What do you tell your children about G &T programmes?

[lionheart]

I went to a workshop for G&T children at the weekend.

As I walked in some parents (two sets) with a group of four or five children arrived.

The children were marching along chanting, "We are the chosen! We are the chosen! We are the chosen!"

It was horrid in so many ways, so I was wondering what other parents have said to their children about G&T.

Something tells me that these parents may have got it wrong.

At my boys' school at the end of yr2 selected children receive invitations to join "the Saturday Club for Gifted and Talented Children"

The club is great, it's just the name that annoys me.

That's the first time my two were aware of the phrase, and we played it down with them. We make a point of calling it "Saturday Club", and tell them it's a special opportunity for children who excel in certain areas, in the same way that some of their mates who are talented in sports, might spend Saturday mornings training for their club, or whatever.

We said nothing to ds and didn't want it spelled out to him at all. In fact, his teacher last year said he would be going on Challenge Club, which is the School's G & T Group, in an off-hand sort of way to us, and that's the way we prefer it too.
The Challenge Club leader is great and he loves the sessions. He is extremely modest about all of this and would never, ever carry on like that Lionheart, that is dreadful.
We have a problem with how ds' form teacher this year has handled the whole issue which is going to make for an interesting parents' evening unfortunately . Let's just say he now knows he's on the Register, as do the rest of his class, and he didn't hear it from us

That's awful, Marina, so clumsy.

At least the Challenge Club shows that it is possible to get it right.

Good grief.

The name is awful, isn't it, Roisin?

I wonder how the committee discussion went when they were deciding on it.

DS2 and DS3 are aware that they get occasional invitations to events, but it wouldn't have occurred to them to boast about it - I would discourage such an attitude if they showed any sign of it.

The vast majority of the other parents I've seen at the events have been perfectly OK, with no obvious sense of superiority about them.

It has just occurred to me, lionheart, that your OP was about a weekend workshop. Is it possible that the children hadn't been terribly keen to go, and that the parents had rather overdone trying to make them feel more positive about it?

Yes, maybe that's what they did.

The children were excited, the adults looking on in that, "Aren't they adorable?" way.

Maybe the adults were just relieved that the children weren't complaining.