why 9 times out of 10 gifted doesn'tmean gifted.

[gracemargaret]

I have read many of the threads here and have been watching with amusement the whole G&T developments in education. I have two daughters who have both been placed on this register - one who was born truly "gifted" and has never ceased to amaze and frankly terrify me from the day she was born, and the other who is bright and quite academic and who is bound to do well in life with far less emotional difficulty along the way. My eldest daughter is eight - she spoke in sentences at 9 months of age was reading and writing before two - she has never really been a "child" - has never played with toys or other children (and I was a stay at home mum running a toddler group so she had plenty of opportunity!) Take her to a park and she will sit on a bench with a book. She is already far cleverer than either myself or her father and will spend hours in her room (if we let her) reading books and writing notes/constructing powerpoint presentations. As an example the other day I suggested going for a walk (it was raining) and she said she was rather "waterproof to that idea and was much more absorbant to the idea of staying at home" - she also likes home made food as "you can taste not just the ingredients but the effort too" Although she has us in stitches constantly with the things she says, her intelligence is far from a blessing as I worry about her constantly - she is so emotionally sensitive that she can hallucinate when upset and will taste words and smell voices - I am sure at some point she will be bullied as she is so obviously different and awkward and I can't see how she will ever develop as an adult able to deal with the realities of life (although will try my best to help her). My other daughter is an absolute joy - bright, very popular, high achiever and wonderfully within the realms of normal - she might be in the top 5% but is definitely not "gifted" despite what school might say and gives me far less reason to worry. Although I love both my daughters more than anything I still say nobody would choose a gifted child and what gifted children need most is not pushing to acheive (this is an inner drive they have anyway), but support, love, and help to try to adjust to a world where they may never feel they "belong". Good luck to everyone with gifted kids - and those with high achievers - know the difference - and realise how lucky you are!!

Ha ha. I love the definition of a Gifted person being an autodidact. It totally lets teachers off the hook:
If you are Gifted then go off on your own and teach yourself, all I need to do is give you the title of a book .
If you have difficulties learning by yourself then you?re not Gifted, so stop wasting my time.

I don't think anyone ridicules genuinely gifted and talented children or their parents, but there is SOOOOO much bullsh8t about this around "Oh, little Tarquin is so gifted the teacher says there's nothing more she can teach him" when Tarquin is 6 years old "Oh, Jocasta is such a handful - she's so very gifted you know" when Jocasta is beating your child with a baseball bat or crayonning on your walls. Or the classic "Being gifted is a special need just like any other, you know" - tell that to the parents of a non-verbal child who needs 24 hour care to prevent him hurting himself.

The "label" itself is subjective and misleading. My ds is on the g and t register at his school because he is a very good reader. Bonkers in my opinion - he's a clever child, but just because he can read books intended for year6s when he's in year 2 doesn't make him in any way GandT - he's just cracked the reading thing a bit earlier than his peers, who will catch up with him sooner or later. My dd has a CAT score of 95 - in her friend's school that would have put her on the G and T register - in her school it doesn't.

Thanks BellaDonna79! It looks interesting and it might be the kind of thing I would consider if she was interested when she is a little older. Right now if I'm honest I just support her learning at home as much as possible by allowing her access to books/internet. It is her social development that worries me more - Moonstruck is right - gifted kids can unintentionally come across as "rude, aloof, inflexible, pretentious" and I think this usually worsens if too much emphasis is placed on pushing them academically at the cost of leaving other aspects of their personality underdeveloped. School are great with dd1 and provide extra teacher/resources but more importantly have really worked hard on helping her interact with other kids of all abilities. her dad and I also have tried hard to help her find her own strategies to manage her emotions and understand better how what she says/does affects others. Re putting her outside her comfort zone - she has only just learnt to ride her bike after years trying - not so gifted then!!

And I agree about the "comfort zone". If you have a 7 year old who is extremely gifted at maths, for example, he certainly needs to be encouraged to develop his gift, but surely as well he needs to be helped to develop in other areas - this could be the arts, literature, social skills - the aim of education should be to produce a well rounded, balanced individual. This must be specially true of the gifted and/or talented, who are in danger of being defined by their giftedness or talent.

The opposite here ds1 is top of everything - esp so at maths and science, has been working yrs above his age for yonks. But he rarely needs to work hard. He is at selective boys grammar top 200 school but has hit a solid ceiling of not being able to achieve any higher because of ks3 limits(he is yr9)
Now that NAGTY has disbanded and become some new govt ship called YGT we have heard nothing, schools have heard nothing, there are no courses/weekend schools/summer school NOTHING on offer.
I really see FA point in having it in schools if it does nothing at all, to help or assist, even the top however many percent it is deemed necessary to detect.
We have had ds1 tested and his Iq is incredible, his common sense if zilch though. What good is an Iq of 150 if you do not look both ways when crossing a road or lose your wallet phone keys and coat every week.
I despair really.

thegrsat thing about cty, at least when I went wasthat it was great for socializing, as I Said I was more like your other dd so for me it was just a case of learning to actually listen to the teacher, not pretend to find stuff hard, realize no one would judge me if I participated in a Convo about kazahk politics etc the majority of kids were much cleverer than me ( here you had to be top 2percent, but kids from the states were all top 0.8) so they benefitted soooo much more than I did! As you might have guessed I can't praise it enough!

Rude is spot on too, aloof yep ye yep

gracemargaret both your dds sound fab

dd2 is very clever and she is bloody rude AND can't ride a bike - blimey maybe she is gifted

I was talking to my daughter (we were just abroad together) who is at university now about her school and the children there - North London Collegiate). The girls there are fairly clever. It often gets the best A levels of any school in the UK and many many girls compete for every place. Everyone gets good A levels and goes to good universities. So 100% of the school would be G&T in the state system. BUT only a very few rare girls are what I would term "gifted" rather than quite bright. What the girls gain however being educated with others like them is working always at that high level and as my daughter was saying an ethos where it is cool to do well and succeed, rather than being a rare clever child in a school of children where it is cool to drop out and mess around. Therefore if the Government does identify bright children and helps them that is a really good thing. In the old days the top 15% were plucked from their schools and put into grammar schools with other clever children which is another way to do it (which in my view worked better for those who passed the 11+ anyway).

My sister's children last week passed their exams at 6 to go to a good school. One of them is very quirky, knows all the London underground stations etc She has of course had them tested by a psychologist. He is probably not aspergers/autistic but he would find some schools hard to fit in. Adults love him and he talks well to them but not his peers. Hopefully in a school with very clever boys many of whom are eccentric he will thrive. We will see.

By the way you can have a high IQ and good common sense. Mine was apparently over 150 and I'm pretty normal. You can also be very eccentric and get on with no one and be a bit stupid too.

Seeker

'I don't think anyone ridicules genuinely gifted and talented children or their parents, but there is SOOOOO much bullsh8t about this around "Oh, little Tarquin is so gifted the teacher says there's nothing more she can teach him" when Tarquin is 6 years old "Oh, Jocasta is such a handful - she's so very gifted you know" when Jocasta is beating your child with a baseball bat or crayonning on your walls. Or the classic "Being gifted is a special need just like any other, you know" - tell that to the parents of a non-verbal child who needs 24 hour care to prevent him hurting himself.'

Amen

I have worked with NAGTY on outreach, most of the children were utterly delightful. But a few were total PITA, not because they were 'unstretched' or bored, they were just distruptive. To the point that their behavior was the only negative comment that we had from the other kids. They were simply badly behaved, and FWIW not the most able in the group either. (and No SN, we had a list! ) mummy should have had a few words with little Tarquin about how to act in public, but hadn't!

Martianbishop - I forgot "Oh I'm so worried about little Tarquin - the school doesn't seem to be STRETCHING him enough" and "I'm worried that Jocasta will be bored when she statrs school- she's so advanced"

I have no idea how clever my ds is, he's only 4 and I think its way too early for me to tell. However, since he was about 2 other people have been telling me how outstandingly clever he is and I wish they would stop.

He finds it difficult to get on with other children and can be dogmatic and domineering. I wish people would focus on helping him learn inter-personal skills better rather than tell me I should be teaching him quantum mechanics!

Our schools (DS2's primary and DS1's secondary)don't seem to have any sign of a G&T register. I'm sure if there was one I would have heard at least one parent discussing why Tarquin wasn't on it, etc. So the whole G&T thing on Mumsnet puzzles me. I get the impression that every school has to keep a G&T register. Why is none evident at our school?

(I'm not complaining at its lack of evidence. Far from it. The schools seem to cope fine with teaching to the whole range of abilities so I'm not sure what the G&T thing is meant to add.)

GL, intersted to read your last sentence.

I work with G and T kids every week.

Group work is central. They have to learn to share, resources as well as ideas. They also have to learn to work as a team, and that sometimes, they don't have the best ideas, Other people might have better ones!

So we do lots of open eded , problem solving stuff, which they enjoy. Bit for me, the most important thing is the socialisation and for them to learn, in the best possible way, that they are not so clever that the earth spins for them, and them alone. Learning to fail and what to do about it next, is a vital life skill for these kids

dd2s primary dont do it I dont think - not that she would necessarily be on it!!

they are giving her year one work though (easy as mixed classes)

Gracemargaret - what a refreshing thread. I think you've verbalised exactly what 'gifted' means to parents and the child, in comparison to 'bright'.

I'm sure your gifted DD is a worry, as I think giftedness often brings eccentricity and a difficulty with fitting in with the norm. I have no idea why people seem to crave it.

I agree with moonstruck - we had 'A Set' 'B Set' etc. Nobody was ever called gifted, although the very bright, eccentric children were obvious - I had a child in my class at 11, who did Latin, Ancient Greek, had a photographic memory, an astounding ability at maths, got 100% in every exam and also designed 3D road systems as a hobby. I quite liked elastics and playing conkers at the time

Can I ask if you and your husband are also highly qualified/gifted [nosey, wondering about precedent with giftedness]?

Interested in what you say MB as that is definately what my ds needs - he does believe he is the centre of the universe and because he has picked some things up quicker than other children that things should always be done his way as he knows best. Also they can't shut him up in class - he always knows the answer (we are working on that with the teacher). He most certainly does not need to be labled as extraordinary in any way (which IMO he is not).

Some clever children who are bored at school become disruptive. Some very bright (and also mediocre) children have other difficulties which are nothing to do with the brain power and mean they do not associate well with their peers. My nephew of the train timetable talent etc is a job to talk to as an adult but I know he will find it hard to mix with other children and he is the kind to be teased, whereas a child who is just top in everything and finds work easy even in very academic schools can also be very good at sports, music, fit in with their friends etc particularly if it's not uncool to do well in exams at the school concerned.

What I noticed with our youngest is that until about 6 or 7 other children are accepting and happy about difference in others most of the time and then suddenly there is a creeping kind of socialisation, where there are norms of what is good, what is nerdy, what is weird, what is strange and that some children who are very very different do find themselves with fewer friends. One child we know comes up and touches the other. The 9 year olds have stupidly started saying he's gay for example apparently at school whereas he's just a bit weird adn someone at home probably needs to tell him what are social norms in terms of how you speak to people and deal with them.

don't all state schools have to do it?

the teenagers in my family (immediate and extended) on the register have all had severe emotional/psychiatric problems - sufficiently severe to warrant hospitalisation on more than one occasion, so not just your average adolescent histrionics. my yr 11 daughter, for example, is unlikely to fulfil her academic promise having about 30% attendance for past 2 years at school and will have spent 20+ weeks in hospital by the time she sits her GCSEs this year. My nephew with his ridiculous string of 16? or 18? A*s at GCSE dropped out halfway through lower VIth.

I was a very clever child who has grown into a pedestrian adult, I was 2 years ahead of my peer group in my academic private school and had completed compulsory education by the age of 14 which in itself caused me lots of problems at an already problematic age.

I've often wondered: is it a total myth that clever, creative people are more susceptible to mental illness - on the one hand some illnesses (like 'our' family one, bipolar) strikes people from all walks of life but on the other you hear a lot of this 'touched with fire' nonsense whereby an extraordinarily high percentage when compared to the general population) of writers, poets and artists have some sort of depressive disorder.

Our experiences as a family have all been quite negative, I can't see the point of the label or the scheme as a whole at all if there is no provision for the emotional support clever but emotionally troubled children need.

Yes Xenia I had grave fears for ds1 when he was 3-5
He memorised the London Underground system from the A-z and also the Peterborough Bus timetables where we lived, if we missed a bus home he would know when and where the nexy one was and what number.
I was astounded at the time but worried as all his mates were still playing choo choo with Thomas.
All ds wanted to do was sort out the timetables (been badly bullied)
He has had social inclusion problems but rather than push him academically to achieve massive heady heights (we could not ever afford private schooling or extension tutors) we focussed on his limited social skills. Admittedly it has been very tough although now at age nearly 14, he has a place in his school, he is viewed differently by many kids but has found 1-2 solid friendships which sustain today.

There are a few of his teachers who really believe he is exceptional, suffice to say not his RE teacher though

Not sure if I go along with the 'Touched by fire' thing. I think the rate of mental illness in the UK is 1 in 10.

I'm not in favour of the pressure that these kids are put under, I dont think that it is healthy for anyone, let alone a developing mind.

Dh was 'assessed' as being exceptionally bright when he was a child living in the States in the 60s. His mother was told that he needed to go to a special school for the gifted.

thankfully they came back to the UK and he went to a normal school, I say thankfully for his mental well being. He got a nice crop of O levels, 4 A grades at A level and went to Oxford. Where he discovered drinking, flying and women....me!

He left university with a poor degree, but went on to be a Fighter Pilot. So I don';t think that his lack of stimulation harmed him any!

Now I'm sure there are children who are not as fortunate, but DH did astonishingly well, in no small part because of his utterly no-nonsense mother, who made sure that he was emotionally 'sound'.

Bless her!

This is a very interesting thread but some thing that i have very litle knowledge.
Could you please clarify for me, the term G&T does this refer to acadeamia only?

From my observation i see that children who need little encouragement to learn academically and who are able to grasp concepts quickly or without much effort and can expand or think around a subject are perhaps classed as G&T.

As the "thick kid" through out my schooling i can see the other side to this and the similarities are quite striking to be honest.
Segregated into groups with other "thick kids"
Not challenged or stretched academically,
Bullied mercilessly.
But a huge aspect is shame which is the total opposite of the bright children whos parents are in the playground harping on about little Tarquin bieng bored etc etc etc.
My whole educational experienced has influenced my attitude towards my sons education, as it has done with many of you.
I aim for this to not be the case for my son.
Square peg and round hole are what springs to mind, if my son is a round peg then i shall help him to be that little round peg.
I say this because i do struggle to get him to sit and go through Biff and Chip and point to the words. In our garage tho, present him with parts of a car engine and he can put them together quite well for some one who is 4.
So is G&T reserved for those with academic ability?
ps thanks for such a thought provoking thread.

the T part is supposed to highlight those children who have more 'non-accademic' areas. In practice this doesn't always happen.

the more severe illnesses like schizophrenia, bipolar are about 1 in 100, though with the advent of the bipolar spectrum if you include the 'softer' bipolar disorders like cyclothymia it becomes something like 5 or 6 in 100 with the diagnosis and who knows how many more besides

I don't personally buy into the gifted/very able = more-likely-to-be-mentally-ill line myself, I just think that in families with a strong hereditary incidence of such illnesses it is an added and unwelcome complication to have the state pronounce some further aberration from the norm by way of this stupid register, especially if they're not going to back it up with individually tailored support that is genuinely useful