Guest post: 'Having a gifted child isn't always a gift'

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Welcome to the biggest stealth boast in MN history, because I am about to write a whole guest post on being the parent of a gifted child.

This means breaking the number one rule, which is, of course: ‘Never, ever talk about your gifted child.’ The taboo around giftedness is so strong that – and I've agonised about this a lot – this post appears under a pseudonym. I just can't imagine any good coming out of being identified, particularly for my daughter. I very nearly changed her gender too, just to make sure that no one knows it's me. How sad is that? But I wanted to stick my neck out for a reason - because, actually, having a gifted child isn't the entertaining brag-fest you might think.

Imagine if you will, that school insisted that your Year 2 child go into Reception. Imagine that they are learning very little, and it's making them anxious and badly behaved because they know they are different. Imagine that the school say there's nothing they can do, and there's no right of appeal.

To cap it all, you can't even talk to your friends, because they will assume that you are deluded, boastful or hot-housing, or possibly all three. Should you say anything on-line, the responses are even harsher, ranging from disbelief and ridicule ('if they haven’t written a symphony by 4, what's the fuss about?'), accusations of not giving them a childhood, then usually: ‘oh, it will all even out in the end’.

This is a rough approximation of our lives and frankly, I hate it, every little bit of it. I hate the three solid years that we've spent fighting to make school work, socially and academically.

I hate the fact that we've had to move her from the neighbourhood school and we're no longer part of our local community in the same way. I hate not being able to talk about her achievements anywhere: not in the playground, not on Facebook and – the fact that has brought me here to rant at you – not even on Mumsnet. If I could choose, I'd far rather she wasn't gifted: plain old bright would do me just fine. But I haven't got that option.

The truth is that, just as there are children at the other end of the spectrum who find it harder to learn, there are gifted children. The government designation of the top 10% of any class as gifted and talented has muddied the water a great deal – and there isn't a proper definition - but let's say those with an IQ of 130 or above, which is about 2% if the population. These children don't find it easy in mainstream education – but any support they get is entirely at the discretion of the school, which can mean that it doesn't exist at all.

By the end of Reception, my daughter had the reading age of a twelve year old. ‘Great’, you might think, but in a school that only went up to Year 4, they didn't know what to do with her. But a gifted child just has to put up with it; their needs, it seems, don't count. ‘The others will catch up,’ said the head teacher. We had to point out that yes, this would happen if they did nothing, but perhaps this could be seen as a failing by the school rather than the natural course of events.

In many ways though, we have it easy. Compared with some of the children we've met, she’s pretty straightforward. But the girl I know who was reading chapter books in her pushchair before she was two and a half? She's been through four schools and is home-schooled now because it's the only way she can learn at her own level. Many gifted children end up being home-schooled because, in the end, there is nowhere else for them to go.

We also have it easy because our daughter's abilities don't come with many other special needs, apart from a bit of dyspraxia. But a significant number of gifted children have something else going on too, whether that's ASD, ADHD, or sensory issues, as well as physical issues such as hypermobility, making things even tougher for them and their parents.

So when you come across a thread where someone is trying, perhaps for the first time to ask whether their child is gifted or not, all I ask is that you think for a moment before responding. Yes, it might be a stealth boast. It may be true that other children will catch them up in a few years time. Equally though, it might be a parent really struggling with how different their child seems, unable to speak to anyone in real life and in need of help and support rather than a shredding.

helly

That does sound awful for your poor dd. I wouldn't hesitate deregistering and H.ed if this was the case for dd.
At the time she was at school her peers on the whole were supportive but I've heard now the class are older bullying happens a lot.
FWIW we took dd out of school at end of y3, her request and none of us have looked back.
It works graet for us as she can struggle with the academic at her own pace and really concentrate on music and the things she enjoys.

She does that a lot in her drama class, which she loves. It did seem confidence boosting, but the problem currently is that she is suddenly getting picked on by all the children she used to play with, rather than just one. She thinks it is her fault, she thinks she must be doing something wrong. . It started when she defended another child, who is now joining in with the excluding and the general nastyness. She has been shaking dd. Others are calling her weird and similar mean names.

I would talk to school again in your shoes. If all the children she formerly played with are now excluding her, that's not right. Someone must be able to help her. You need to go in with a plan of what has to be achieved (DD's class no longer calling her names, no longer excluding her from games, whatever) and ask them how they plan to achieve this. Put the ball in their court.

I don't think it would work for us as a family to home-ed. We did do it for two terms but it didn't work well. Partly as dd is inherently social, she wants to be with other children all the time, she really doesn't much enjoy being on her own. The other issue is that we live in a Welsh language area but I am not completely fluent and DH doesn't speak any. If we take dd or both children out they will lose their welsh language skills, which would be very sad, and more seriously make it extremely hard for them to go to the local secondary school (all schools here are welsh speaking). I found it tempermentally hard doing home-ed too. I got frustrated and shouty with my dds, there were so many distractions too. DH works from home, it was all too chaotic and claustrophobic. We went to a few home-ed groups, but all the home schoolers are English ex-pats, so only english spoken, and neither dd nor i really enjoyed them, even though a few of our closer friends are in the group.

Fin, I think that is what we will do. We saw the teacher yesterday but she was quite tentative and asked us what we wanted to do, rather than having a plan. They have a guideline to follow, all to do with positive conflict resolution as far as I understood. Fair enough. But it was more something that would apply in a one on one situation, rather than this where she is getting excluded by everyone, with occasionally someone "allowing "- her words- her to play as though bestowing a favour. The teacher has talked to the class about being kind etc, in a general way, but it hasn't made any difference at all. Dds anxiety reaches a point where she can't make decisions and is just overwhelmed. She got to the point last time (at five) where she couldn't even choose a sweet in the sweet shop, the choice was just too stressful. She seems to be getting that way now. Her confidence is dropping badly.

It's not OK. It's up to the teachers to fix it, not you. They are the professionals here. Make a list and ask them how to get it sorted.

Helly I think Y4/5 is particularly hard as the girls are revving up their social posturing. We did role play and my child is also not a withering wall flower. She enjoyed her time at home but I made her work - to ensure that she was not seeing it as a cushy alternative to school. Withdrawing her permanently for me did not seem right as she will have to work out how to cope with similar issues at secondary school. With hindsight I believe a larger school might have provided a broader spectrum of friendships and the glimmer of possibility of an intellectual cohort.

I think that too twee. A larger school might give just that to dd, we are going to look at the one school close to us that is a bit larger in case we have to move her. It had a reputation for being a bit rough, but has gone up in the Estyn (like ofsted) reports. I am loathe to change schools again though, esp as it would also mean dd2 moving school. I hadn't really noticed just how bad dd's anxiety was getting. With hindsight I can see that her stress has been building for months and that it has hit the tipping point now. Possibly we will have to remove her for the rest of this term. We are going to try and book a meeting with the deputy tomorrow, hope he can see us quickly.

I think it's strange to have a system that classifies children so early on in life and labels them so publically.

Where I am we have no such system, but we have a universal curriculum and standardised, universal, countrywide tests. The results are strictly confidential. There is no 11 plus or anything like that, no need for tutoring.

All my dcs teachers have been amazed at my dcs results in these countrywide tests.
I've looked up the GnT system in the uk, and they would be on it, but as no labels exist here, they are just a allowed to be kids.
They go to the school library if they want to go further with anything, and have finished their work.

It suits us very well, as my dcs love to daydream, as do I.

I don't feel they need to push themselves- there is a holistic attitude here that maybe is lacking in UK schools. So many of you seem to have children who are anxious- maybe this early GnT classification system leads to that a bit, or the selection process for secondary... what do you think?

We have neither here, and it seems to work very well for everyone.

lady thankyou for your post, I have since gotten two degrees so I didn't end up doing nothing. I just needed time to 'find myself' and do it my way instead of with all the pressure.

sorry for slightly off topic if people think I've ventured off

Venus - very many schools in the UK do not even tell the parents that their children are labelled G&T and also quite a few do very little about it. So, I do not think any universal pressure or expectation is applied. Here, generally there are 3 classifications: 1) Able - the top 20% in academic attainment 2) Gifted - approximately the top 2-5% in academic attainment 3) Talented - exceptional ability and potential in 'non-academic' subject e.g. a sport, art, music etc.

For a child who is extremely able to be made to conform by only working to the ability range of those less able can be very frustrating.

Personally ime, the anxiety that some very able children experience is due to high personal standards and consequent expectations, poor social skills or having to socialise with children with a totally different perception/understanding of the world, so that they feel different and as they often also are different, then experience exclusion from that age peer group. It is rather akin to asking your children to play only with a cohort 2 years below them.

Where and if there is hot-housing I do agree that this removes the freedom to just 'be' that all children should be allowed to experience.

Venus, there was absolutely no pressure on dd from school or from us. No high expectations apart from some teachers expecting her to get everything right because she usually did which then transferred to her.

The problem was the opposite in a way - she wasn't given an education that met her needs. Her anxiety stemmed from not being able to be who she was. Now that she is at secondary where expectations are so much higher and they are making sure that she isn't being held back by the curriculum her anxieties have mostly evaporated.

Venus, some gifted children do seem prone to anxiety, but I would argue that it comes from the stress of being bored in lessons and not being given anything remotely interesting, along with (see Helly's post above) the stress of trying to be friends with children who they don't have that much in common with. My friends gifted++ child has just started HE and her anxiety is just melting away. It may be that your system is much better at differentiating for their needs.

Helly that sounds grim. Good luck with meeting the DH. The advantage of a larger school is that she is more likely to find someone like her. We moved DD from a larger school to a smaller one at the start of this year, and tbh that's the only disadvantage. She gets on fine with the class, but there is no one she really clicks with. (We put her in the larger school originally for exactly that reason; out of a group of children she will tend to be friendly with only one or two).

Venus where I am (a Scottish local authority) state schools do testing in Primary but individuals scores are not relayed to parents.

I have still seen anxious kids and schools that see them as kids with a discipline problem. I'm happy to say my son's primary is much more accommodating than some and seem less panicked into pushing kids into a mould. (I don't mean academic - rather being socially acceptable in a group setting.)

Also schoolwork has changed from being about individual, often academic, work to a lot of rather amorphous group activities many focussing on social issues; even my relatively happy child finds this frustrating. I think he might find it more satisfying to be in a more structured work setting. I can see how very high ability children who are struggling to relate to their peers could be totally miserable.

hellymelly we have had similar problems throughout school with our DS. Our DS is only a little older than your dd. I have reluctantly accepted that my DS will have these problems for some time yet partly because of the way he views social interactions and his heightened sense of injustice and unfairness. Whereas other children will brush small comments off and be able to cope with a bit of playground cheating or insensitive comments my Ds gets really upset about them and concludes that the other children are mean and nasty and ill behaved (Some of those things might at times be true).
The only thing that really makes a difference and makes things easier is how the school manage these situations. My sons previous school did not manage these situations well and blamed my son for being upset when other people were being quite nasty. There was one boy who was calling my son names on a daily basis (geek, sissy, wimp etc) and the school told me that there was nothing they could do about it because my son was constantly being upset and that was the trigger for people mocking him and name calling etc. they said my son was the one who needed to change. He was 7 years old at this point and had got to the point where he really hated going to school.
He is now at a new school (transferred a couple of years ago) and we still have some playground and friendship issues but the school manage it differently. They don't accept any children being unkind. They write playground rules together with all the children to ensure that everybody understands how to behave and play. They have clear sanctions for poor behaviours. If anybody misbehaves the school deal with it appropriately and never go down the route of 'victim blaming'.
Playground upsets are always going to happen, much more so with a gifted and sensitive child, but the school are the ones that need to manage the situation. Do not let the school tell you that your child is causing or imagining the problems. Your child is entitled to go to school and be happy any not have to worry about playground nastiness.
Ask to meet with the senco and discuss your child's sensitive nature and how he is feeling about coming to school. Ask the school to write a plan of how they are going to manage the situation to ensure that your dd can go to school everyday without coming home in tears.
I had a little boy who came home from school every single day for two terms with black tear stains on his face (adamant that he hadn't been crying). It is only now that we are in a supportive school environment that I can clearly see that none of it was my child's fault and that it didn't need to be like that.

Where I am we have no such system, but we have a universal curriculum and standardised, universal, countrywide tests.

This is the same as England. I think Scotland and Wales set their own standard curriculum and tests.

As for the anxiousness, in DD's case it is most certainly not to do with being clever. She has never been told she is on a list (though I know because I was told by the teacher and she has been selected for every extension activity). In her case, anxiety comes from being very imaginative and taking things too much to heart. I think it is also partly to do with having been able at a young age to look into what would be the likely consequences of actions etc - this ability is generally quite undeveloped in small children and if you develop the ability to look ahead and think of how things could go wrong without having the ability to rationalise it and explain to yourself how things going wrong will be prevented or mitigated, well, who wouldn't be anxious?!

Marking spot.

twee 2) Gifted - approximately the top 2-5% in academic attainment 3) Talented - exceptional ability and potential in 'non-academic' subject e.g. a sport, art, music etc.

I thought G&T was top 10%?

Helly, hope your DD is OK today.

YouAreMyFavourite - the definition varies as it is up to the discretion of each individual school but they usually follow the guideline set by their LA. I was trying to show the broad parameters. Some schools do not distinguish between A and G. Those that have an A category set the G category higher. At my DD's primary A is defined at approx top 20% of the class. G is defined as those capable of exceptional performance = 0.5% of the national population. Of course, super selectives will deem all pupils G and then have a SuperG category!

Thank you Fin. We did some maths together this morning, and then I let her relax the rest of the day. I am keeping her off tomorrow too, as she started crying over a minor thing to do with a friend of dd2, and she seems so overwhelmed generally and stressed that I think she really needs this time out. We will see the Dep Head next week (He is super busy as teaching full time plus filling in for the head). We have booked to go on an outdoor fun weekend with Potential Plus, so that she can meet some other children who may be similar in temperment to her. It sounds fun anyway, she loves climbing, running and outdoor stuff generally. So she has that to look forward to in a few weeks. Has anyone else done anything with them?
I hope she is a bit happier tomorrow. She is relieved to not be in school but worrying about having to go back in I think.

For those of you who have very anxious children, what is it they're anxious about?
Things they can control or things they can't?

Without meaning to be trite, maybe you could try a few things we found useful?
Have you got them to draw themselves and their friends as circles, and as venn diagrams - this helps them understand their boundaries, and spheres of influence, and non shared space. Do they know they're not in charge of everyone else and everything?

Maybe try meditation? It keeps us all on an even keel and I notice if we haven't done it for a while.

Venus - I think you are on to something there. Thank you for a very thoughtful post.

Venus- that is interesting. I think I will try that with dd. She gets anxious about all sorts of things, she worries about other children if she sees anyone looking upset or withdrawn in the playground, that sort of thing. She gets very upset if anyone is mean to her main boy friend in school. She worries if someone has been sick in school, as she is scared she might catch the bug (I think this relates to a night when she was hospitalised aged 2 with a vomiting bug). She worries about things like ticks as we have a friend who has a daughter with Lymes disease. She worries about our puppy eating plants/getting hurt (puppy ate a bit of a deadly poisonous plant at a plant fair, luckily the stall owner saw her snaffle it and we got it out of her mouth ). She is already worrying about GCSEs and how she will cope with exams when she goes to secondary school (she is only in year 4!). She tends to project ahead with things and work out the worst case scenario and worry about it. I do this too, but I didn't do it as much as a child. All this is much worse if she is generally stressed, as she is now, by unpleasantness in school. She is surprisingly, a very cheerful and sunny natured child though! All the worries are something reasonable, but she doesn't seem to be able to filter out what is serious and what is not, when to be concerned and when to ignore something. She takes things seriously, and her brain is just constantly on the go. If she is very stressed (almost always related to school) then we give her tricky mental arithmetic to do, that is the one thing that calms her down as her brain deals with the task and isn't wondering off on a tangent. Both my dds love this as a distraction technique.
Off on another tangent- dd is home again today- should I ask the teacher to tell the class she is off as she has been very upset by being left out etc, and ask them to be kind to her when she is back in? (hoping for guilty consciences to be pricked) or would that possibly make dd more of a victim? Am not sure. They are 8/9 year olds, so maybe kinder and more responsive than if they were older. What do people think?

DD is very much anxious about things she can't control (it tends to be the big stuff like war and death, but also small things like other people being treated unfairly at school or friends being sad or people being mean to her). Like Helly's DD, she projects ahead and worries about the worst case scenario. In our case, for instance, she's worrying about what will happen if she goes to university and I can't go with her. She is in Y2. She may not even want to go to university, and I'm pretty sure if she does then she'll be delighted to be off doing her own stuff by that age! She is receiving some therapy for anxiety and this has given her some coping tools which I hope will improve things.

I'm not sure about telling them directly, helly, but it would certainly be a good opportunity for the teacher to do some talking about kindness and inclusion in general.