"Help - my child is gifted!"

[philmophlegm]

Yesterday I had a meeting with a teacher from a local school* about the possibility of us doing some skills courses for pupils there - presentation skills, leadership, teambuilding, interview skills, making an impact - that sort of thing.

One of the ideas he threw at me at the end of the meeting (I think he thought of it there and then) was courses for parents, specifically parents of 'G&Ts'. In education-speak, G&Ts are Gifted & Talented children - gifted academically or talented musically, artistically or athletically. This teacher is Head of G&T at his school and he wondered if parents of G&T children would benefit from some advice on how to be the best parents they could to a G&T child.

There's plenty of this sort of advice on the internet. But since many of the people reading this were probably G&T children, I would be interested in hearing what did or didn't work for you. What did your parents do to help you? Did it work? Or was it counter-productive? I would be especially interested if, like me, you were G&T (I was G, I'm definitely not remotely T) but your parents weren't (mine have two O-levels between them). I'd also be interested in hearing from teachers and academics dealing with G&T students. And finally, I'd be interested in hearing the experiences of any parents who have G&T children.









* Non-selective state secondary. This one in fact.

Comments

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Based on observations of parents in the library, my main recommendation to parents would be make sure that support and encouragement doesn't turn into undo pressure. I've seen children desperate to borrow a book in a series they're crazy about, only to told sternly to put it back because it's "too easy," and doesn't stretch them enough. ("He's gifted, you know," they tell me proudly.)

Yes, they're gifted and talented children, but they're still children. They can't be busy achieving all the time. Let them relax with "easy" books, or run round madly, or play games. Keep it fun. Allow them to pursue their enthusiasms, however bizarre or unfashionable these are. My parents obligingly took me to endless castles and let me run round the garden dressed up in historical costume and endured neverending games of Kingmaker, all of which probably did far more to lead to my studying history at Oxford than any amount of pressure to study and achieve.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

ditto. I remember a poor Korean child who I tutored for her history A level. She had only been in the UK a year, and her understanding of the British history syllabus was rudimentary at best, but she was terrified of disappointing her (utterly terrifying) parents and had got through the last year of school by cheating in every way available to her.

She was a bright kid, and if we'd had a year of one to one carefully watching for all the stuff that she found incomprehensible due to cultural dissonance and lack of basic background and explaining it, she might even have passed the exam but what they were asking of her was ridiculous. We had two weeks. I wanted to predict her to get a 'D' but she begged the owner of the crammer to change my prediction to a 'B' because she was so afraid of her parents.

She got an E, if I remember rightly. :-/

[pete stevens (from livejournal.com)]

Let them play. Tell them not to do hard things because they're too hard and make it easy for them to try and do them anyway.

The most useful things for me were, (a) getting interested in writing 3d computer games (maths & physics), (b) trying to work out how to get fair fights in role playing games (maths & stats & numerical simulations), (c) music lessons (how to practice hard even when it's not fun and easy), (d) a paper-round (hard work is good for you, you need to earn your way in life).

My parents utterly missed that exercise is a really good idea (tbh, so did my school) which I didn't work out until I was about 25. Combine discovering running is fun with (c) and ten years later I've qualified for the Boston Marathon. So I'd add taking them to the parkrun/swimming class/cycling and teaching them how to lose gracefully and if you practice hard you might one day get a medal (I've managed 2nd in a race once).

Other than that make them watch Back to the Future,

'If you put your mind to it you can accomplish anything'

[ckd]

YES YES YES THIS SO MUCH THIS.

I was lucky; my parents encouraged me to try things and see what I enjoyed, then supported me in exploring those things more deeply.

When I was 9, there was a local association (Tacoma Area Council on Giftedness) that offered after-school and weekend classes in various things for kids. My parents showed me the list and asked if any of them looked interesting; I decided to try a BASIC programming class.

I loved it. Figuring out how to get a computer to do things? Absolute fun.

I took a second ("intermediate BASIC") class, then a third. My parents saved up and bought me a secondhand Apple II; I saved up and bought a secondhand 300 bps modem, leading me to discovering BBSes and FidoNet.

By the time I got to college, I knew I wanted to do things with computers and networks. Working at the help desk got me started on Unix; IRC taught me about TCP/IP.

A year after graduation, I talked my way into a system administration job--for the EFF.

These days, I work for a fairly large company that does one or two Internet-ish things, and I love it.