Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy My gifted Child and the School System

I do not have his achieve scores in front of me for the past few years. They have gone down over the last two years though. When he was tested in Kindergarten and 1st grade he was reading near a 6th and 7th grade reading level. This has always been the case but it seems it sort of just got stuck in one place after a couple years. School has yet to push his reading ability, sad really.

I talked with him a bit about the past year. He says that he lost the drive to learn and achieve mainly due to pressure at school. He has had some terrible teachers. They simply did not know how to handle him. He has a math teacher now that tries to fight with him on nearly a daily basis. This is not nearly as bad as the 2nd grade Montessori teacher that simply hated him due to his questioning nature. She was an engineer by training and a GT grad, she was lost with him. We had him switched to a different room. Problem went away. He does take things very personal.
His lone bright spot is his language teacher. She is the Knowledge Bowl coach. He is going and is excited about that.

As for the meds, he simply wants to stay off it and has worked very hard to make it work. He does not get into typical troubles and has worked so hard "not need it" as he put it. HE is also a gifted athlete. He seems to be very aware of what he puts in his body. While we have talked many times about the possible need for it. He has over come so much I simply wont ask him to take something just to improve a test score or make him more in line with a teachers standards.

The VSL i tend to agree with. He has no concept of time. He learns in chunks. We often comment he cant see the trees for the forest. It is very true with him. He sees all big picture.

Side note to all that: his brother is also gifted and very detail oriented. Heaven help us all should they ever start working together.

Added: he has been in Gifted since Kindergarten. Teacher stated she had nothing to teach him that year but really loved his voices when he read to class. This was on day 1.