Arise, Lucifer

Hmm. When do little girls hit puberty, again?

As I sit here on holiday, feet up, half drunk San Miguel on the go beside me, La Child is in the pool using a pair of goggles to beat the shit out of a rubber ring whilst delighting us with a rousing rendition of Let's Go Fly a Kite. Nothing unusual to see here, move along, move along. 

Increasingly, however, La Child has been demonstrating certain...traits. Behaviours. Habits. Acts which when taken in the round would appear to suggest that perhaps certain hormonal changes may be taking place earlier than we would all have liked. To whit: 

'I didn't ask to be born!' 

'I have to do everything around here!'

'It's so unfair!'

Now don't get me wrong, La Child has never been a model of perfection and propriety. Saying please and thank you has always been a challenge. Empathy is not, and has never been, her strongest skill. La Child has always been, well, a bit feisty. She has her opinions and has never been afraid to share them. She has, for some time, been entirely happy to be considered every bit as grown up as the grown ups and I confess that, for as long as she's been capable of communicating with us as one, we've been happy to treat her like one...to a point. But something subtle has changed over the past few weeks. The moods have deepened, the tempers become more frequent. Communication is increasingly a series of grunts, and patience wears quickly thin (two minutes ago I overheard her ranting at her DS, shouting 'you wretched thing!' for apparently not reacting as quickly as it clearly should). An attitude has surfaced that wasn't there before. Every request is met with a 'no,' every question with a shrug of the shoulders, every refusal results in meltdown and accusations of bad parenting. A telling off sees her issuing a threat to call in the authorities. And suddenly she is her own worst critic. Each thing she does is 'rubbish', every attempt at anything is pointless. Life, it seems, has overnight become really quite difficult for poor old Child.

In other words she has, it seems, become a teenager. There are even slight physical changes, breasts seem to be budding, she has an obsession with body hair, mood swings come and go, an apparently constant need to readjust herself, but... But. She's eight. Surely it can't be? Not yet? 

I'm sure someone vaguely old and wifey told me many years ago that children develop in one of two ways: either they're angelic pre-pubescents and go on to be evil teenagers, or they're horrific pre-pubescents and become easy teenagers. Ha ha har har de har. To date we've had feisty pre-pubescent with notes of Right Cow followed by an escalation to Hint of Lucifer. If this carries on we'll soon be at Full Sauron and the fall of civilisation as we know it.

Home schooling, you say? Yes. Hmm. Well.

Cake or Ofsted Report?

This. A thousand times, this:

“Too many non-selective schools are failing to nurture scholastic excellence. While the best of these schools provide excellent opportunities, many of our most able students receive mediocre provision. Put simply, they are not doing well enough because their secondary schools fail to challenge and support them sufficiently from the beginning. I believe the term ‘special needs’ should be as relevant to the most able as it is to those who require support for their learning difficulties. Yet some of the schools visited for this survey did not even know who their most able students were. This is completely unacceptable.”

So spake Sir Michael Wilshaw this morning on the release of the Ofsted report into the treatment of the most able students in secondary schools.

Sir Michael isn’t the most popular man in the world; Chief Inspector of Schools in England, head of Ofsted, seen as many (particularly teachers) as a bully with a hard-line style and an unforgiving approach to standards, accused of instigating a period in which teachers feel alienated and in which morale is at an all time low.

But. When someone says something that makes sense, one should always acknowledge its wisdom. And by Jove that quote up there makes a lot of sense. I’ve argued for years that gifted children are every bit in need of special needs provision as are children with learning difficulties. Gifted children come with a whole host of issues: they can be relatively mild (short attention span, very little patience, poor empathy, problem with authority, quick to boredom, constant bloody questioning) or really quite serious (dyslexia, dyspraxia, autism, aspergers, acute and debilitating sensitivity to noise or bright lights). And because of these issues it’s not always obvious that they’re gifted. There’s even a term for it: ‘dual exceptionality’, where a child is gifted but also has some form of special need. What happens is that the disability shines so brightly that it blocks out the light of the child’s other abilities, and either the disability is all and the child is incorrectly identified as needing SEN support, or the child’s other abilities compensate for the disability such that they appear entirely average and receive no support at all. That of course makes it difficult for schools to identify them, but it doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t try.

Some teachers have responded by saying that the problem isn’t in fact non- or mis-identification of the most able pupils, it’s that teachers simply don’t have the time or the resources to deal with them (this blog by @Bigchris_BRFC gives you a pretty good feel for the sort of environment some teachers are operating in). Class sizes are too large, abilities too mixed and disruption is rife, either because of bad behaviour or because of the need to deal with often quite serious special needs within mainstream schools. If we want teachers to spend more time nurturing the most able pupils, they say, then give us the time, the space and the resources with which to do it. 

That’s not an entirely unreasonable response, but neither is it the whole story. Non- and mis-identification remains an issue. The current method of identification is simply to look at the pupils who scored in the top 5% of the Key Stage 2 SATS, but that misses those with any form of dual exceptionality, and frankly therefore misses most gifted children.

My daughter, as wonderful as she is, is intensely frustrating sometimes. Because I know her abilities, because I know full well what she’s capable of, it annoys me to distraction whenever she decides not to bother showing anyone else. Even her current school, which is the first in a long line to even get close to providing good support for her, doesn’t really know what she can do. An example: my wife spoke to La Child’s class teacher the other day to ask roughly what level she was at (we’re going to be home schooling her from September, so we need to know roughly where to start her). ‘Oh,’ replied the teacher, ‘she at about a level [x] for literacy and similar for reading.’ Wife thanks teacher, teacher wonders off, La Child suddenly looks around furtively and then says in a whisper: ‘Actually, I’m probably a fair bit higher than that. I don’t really try very hard at school.’

How do you deal with that? How do schools deal with that? I can tell you how they won’t, and that’s by fiddling around with the curriculum, insisting on ‘rigour’ and assuming that the gifted kids will be the ones performing the best. They won’t be.

In truth we need to take a long hard look at what we want our education system to do and decide how best to help teachers do it. As long as we carry on tinkering here and adjusting there and constantly blaming the teachers for, well, everything all we’ll ever achieve is to alienate an entire generation of teachers and waste several generations of potential. Now that is completely unacceptable.

Stand for Bidet

So, she’s a bit bright, then? No. No, she’s not bright, she’s gifted.

Gifted? Gifted.

What, as in really very bright? No, not ‘bright’…

Is she a genius? Well, that rather depends what you mean by ‘genius’. She hasn’t quite discovered the grand unified theory just yet.

She’s only 8, I guess. Give her time. Is her IQ higher than Einstein’s? What? I’ve no idea, don’t think so. 149 on the Stanford-Binet, if you must know.

Stand for Bidet? I’d rather sit to do that, if it’s all the same. No, Stanford-Binet. It’s a type of IQ test. Others include the Cattell IIIb, the Otis-Lennon, the Miller Analogies and the Wechsler. You have to be a little careful just saying that someone has an IQ of ‘x’, because the different tests measure it in different ways. So, for example, an IQ of 149 on the Stanford-Binet is the equivalent of 146 on Wechsler and 172 on Cattell IIIb.

That’s confusing. Yes it is.

Surely there’s a better way to doing it? Well, there might be. Most of the tests will measure where someone fits on a percentile chart. So, for example, an IQ score of 149 on the Stanford-Binet will put you in the top 99.89% of the population. Put another way, if you were to walk into a room with 911 other people in it, chances are you’d be the most intelligent one there.

So she is quite bright then? For the sake of all that’s Holy….

Alright, alright, keep your wig on. So why are we even having this conversation? I thought you’d never ask. Channel 4 is about to screen a documentary called ‘Child Genius’.

That doesn’t sound at all controversial. In fact it’s already raised hackles, but not necessarily from where’d you’d expect. It’s the parents of other gifted children (or children with a ‘high learning potential’ as leading charity Potential Plus UK would prefer you to refer to them) who have raised the biggest fuss, on the basis that the documentary isn’t going to do much to help them.

Do they need help? Well, raising a child with high learning potential isn’t the easiest thing in the world.

Get the children to do it. Oh, very droll.

What’s so difficult about it then? Well, imagine you have a child with an IQ of 149. Imagine that as the child moves through its early milestones, walking, talking, reading, it does them all much, much earlier than its little friends. You’re very proud of that fact so you start to tell your friends and to your horror you find that your friends don’t seem to be particularly happy for you. So you stop telling them, and they stop asking, and quite soon you find that they stop wanting to spend any time with you, or to let their children spend any time with yours.

That’s a bit sad. Yes it is. It’s not everyone of course, but when some friends react that way it comes as a bit of a shock. And imagine that, as the child starts going through school, she really doesn’t do as well as you think she could. So you start looking into why, and you discover that she’s bored because the school want her to do what all the other little boys and girls are doing. So you think you’ll speak to the school, they know what they’re doing, they’ll help, but then you find out that the school don’t want to know. They have lots of other children to teach, and a certain way they need to teach them, and if that doesn’t work on your child, well… she’s clever, she’ll deal with it.

I thought schools had gifted and talented policies, and stuff like that? They did have, once upon a time, but money is tight.

Ah. Quite. Funding for teaching more able children got pulled a while ago, and now it’s up to schools to do what they can in any way they decide. Most don’t bother, and those that do don’t tend to have the experience or the training to do it properly. And let’s not talk about behavioural issues.

OK. I mean, imagine having a really, really clever little girl…

I thought we weren’t going to talk about… who gets easily frustrated, and bored, and who can’t always understand why other people do the things they do, and has trouble empathising. A little girl who finds it very hard to sit still, who has very little patience. Who won’t do something just because she’s told to, but has to be told why she’s being asked to do it.

That must make her popular at school. ‘Challenging,’ according to her teachers. And it doesn’t make it easy for her to make too many friends, either.

So, to recap. She’s really clever, but you end up losing most of your friends and fighting with schools, while she has the patience of a coked-up Tony Montana, says inappropriate things and has empathy issues? Erm…, well, yes. I suppose.

Sounds fun. So why is the documentary not going to help? Reinforces stereotypes. The problem has really always been the perception of others. Genius? Clever child? You must be a pushy parent who hothouses her. You’re a Tiger Parent. She must be a precocious little madam.

I assume none of those is true, then? No, they’re not. How very dare you.

Sorry. All we’ve ever wanted – and for that matter, all most parents of gifted children want – is to ensure that she gets an education that will interest her and prepare her for whatever life it is she wants to lead. Allowing her to spending 14 years getting bored at school doesn’t strike me as fulfilling our parental duties. And for what it’s worth, just so we get this one out of the way, I couldn’t personally give two hoots whether she becomes a particle physicist, artist or McDonald’s chip fryer, so long as she’s happy doing it.

Any last words to the assembled masses? Yes. Normality restored next time. A Q&A with yourself is just a little bit weird.

How dare you…

Zen and the art of positivity

I'm feeling cheerful today. Don't really know why, just have a feeling of positivity about me. Perhaps it's because it's sunny (highly likely to be because it's sunny, in fact; how depressing our usual grey backdrop is), maybe it's because I know that The Annoying One is away next week and the office will be so much calmer and more pleasant without him, maybe it's because I have a particularly good tune on the go. Maybe it's a mixture of all three, maybe it has nothing whatsoever to do with any of it. Don't know, don't really care. I'm feeling less-than-depressed today, and that's good.

I quite like feeling like this because it means I actually do stuff. When I feel my usual self I tend not to want to do anything. Why is that? The more bored you are, the less inclined you are to pick yourself up and do things, even if things need doing, even if doing those things might make you less bored. Is it because actually those things themselves are inherently boring? Can't be, not everything is inherently boring. Or is it because the fog in front of your eyes is so impenetrable that the synapses in your head marked 'that'll be interesting' just don't fire? Whatever it is, sunshine, good tunes and the knowledge that I'll soon have a week off from having to deal with The Annoying One conspire to make Marcos a happy chappie. Let's strip naked and rejoice!

I do have one regret this morning. I’m a bit of an avid photographer. Like to take photos of stuff. Been doing it a while, and have a very large and heavy professional looking camera that makes me look as though I know what I'm doing. Every now and again I think to myself ‘really should carry my camera around with me.’ The only problem is that it is very large and heavy, and carrying it about is a bit of a pain (even if I'm not already carrying other things, which I often am), and this morning despite the weather being glorious and sunny, and the sky being blue, the grass being green and the conditions being bloody marvellous for a nice bit of photo taking action, I took one look at the thing and decided it was too much like hard work. Left it at home. Now of course I'm sat on the train on the way into work and getting more and more frustrated at myself by the minute as I realise what a complete tosspot I am. Lazy, weak willed, slothful. Allow opportunities to run past me with barely a look. If my headstone has an epitaph it's likely to be "Fuck it, that'll do."

Happiness doesn't last long, does it? Feeling quite fucked off now.

My life is full of little regrets. When you look at them all individually they don't amount to much, but add them all up and they lead inexorably to a deathbed revelation of despair and futility. Well, perhaps that's a bit strong. Didn't want to use 'regret' twice, you see, but it's probably more accurate: a deathbed revelation of utter regret at missed opportunities. For example, I once spent ten years learning how to fly, on and off. Ten years. Got quite good at it in the end, could fly in the end. Spent thousands of pounds on lessons, amassed about 60 hours of flying time, got as far as doing my QXC (qualifying cross country flight, for the uninitiated: a solo cross country flight from Stapleford in Essex, to Leicester, to Cambridge and back - in fact got lost on the way to Cambridge, that was a sphincter puckering moment), sat and passed five of the necessary seven written exams...and then stopped. I felt I had my reasons at the time, of course. The Child had just been born, money was tight, flying was taking up rather a lot of my time... but it's all utter tripe, really. All that time, all that money, all that effort, tossed away because deep down I'd grown tired of it and was secretly a little bit nervous at having to take the flight test.

Or playing the piano; spent years learning how to do that as well, and I really was good at it. Did my grade exams, was playing grade 8 and diploma pieces with ease, liked nothing more than to spend every waking hour tinkling away, practice wasn't a chore at all. Performing was a joy. Even got to perform my own pieces at the Queen Elizabeth Hall once, and believe me there’s no drug that can quite replicate the feeling you get when you soak up the applause of a thousand people. Then what happened? Life got in the way again. Exams took precedence. Going out with my friends took precedence. Not being arsed took precedence. Truth be told I got bored with it. I thought I'd take a break and come back to it, except of course I never really did. Now, years later, I can still play the odd little thing but not like before. All that effort, all that time.... Patterns do tend to repeat themselves, don't they?

I get bored, that's my real problem. I flit. My father was the same. He'd get really into something, spend a fortune on it, think of nothing else  and bore us all senseless for months, and then one day simply wake up and decide he didn't like 'it' anymore. Maybe I've got it from him then, this mad passion about something, this intense desire to do something, to become good at it, and then a sudden overwhelming boredom with it as soon as I have become good at it. Maybe that's why I've suddenly decided I loathe my job. Spent years on it, a great deal of effort, got quite good at it....and now I'd quite like to give it up and live in a cave somewhere.

How do you cure a problem like Marcos, eh?

Despite appearances, I am actually still quite positive. The urge to walk out in front of traffic was still there this morning (‘come on then, you feckers, prove you’re paying attention,’), but my usual desire to maim my fellow commuters with a blunt plastic coffee spoon just wasn’t. Positivity, see.