"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

[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. :-/