"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

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

The main piece of advice I can give is this: I knew I was smarter than most of the other kids, and I knew the adults (my parents and teachers) knew this. So I figured since this was known, why should I have to do memorization busywork to prove whether or not I could? So sometimes I would just not do my work. Note that I didn't realize the point was to learn the subject at hand. In my defense, I mostly did this with assignments/tests I couldn't see the value of, such as memorizing exactly which explorers were in what areas of the US (usually Florida, where I lived) during what years. It's as though I expected to just be given an A even if I hadn't done the work, because it was already taken for granted that I *could* do any work. In retrospect this logic seems insane, but that's how I thought at the time, and apparently it's very common amongst G&T kids.

So yeah, my advice is: watch for motivation. I don't actually know that I know a way around this problem, except to find a way to convince kids that yes, actually, you do have to do the work, even if it's boring; the point is to do the work, not to prove whether or not you can do the work.

I'll also say that I was far, far, far happier in the G&T classes I took than in the regular ones, when G&T classes were available later on. They were more challenging, and if I wasn't being challenged, I was bored and unhappy and failed my tests. So I guess my other piece of advice is to make opportunities available. There's a fine line between providing opportunities for challenge and pressuring a kid too much, but the line is there. Let them explore.