Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Wrong personality?

Don't let these people manipulate you into blaming yourself.

... (because advocating never ends), we've gotten a good deal more success by cutting through all of the fluffy nonsense and focusing the dialog on their core mission: teaching. They love to talk about the whole child, and the various other domains, like social and emotional, and what they're doing about all that. We fell into that trap originally, mainly because it was in the social and emotional domains that they were doing her so much harm, so we thought that was a good basis for discussion. I finally came to realize that an appropriate placement with peers that addresses her intellectual needs solves all the other problems in the other domains, so I need to focus entirely on that. Now, I boil it down to one simple statement: "My DD needs to be learning," and I return to that theme whenever the conversation starts wandering down the wrong path. If they try to interject about "the whole child," I remind them that we're the parents, worrying about that is our job, and we are on it.