Organising a gifted and talented group

[diazeki17]

Hello everyone,
I am interested in starting a gifted and talented group for children aged 5-7 in central London. I have two children who are in Mensa but unfortunately, mensa events and communities are for their adult members. Obviously, I do not mind if your kids are in Mensa or not, but if you feel that your kids are working above their age group and are gifted, please drop me a message. The hope is that it would be a relaxed group where we could organise trips and fun enriching activities that will continue to nurture their love of learning.

Infant school aged children do not need to wear any 'I am normal really' armour.

My (able) DS's absolutely worst time for 'wanting to be normal but not yet being able to appear so' was 5-7. His subsequent mental health issues are not visible 10 years later, but were visible for much of those 10 years.

Both of mine were free readers at 5. Should they have been put in special groups? Or just given different books........

Love the fact that footballers have been included.........

Should they have been put in special groups? Absolutely. And you should have told them every day how much better than their peers they are. Would have done them a world of good.

My (able) DS's absolutely worst time for 'wanting to be normal but not yet being able to appear so' was 5-7.

Same for my DC, the early primary years were when he had the least in common with age peers but was not yet old enough to have learnt what to do to fit in.

You wouldn't put an 7 or 8 year old with 5 year olds and then say the older child had social problems when they did not fit in with the group. That is what it is like for these kids, except that their emotional maturity may not be in line with their intellectual development and their interests so it is even more difficult for them.

Not sure I like the ‘gifted and talented’ label because it could make you think that you don’t need to put much effort in or that you’re superior to everyone else.

I would call it the ‘fun and challenges’ club or (something like this that rolls off the tongue better.

Also I don’t think you can tell who is G&T at age 5-7. I always remember my friend at school who seemed like a genius at age 7. She left school at 16 and went to work in bank and has led a perfectly ordinary life since. My DD on the other hand, was not amazing in primary school. She is in Y11 in an ordinary comprehensive now, doing 10 GCSEs and expected to get all 8s and 9s.

This is so peculiar!

I was reading by 2 and remember being seriously perplexed when the school started trying to teach me at 4. I was a bright child, top of the class in lots of subjects etc, but guess what, lots of other kids were as bright or brighter and whilst I'm still academic and successful, I won't be winning any nobel prizes any time soon!

One of the schools I went to when we moved had no idea how to cope with a child who could read and I spent a lot of time in the library by myself or being made to do maths puzzles that were embarrassing because they were ahead of everyone else, who of course crowded round to ask what I was doing. NOT how to help the new child settle in.

Meanwhile one of my ex's was so super bright that he came top of his year at Oxford and went on to a very very difficult and highly paid career. The guy never had friends at school; hated university so much that he thought seriously about suicide and ended up on Prozac at 18; and to this day is so miserable in public that he still has very few friends. He's also incredibly narcissistic and needy. The mercurial IQ is just not matched by any sort of EQ.

It's quite often those who are better at engaging with people and peers who go on to be happy and successful.

I think your group would attract only pushy parents. You'd be better getting your children to enjoy making friends and spending time with them! Not that you'll listen

(That should say "reasonably academic and successful!"

all were consciously kept normal by their parents

Returning to this: Do you mean that all were not allowed to attend dance classes, music groups or ANYTHING to do with their area of strength because they should be 'kept normal'?

That is essentially what is being said on this thread - that it is absolutely wrong to create or send a child to an extracurricular club that relates to academic success / interests / abilities, and instead they should be required to spend all extracurricular time with children who did not share their interests or aptitudes, because it would be better for their social development.

I suspect that, on the contrary, your very successful friends spent the complement of extracurricular time usually spent by able dancers / singers / musicians in classes or activities that catered to their needs at that point, where they spent time with others who shared their interests and gifts - which is exactly what everyone on this thread is seeking to deny those whose gifts happen to be academic.

i am not saying that every academically able child should be continuously told how wonderful they are, or artificially separated from children of other abilities. Just that in the 'portfolio of their activities' there may be space for some overtly academic clubs / activities where they may meet like-minded children.

Why it is different if a child's 'thing' is Maths or writing stories from if it is Music or Dance or Football?

Here the question was not about "My kids really interested in Maths, where can I find some groups where they can enjoy it with peers?" As that would get the same response as music, dance or football I'm sure.

This question was about creating a group where the only common denominator was "gifted and talented", based on the premise that being gifted and talented alone needed different socialisation. Your analogy breaks down because the groups getting football or music advice are not being told they need other talented footballers or musicians to do non-football events. That's the difference.

The advice people have given here is sensible - pick the domain first, and then find groups. It's quite silly to attempt to get a gifted writer, a gifted mathematician, a gifted juggler, a gifted musician, a gifted historian together and expect it to be a success, or any different to a group who don't have various gifts.

It's strange for the OP to quote a study of what happens who people who assess in SAT's as top 1% at 12 solely in maths, as being particularly relevant to a 5-7 year old socialisation. Like most things (such as why top sportsmen take up their sport late) early specialisation often doesn't have brilliant outcomes.

As others have said, socialisation with age appropriate kids happens outside the gifted area, socialisation with age appropriate similarly gifted kids happens in groups specific to their interest, for many this will be impossible as there won't be any similarly gifted and interested groups around. Mixing kids with weak social skills (as almost all 5-7year olds are, and certainly those who call their friends boring, rather than finding how to enjoy the company of their friends in a common activity!) who happen to have wildly different gifts is unlikely to be any more productive at improving social skills than those activities which are away from the talents.

I understand why the OP is wary about all the interactions being with older kids and adults, or in activities where the peers are weaker, being permanently babied or always being teacher to others is not a good environment. I have never heard of a "Renaissance man" at 7, they simply haven't had the time to learn enough, so there will be areas where they are merely average.

Personally I see little wrong with a 2-3 year age gap if the child is socially confident and can demand not to be babied in the areas where the child is gifted, many countries end up with this via advancement in school years, and rarely is it a social issue about the academic areas. (I would be violently against it for the transition periods, puberty, adulthood etc.)

And those talented musicians and footballers will be practicing with peers exactly that sort of age group older.

As I've said before, my personal vision is to encourage development of the non-gifted and talented areas of a child, they'll happen easily and need little encouragement, encourage the others, and also avoid early specialisation.

Thanks sirfred, that makes real sense to me.

(Though I am VERY wary of age acceleration, having experienced it from 11-17. DS was offered age acceleration by 2-3 years as a solution to his issues at age 6. We HEd then moved house instead.)

My 2 daughters were classed as gifted and talented at primary and the eldest was in the top 5% at secondary school the whole way through. She was expected to get all A* grades in her exams and at parents evening they said to us that she was oxbridge material. The pressure to excel not by us but by the school was too much for her and even though she got excellent grades they were not what were predicted and she was very disappointed. We have always said to our children just try your best and we will be proud whatever you achieve. We will always encourage our children but I don't believe in pushing them to the extent that top grades is their only focus

Most of these g+t groups are code for "parents like me", to be honest. At that age, children are a product of their environment and if parents are going on about Cubism then the kids parrot that; if the parents reading material consists of the Sun the child ain't going to be deconstructing postmodern literature.

And it is perfectly possible to have young children being ace maths whizzes, chess champions and music prodigies whilst also going nuts at soft play with other kids. The sneery attitude that many of these groups encourage, that somehow normal childhood stuff is beneath them and that they are too special to mix with the plebs is deeply damaging in the long run.

By all means start a maths group or what have you, but keep a balance and figure out how you are going to cope when your kids come up against someone even more exceptional than you think they are.

Tbh at ds’ school there is no real differentiation if a child already knows the material in ks1. If you can get any i5 is because you’ve pushed hard to get it. Book bands are limited by year and they refuse to do anything outside the years curriculum in maths and science, leaving able children bored and often disruptive or else withdrawing. Gotta love the NC.

Tomorrow, as i said before if school is providing well for socialisation and breadth but less well for academic needs, then it seems entirely reasonable that a parent might seek academically stimulating extracurricular activities.

And at six spends most of the day at school bored out of his or her wits... great

I wonder how many adults would love to spend same amount of time per day studying boring and repetitive material?

@cantkeepawayforever not at age five to seven, absolutely not. Even older, no. Even as older teenagers, the emphasis was never on their particular "talent" but on them as a whole person.

Teenagers are different to little ones and unlike a five year old, have the ability and the maturity to decide their own interests based on more than the influence of (pushy) parents.

Until then, a good all rounded education and extra curricular programme along side learning to be bored is very important. Wanting to learn for themselves and slowly experimenting until they learn their passion takes time. Until a child is a teenager and beyond, all it should be about is learning about what sort of person they are.

I am very interested in what you would have done differently, either for you or your bright child. I am happy with the way i was brought up and so I am doing the same with mine. The oldest is certainly very very intelligent and is currently thinking seriously about applying to Cambridge. She has the sort of brain that will do well there (personal experience), but I am so so so glad I didn't push her at all when she was five. She could have turned out with a quite different sort of brain instead. Or a different talent.

Do you wish you had done clubs with your son when he was five to help him? I am reading from what you have put that you think he has been mentally disadvantaged. But... What would you have thought then though had he turned out to be developmentally just advanced for his age and not an outlier?

My ds struggled socially in early primary and always preferred older company. But it wasn't because he was too intelligent, it was because he was so socially immature and it was easier to be with older children who babied him. He finally found his mate in yr3, had similar interest and similar nature. Nothing to do with level of intelligence. He wouldn't talk about what he can do at school. That's his interest.
I can see that OP wants her dcs to have like minded peers for their children. But they maybe there already.

Lol by the way for a high ability child often the need to find knowledge is insatiable. My son will search out info on his obsessional subject (he is suspected ASD) and although I can feed the need he is past where my own knowledge lies but can read as well as I can and that is how he researches.

And like I said up thread, there seems to be a group of posters who made up a G&T group already in London. Keep posting and they may contact you via PM.

Because ds knows shed loads about minecraft?

@Tomorrowillbeachicken my DD's play little big planet with their dad.