Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy "defiance" and "not listening" UPDATED

I feel for you right now, and it probably doesn't help a lot to say that this, too, shall pass.

I think part of what stopped the crazy-making for me (not all of it, as I still have days of huge frustration) are these:

Stop trying to control or change things over which you have no control. You cannot and will never make your daughter WANT something. You just can't make another person desire to do or not to do something. All you can do is what is within your power - draw firm boundaries, apply consequences predictably, and do your best to take your own emotion out of the dynamic. You can't make the school change their policies (but you can sure as heck try to apply pressure), so you have to learn to cope within them. If it isn't where you can cope, then maybe it's not worth having her there.

Accept that what applies to 99.9% of the kids and what works on them may not ever work on your child. That doesn't mean anything at all is wrong with her, and if she thinks her mother thinks there is something broken about her, she will be angry and hurt and act out because she will believe the one person she needs to be in her corner isn't. That doesn't mean you make excuses or let slide bad behavior. What it means is that you do everything within your power to empathize with her struggles and how she thinks and what makes her tick. The biggest struggle of parenting my children has come from the fact that what motivated me as a kid is nothing like what motivates them. I had to finally accept that two of the three were never going to care about grades. And so I learned to talk to them about what DID matter to them - honoring the blessings they'd been given, being a person of integrity, and showing kindness to others. And when I had their ear on those things that they did see the value in, then I was able to reason a little better with them about how their behavior or choices wasn't doing one of those things.

Take care of yourself. When you need to, walk away and remove yourself from the argument until you're in control again. Stop beating yourself up and telling yourself you're not a good mother because you can't get your daughter to do what you need her to do. It's a journey and a learning process for both of you, and if you fracture her respect of you or your respect for yourself, that is far more difficult to repair than dealing with an annoyed teacher who doesn't like not having her attention 100% of the time.

Accept that your daughter will likely always march to her own tune to a certain extent. Assess her strengths and her areas of challenge and start finding places where she can excel and where the areas of weaknesses will not prevent success. And then once you have some successes, build on those by easing her into more challenging circumstances that force her to deal for short periods with her struggles.

There are no rules that work 100% of the time on 100% of the kids.

This was the advice my pediatrician gave me about my kids, and I am so grateful to him for his insight into my own struggles at parenting. Pick your battles - the things that you will not back down from because they are inherent to your values (such as no hitting, no stealing, etc.) and then as much as you can, don't choose to battle over the rest of it. Let some of the small things go and don't own them all. If your child is hitting another kid or openly defying the teacher in class, that's worth a battle of wills with your child. But maybe everything else that's minor isn't. For those of us with kids with high maintenances personalities, chewing them out and making them aware they've failed us yet again is not a message they need to hear incessantly.

Hang in there - some days are worse than others.

I have a DD8/3rd as well. Does your DD have a desk that's open near her lap/hands? My DD hides little things at the edge and plays with them with one hand and has the other hand out for whatever...turning pages, holding up her chin. She's learned through trial and error what works and what doesn't. She isn't aloud to hold any fiddling thing and she could really use it to relax her.

The girls in class get reprimanded for twirling hair and playing with those feather barretts they're all wearing, the boys get reprimanded for flicking things at each other.

I think they're just going over and over and over the material because of the assessments and it's pretty excruciating.

I remember doing all-class reading when I was in school and the poor kids that would get called on for their turn to read out loud, when the teacher obviously called on them because they had a spaced-out look on their face. Then the kid was so embarrassed.

How is your DD able to go to school for 3 hours? Is that per day? Is it a public school? How did you manage that, I am a little jealous.

oh, dear, sorry I should have said "allowed" not "aloud"...yikes

2giftgirls, your dd is a wonderful girl and you of course like and love her -you're frustrated with the situation, not frustrated with who she is.

I couldn't remember the details of yr dd's testing and why you picked this specific program, so I took a quick look back through your old posts. A few things stand out in what I had time to look at, so I'll offer that up as food for thought - they might be irrelevant or might be worth thinking about.

Did dds testing definitively rule out ADHD? I noticed that y mentioned there is a history of ADHD in your dh's family. If there's still any sliver of a doubt that she's for sure not ADHD do you think that might be making it exta difficult for her to pay attention in class?

Butter's iq testing had a significant dip in the coding subtest and the psych noted that it would impact handwriting. We had a brief post-discussion where it sounded like had has many of the same symptoms of dysgraphia that my dysgraphic ds had at the same age, and he also had behavioral problems in his classroom prior to accommodations - but it was tricky - the behavioral symptoms didn't have an obvious connection to dysgraphia. Have you been able to move had to keyboarding yet? Is there a chance that her dysgraphia may be impacting her in this class? Is it possible that it could be *indirectly* impacting her? I've noticed with my ds that teaches who either don't know about his dysgraphia or don't fully understand it sometimes form an opinion of his overall abilities based on the speed and quality of his handwriting rather than his true intellectual abilities. That combined with Butter being frustrated over handwriting could combine into a difficult situation for Butter to handle.

I'll also offer up an experience from my childhood. I think most of us here have also been in the situation in our own education of occasionally being bored in class. For me, that led to developing a bad habit of daydreaming which I had to fight like crazy once I got to college and into the working world - if Butter is bored now, just wait until she has to sit through a never-ending meeting at work . The anecdote I wanted to mention though isn't about me - it's about a boy I grew up with in my. Grade. He and his parents believed he aas PH. I don't know if he was or if he wasn't, and I don't know my own IQ so I have no realistic frame of reference. I know he was smart and we were both tracked in our schools gifted program starting in elementary school. Many of us found some teachers and some parts of school occasionally boring, but we came to school and paid attention or at least tried to look like we paid attention. We were bored now and then, but we also knew that it was still important to pay attention to the teacher. this one boy who thought he was smarter than the rest of us felt he didn't need to pay attention, so he instead brought a book with him and read every day. he'd occasionally talk abo it something that sounded intelligent but off-topic. I never paid much attention to him and neither did the rest of the kids because he seemed arrogant and not interested in us. Some of our teachers acceptede him for who he wa, others tried to get him to pay attention and do the class work. The reason I mention him here is - by the time we got to middle and high school, he was no longer in the honors courses and the AP courses, and it wasnt because he'd been radically accelerated, it was because he hadn't made the grades he needed to make to get there, which was too bad -because by the time we got to middle and high school and our group of gifted kids was truly able to accelerate and had access to gifted accelerated programming and classes of like peers, school was much more interesting and fun. Nne of which may have mattered in the long run - we've both had successful and happy lives -but I don't think his school experience in childhood was positive due in part to his attitude.

I hope none of that sounded harsh or critical, I'm sincerely trying to offere up some helpful advice.

Best wishes,

polarbear

bzylzy-we are fortunate to have a "home study" school in our District. So, it's really homeschooling but they supply the books, consumables, etc, including some teacher's editions when needed. We do the real "schooling" at home, then she has one day a week that her class meets. I think they actually call it a study group. The main draw for that is science experiments. All the elementary grades have a 3 (plus half hour lunch) day like that. Then they have other activities and classes that are optional. Butter actually goes to orchestra (violin) for 45 min 2x per week and also has guitar, multimedia and back to back drawing and elementary art for 3 hours on Friday morning! Lots of times she's the only one for drawing, so it's like a private lesson.

Another friend of mine said I need to just take a breath and let it go because this is just stupid, basically, lol! Part of it is...she's not bothering or hurting any other students, throwing a tantrum or anything like that....it seems like such insignificant stuff, honestly. My fourth grade teacher hated me for dotting all the "i's" with hearts and flowers...and I would also do homework in class in high school, only half listening...but no one ever called that defiant.

That is the part I'm kind of still trying to figure out, and not be someone who makes excuses either...I DO think Butter is testing the teacher a little, since she's had such crummy ones in the past. She doesn't know yet if the teacher respects her or values her in the classroom, I don't think. I think she's bored too though...

and maybe I DO care "too much". I would actually say we are both somewhat damaged from the previous school...and even though this has been better, this complaint sends me right back to where we were before. And even though it's better, they aren't really giving either of us what I want and am hoping to get from the school.

Then I look at my awesome kid who is learning both guitar and violin at the same time, does chores with no backtalk (including the laundry) and sells a TON of Girl Scout cookies and, well, you all know how that goes...

I think the homeschooling part of it works because she is allowed to wiggle or fidget if she needs...and she knows that I repect her and she gets to make some choices. I would like her to have at least some of this in the classroom. I think it would go better for her and then the teacher could get the results she wants.

And I do really think that there is just not room for quirkiness in either of the school situations we have been in. There's a lot of worry about test scores and keeping schools open and jobs, etc...I think this has put us in an educational system that is particularly oppressive for these kinds of kids...

Well I hope you find ways to help her, testing the teacher and discomfort with writing can all be reasons. Writing is a big issues w/ my DD and other walls she runs into which is why we've scheduled more/different testing for the spring. DD has had lots of bad experiences with teachers and it took her a couple of months this year with a new one to warm up. It's sort of going so, so, but I agree with the poster who mentioned that it's the teacher's responsibility to gage the class. If there is so much flicking of things and hair twirling, maybe it's time to learn something new.

Anyway, in the short term mention to your DD the little object at the edge of the desk thing, that might work for a bit.

School is so different now and I believe that kids need to learn to be respectful and well-behaved, but it takes time and there is always room for growth. Even as adults there is so much room for growth.

I rememember braiding the fringe on my poncho in church because I was so bored, and getting dirty looks from the grown-ups for giggling when a priest was especially dramatic during the homily and it seemed so funny, with everyone so quiet and all the adults looking forward, most of them with glazed eyes.

It's all the big picture. I loose the big picture with my DD too and then come back just like you did.

I don't think coloring one's nails with a marker by itself is disrespectful. However, as a teacher I can see how it can be distracting to other students and why the teacher asked her to stop. Markers are for writing/drawing/coloring with on paper, not the body. How a student responds to a teacher's request to stop doing an activity such as that could be disrespectful.

When you are in a group (whether it's sports, clubs, or school) the teacher/leader has to maintain some sort of structure or control over the kids. It can't be a free-for-all or it just wouldn't work. That's part of being in a group.

P.S. I like the quote "I get excited when the library lets me know my books are ready for pickup... " I do also.

I do want to add though that I work in a district that is very understanding imo of kids' needs to fidget and we have exercise balls and inflatable balance boards (with texture) for kids to sit on. They can even stand if they want at their desks. I think kids need this and shouldn't be required to be little soldiers for an 8 hour period.