Were you a gifted child?

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As a child, I was repeatedly told by my parents that I was gifted. In fact, this was the most common explanation given for why I was bullied. The understanding was that the other kids envied me because academics (the only exception being research papers) came so much more easily to me than to them.

Ironically, if there was any truth to this, my parents made an awful decision by insisting that I attend a small private day school rather than the prestigious "magnet" (term not yet current at that time) school I wanted to attend. They (or more specifically my father) believed that lack of a private school education would hurt my prospects in the business world later on. The school I attended did not have especially high academic standards. In fact, it was famous for accepting pupils who had washed out of other private schools for academic reasons. Later in life, before my father developed dementia, I had a conversation with him in which he admitted that I should have been allowed to attend the magnet school.

Ironically, later in life I came to believe much less in the relevance of "IQ", that anybody whose brain hasn't been damaged by exposure to lead or fetal alcohol syndrome can excel academically under the right circumstances.

Yes, but my grade schools Gifted And Talented program was just letting us skip classes to go play board games in the old wood and metal shop classroom. I was bad at math but I don't think they diagnosed dyscalculia in the 90's. I was also home-schooled since 5th grade. I went to a high school program for people over the age of 22 who never received their high school diploma or GED (I got really sick at 15 and again at 20) and they always told me I had an advantage above the other students. It was a low income area and half of the other people there could barely read and they really liked my art and wanted me to do a mural in one of the classrooms but decided against it because they weren't sure they were going to stay in the building forever and didn't want to have to leave it behind or have it get painted over.

For a while I was under the impression that gifted programs were more of an American thing since I only ever heard about them in American (and sometimes Canadian) TV shows. However, when I was about thirteen or fourteen someone I knew mentioned being in a gifted and talented program. They were talented in gymnastics and dance, the program they were in seemed to be mainly focused on theatrical and athletic performance.

In UK secondary schools you have sets / levels and the system can vary by school. My school had sets 1-6 (six being the lowest, one the highest/top set). There was also what we sometimes referred to as set 7 which was special ed services (it was also a place they'd stick all the troublemakers/disruptive kids). My school attempted to put me in there are couple of times but I refused. I wasn't to the level where they'd force you into it (like some kids were) but it was suggested that a part time routine might help me. So instead of following the usual program the special ed unit would follow I'd only use a small part of it. However, although a teacher suggested I sign up with them I decided not to since I didn't want another reason to get bullied. I never showed up to the sign up and they thankfully never followed me up on that.

My school definitely wouldn't have had the money to run a gifted program anyway, at one point one of the science rooms barely had a roof. The building was falling to pieces, some of the text-books were the same ones my parents had, we had to pay for our books and lockers (unless you used one of the old ones, then you got one for free but you risked getting one that'd break easily). I got one of the old ones and the door fell off in the last week of school. Oh well, it lasted long enough. We used to have outdated video tapes and the teachers kept having to pause them to correct something. I think the most interesting parts of those videos was the 80's and 90's hairstyles, cheesy music, and terrible acting. Perhaps I'll try to find them some time, might be good for a laugh. The school used to have security issues, people kept breaking in to extract lead from the roof apparently. In my primary we had a group break in, steal a piece of wooden equipment that kids used to play with, and they used it as firewood in the woods nearby. Which seems a whole lot of effort to go to. They thought it was probably a group of teenagers.

Yes. I was in "special enrichment" in elementary school for the "smart kids". I was also an honor student all through school and college. All A's except for math, art, and gym. I usually got B's or C's in these classes, because I have dyscalculia also, and art and gym require one to have motor skills which I lack. Despite this, I always had extreme trouble socially and dealt with constant bullying and almost no friends. I had behavior issues in elementary school too, and was always getting in trouble for little things. By middle school, I learned to "play the game" and all the teachers loved me. I always felt different, even among the other "smart kids".

I was able to say the seven times table (up to twelve sevens) in 7-8 seconds when around the age of 10. This was apparently impressive to the teacher and to my fellow pupils.

I was never gifted but my mom will exaggerate my academic ability from when I was a kid. She says I read at college level in 4th grade. No, I read children chapter books. I did not read any college textbooks or any encyclopedias and I didn't read the newspaper nor any books written for adults or for teens. I got mostly Cs because of my language and reading comprehension issues, I was average in math until 5th grade. I had a very bad attention span so I never got my work done in school like most kids so I always had tons of homework. Just because I learned some things quickly such as how to do division does not make me gifted. It's a matter of knowing multiplication and going by the nearest number and also knowing what two times sequels 4 to know the answer or what 144 divided by 12 is knowing what 12 times equals 144. But I always had problems with long math problems because it takes lot of concentration. That problem started in 4th grade but only because our student teacher was accidentally giving us 5th grade math because half of the class was ready for them and me and some other students were having troubles with it. So she started giving half of the class two different math assignments, 5th grade division problems for the ones who can do it and 4th grade division problems for the other half who are not ready for that math.

There is advanced and gifted. My NT brother was probably gifted because he did above grade level math and other school work, he got challenged. Then he started to love school again because of it.

Parents will exaggerate their kids abilities and then I was pretty disappointed to find out I was not as smart as my mom made me out to be. Parents, don't do this to your kids please.

I was an average pupil in schools where being average was above average compared to pupils generally. I didn't get high grades ,or get moved up a class. Last year, at the age of 63, I started to fluke my way into some high IQ societies . If I can do it then a lot of other people can do it too .

Yes I was.

I was high grades in all my subjects.

It's because I read a lot. And read widely too - in terms of reading history books, geography books etc. And retaining information.

The only times this wasn't the case was PE (fair enough but it bothers me that this is all team sport orientated so other kids resent you) and when teachers decided to judge the quality of the work based on the handwriting rather than bothering to read the actual words I'm dyspraxic, I was in my 20s when my handwriting wasn't a mess. Same with drawing graphs or doing cooking.

But anything which was about either writing essays, writing stories, retaining information or even speaking up in class, I was considered a smart kid for and was in all the top sets etc at secondary.

At primary I had a reading age of 17 and my teacher said that there was something 'beyond my years' with trying to talk to him about the Chaos Theory when I was 11.

The weird thing is that his really nice school report read basically the same as my statement except the statement was negative and medicalising and his school report was full of praise. 'Well read' became 'obsessed with books' as an obvious eg of this.

As an adult, I couldn't find work and it made me ill. But I have an MA and am constantly using the time I have available on learning: again, pretty much constantly reading.

I did read encyclopedias from the time I was about 8.

I guess I was a snob---in that I refused to read books which catered to "kids" or "young adults." I wanted the Full Monty, even if I didn't comprehend it totally.

I wasn't "gifted," though. Not by a long shot.

I was fairly intelligent, though I didn't have much critical thinking skills. I was absolutely excellent at remembering dates, and history in general. I was always the top kid in my class in social studies. And I was pretty good in arithmetic, too---though lousy in abstract math.

There wasn't any "gifted" education when I was young, but I went to a progressive hippy-type school that catered the best it could for students' learning levels. It was an open-concept area with six different classrooms being taught at the same time, without walls. I don't remember it being noisy. We had a lot of throw-pillows and could sit wherever we wanted on the floor which made me very happy - I don't do chairs. We did group yoga and meditation types of activities.

Academically, I had my own reading program and I was allowed to progress through it at my own speed by grading my own answers to the comprehension tests. I kept track of my own progress and set goals for myself. I know I was far ahead of many others in the class but there was no sense of competition. I knew all the multiplication tables by rote when I was eight, and could do long division in my head. I was a smart kid, but that doesn't mean I was necessarily gifted.

Gifted doesn't mean "highly intelligent". It means that the person is a creative thinker who can think outside the box. I've never been tested for that. My daughter was identified Gifted at age 10. Now she's noticed that there are lots of memes about autistic adults who were praised as gifted in their childhood, who struggle to cope with daily life skills once they finish secondary.

My father got me the Columbia Encyclopedia when I was 8. It was something that was "heaven-sent." I would spend literally hours on it until I was about 14 or so.

I wish I had the Encyclopaedia Britannica, though! I would see it in the library---and I would want to steal it!

I remember liking Jeopardy, and knowing at least some of the answers, when I was 6 years old.

I bet we would have gotten along great as kids, Firemonkey. You're only 3 years older than I am.