Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy How to advocate for child who tries to blend in?

I agree with earlier replies that it is more difficult to advocate for a child who is trying to blend in. My eldest was such an example and I didn’t have much success. In the end she had to work quite hard in the final year of school to cover the entire curriculum because she had always been held back by the rest of the year (we are at our local high school though, by choice, which serves an ‘average’ population and didn’t have other particularly high achieving students). My son started at that high school the year after she finished and he already had several maths comp prizes (with a few perfect scores), so they were keen to accelerate him. In primary school, he did the same worksheets as the others, but gave more advanced answers. For example, in Grade 2, he answered the multiplication worksheets using Roman numerals, in binary format and then in other base numerals. Although the teachers didn’t mark his work, they were happy to give him free rein.

The take home message for me is that teachers respond better when they are shown, not told, that a student is working beyond (and therefore that acceleration is appropriate). I’ve found that revision text books are really useful. I have given my younger kids revision textbooks for up to several grades above their enrolled year. They can usually master a topic in one or two sittings whereas going through the tedious exercises of a standard textbook could take weeks at school. In this way, it has become obvious that they have mastered topics and are ahead. I leave it up to the teachers to decide what to do - I’ve also advised my kids that if they already know the material being taught in class, they can do deeper/ broader research (they bring laptops to school and have access to the internet).