We feel like we're spinning our wheels in terms of DD8 and her education. Because of job changes, we have moved a lot during her life, so she is now in her 3rd school in 3 yrs. Each time we were hopeful that we would be able to find someplace that would be able to keep up with her, or at least work with us to try. This year (gr 3) we got her into a gifted and talented magnet program. We were pretty excited at first, and as I mentioned in another post, that quickly turned to frustration with her teacher not seeing her as a kid who could do more than was being asked of her. (Think of the completely compliant and perfectionist child - does exactly what is asked of her perfectly, therefore "must be working hard to do so well, while not being overwhelmed" - their quote
) The reality is that DD is bored to tears some days, and her teacher just doesn't get it.
So, DH and I have been trying to figure out what to do. DD is socially happy at school and got very anxious and nervous at the thought of yet another school change for next year. She would like to skip another grade and go directly into 5th grade next year so that "maybe I can actually learn some new stuff at school" (her words). The problem we see with that is that while there could be more things in gr 5 that she doesn't know already, the pace at which she would pick it up is still going to be so fast that there is still a real possibility that she will be bored there too.
I know that homeschooling will be a suggestion by many of you as a possible way out. We have been discussing it, and may go that way, but need to figure out some logistics to include DD3 in the mix as well. (Not to mention convince DH that he would do a wonderful job at it and have fun doing it too.
)
I just feel like we have spent the last 3 years going in circles trying to get an appropriate placement for DD and am feeling pretty depressed about our inability to be successful. Not to mention the fact that the idea of starting this battle all over again when DD3 gets into school is another dark cloud looming in the future.
All we want is for her to have a reasonable amount of growth in an academic year. The problem is that the amount of growth that the school is looking for is based on a regular 3rd grader, not on an HG+ one who could really learn 2-3 school years' worth of knowledge in one if given the opportunity.
I know we are not the only ones with this problem, and will unfortunately not be the last, so please, any magic bullets, or helpful phrases we can use when we approach the school again about needs not being met would be great. (Or any really yummy brownie recipes to help with the blues could be helpful too
