should G&T be considered a Special Educational Need (SEN)

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Starts thread and takes cover!

what Martianbishop said (and I did admire her posts very much) presumably just meant that in her opinion those children who combine several different types of giftedness: academic giftedness with social skills and the ability to self-start, are truly gifted, because they have it all (lucky so and sos)

to me, this does not preclude the idea that there may be other children whose gifts are more limited in range but may still be outstanding in quality and who need help in order to make the most of the gift they have

when I have objected to your posts in the past, Dad, it has been because I have had a feeling that you said all gifted children fall in this limited-range category, which my own experience working with outstanding academics does not bear out

I think we have now reached a better understanding and that we aren't that far apart really in what we want

I would be very happy for money to be spent on anyone who needs it. But I reserve the right to say to my dd that 'I don't think you need extra help, if you choose not to stretch yourself and go the extra mile, that is your responsibility and I will not be interested in any attempts to blame anybody else. If you misbehave or let yourself grow lazy, don't expect any sympathy from me'. Because I know her and what she needs. It's about knowing your own child. Despite living her life in pain and under some pretty atrocious treatment from her previous school, I wouldn't say she is a particularly vulnerable person; some of her less gifted friends seem far more vulnerable to me.

This does not mean that I would be equally unsympathetic about a friend of hers who might need a different approach.

I think the parents attitude can help enormously here. Picking up an instrument and being able to play it in a few weeks doesn't mean that you can't get any further on it; parents can do a lot to make it clear that there is always more hard work to be done.

At the same time of course, there is a strong argument for not leaving all this to parents- what about the gifted children whose parents can't help them with this? Schools do have a responsibility.

What gets my goat is when you get very educated parents moaning about how my dc finds everything too easy. That makes me think, well why haven't you told him different? Why don't you have higher expectations? Why don't you show him how much harder the real successes in this world- the Yehudi Menuhins- have to work, despite being that gifted?

Kerry, I'm interested to know what your criteria for success/failure are when you say "truly gifted kids fail as adults"

I think gifted kids (and other kids too) hear an awful lot about 'succeeding in life' or 'failing to achieve their potential' and that these terms lack concrete meaning once one is outside formal education (for those lucky enough to escape formal education and not get walled up alive in a cell in Oxford surrounded by dusty old papers and empty port bottles )

I had it drummed into me by every teacher who ever came near me that I had "a glittering future" - but nobody ever told me exactly what this future was meant to look like. I'm vaguely aware that I was considered a failure during my twenties, according to this invisible scale of "success". I'm vaguely aware that I'm not being viewed as quite the same level of failure in my 30's, but definitely not "successful". I think my life glitters - I have beautiful children, wonderful friends, a job I love (low-status though!), my beloved garden, my painting, my music - but I'm damn sure it isn't the "glittering future" I was supposed to have delivered.

Dangerous to bandy about terms like "success in life" around children, IMO. You're projecting your own fantasies (nebulous and intangible as they are) onto a different person and setting them up to be neurotic drones who can't enjoy their lives without feeling guilty.

children are not idiots Kerry (ironically enough) - they pick up on your drive for success whether you think you are telling them or not

Do you think your son doesn't know that he is gifted and how important that is to you? Everyone on MN knows it , so I doubt it's escaped his notice.....

Nahui, I have never said I agree with bad teaching. In this situation, obviously you should complain to the teacher.

Ime with a good teacher, there shouldn't be much thumbtwiddling for most gifted students. A teacher should be prepared. If it's a literacy task, you can spend the same time as everybody else, just do it to a higher standard. If the geography homework is boring, you can do more research online or in the library. Some of dd's friends did masses of extra work in infants; their homework files were enormous. Not something the school required, but they suggested you could do it. In maths, extra work can be set. For many gifted children (not all) this can be catered for within normal school resources, so does not need SEN resources.

For those who need SEN resources, I think they should have them. Absolutely.

Also, there is nothing that has helped me more in my academic career than the early practice of being used as an unoffical TA- I couldn't do my job as a university lecturer if I was unable to cope with explaining things to people who are considerably dimmer than me. I needed that early practice.

why does it turn into nagging, Kerry? Isn't learning and discussions part of the fun you have as a family?

We should abandon all mention of "gifted and talented", it is an unhelpful label which does little to benefit those children saddled with it.

Children should be dealt with as individual's according to their needs. Allowing a child to learn without pain is clearly a greater need than giving a clever child a fresh challenge.

My son is probably within the definition of G&T but I don't care. I want the school to help me deal with his social issues and to stop him being unhappy - that is his particular need. I don't care whether his lack of social skills stem from the fact that he is clever and I don't think it is helpful to group the two together. I just care that the school and I can address them.

"I believe this is a major reason why a lot of truly gifted kids fail as adults. They haven't learned how to have to work hard at anything."
Exactly. They were left to just get on with it (like I was as a child). That's also a good way of creating some top class criminals, I very nearly ended up as one. It's only by chance that I ended up on the right road and and not busy keeping a whole police force occupied scratching their heads.

"Martianbishop is a teacher"
If she did express the comments attributed to her why am I not surprised she's a teacher?

cory, our experiences with our own children influence our posts but I do think our positions aren't different.

"in her opinion those children who combine several different types of giftedness: academic giftedness with social skills and the ability to self-start..."
She's still wrong if she believes they need any less attention than the average child just because they can self-start. The previous comment on self-starters seemed to include "talented". The swimming champ Olympic hopeful can't very well practise in the corner of the class no matter what ignition system she's working on.

DS1 has soem G&T areas assessed by Ed Psych but his Sn mens h cannot access them.

They are not mutually exclusive things

The mums of the g&t register kidsat school would rather die tran have their kids labelled SEN though!

In truth my only real objection is budgetary: its already too hard to get a child with SEN help, if G&T kids had access to the same budget then too many kids would potentially lose out: funds should IMO be addressed firstly at getting all kids to a base level of reading, maximising independence etc.

That's not to say I am opposed to budgets for G&T, but I think BOTH groups would miss out if they were jointly administered, what LEA can afford to palce a child with G&T in front of the X number of kids with diagnosed disability it has been putting off for threeterms?

And anyway,a s a veteran of tewo statements and one on SA+, you'd ahve to be frigging bonkers to want to be landed with the endless apreperworks, fights etc! It'sa full time job and Hellish

nahui: I know that some kids get round it by setting their own tasks. Work out in your head how many tiles or pots of paint it would take to decorate the classroom. Observe your teacher and classmates and try to work out their personalities; try to work out the inter-personal dynamics going on in the classroom. Write a story in your head. etc etc
This is the sort of thing that Cory is talking about (I think, apoogies if not Cory!). You can either say, "I'm bored" or you can say, "I'm bored and the teacher isn't going to do anything about it so I had better do it"
You get taught at school but educated at University. Try to think that you are already at University and need to learn how to self-educate.
HTH

"Allowing a child to learn without pain is clearly a greater need than giving a clever child a fresh challenge."

Don't underestimate the intense mental pain that very clever children frequently have to endure in the classroom. I speak as someone who knows of two teenagers who have been hospitalized for mental health conditions arising from the intense boredom they were enforced to endure at school.

Greensleeves, excellent post.
It's funny what counts as 'failure' for gifted children. You often hear people say snidey things about Ruth Lawrence - 'she was meant to be so brilliant but where is she now?' etc. Well, the last I heard she was working as a mathematician in a university which is obviously the job she always wanted to do, is happily married and has kids. Sounds like a pretty good life. It only looks like failure if you have this bizarre idea that gifted kids are all going to be the next Einstein.

I had a mathematician boyfriend (before meeting sane mathematician dh) who when I knew him was going through a rough time because he'd "failed" his Finals, ie came second in the university instead of top . He subsequently rethought his life, decided he wanted to do something more directly useful rather than the 'hard' abstruse stuff he had been doing so far, and went into medical statistics, which is a pretty sound use of his gift. A lot of people around him would have seen this as failure but really it was a great success - him deciding himself how to live his life.

"funds should IMO be addressed firstly at getting all kids to a base level of reading, maximising independence"

That isn't necessarily a good use of public money. Very clever children might need only a small amount of extra funding to make a huge positive difference to their education whereas some SEN children need huge amounts of public funding to make only limited progress towards independent living. Is it really right to deprive clever and able children in this way? Is that good for society as a whole?

"The swimming champ Olympic hopeful can't very well practise in the corner of the class no matter what ignition system she's working on."

No, but dd can think up the plot to her next novel, because that does not require a swimming pool and her "coaches" are the writers she reads in the lunchbreak. She can start up a drama club, she can access a teach-yourself-German course online during the lunch break, she can plan a painting in her head- it's far cheaper than learning to do sports to a high level.

Senua, that's precisely what I had in mind. I see so many students who are hopelessly ill prepared for university because they expect somebody else to organise them.

Hospitalised through boredom? Surely not. They were presumably hospitalised through mental health issues which may or may not have been exacerbated by school.

No quattrocento - the mental health issues were a direct result of the school situation. This is sadly rather a common problem in France.