Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Would You Switch a Happy Child?

LOL! This is one reason why I'm a big fan of the "share and shrug" method of discussion about all of this education business. In other words, saying "Here's what worked for us, here's what failed miserably for us; now, do whatever you want with that info--and doing nothing whatsoever with it is perfectly fine."

I simply cannot get all worked up about what you (in the generic sense) choose to do to educate your child, since I know neither your child nor your situation in any real sense. You're the expert, and if you think it's working, and you are a thinking person who is aware of your options, then it IS working!

(BTW, the "aware of your options" part is the one place where I suppose I might seem to be evangelical. I do hate to see people reject home schooling out of some mistaken sense of what it is. I try to clear up misconceptions so people can make educated choices, free of misleading myths. No more, no less.)

Your decision has no bearing whatsoever on my choices, so I have no vested interest in what you decide to do to educate your child. Even if every single HG+ child in the country were HSd, we'd still be in the minority, so there's no reason for me to campaign to "convert" you. Personally, I want every HG+ kid--heck, I want every non-HG+ kid, too!--to be educated in a way that works for them. That's my personal stake in the situation, and nothing more.

Don't second-guess yourself, acs! If you are watching carefully (as I know you are!) and it seems to be going well for your child, then it is. Period.

(And here's where the shrug comes in...)

<shrug> You're the expert on your child and your school and your situation. There is no one right way. I always say, I'm not dealing in theory, where I commit to "one right way!" no matter what; I'm dealing in practice! Reality! The ever-changing conditions of trying to guide an HG+ child through a world not made for him. "One right way" isn't going to cut it even for just one child, let alone for all of them!

If it works for your family, then it works, whatever "it" is! So I say that for you, acs, "Yay! Rah! Public school!" More power to you!

And that's why I (generally) don't feel defensive, and I hope you won't either. Share and shrug!

Dottie,

You know, I�m really not twisting your arm trying to get you to homeschool! It would, indeed, be awfully weird if you suddenly changed all the plans you�ve worked out over the years for your kids� education just because of the opinions expressed on this board by some guy you don�t even know!

As you say,
>Honestly, if we were starting over from scratch, I might more strongly consider home schooling. But given that mine are now in 8th/5th/5th, with "smooth sailing" for the most part, I think it's a moot point for us.

Of course.

My post to which you replied was not directed to you but to Jamie � Jamie seemed to be asking for our no-holds-barred opinions and experiences and so I presented mine. It was not an attack on you. Of course, it�s great that you chose to comment on my post � I�d guess that this is the kind of discussion Jamie hoped to hear.

Before I had posted, acs had posted a message relating some negative homeschooling experiences she had observed. Again, she was responding honestly to Jamie � no one thinks acs was trying to convince Kriston, me, etc. to not homeschool.

I hope that is clear to everyone.

On the substance of the matter, I think you and I do have slightly different values we are bringing to the whole issue. You wrote earlier in the thread:

>I think you also need to consider your own goals for schooling. Is it to nurture your children to their absolute fullest potential? Then public school is probably not the best choice for any child. But if your goal is a more well-rounded approach that exposes them in areas you might not pursue at home, accepting limitations in other areas, perhaps school is the best.
>I have times where this thought gives me great pause. I know I can take my children further in the key academic subjects, but I can't give them other things they find at school.

Yeah. Clearly, no one here thinks that having friends does not matter at all, and no one thinks that academics are irrelevant either. But we all are going to give slightly different weights to those considerations.

In response to my post, you wrote:
>It does seem to boil down to the right friends/peers in many situations, and my girls at least seem off to a great start.

I think I see that as less of an issue than you do. Clearly, having horrible experiences with peers is a bad thing. But academic/intellectual issues mattered much more to me as a kid than social issues, and also matter more to me vis a vis my own kids. I�m not willing to trade off much academic quality for positive social benefits.

I taught myself Einstein�s special theory of relativity in seventh grade. To me, any adequate school has to offer relativity to seventh graders (not that everyone would choose to learn it then). I think kids can start learning calculus by sixth grade (not mastering it, but then I�ve never known anyone who had mastered calculus after their first course at any age), so my idea of an adequate school includes making that possible for its students. I have similar expectations in history, economics (I studied Keynes� �General Theory� in high school in detail and figured out what the errors were � he messed up in his use of units), etc. (Incidentally, I am not at all sure I was �gifted�: I was just really curious about a lot of stuff and did not see any reason I couldn�t learn about it.)

Obviously, there are not many schools that meet my idea of an adequate school (and I do understand why it is difficult for them to do so)! So, it makes sense that we are homeschooling.

I suspect that you, and probably most people on this board, have somewhat less demanding concepts of what counts as an adequate school than I do.

I suspect that I may also have a different conception than many people of what social experiences count as �positive�: I think that �socialization,� even with good peers, tends to boil down to learning to be like other people (which of course is one of the reasons why it is better to have �good� peers than �bad� peers). I think that is a bad thing. I want my kids to be honest, courteous, kind, etc., but I would rather they be a bit blind to all of those little social cues and pressures that cause most people to fall in line with the �group,� whether what the group is doing is good or not.

I think that for people who share my values, homeschooling probably is the wisest choice to make. But no one has identical values to another person, and everyone has to decide for himself or herself what is best based on his or her own values. I�m really not trying to convince everyone to homeschool.

All the best,

Dave

acs,

You wrote:
>In the country at large, homeschoolers are definitely the minority, often mocked or mistreated because of their decision. As a result, a little defensiveness makes sense�

I�m not sure that most homeschoolers are very defensive about homeschooling, except in the limited sense of wanting to protect their legal rights. E.g., out here in California, a lot of us are rather concerned about the recent state appellate court decision against homeschooling (although it does not affect my kids since they are enrolled in a public charter school, and we do expect the decision to be overturned on appeal to higher courts anyway).

And, in fact, when I have talked both with acquaintances and with random strangers about our homeschooling over the last four years, I�ve gotten an overwhelmingly positive response. I think the reason for this is all the news stories about how US public schools stack up poorly against schools in many other countries, and also the obvious behavioral and social problems in many US public schools. Perhaps, evangelical homeschoolers who announce that they are homeschooling to protect their kids from Satanic influences (such as evolution!) get a less sympathetic response than I�ve gotten, but we are homeschooling for primarily academic reasons (I�d like my kids to understand evolution better than public school kids do).

The main �defensiveness� I�ve seen among homeschoolers is among the �unschoolers,� and those who lean in that direction, who are defensive about their kids� being behind in grade level even in the three Rs (not all are, of course, but there are some who are). In fact, I stumbled on this site because I was getting tired of keeping quiet about the fact that my kids were way beyond grade level in academic subjects � it makes it hard to share information on books and resources when it is considered ill form to mention that your kids are academically advanced.

I was actually rather startled to see the interest in homeschooling here. My guess is that homeschooling seems more prominent in the �gifted community� than it really is, simply because of the novelty factor: after all, homeschooling is �news� but sending kids to the public schools is not news. I wonder if anyone really knows how widespread homeschooling is in the �gifted community�?

You wrote:
>I, who have a kid in a regular public school placed in his age-appropriate grade, start to feel like I don't quite belong here (maybe my kid isn't gifted? maybe I'm a bad parent? maybe they are all laughing at me). The same kinds of insecurity and defensiveness start to grow. And I start of feel a little evangelical about regular school.

Well, for my part, I thought your description of some bad homeschooling experiences that you knew of was quite appropriate: that�s the sort of information Jamie was asking for. As Kriston has said, homeschooling is not a goal in and of itself. The purpose is to give children the fullest opportunity to develop their potential (hopefully, in a way that does not make them miserable).

For some of us, homeschooling seems to be a good way to achieve that goal. But homeschooling is not a magic bullet. It�s certainly possible to do it badly � personally, I�m doubtful about how the unschoolers are doing it (but it�s their families, not mine � in a free country, we accept that other people will make decisions we disagree with). Even those of us who try hard to do a good job homeschooling are certainly not perfect � we just try our best.

Anyway, I agree with Kriston: the goal is to figure out how bright kids can receive better educations than they are generally now receiving. To the degree any of us can share information about methods, resources, ways of thinking that can help reach that goal, we�re all better off.

Incidentally, most of my children�s friends out there in the real world actually attend public schools � the local home school group is just way too �unschoolish� for us. We did just find out last week that one of the other kids in their dance class was also homeschooled, but, by and large, it seems to me just as foolish to limit our interactions to others who are pursuing the same educational method as we are as it would be to limit our interactions to people who held the same political or religious opinions or had identical tastes in art and music that we have. Aside from the fact that it is boring to interact with people exactly like yourself, I�m not sure where I could find people exactly like myself � it would limit human interaction quite considerably.

It�s probably unavoidable that we homeschoolers sound a bit enthusiastic since we are working hard at something that we think is working out pretty well; and I do think we owe it to people like Jamie to share our positive experiences and our reservations about the public schools, just as you owe it to Jamie and everyone else to share your cautionary tales about homeschooling and how you have worked things out for your kids within the public schools.

But it would certainly be a shame if you really felt you did not belong here! (And, yeah, I do know the universal parental anxiety of �OMG! Am I doing the best thing for my child?� I fear that is part of being a parent for all of us.)

All the best,

Dave

Dave,

One alternative that is not discussed much here is independent schools for the highly gifted. My dd7 is currently attending one and she is extremely happy. She is being challenged academically (advanced 2 years in math from 2nd to 4th and working on middle school level problem solving on the side with the help of a mentor in the school). The math team has achieved gold level nationally (only three schools in the country received this honor). The school has an excellent drama, music and art program.

I hate to admit it, but I don't consider myself to be the best educational option for my dd. I can and I am a facilitator in my daughter's education. I drive an hour to school each way because I feel this to be the best match for my dd at the present time. I provide my dd with all the books she needs/wants. I take her to the museum and encourage her when she wants to research a topic in more depth. When I see an area that I feel she needs to study more, I sign her up for additional lessons. I also provide a respite by being only mom and not her teacher as well (at least not full time). I would imagine it would be very difficult to separate the two (mother and teacher) if I were to HS.

My point with all this rambling is that there is no one option that works for every child. My daughter is thriving in her current placement, but there have been children before whose needs could not be met at this school.

HS may be great, but I don't feel it would be the best choice for us. Public school is working for some children, it didn't work for us. Private schools for the highly gifted are rare and expensive and not particularly available for all the children who need them.

One thing is clear. All the parents in this group care deeply for their children. That alone makes them very fortunate. Our approaches may differ, but our goals are the same. To get the best education for our children and help them soar.

Bianca, what a nice post. And now I know why you're up so early in the morning!

Also, I never thought HS was an option for us until I came to this board. Now, I realize that our local private schools will not work for DS, and our choice as to whether to continue in public school (which means extra work after school) or to HS depends upon how he is doing. For now, we're in a holding pattern. The toughest thing for us is the 2E - the local private schools don't want the 2nd E (whatever anyone's 2nd E is, why admit a child who requires more work), and the public school can't address the other E. All of a sudden though, he seems happy with the other kids in school, so we'll see how it goes. Of course, this is a week of half days for conferences with vacation starting Friday, so it's really a week of fun and games. So for us, at the moment, the answer is we won't switch a happy child. If he becomes unhappy again, however, we know just what to do. It's so nice to know there are options.

Thanks so much to everyone for your replies! This seems to be a very diverse and dedicated group and I have enjoyed reading all the different perspectives! I don't have much time now but wanted to post and let you all know I have been reading and will try to put together a lengthier response later. Thanks again!

I have some stuff to say about this, but I fear we're in danger of commandeering Jamie's thread.

I'm going to go start a new thread on the topic of "Defensive Homeschoolers?" Please follow me if you're interested...

Thanks!

K-

Jamie, what would you do if there was a magnet gifted school your children could attend next year? Would you enroll them even though they are happy in their current school right now? Would you put them to a different school because you believe that they would learn much more there than in their current school? Would you do it even if it meant leaving behind all their friends? Would it all seem worth it even if they are happy right now?

Now is hs that scenario far away from a gifted magnet school? On the educational level probably not, hs may actually work better since most gt schools are not perfect fit for HG+. Of course the social dynamics of hs would be completely different than going to school and you would be in a position of parent & a teacher. I think Bianca is right on that one, it's hard to be a Mom when you are a teacher as well.

I don't think a kid needs to be unhappy before you switch to hs. Hs is just a different educational choice. It may be right for you and your child and it may not. I think you should discuss it with your spouse and hint a little bit to your daughters and see what they think.

DS5 is not unhappy at his school, but going to the junior class would mean completely new kids, new teachers, new building and also full time schedule which he is strongly opposed to. Homeschooling seems like better educational choice for him. If it doesn't work he can always go back.

Dave, talking about hs groups. Have you checked
http://giftedhomeschoolers.org/giftedresourceselsewhere.html

California seems to be a great place for HS gt kids. I went to see our local school group and I must say there are lots of unschoolers too. One of the comments that sticked with me was "Then my son decided to go to high school and had to work really hard with a tutor for a year because he hadn't done any real academics before." Oh my.

If anybody has any idea how to find out if your hs group has gifted children, let me know. I don't think it's a question I can really ask

My stealthy way has been to be part of a GT group and be part of a HS group, and then I note which of the kids I see both places.

It's the only way that's worked for me!

Dottie,

In all honesty, I should say that I think you and I have *slightly* different values and attitutdes -- if we sat down and had a long talk on the subject, I think we would find that are views are pretty close together. I may have made it sound as if you and I are on different sides of the moon, and surely that is not the case!

Our main difference, as Kriston has suggested, is simply that you have, over the years worked out a situation for your kids in the public schools that you�re happy with and that I have worked out a homeschooling situation with our kids that we�re happy with.

Incidentally, there are quite a few homeschoolers (no one here, I think!) who consider me a �traitor� to homeschooling because we are signed up with a public charter school. Perhaps. (I actually sort of see their point, in fact.) But the well-being of our kids takes priority over �loyalty� to the �homeschooling movement.�

I think everyone here is really on the same side.

All the best,

Dave