will get? Also the better she gets, the more she will enjoy it. STEM subjects still have an extremely low female uptake.

There are so few female role models. It would be nice if women were getting as much recognition in science as men or, sometime this century, at least one of the many Nobel Prizes handed out for physics went to a woman.

I don't think people saying it are meaning every child will be gifted.

I've always thought they were meaning that when they're younger (SEND aside) it doesn't really matter who spoke first, who rolled over first, who walked first etc. They'll probably catch up.
Same for literacy. Not all parents will do the super mumsnet thing if claiming their chikd can read War and Peace aged 3 so are so worried that teachers won't cope. There is a lot of evidence that a vocabulary gap exists based on word rich/word poor households, but take 2 children from a similar background and most will even out.

They don't all catch up, but a lot of them do. Two examples I can think of straight away are a child described as 'thick as a brick' by her Primary school teacher who got a first when she was 20 (August birthday) and one who scraped through the 11+ who went on to get a PhD.

It’s plain old jealousy on the G&T board. Yes, a child who can read fluently at age 3 won’t appear to read that much better than another child when they both reach the age of 10, however if the advanced child was pulled out of class twice weekly to do piano lessons while the other kids were busy learning their letters then by the age of 10 the advanced child is a more well-rounded individual than the child who didn’t learn to read until school. Replace piano with maths and science lessons and then maybe they skip a grade and get to university a year earlier and get on with their lives. Maybe they learn another language? The possibilities are endless. The only way other kids catch up is if the advanced child’s learning is stopped and they are forced to wait for other kids to catch up.

This phrase seems a bit vague - in what context is it being used?

Child A might well learn to read quicker than Child B but if Child A loses interest in reading whereas Child B continues to enjoy it and reads a lot then they might well end up doing better in English than Child A.

I don't see how anyone can expect that a child who is ahead at age 5 "should" also be ahead at age 15. Maybe their brain developed faster at age 4 and another child's developed faster at age 8? And that doesn't even account for differences in work ethic, social background etc.

That’s true. There’s a big push to identify gifted children in early childhood to identify those kids coming from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and help them before they turn into the classic “gifted underachiever”. Anything can happen. As a general rule though it’s people with higher IQs who advance more quickly as children and unless something happens to hold them back those children will continue to advance more quickly.

Nobody will catch up to DD.

Oh, and the context is usually,

Parent A: says anything positive about their child

Parent B: passive aggressively puts down Parent A and their child by saying “they all catch up eventually”.

See also, “all children are gifted”, “I prefer to let my children be children” and “it’s better to be well liked than to have book smarts” and similar.

I really don’t understand that kind of behaviour but these boards are full of it. It makes me happy to hear that children are doing well, especially my friends’ children. If that sparks the kind of jealousy that prompts these comments, those people have serious issues.

Nobody will catch up to DD

What do you mean?

Not in her class anyway. I just don't discuss how she's doing at school, rather than be seen as bragging. The only person I do discuss it with is a mum who has a DS a year older than her with learning difficulties. She also tells me his achievements. There's no bullshit.

The phrase is not about exceptionally talented children and it’s not about children with special educational needs. It’s just a phrase used in relation to average children with normal development. They’ll all eventually walk, run, read, add and subtract, etc. Just at a different pace and to a different degree but over the threshold of enough.

The phrase is not about exceptionally talented children

I suppose people use it in both contexts really. The OP would need to come on to clarify for us to be sure what she meant. It really is thrown around a lot on the G&T boards as a way of putting people down though.

There's no bullshit

That would be so refreshing!

Have you considered skipping your DD ahead a year?

Its because development is so jerky and uneven in early years that
where someone is aged 2 is no indication of where they will be aged 12.

Some parents push harder, some homes are more conducive to learning, but when children from culturally poor homes get into good schools they do very quickly catch up with children who have had the advantage of home support, in many cases. And excede them

Iwas no, she couldn't handle that emotionally. She's in year 6 and was crying on Tuesday night because it was so strict. Her teacher told me on Wednesday (I was telling her that DD had forgotten her homework and was scared to tell her) that, just as I'd suspected, it was to prepare them for secondary school.

That seems so mean, Philomena. They should be getting excited, not frightened. I’m sure she will enjoy it a lot more once she’s there.

I don't think her teacher meant to frighten her, DD says that she got told off for touching her book when she was listening to the teacher. She says that they have to sit there like statues.

Many reasons.

So those behind are not discouraged

Because schools often believe that children who are ahead on entry have been "hot-housed", and that will be reduced once they start school

Because schools often don't believe that children are as able as their parents say

Because the differences become less obvious. If you have a 4 year old who can write and spell it's very obvious that child is ahead of their peers. When they are all 7, for example, the differences are less obvious.

Oh finally, because schools as a rule don't provide sufficient teaching to the most able children, and so naturally the gap between those who are being challenged and are learning, and those that are not and who are coasting does indeed narrow.

A lot of young children whose parents think are gifted end up being merely bright. I knew a woman who started each academic year asking the new teacher how her gifted child would be challenged. It was a shock when the teacher replied that the child (then 9) would be challenged in the same way as the 6-ish other equally bright children.

But you're right - not ALL catch up but some clearly do.

I was a very high achiever in primary school. Years ahead in some areas.
I was a straight A secondary student.
But I only got a 2:1 in my very tough stem degree and even that was hard work.
Basically I was just a really bright kid but certainly no genius.

I wonder how much of that is due to lack of challenge though, @W0rriedMum?

Schools in my experience treat the parents of all children as though they don't really know their child, and are like the parent you mention. This is unfortunate if your child is genuinely not being challenged at school.

i've met a fair amount teenagers who wasted their youth (so to speak) but attended uni later in life and certainly did catch up. or flaky airheaded teens who eventually buckled down as mature students after starting a family.
3 neighbors all different backgrounds and educational training all living on the same street...the pharmacist, forestry worker, and costco shift worker all on the same level not sure what the op means by catching up (educationally, financially or physically...i'm short never caught up).