Gifted and Talented the most detrimental label

Post Reply New Topic

Okay, I'm about to rant. Feel free to click out of this. this is my opinion and I've held it for awhile now. I've wanted to get this up here for almost a week.

I learned how to read at about age 2. I read the entire little house on the prairie series in kindergarten. I spoke French at a grade four level in grade one, with no help from my family. I knew more about certain subjects than my teachers since I can remember. (At one point it was horses and farms, then biology. Right now, I know as much biology as my biology teacher.) I could add and subtract way beyond where I should have een when we started learning that.

Put it all together and what am I??? GIFTED AND TALENTED. Bull.

I was so far ahead of my classmates when I started school that everyone decided that the trouble I got into was caused by my intelligence. They ignored the fact that I annoyed older kids into beating me up while thinking I was carrying on a normal conversation. I threw temper tantrums over stupid things like a kid yelling in gym class. I couldn't get along with more than two people at a time, and even then I stressed out.

But there was nothing wrong with me. I was smart. I was above average, not abnormal.

They (the school admin) bribed me with toffees to not tell them things were going badly for me. They overlooked the fact that I did not express myself in appropriate ways (like the time I kissed a third grader because he was nice to me. I was in grade 1.) They completely ignored the fact that there were only about three kids on the playground who would come near me with any intention other than hurting me.

I was beyond my years. The others would catch up eventually.

I stunned adults with my lectures on why mosquito bites itched or how all european languages seem to be essentially the same (I'd never heard of Latin. I didn't know that most of them stemmed from the same language to begin with.)

Eventually, though, I was almost as big as the adults and I wasn't just a cute and precocious child. I was something obnoxious and wrong.

I knew all along that there was something different about me, something that set me apart from my peers, but I didn't know what. Everyone around me chalked it up to being G&T, without a G&T program at my school. I knew that they were wrong. I tried to convince my mother to send me to a Montessori School. She said it was for "special" kids and I wasn't "special", just smart.

She still believes that. The day I told her that I fit the diagnostic criteria for AS and Hyperlexia, she shut me out and said there was nothing wrong with me.

Apparenlty, I'm just smart. Not special.

Sorry about the rant. Any comments?

Ahhhhhh... Taineyah vents like Old Faithful (the geyser, not the dog Old Yeller, although Old Yeller was also faithful). You are a smarty pants if all of your accounts are accurate, and I mean that in the best of ways. Thanks for taking the time and energy to share this with us.

Doesn't it make you just grit your teeth when you're trying to explain something in your head that appears so clear-cut and shiny to you, and when it comes out, it is not understood nor appreciated and perhaps not even given thought to? That others may simply continue on their conversation without giving you so much of a nod of acknowledgement?

But you know, "gifted" and "talented" are words held to have positive meanings. To give a gift, is not to take something away... quite the contrary... and in the case of you, what gifts you have are very deep in there inside of you and can never be removed from who is you. I hope you will find some comfort in the recent "unearthing" of the "gifted" like Michelangelo and Einstein possibly having Asperger's. And Hyperlexia is quite legit. The elimination of terms like "gifted" and "talented" are in due part to a stupid Political Correctness and the ugly self-handicapping process that comes in a society where each person is SUPPOSED to be unique, but in the end, everyone is expected to conform. Bah. No one is going to lie to me and b.s. me into believing that Michael Jordan is NOT a gifted, talented basketball player.

But now, what's wrong with "special"? It's not the same as being called "moron". Taineyah, I sense that maybe these are words you are trying to get away from... but that you'll never escape fully. So why not use them as your own, and control them as how you see fit in conversation flow with others as they come up?

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=special

Hiya There

I think a neurodevelopmental assessment would be of great interest to you - they expose your strengths as well as your flaws. For example, I was recently the subject of such testing - apparently my verbal IQ was the highest this particular psychologist had ever encountered. Conversely, my working memory - arithmetic ability, etc. is in the low average range! Anything physical proved trying also! Disturbing, but enlightening as well !

You could talk to your School/University Counsellor - he/she should be able to refer you to someone for analysis, or perhaps even be qualified to carry it out. The results of this testing would assist you in gaining diagnosis as autistic and/or hyperlexic!

Best of luck

I was thinking about this the other day. I was in the Talented And Gifted class. It didn't help much. I got drug out of normal class to go I think one day a week and when I would be done and go back to normal class... Well it wasn't a warm reception. Being in that class isolated me even farther.
Looking back there were such obvious signs that something was going askew for me but since I was smart then I was ok. Even when my grades started to plummet because I wouldn't go to school anymore.
My mother can't seem to grasp the concept of the spectrum at all. She's certified in child development and those types of fields so she insists that since my daughter is bright then therefor is just nervous. Too bad she got her certifications at least twenty years ago before the concept of the spectrum came about. To her autism = rainman and that is that.

I have to wonder how many other "gifted and talented' kids are going through what I went through and no one notices that anything might actually be wrong.....

It's the only argument my bf and I have, you see. We've been together for years and of course the suject of to have or not to have children has come up. My answer is always a flat-out no.... I'm terrified for any child like me out there and wouldn't my own have a higher risk of being like me?

Yeah..........

Yes - I do not want children either! Why inflict a difficult life upon a child if you know that you have the genetic propensity to do so?

A can of worms - isn't it?

A lot of people notice. But nothing is done. It's the neuro-psyched equivalent of the Emperor's New Clothes, no doubt.

But would you not love someone who is like yourself, as you have been there before, it makes it less scary, and perhaps even healing?

I thought "Ohmygawd! Weirdo!" was the worst label one could receive, but I take it the mental and developmental health professionals have discontinued its use. However, its popular appeal has yet to wane.

I don't know how damaging it can be to be labeled "gifted and talented," although I was in my elementary school's gifted program for one year (concurrently with their reading program because I had some trouble reading for a few years). I was definitely out of place there. The Discover (as the program was called) teacher was obsessed with having us do math olympiads, which I was no good at, and submitting science fair projects, which I never got around to doing. A year later, when I was in 4th grade, I was taken out of the Discover program obstensibly because I wasn't keeping up with my homework (I had a tendency to forget to do some of my homework a lot for the first couple of months of each school year up to about 6th grade). I don't remember why I was ever placed in that program, but I do remember taking some tests, including one that allowed me to "fill in" a couple of lines or dots with crayon drawings of my own imagining.

It might be cool... but then there's always the idea that a child might be "normal" and wouldn't understand me.. even grow to hate me for being the "freak mom."

Am I making ANY sense?

Do you remember a time when "bad" meant "bad" instead of "good"? I cite Michael Jackson's earlier album as a foremost example of this. Or when "wicked", "sick", and "ill" were all the bearers of bad news?

That's why I'm convinced even something like "weirdo" can be turned around. Hey, "geek" and "nerd" are currently being "processed" through that Tunnel-O-Positivity

"The Discover" is a new one to me. I've heard myriad names for these types of classes...

As much as I might want children - I would wonder what sort of parent I'd make. As nice as I think I am, I know that it would be impossible to nurture any child properly. One needs to have an understanding of human nature in the practical sense, and because the world needs to operate in a manner with which I am comfortable for life to proceed at all.

I'm not speaking for everyone in saying this, but I believe I, as someone with AS, have too much to contend with; it would be downright selfish of me ask a child to endure a life with me (any child - normal or not).

Our's was the "Accelerant Learning Stream"!

Ah, yes, the proverbial flipside of the coin. But you know... in life, there are problems. I've seen Mothers and children who conceivably should not have been able to get along for whatever reason, but in the end, love unites. I know it sounds fairytale, but like I mentioned, everyone has problems -- but it's how you deal with them that ultimately matters. Children are surprises, you don't know how they'll turn out in the end.

No matter how you raise your child, you can expect rebellion in the teenage years... just be the best Mother you can be

I do know that any child of mine would not have one of the problems I have--a mother who can't accept the most obvius truth! THAT i AM NOT NORMAL!!

There you go. That's a start. Learn from your experiences and impart this to your offspring.

As for your own Mother, keep at it. Persistence pays off, and you never know.