I feel like we are failing DD9! I have a nagging gut feeling that we aren't doing enough or maybe we are not doing the right things for her. She is still getting into trouble in class (just not as much as she was 2 years ago), she is extremely apathetic to school in general and as I've mentioned in other posts it seems she has lost her spark for learning, she quite often will just slop something down on a worksheet as quickly as possible in order to be done with her work, she never comes home excited about what she did/learned in school, and now she has told us all her classmates "hate" her. She couldn't tell us why they would feel this way just that she knows they do. In our home, "hate" is a very strong word, and our girls know we don't use it, so for her to use this particular word is very disconcerting.
We have had concerns in the past about DD's social skills, but teachers, daycare, etc. have always told us she plays just fine with others and she has friends. If a kid is bothering DD she will sometimes walk straight up to them and growl or bark at them which is sort of funny to witness, but also probably not helping DD out in the eyes of the other kids. It seems as though nothing that other kids say or do really bothers her, but now that she claims everyone "hates" her maybe she really is affected more than we realize.
We considered counseling for DD, but I contacted the local mental health centers we have and absolutely NO ONE provides services for gifted children, and they didn't know of anyone that does. Of course they were more than willing to set us up with a counselor, but if the counselor doesn't really understand gifted kids will it do DD any good?
DD went through her testing at the age of 7 and she was given what was called a psychoeducational assessment where she was tested using the KABC-II and Kaufman achievement tests. We also provided the testers with the (worthless IMO) ADD/ADHD scales that DD's teachers had completed that all said she was probably ADD/ADHD. She completed the testing in 1 setting since we had driven from several hours away, but I think normally it would have been at least 2 sessions of testing. I wish we had known about the different tests at that time because we may have asked about using the WISC-IV since that seems to be the most popular test. At the time we weren't testing for IQ - we just wanted to rule out any disorders that the school was throwing out to us. I've read some posts on here about neuropsych testing or what seems to be more complete testing, so I wonder if there is some further testing we should do. Would any different test give us different, more detailed information?
DD gets a gifted pull out 2 times a week for about 1 hour each time. She doesn't get any differentiation or acceleration in the regular classroom other than some higher level spelling words (which we asked for, but isn't in the GIEP) when the teacher remembers to give them to her (I know the teacher is busy and this time of the year is crazy, so I get that she can't always remember).
I think we probably need to reconvene the GIEP team and talk about a plan for next year (DD's gifted teacher agrees). I'm concerned about next year because DD will move to a different part of the building and will have at least 2 teachers that have already proven they don't understand DD and have no desire to try to understand DD. When we have the GIEP meeting I plan to go over the information we received from NUMATS after DD took the Explore test. I hope the school will be willing to make some changes based on the recommendations from NUMATS.
What are your thoughts? Should we do any further testing with DD or do you think this is just a matter of a poor fit since she has no accommodations in the classroom? Would counseling help if the counselor has absolutely no experience with gifted kids? What are we missing?
