Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy DD8 wants out of school. HELP!

Okay, this is my first posting so bare with me.

My DD8, has had a full WISC IV with all the ability tests. Have those reports but she sat the COGAT earlier this year. We do not have those reports yet.

She absolutly loved school until now. I am not sure what has happened. She has a perfectionist attitude with everything she does. Everything she tries she does very well. But my DD has no friends at school, she sits alone and reads durring lunch. She thought she found a friend at the beginning of this year but that just fizzled out.

Anyway, she came to me about 2 weeks ago asking if there was any way we could find her a program where she could just get through school so she could get into college. She said she could get through that and get on with "being with her family".

I shrugged it off for a few days and then she asked about doing extra work to help her advance. So with that I figured she is serious about this so I started looking into it. I found EPGY so I let her test on their site. She did extreamly well 87th percentile.

That was a week ago and I have promised her we would let her take math with EPGY. But tonight she came to me and told me that there are 101 days left of school on Monday, then she told my how many days till spring break, then how many days till summer break. Pretty soon she was in tears.

When I ask her what is wrong, she said "Nothing" or "I'm fine", (she always does that) and was very hesitant in telling me that she just doesn't want to go to school anymore.

I am not sure if I should advacate to skip her ahead, because I really don't know what all is involved and I don't have a cogat, and I am not sure that is the real problem. She always loved school in the past. But now she would rather get a shot than go there. She swears its not anyone mistreating her, she tells me that the kids are nice enough, but she absolutly hates it.

What should I do? I feel that if I don't do something soon, we will both end up regretting it. HELP!

Any advice would be welcomed!

-Albionkids

What were the WISC results?

Do you want all of it? Just kidding. Well she her over-all IQ is 120. It was explained to me that her focus seemed poor during the test. Which showed in her processing speed which was 42th percentile. But verbal comprehension was 86th percentile, her perceptual reading was 75th percentile, her working memory was 94th percentile and on the WJ-III as follows:

Letter Word Identification 89th percentile = GE 5.4
Calculation >99th percentile = GE 5.1
Spelling 64th percentile = 3.7
Academic 91st percentile = 4.8

Really, we did want all of it - subtest scores included.

Sorry Aculady... Beckee asked for the results. I'm sorry if I went into to much detail. I am just looking for some help and I am trying to offer as much as I can to get that help. Sorry again.

I think you misunderstood aculady. She wants to see the full breakdown of scores, all the subtests for each of the aggregate indexes (VC, PR, PS and WM) you provided. For some kids the indexes can average wide variations.

Translating %iles to scales scores, for a start.

WISC IV

VCI: 116
PRI: 110
WMI: 123
PSI: 97

Oh okay sorry.
VC 120
Pr 110
WM 123
PS 97

Hope this helps. I am very new to all this (IQ tests and such). I am putting in the leg work but I am still in a fog w/most of this.

Shoot. I mean VC 116.

And my non score related question: what does she say when asked what she hates about school? Specifically?

Because despite her claims that nobody is bothering her... This seems like a very sudden change. And there must have been a trigger somewhere (even if only a trigger that revealed an established malaise).

Ok, we cross posted. What aculady wants are the scores for the subtexts. Things with names like Block Design, Vocabulary, Coding...

Yes, this! Please, all the detail you have, so we can look at the whole picture and see what is behind the index scores. For example, a child who got two 14s and a 15 on the verbal subtests might have a very different experience of being in school and in life than a child who scored two 18s and a 7 on the same subtests, even though they would both have the same VC index score.

Well she tells me that she is bored, she says that she falls to sleep in class. I asked her if it is happening in the morning before lunch or after. She tells me that it happens both before and after. I know she is getting ample sleep. So I find it odd that she would just fall out at school like that. Which makes me feel that there is truth to her statement.

She has also mentioned that the other girls in class want to talk about "dumb kiddy" stuff. She doesn't seem to know how to associate with them. She has older cousins and friends thereof which she does just fine with. She also attends a theater group that has ages 8-18 in it. She loves that. The older kids are really receptive to her, and she them.

Other than that. Nothing. She also sees a therapist once a month, we just met with her last week. Her report to me was that my DD is doing great. She is much more focused then when they first met. She told me that she seems happier. She then asked me if I ever thought about asking the school to advance her in math. (Which makes me wonder now if that was brought about by my DD asking me for more work).

Some of us are assessment geeks. We want to see the subtest scores before we know whether we can trust the FSIQ. Some school psychs don't use the FSIQ as a summary of the student's cognitive ability if there is a big disparity among the subtests. You're lucky we didn't ask for confidence intervals! I think you may also be mixing in the scores of an academic assessment with the WISC there.

The focus and processing speed may improve as she gets older. Does she often have trouble with focus? You wouldn't necessarily see that kind of frustration with the slow pace of school with an IQ of 120. Personality would play a role, though, in her expressing this to you. I'm going to go ahead and predict that she is a "Feeling-Perceiver" on the Myers-Briggs.
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From http://www.educationaloptions.com/resources/resources_rufs_tips.php

"If they are Feelers (FP), they will feel morally violated when asked to do what they sense is wrong, unnecessary, or demeaning for them. When they are threatened with punishment or bad grades, for example, it not only doesn�t work, it builds resentment and anger in the FP student. One way I suggest for parents to know if their gifted child is an FP is to ask them if these words have ever come out of their mouths: �In the amount of time you�ve argued with me, you could have finished this.� One last word on Perceiver children: the gifted children who are brought to specialists such as me are a parent-selected skewed sample. Although estimates of the percent of the US population who are Perceivers is 48%, a consistent 92% of the children who are brought to me for help are P-Perceivers."
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A couple of possibilities are that this testing is not very accurate for some reason, and that there's a lot more to the story than she is telling you. That the testing isn't terribly accurate is a distinct possibility given her age and state of mind. The WISC report is one piece of data, one snapshot from one moment in time. It should be considered in the context of everything that you know about your child.

You might look for the book "5 Levels of Gifted" by Deborah Ruf. There are a bunch of milestones in that book, and quite a bit of discussion of the different degrees of educational needs of gifted students.

Okay subtests:
BD 10
Sim 14
DS 14
PC 14
Coding 9
Vocab 13
L-Numb Seq 14
MR 11
comp 12
Symb Search 10

Hope this helps!

As far as her falling asleep in class, I wonder if she's been up late reading secretly. Boredom rarely makes students fall asleep unless there are other issues going on. When they do fall asleep, you often find that they've been playing video games until 4 AM, or the TV is in the bedroom, and their family has been watching it late, or there's some kind of health issue going on.

Do you have Verbal Comprehension (VCI), Perceptual Reasoning (PRI), Working Memory (WMI), and Processing Speed (PSI)?

Reading has happened before. We have had those conversations before. But I have been checking on her every night. She is gone about 20 minutes after bed time. So I don't think she is doing that at bed time. She reads for about an hour before she heads off to bed, she doesn't like video games, no interest in them at all. I bought a Wii for her and her brother. If it wasnt for him it would sit and collects dust. She doesn't watch TV in bed because she doesn't have TV in her room. But even when she is in the livingroom, she is eyebrows deep in a book.

Her lowest subtest scores are the ones that have a significant motor component: Block Design, Coding, and Symbol Search. Motor output (the physical act of writing) might be something of a bottleneck causing some frustration if her hands can't keep up with her head. Her working memory is excellent, and this could easily lead to boredom or frustration with things like being asked to show her work on math that is too easy.

I second checking to make sure she isn't reading in the bathroom or by the light coming under the bedroom door...I was always bored in school, but the only times I actually fell asleep in class came after nights when I had stayed up reading or when I was actually experiencing an illness or auto-immune flare.

Again this morning, the same thing again, she said "I can't wait to get this day over with". I think I need to speak to the teacher and the guidance counselor. I believe there is something she isn�t telling me. You all are right about the abrupt change. It has been over the last several weeks. She has done a complete 180. We have always been told, by every teacher she has had since Kindergarten that she should be moved forward/advanced. She used to bound out of bed and be around in a matter of minutes. She would come home and do her homework at the table. But this year, she has most of her homework done by the time she gets home from school. She does the final touches without ever having to be told. I have to force her to let me see it. It is always correct. I asked her why she doesn�t just bring it to me instead of me having to go look. She tells me that she knows what she is doing and feels that she doesn�t need help so what is the purpose in having me look at it.

But I do want to say, I have already benefited from being here. You all are very knowledgeable about this stuff. I really am glad I found this page. I really have no experience with all this stuff. I have been to the library looking for help but honestly I do 100x better with speaking with people, and benefiting from the experience of others. Thank you guys for all your helpful thoughts and words!

Is it possible that this sudden change in attitude toward school is not related to academics at all but to something that has started happening recently socially that she is uncomfortable telling you directly? Children often use very indirect ways of indicating something is wrong. Could other kids have started ganging up on her? Could abuse be occurring by a teacher or another classmate? Could bullying be occurring? All of these things can lead to shame in the victim, and discomfort directly telling others what's going on.

She's expressed the desire to advance so she is no longer in her current school situation. What happens if you suggest moving her to a different school? If she is equally morose about that idea, then perhaps it's nothing related specifically to people at this school. But if she's interested in discussing a different school, maybe something is going on at her current school that she hasn't fully revealed to you. Best of luck working with your DD to get her into a happier place.

Here's what I think, the CoGAT is usually less reliable than the WISC, but in this case I'm suspicious that the WISC is an underestimate of her abilities, based on

I'm not sure exactly what this last quote refers to - is it 'she doesn't need to be held back' or 'she needs something more advanced than other kids her age.'

I agree that the first step is to set up a meeting with the teacher and listen to what the teacher is seeing. I think it's the role of the parents at this age to bring reports of the child's emotional state to the school. I think that the teacher will be concerned. The teacher may have a much different story, and it will be hard to know what is going on, but I would suggest that you set up a time to observe the classroom for yourself and see if the other girls are actually functioning on such a wildly different level or if your daughter needs some help with social skills. I would also try and observe a classroom one and two grades up so you could get an idea of what sorts of thinking level the older kids have.

If you are interested in evaluating if a grade skip might help, then I would recommend you read the 'Iowa Acceleration Scale Manual.'
see
http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/iowa_accel_scale.htm

How long ago was the WISC done? Was it done for a particular reason? It seems to me that something isn't going well for your daughter, but it's hard to know at this point if the problem is giftedness or something else. A Developmental Pediatrician might be the sort of specialist who might be able to help.

I'm picking up a hint of dis-satisfation about the one to one therapist - it's a little odd that she things things are so much better and your DD still doesn't have anyone to eat lunch with. Of course, I don't know how things were before....

Love and More Love,
Grinity

I try never to base placement decisions solely on IQ scores b/c there are kids with sky high scores who don't need significant advancement and kids with more mildly gifted scores who do well with advancement. That said, unless the IQ scores you have are quite off, I would expect that she'd be a very good student (as she appears to be), but not so far out of the norm that she needs to skip grades, for instance.

She should fit in and do very well in accelerated/GT classes and have peers there. Her achievement scores from the WJ you posted seem in line with that. She's in 3rd grade? For a 3rd grader, she should be a top student but one who can be accommodated within the classroom again, unless, the scores don't line up with the kid well or her school tends toward lower performing kids.

What I'd look for in scoring, and what I suspect others were wanting to know when asking for all of the subtest scores, is whether the pattern shows major scatter. Major scatter tends toward making the composite numbers less reliable. Scores in the 13-14 range are comfortably gifted and she does have some definite low spots related to speed/motor skills, as someone else mentioned. The difference btwn a 10 and a 14, though, isn't as huge as a kid who, for instance, has scores that go from 7 to 18. I wouldn't be inclined to distrust the overall score you got as a result. B/c her WMI was as high as it was, the GAI probably isn't going to be wildly different from the FSIQ either so it won't give you much more info on ability.

Does she seem truly bored with the material and tremendously more advanced than the other kids in the classroom? Can you go in and observe or volunteer to get a feel for what the rest of the class is capable of doing? If it is a misfit btwn her and the rest of the class, is there another classroom she could move to that might have a better peer group?

Due to the sudden nature of her complaints, I'd also wonder like Coll whether there is something else going on at school that isn't totally related to a need for academic acceleration.

Is this the first year where she has not had anyone to eat lunch with, or has this always been an area of challenge?

Sounds like she is having issues with other kids at school that she doesn't want to tell you about, or it could be the teacher and her don't get along... lots of things can be the problem and trying to get some kids to tell you what it is can be next to impossible... It might be easiest if you could get an older kid to talk to her and find out why she hates school so much.. you mentioned she got on well with some older cousins, one of them might be able to find out the answers for you. Often a kid will open up much more with another kid while say nothing to an adult or parent.

I'm hoping that my prior post didn't offend or send the OP away. I guess that I'm just leaning toward exploring other possible options for why she is unhappy in school before looking toward grade skips. I could, of course, be totally off base as does happen at times !