"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

[chess]

The classic 'praise a child for being intelligent and they will divide the world into things that are easy and they get lots of praise for and things which are hard and are therefore impossible, and then they will give up too easily for the rest of their life' thing happened to me.

As did the 'feeling really guilty that I haven't taken over the world yet' thing.

Mostly what parents (and teachers!) of gifted and talented youngsters need, from my perspective, is to know when to keep out of the way. Trying to get them to stop reading or writing novels or doing other classes' homework in your class will just piss them off.

Smart kids need good library access, good internet access, and access to peers who are as smart or smarter than them. Weekends etc away with the smartest kids from every school in the area are a godsend for the latter.

As is just letting them go and meet their friends off the internet, if the school can get the parents to put their paranoia about that down...

My parents were pretty good at all of these things really; it's only the classic 'praise for intelligence will screw your kid up' that they really got wrong in that respect, and no-one knew about that in the 80s. I had much more trouble from teachers / school staff who thought I ought to be paying attention (which I was, just not all of it... I was queen of that irritating trick where someone who blatantly was doing something else recites the last couple of sentences the teacher was saying).

I think scheduling the kid too much is also a mistake, although my parents never tried this one on me. Even though they're stupid because they're a kid and you might therefore have to do things like throw them out of the house for fresh air and exercise occasionally, mostly they are smart and know what they should be doing with their time. Really good computer games might have screwed this one up though.

TL;DR: reiterate to parents the 'praise for effort, not for success' thing; don't get in the kid's way; let them on the internet freely (most kids just find bad stuff on the internet much more boring than additional cool dinosaur facts anyway) and out to meet people who are on their wavelength.

[bemused-leftist.livejournal.com]

The 'praise for effort, not for success' thing can send the message that the things you're good at happen to not be worth doing.

[chess]

Has that happened to you?

I know there's a bad connection with the 'prizes for effort' thing where no-one values the 'prize for effort' because they know it's a shorthand for 'and lack of success', but if there are no 'prizes for success' then I'd expect that to be less of an issue.

Generally the things I am good at are things I find intrinsically rewarding, so getting praised for them is meaningless chatter, rather than something I value.

[bemused-leftist.livejournal.com]

I was told different things by different people, so it's hard to sort out the details now. But the bottom line was always the same: "Instead of wasting more time on books/art/schoolwork, you need to focus on social/athletic/etc". Whether the reason was "Literature and art are worthless/don't pay" -- or "You're good enough at those already".

So I was never given any challenge or even realistic critique on the "good enough" things (since I was making straight A's without work).