OK< I'll admit the G&T term just riles me

[Twiglett]

and I accept that there are children who are immensely talented or gifted

and I accept that my children are very bright but probably not geniuses (genii?)

and I also accept that parents of children who show exceptional ability need just as much help and advice as children who have SEN .. in fact I also accept that superlatively bright children do have SEN

so why does the G&T term get to me?

hmm?

And I suspect Gess, with her Oxford science degree and various academic bells and whistles, was hardly a slouch at school either.

Aloha and Gess - I think that is it really.

If the parents of a 'clever' child were to put as much time and effort into enriching the development of the child as the average parent of a child with SN posting on the SN board seems to have to put in, just to access basic interventions, then the needs of these clever children would be more than met, IMO.

Just seen alohas post too
I have a dd who is just starting school with SN - you do have to fight for even basic curriculum access and funding (I've never wanted to club so many people over the head in one room as in dd's school entry assessment) , I would always argue that the most support should always go to those that struggle without question, but when there is enough resources (as the government alleges that there is) , that children who are academic and able to achieve highly and above their age level should also be considered as extra educational needs but not at the cost of SN provision.

Take DS1- fairly clear he has a high level of need. We had to fight for a statement (I upset everyone by applying 'early'- except I didn't) this was whilst arguing everyterm about nursery provision. The statement was issued- it was hopeless so we had meeting after meeting to come to an agreement. The statement was then ignored completely. It was only followed when I wrote to the LEA and said that I would be contacting the local givt ombudsmen if they didn't write to me by X and confirm that they would be funding the provision as per the statement. I then found out that at school all he was doing was walking round and round the school the entire day. At which stage I initiated his move to the SLD/PMLD school he is now at which is threatened with closure (despite an outstanding OFSTED report). Yeah LEA's really meet the needs of children with SN don't they, and us parents don't have to do anything to ensure those needs are met

The ironic thing is that my ds is clever. His teacher said the whole of the reception literacy and numeracy curriculum was 'irrelevant' to him. But that's not what's holding him back. The impulsiveness, the social difficulties and the other things associated with his Aspergers is the problem. Yes, I'd love him to have one to one tutoring in things that interest him, but that ain't going to happen.

I'm so sorry about your ds's school Gess. What a bloody nightmare.
Am going through the statementing process myself atm - am dreading it, frankly.

Even ds1 has been described as smart Aloha (this child with SLD's who was reading aged 2 and can still name trapezium's etc -even if he has no yes/no concept) and its that area that his school can't cater for and I don't expect them to. Because its too odd and out of synch with their curriculum. So we do it, and they know we do and we work together.

I have not read all of this thread. I am angry for the first time in perhaps 20 years and am not sure whether to type or cry.

All I can say is:

yes, I did wish I had been less "clever", or at least thought less, and I still do. Sure, I'd wish my child to be in the top 10%, but absent some altruistic desire to save the world, I'd never wish for him to be truly gifted. I hope he's not. It sure doesn't make you happy in a lot of cases.

Giftedness can well be a disability and to say that it can't be a matter of life or death very much upsets me personally as i know as some friends of mind have lost their lives over it.

Kerry _ there are things I haven't agreed with you with on other threads, but I am 100% with you on this one. Doubtless your trip around the NHM/SM is special time - but I'd really like to meet you if you could bear a hanger on and I can sneak out of work!

"Most other clever children will come to no harm from learning to cope with a world that doesn't always change to suit their needs." - yep, we can do it, and do it well, but not necessarily at severe personal cost.

Thought about changing my name for this but decided not to. If I alienate a bunch of strangers I can live with it (heck, have managed to alienate a bunch of people I know over this issue!)

[probably best if I had posted before drinking two glasses of wine, but there you go]

Getting the statement is one thing Aloha (and remember everything in parts 5 and 6 is not worth the piece of paper its written on- it needs to be in parts 2 and 3), gbetting it followed is another battle!

aloha very similar with dd, very clever and bright little lass highly numerate and reads with ease - however social problems due to poor vision and mobility issues, and various other minor (but not when collected together) issues conspire to make school a true challenge .

Of course it's not good for children to be bored witless at school, I just find it so brutally insensitive to imply to parents of children with disabilities that a child being very clever and competent is just the same as having a severe learning disability in terms of need. It just isn't.

Dosn't EVERYONE have to learn that the world does not change to suit their needs? It's one of the lessons that ds1 finds the hardest. I stick with it because I know that if he can learn that the rest of his life will be far easier. He almost broke my leg last week because I wasn't prepared to walk in the direction he wanted to (we had jobs to do- he had to wait 5 minutes, then we could do what he wanted). He HAS to learn that because if he doesn't his life will be incredibly limited because health and safety will mean that he isn't taken out.

Gess - yes, of course you're right. Badly put. Knee jerk reaction to the implicit comment that anyone gifted is somehow selfish and inconsiderate of others.

will hold off posting further until blood pressure / adrenalin levels return to something approaching normality.

Legalalien - everything your write could also be said of a child who is fat or has ginger hair. Yes, it is tricky being gifted but the best skill we can teach a gifted child is how to find their own ways of fulfilling their individual needs. How to self-motivate. How to have good self esteem (and importantly not to create all of their self esteem from their cleverness).

There is a wealth of opportunity for a clever child to stretch themselves these days - much of it in the library or by searching the web.

Additionally you will recall from the bit of my post that you didn't choose to quote that I said that for some especially clever children (genius for want of a better word) some social skills need to be taught. In my mind these skills take much higher precedence for some clever children than more academic stretching.

I don't see that implied anywhere, and would suggest that's projecting to be honest.

If you have a child who is far from the norm then you have to take some responsibility for educating them yourselves. We (like many other parents of children with SN) have done that since ds1 was 2 year old (first by paying for SALT, doing it ourselves, then by paying to train ourselevs in SALT, now by running a part time home program). Sure you can talke on the LEA - but good luck- their legal responsibility is only for a suitable education. They have no legal responsibility to stretch children - whether SN or highly gifted.

Kerrymum you're not even reading. MY child's needs are not met by the LEA- they never have been- we've always HAD to take on a lot of his education. Precisely because he is nowhere near an average.

I have quite a lot of experience of the incredibly (and the not so incredibly) bright - Oxford tended to attract them . Would agree with soapbox about the need to work on social skills (and personal confidence and self esteem - far more important than academics for a child who finds academics easy).

I totally agree, ds1's social skills and friendships were woeful and we have really put some effort into helping him form solid friendships and learning how not to provokr others into wanting to break his arm and nose (both done in the past)
Being 13 he is entering adolescence and I am actually going to enjoy his social life overtaking his academic skills as the mainstay of his life - it is just happening now and I can say with total honesty, it is far more satisfying to see him happy within his social group, finally ...getting calls/texts/msn/cinema trips and sports etc than to see straight A's at maths

Oh gess that is dreadful about DS1's school .

Oh that's so true Piffle. DS2 is breezing through school- in his report I was most pleased with the line that he is 'kind' and that he's learned to swim. He's very like dh's dad which means he'll be stupidly bright -academically -(very different from 'life-bright') - its important that he has good social skills and a wide range of interests and people he can call friends.

All in the name of f* inclusion dino. The sooner they realise that inclusion EXCLUDES the most complex the better.....

That is a nightmare . I remember your DS's transition from mainstream to special school, even your "hey ho hey ho" thread, and I know how much happier you've been having him there rather than "included" [hollow laughter].

Ah he won't be included (thank god) but becauuse they're including everyone they possibly can they're combining 2 SLD/PMLD schools. The same on paper- TOTALLY different schools in practice. Parents tend to fall very strongly into one or the other. The other school would be awful for ds1 (it doesn't cope with challenging behaviours at all) he would be a problem there. I know parents who felt that ds1's school was absolutely not the school for their child. A bit like trying to combine a grammer school with a steiner school iykwim- 2 totally different philosopies.

soapbox - still sufficiently het up to start to object to "go to the library and you'll be fine" is the answer, but I really don't think you entirely meant it like that and appreciate that when you're fired up there is a tendency to selectively quote.

otherwise - it's true that teaching "social skills" is great for helping people survive in society, but it's not in itself anything approaching a good solution in itself. Think of it as "how to hide your light under a bushel" 101, and then think how that makes kids feel about their abilities. They're something socially unacceptable, and to be hidden at all cost. Unless people are very careful, that's the message that comes across. And gifted children often have quite amazing socially chameleonlike tendencies....

deep breaths.....

and can I just say, I'm really saddened that somehow this needs to be some kind of competition between SNs (non-gifted) and giftedness, for a scarce resource. Which it probably is in practice. And the word "gifted" sounds crap in this context, for which I apologise.