This weekend Ireland's first-ever conference on children with exceptional ability will be held, with the President, Mary McAleese, officiating.

Although according to the Irish Association of Gifted Children (IAGC) there are some 20,000 children of exceptional ability in the State, there is very little understanding of their needs. Visions of precocious, wealthy kids tend to spring to mind; in fact, exceptionally able children come from all walks of life, and quite frequently have very little self-confidence. So says Annemarie Hogan, chairperson of the IAGC. "The school curriculum caters for children of average ability, with some provision made for children who need remedial work, but to date there has been no acknowledgement in the education system of the needs of very bright children. "As a result, gifted children can become disruptive at school. Others withdraw and more or less opt out of the system from quite a young age. One way or another, an awful lot of exceptionally able children end up doing quite poorly at school."

However, attitudes to children of exceptional ability have begun to change. Under the Education Bill, all schools must have a "whole school" policy on gifted children.

"The insertion in the Education Bill is quite a momentous step," Hogan says. "But it is going to be very tricky for most schools to know how to approach the issue because teachers haven't the training. If children are more than able for the curriculum, providing extra stimulation has been seen as the parents' role."

Monica Byrne has a 12-year-old son who is exceptionally able. "I didn't really think about how unusual he was at first - you're busy with all the kids and you just don't think about it," she says. "But by the time he was three he could add and subtract. I decided not to teach him to read because I thought when he went to school he wouldn't fit in. But by the third week he was reading so well, he'd read the newspapers and encyclopedias!

"I have been lucky with teachers - they have gone out of their way to facilitate him. They scheduled maths classes in the school so that he could go up a few years when maths was on, for example. "He has found it difficult at times. It's great if they are learning something new, but once there is any repetition he gets bored. He learns very quickly and he doesn't need to do things over and over." Typically, her son is reluctant to do very well at school for fear of being rejected by his peers. "He does well at school, but he doesn't want to be top of the class - he's afraid of being called a nerd," Byrne says. "He is competitive, he wants to win, but he doesn't want to appear to be a `brain box'. "He does enough to achieve what he wants - and that's fine by me. It doesn't matter to me how well he does academically. I'm more concerned that he's happy and he has friends."

However, many children who are exceptionally able find it very difficult to make friends. Mary Ferguson has two gifted children, Gary (13) and Jane (10). "I find it hard to get my son involved in anything outside school," she says.

"To feed his desire for knowledge, he tends to become obsessively involved in a subject for about three months. He devours information about the subject and becomes a complete expert. Then he drops that and moves on to the next thing. "Although my daughter does get involved now, I feel that when she was younger she suffered from depression. She found it hard to play with other children, and she would spend an awful lot of time alone drawing, writing poems and playing imaginary games with her dolls on her own. "They are both very intense. They take everything very seriously and find it hard to socialise.

"They seem to have difficulty trusting other children, perhaps they feel they will be rejected if the others notice they are different. These days I try to inject a bit of humour into things with them, I try to help them take things a bit less seriously." While having an incredibly intelligent child may seem like a wonderful idea, in fact parents often find it very hard. "I can't help feeling like I'm failing them all the time by not providing them with enough of a challenge," Ferguson says.

"It has been a terrible burden not being able to discuss it - people don't really understand. It is becoming more acceptable to talk about it, but mostly it is seen as boasting."

According to Hogan, parents contact the Irish Association for Gifted Children for support and to share their experiences. "There is very little information out there for parents of gifted children, and it can be difficult to know how to cope. Parents of gifted children can find themselves embroiled in complex arguments with three-year-olds over whether or not they should be wearing their jumper! "It is important to remember that while they may be very bright, they are still children. They may be highly articulate, but they aren't necessarily very mature. They need boundaries, and they need to have fun. "Often because they are bright they have a great sense of humour and they are a whole lot of fun themselves.

"In general, we need a far more sophisticated awareness of what is meant by exceptionally able children. Most importantly, they should not be singled out as odd, but as children who have certain needs we have to meet."

The two mothers interviewed for this article did not wish their children to be identified, so names have been changed.