Programme on Thursday

[baddad]

Not specifically AS/ASD related, but sounds interesting in terms of some of the savant skills under discussion.

 

 

linkyplinkycleverkiddywinkiesthing

 

L&P

 

BD

[Brook]

Thanks BD, it looks really interesting, especially as they are going to follow them in years to come,

it would be good to see what sort of jobs they have etc.. etc..

 

will defo watch, especially if I'm snowed in..

 

Brook

[UltraMum]

Looks good -

 

wonder why it's on so late as i know J would be interested in it?

[hev]

im gonna watch that,thanks BD,i never normally look at telly guide so would have missed this one

[loulou]

Hi,

 

There's an article about it in the Radio Times. I think i'll watch it, but i'm prepared that it will upset me when i compare these kids to my boy .

 

Loulou xx

[JsMum]

Me and J watched this together even though they where intellegent, and had massive IQs, they where all very ecentric and had very grown up ideas, what stood out was most had difficulties with social interaction with younger children and one was behaviourally difficult.

 

did anyone think that some of these boys showed ASD traits here?

 

most where home educated or private educated, so says a lot about our state education again, so even when you have perfection our state education cant meet the needs of these children as much as the onces who have difficulties in acedemic, so our children really cant win can they?

 

It was interesting and most where boys, but I did feel that some of the parents pushed their abilties and some didnt seem to want to even test the capabilities.

 

I cant wait to see how the little cute boy copes as he is three bless him wasnt he so cute, but I am not sure about the book child prodigy anyone read his book?

 

I felt sorry for Amy as she has to do over 2 hours homework just to fit the criteria for her specail school placement, and this was putting a lot of stress on her, it would of been better to have her access a music school for her own age range and then aim higher as she matures and does her studies.

 

Having a high IQ certainly had as many difficulties as children who have a low IQ.

 

they are going to review them after 2 years, so we will see how they are, I bet a few schools try to contact them to offer them a scolership!

 

JsMum

[Canopus]

I watched the programme and noticed that many of the kids had no enthusiasm desire to interact with other kids of their own age, even if they had similar interests. I suspect that some of the kids could have AS and I also noticed a large amount of "twitches" and unusual body language common to kids with AS, but generally not tolerated by most kids or adults. Something else I noticed is that the parents seemed to be people of high intelligence and not really interested in popular culture, or trying to thrust it on their kids by forcing them to fit in at school. They appeared to value and respect their kid's eccentricities rather than wish they were conventional.

[Kathryn]

With programmes like this I try to bear in mind the selective editing that goes on, but even so, I found some of the parents' attitudes made me feel really uncomfortable. Many of them seemed to regard the IQ test as some kind of competition and strangest of all was the family who had a lavish celebration for their daughter just for getting into a particular school of their choice - the envelope containing the letter from the school was brought to her on a cushion and they all sat facing her and waited for her to open it and read it out. Talk about pressure! I couldn't help thinking, what if she hadn't got a place? What would they have done with the two tables piled up with gifts?

 

ASD traits? Maybe one or two, I thought.

 

I hope all these children grow up to be what they want to be and not just conduits for their parents' hopes and dreams.

 

K x

[badonkadonk]

Kathryn I totally agree. The family that lived almost cut off from people seemed more than a little kooky and of course the documentary makers are not going to be sympathetic to the family, they're gonna exploit any oddities that they have. I personally found the mother to be quite unsettling myself, in fact I found myself clutching my pillow not wanting to watch

 

I think Dante, the 11 year old philosophist could probably be Aspergers. I recognised an awful lot of myself in Dante. The, what comes across as, aggressive attitude towards parents, the vast and totally unorganised and random ideas about life and what it all means, the irritation and scorn at the social rules that don't make sense (like respecting your elders when nobody respects you as a child). The lack of self-esteem and never feeling good enough as well rang true. I really hope that he can get a handle on everything and make something positive out of it all because unfortunately I seem to be getting there far too late to put my potential to good use. I had the whole gifted and talented thing going for me when I was younger but a lack of confidence and understanding from my teachers and parents led me to spend a lot of my school days excluded from lessons and moved around. My IQ now is around 127, but had I been disciplined with myself and continued the pace at which I was learning I'm sure it would be a different story. More positive or negative it's hard to say and most of the time I can't say I regret how things have turned out, though sometimes I wish it hadn't have been so hard and draining seemingly learning everything the hard way

 

There were a couple of others that also stood out to me as possibly showing some traits. The youngest child in the family of gifted children, his obsession for maps was an obvious sign as it wasn't pursuing something creative or mathematical. He simply liked maps, reading atlases and drawing maps, ALL the time. He was totally adorable and it will be interesting to see how he copes as the baby of the bunch.

 

The six year old home schooled boy was another one because of his speech and the way he explained the answers to his questions in his IQ test. I know they seem like little things and probably mean nothing but I dunno I kind of have a sixth sense about ASD kids, I can just tell whenever I meet someone. I'm not saying these kids are ASD for one second but it will be very interesting to see what has happened when they go back in two years time.

 

I know the programme makers are probably hoping for some dramatic heartbreaking storylines and I'm thinking they will probably get their wish in some cases I found all the kids highly entertaining and all of them completely vulnerable and I just wanted to give all of them a hug. Especially the three year old maths whiz, his dad looked gutted when he got 137 on his IQ test when he got 138 on his last one. I just felt so sorry for him that he didn't know what a hat was but could do multiplications that kids 3 times his age would have trouble doing. My heart went out to Amy as well, she just seemed so monotone in her behaviour when she gave that performance. Sat on a plastic chair outside the main hall reading her book, gave the performance and went back out straight away and sat down and picked up her book as if nothing had happened in between! Where was the excitement at going on stage to perform or the adrenaline rush afterwards?

 

A very interesting programme!

 

Emily

xxx

[chriss]

What struck me was that many of their lives looked so tedious Even talented and gifted kids are allowed to be silly and have fun. It will be interesting to see how things work out for them.

[Canopus]

What struck me was that many of their lives looked so tedious sad.gif Even talented and gifted kids are allowed to be silly and have fun.

 

Some of the kids exhibited quite juvenile behaviour, especially Dante. Somebody like him would have been shredded at my residential school. The question is what do G&T kids find to be fun? Are they generally interested in things most conventional kids find fun? I used to be a member of NAGC when I was a kid and found many of the kids to be quite staid and dull compared with conventional kids. Some didn't even watch cartoons or play computer games.

[loulou]

Hi,

 

I watched this programme too. Kai saw some of it and said (about Amy and the book-writer boy), "They are big boasters Mummy" .

 

I felt sorry for most of them really. There's such a HUGE amount of pressure on them.

 

I definatley think Dante showed some ASD traits. He was also quite hyperactive, climbing on everything and moving all the furniture about. Peter (chess wizard) I also thought showed some traits. He reminded me of Kai the way he talked.

 

One of the mums said that being gifted was sometimes a "curse" rather than a "gift". I had to agree.

 

Loulou xx

[Elouise]

Occasionally JUST occasionally kids do win in the rotten education system. It can take some fighting though.

 

Nathan has been classed as gifted and talented in art due to his visual spatial reasoning and conceptionalising. Currently the lad has his eyes on a fine art uni course after his special college. His IQ was assessed at 110 when he was seven, bless him he simply could not answer the word questions..

 

Sam has walked out of every IQ test his ed psychologist has tried to asses him with on the grounds' I am not THAT stupid if I do this everyone will expect me to be good at everything'. What matters to me more is he is reasonably happy at school, is given access to a SULP group that helps him practise social skills and is allowed to shine in his area of outstanding ability as Sam becomes very destructive and withdrawn if he is not allowed to.

 

Sam *ngghhhhhhhhh....* has a diagnosis of Aspergers Syndrome, ADHD and *dear God...help* he is gifted and talented in science to an alarming degree.

Sam campaigns for home education with ruthless determination , he has even handed in his notice at school.

I cannot fault his school. They provide support in his areas of weakness with recording written work and allow him to have a differentiated curriculum in science. Sam is in year 5 but has been moved onto the secondary schools science curriculum and his primary have arranged for a specialist science secondary teacher to provide his differentiated lessons.

 

Jo is also rated as gifted and talented in science, maths and music *whimpers*. How she can listen to a complex piece of music and get it note perfect after a handful of goes and teach herself to play such a wide range of instruments is beyond me....thankfully her school is listed as a technology and music college. I have arranged nothing Jo does all the running because I worked on the theory if Jo REALLY wanted to access something she would sort it herself and scarily she does.

 

Even Annie *lost in time and space* is beginning to bounce out. Despite her complex SpLD and mainly thanks to all the extra OT and physio the school arranged on top of very specialist language support she pulled her class teacher up with 'Allenberg is okay if you just like rhyming but I prefer Coleridge, how about we look at Shakespheres sonnets instead?' and then went on to explain what one of the sonnets was about...in detail....Yep the SENCO has asked me to come in again on the grounds that the difference between Annie's written and vocal work is getting greater.

 

My kids watched that program, they voted that they swap places with the other family of four as 'an experiment to see how long those parents could cope with real kids' and Nathan seemed particularly keen to do so. I think he did not like the mother and wanted to know why the dad always sat there looking like a fish out of water.

Jo recommended that the mother should go off and 'do her own university course if she is so darn keen on doctorates. Sam suggested packing and taking his chemistry lab and Annie said they should be made to watch 'Disney movies for hours on end. *Annie's idea of a serious punishment*

 

The only parents I liked were Dantes, they did not care about how high a score he got in his IQ test, all they cared about was Dante being happy. That is really the bottom line. Many gifted children get ground down by unreasonable parental and teacher expectations and they do munch huge amounts of parental time and energy, I can see why most of the parents went with the flow of the area of ability rather than slow things down and set a gentler pace. Jo would not talk to me for weeks when I refussed to allow her to sit for the local nationally rated grammer and sent her to the local tech and music college school instead. She now admits she has more time for fun than her friends who have more homework.

 

Will my kids keep this level up as they move through the adolesence, who knows? They may end up being happy train drivers who like to spend their evenings on logic puzzles.

 

Parenting gifted kids is hard work. Parenting kids who are gifted and who also have a disability can be a surreal nightmare. Ha if they need a contrast they could have filmed my lot in action....except for Sams ability to strip an expensive TV camera down to its many pieces in a few minutes and Nathans desire to control all the editing as he loves photography and film and Annie who spends all her time hiding in her Scary Mary hoody and Jo and her friends endlessly debating philosphy whilst creating their own music......

 

I have just remembered why I go out to work. I NEED the R&R.