___WEDNESDAY___CH 4___UPDATE___"CHILD GENIUS"___UPDATE___CH 4___

[RTKangaMummy]

WEDNESDAY

CHANNEL 4

AN UPDATE ON THE CHILDREN FROM LAST YEAR

x x x

Documentary
Child Genius Wednesday 16 April
9:00pm - 10:00pm
Channel 4
1/2
The subtitle of this series about megabrained children is "young and gifted", but by the end you half-wonder if it should be "young and cursed". We're catching up with kids we met in the last series - chess champ Peter (11), who wears a "genius in training" T-shirt, Adam (eight), who dissects rats in the kitchen, and Mikhail (five), who as Britain's youngest Mensa member has appeared on Oprah and Countdown. We also meet Georgia, who toppled Mikhail as Britain's youngest Mensa member. At two, she was measured with an IQ of 152 - impressive given that, being a toddler, she fell asleep halfway through the test. Her mother notes that "a lot of the pictures we take of Georgia have this white light around her . . ." That's the thing: inevitably, parents become caught up in making their gifted children into mini-celebrities, especially when TV crews get involved. It makes for fascinating TV; whether it's great for the pressure-cooker kids is another matter.

x x x

now? know!

He doesn't 'go over' anymore. He does get obssessed easily, so he used to spend ages worrying over games like Riven and almost playing them in his sleep. Now he knows this so he tries to choose what obssesses him more carefully. He's very uneasy with his own errors in playing and until we got hold of a good teacher most practices ended in a meltdown if he couldn't get it right.

A thing lots know but some don't is that these kids are NATURAL perfectionists and I spend most of my time saying things like, what does it matter, not the end of the world' while he says 'yes, it IS the end of the world. ' Is this spectrummy too? I know this is true of Dante as well. IMHO kids like this sometimes stop trying because it's SO painful to fail.

Oh, that's sad Jane. They must have such a need for perfection it must be overwhelming.

I found a good book to help with the sensory aspect, it only takes up about a page though so it's really not worth buying it. It talks about a grounding technique to help a child become more aware of their environment. They sit and close their eyes, listening to the noises around them. Then they start to feel what they are sitting on, the pressure of the chair on their back, the texture of whatever their hands are on, then they open their eyes and look around them, noticing the colours and patterns. My ds is addicted to Lego. It drives me nuts but he makes some very interesting models that he just has to talk to me about. He's got use to not putting effort into things, he's never really had to. He'd rather go off and do something else rather then do his homework properly. He's slowly changing his atttiude, I think it doesn't interest him because there's no challenge there. On the odd occasion he's been given something interesting to do he's been so enthusiastic. He had to research a red squirrel for a project, he did so much work.

I don't know whether perfectionism goes with spectrummy kids or not really. DS2 is our little perfectionist - he's not spectrummy really (scores about 0 on ASD measures- I've just completed one as part of a research project into siblings)- a little quirky , definitely some sensory issues (he's the one with the labels cut out of clothes).

Perfectionism is a pain. DH is a perfectionist at work as well, and it causes problems. I spend a lot of time trying to get ds2 to deal with that.

DS1 is a terrible perfectionist. One bend on a piece of paper and he'll crumple the lot and he flips his lid if some wonderful structure he's building isn't perfect and ends up breaking the whole thing up. He's quite self conflicted because his sensory seeking side means he loves rolling in the dirt, but he absolutely detests being dirty. DS2 is also a source of endless frustration to him because he has no sympathy with his need to line everything up perfectly and scatters it to the four winds.

DS1's perfectionism is spurring him on with his reading. He's ploughing through the readers I thought would last him through the summer and has that attitude I remember having that there can't possibly be a book he is unable to read. If he encounters a word he can't decipher or has never heard before, he insists it isn't actually a word. Of course, while he's reading, he's frantically nodding his head and blinking and squirming all over the place. We stop for frequent breaks while he climbs back on the sofa because he's slid right off!

perfectionism here only when it concerns his art. He is quite casual about things otherwise, but, that said takes great offence at very minor things. Rails against useless causes, like USA spelling colour as color and using -ize not -ise. But will happily laugh at himself making a simple error in a maths test! Hates getting the hard questions wrong though and beats himself up verbally if he ever does.
the fidgetting/repetitive thing drives me to madness though. He is not as bad as he used to be. But that's only because he is 14 and has some control.
he has SATS next week and has been told to dumb down his English as markers will mark exceptional answers lower than expected answers. WTF? World gone mad. Teacher said not to worry if mark came through lower than we'd expect!

Piffle that is mad re english!!!!!

Why????

The teachers can over ride the marks for the SATS based on the child's work all year if they think that the child has not worked to their ability in the test.

ds's old teacher said they had changed it to take into account the children that worked really well but were too stressed to do the tests to their normal standard. Could be just KS1? I'm not sure.

The KS3 SATs? I don't think so.

She said it when ds was doing KS1, I don't know if it applies to all of the other stages.

this is ks3. They used to be marked locally I think. But now go to central marking?
no idea to tell you the truth.
pissed off though for ds still hiding lights. When will it be ok to be GREAT I wonder.

All the STAS tests were marked against a pretty rigid marking framework. I think there's a lot of myth and rumour about them - but I would, frankly be AMAZED if the markers at KS3 marked down excellent answers. There is sometimes the possibility of more than one answer, and a very bright child might spot ambiguities that others mightn't, so it may be a good idea to remind him that the most obvious answer is probably the right one, but I don't think this could be called dumbing down, could it? I think that maybe one of the lessons that doing SATS teaches is that sometimes in life you just have to tick the right boxes. Plenty of time for discussion and questioning things OUTSIDE a multiple choice test!

Oh, golly. Okay, wearing my hat as a dethpicable elitist, WHY is the WHOLE education system now geared to the bottom third of the ability range????? Must create lots of injustice in and for the top third. This isn't a point about my son - it would be SILLY for an education system to be geared to the extreme top of the range. It's more a point about Oxford admissions.

How is is geared to the lower third, Jane? In my experience, it's the lower third who tend to miss out - that's why so many children leave primary school unable to read - they have been written off from a very early age.

not geared per se... I think it is simply a matter of the State having scant resources and the priority has to be towards those struggling. I have always accepted that even though it means my son has never had an education on the states money befitting his aptitude.
How I wished I could have afforded to educate him privately if this meant meeting his needs.
But that's life on the thin end of the wedge. We are considering private 6th form though - but that depends on his university desires.
if he still has Oxbridge aspirations then it may be needed, although one hopes a good state grammar education shows enough to help him through.
I am not English but a kiwi and the system here be it elitist or classist, frightens me.

and seeker re the SATS it was an English teacher who said ds1's answers might be too sophisticated for the markers.
As you can imagine I'd rather not have heard that tbh

I would agree with Seeker. It's geared to the average.

The bottom 10% get nothing without a parent prepared to do battle and ensure that legal duties are met.

Piffle- I went to Oxford from a grammar school. They were very geared up for it.

Oh I do know 10% isn't a third btw But really the ones at the very bottom lose out the most.

Jane - on one level I agree, particularly having watched dd1 bored comatose in some years, being made to spend 30 mins at a time with her head down on the desk because she'd finished her work early, repeatedly sent out of the classroom for pointing out teachers' errors (bloody hell, do they not like that, and they lack even the basic social skills to jokily pass it off as a deliberate mistake) and for keeping up a running sotto voce sarky commentary on the teacher's every action.

But with my pragmatic, socialist, non-parental hat on, I guess I accept that the value of bringing an illiterate 8yo up to age-approprate level is greater (in terms of the difference it makes to that child's life chances) than teaching my precocious 8yo dd to deconstruct Hamlet. For some of these kids the school is the only stable or positive influence in their lives; I suppose the reasoning goes that the smart middle-class child will be fine anyway, because the parents will make damn sure that's the case. And to an extent that's true -- it's the highly able children from non-supportive families that are left out in this scenario. But then again you run into issues of definition, since a child in that category could need support by virtue of being (say) in the top 2% of the population distribution. Whereas the kids we're discussing here are probably somewhere above the 0.1 centile, and have needs that are clearly different from the top 2% let alone the top 10% or whatever the govt's definition of G&T is.

I wouldn't worry about Oxford entrance from a grammar school - if it's anything like my dd's grammar lots go to Oxbridge from there!

Agonybeetle - are you saying that your dd SHOULD have been allowed to keep up the sarky commentary - please tell me I've misunderstood you!