Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Parental Isolation

I never think of the great things to say until 3:00 in the morning! I wish I had a great gift with words like you Dottie. But incog - I'd probably have done the same thing you did. How rude of that woman to ask such a thing!!!!!

Reiterating, my dad's always salient answer was., "IQ tests test how well you take IQ tests." Avoids needless nonsense!
Aline

kickball - I really feel your pain...
I feel kind of stupid b/c I'd heard about the difficulties of advocating for gifted kids, but I always thought to myself...I'm sure it's not that bad! People must be exaggerating!
What an awakening I've had the past year!!!!
I find people I can talk to in the weirdest places...the OT and the PT that I work with both have gifted children, but it took over a year of working together before we broached the subject (the fear of speaking about it with others). I took my kids to the Museum of Natural History the other day and it was awesome! It was members only night and we were allowed to go behind the scenes, see the collections and talk to the scientists. It was so great b/c it seemed like most of the kids were gifted. It was so different from being around the general public - very interested, engaged children (like mine!). I went to check out the education resource room where teachers can check out materials... it turns out the lady running it has a gifted son (2). She was so excited to talk to me and my dd's. We exchanged #'s and I referred her to Dr. Rimm.
I guess what I'm trying to say (the long way) is that I've met people in the least expected places, they just come along; but I'm careful what I say to most of the people I associate with on a daily basis. Some of the other teachers at my school are also very supportive.
Can't forget Mom! She's right on board!

My huge frustration is with general attitudes toward education. There was an article in the NY Times the other day about math standards and a new report that's come out, and it was very depressing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/14/e...sq=math+standards+third+grade&st=nyt

The whole focus of the piece in the Times was, as usual, on minimum standards: everyone should be able to add and subtract whole numbers by the end of third grade, etc. etc. The report itself is 120 pages long and pretty much just gives lip service to gifted students saying that learning faster doesn't appear to "harm" them and that they should be "allowed to do so". <sigh>

It is so frustrating that schools and elected officials just don't get it. Sure, it's a disaster that some kids are behind. But it's also a huge disaster that we aren't teaching the bright ones how to think (or the other ones, for that matter).

We have abandoned our bright and brightest children because they get good scores on dumbed-down tests. They must be okay, right? They scored in the 98th+ percentile, right? That's great, right? Wrong. That's a disaster. My 3 year old can 2+2 in her head. Why did they force my 7 year old to do this in second grade??

Our schools squander our best minds and leave them to fend for themselves. Then Mom and Dad get labelled as troublemakers because we want something challenging for our kids.

<RANT OFF>

Val

I know that feeling very well. In my case, it is not just feeling like we don't fit in but as my son put it, it feels like we are being shunned. We are. I recently saw several of the homeschool moms together and they acted like they didn't even see me.

I felt at my lowest point about a month ago and I did something really stupid that only made things worse. I responded to an email by a member of our homeschool group who is also a member of the musical theater group my son is in. I was upset about something and wasn't thinking when instead of sending the email to this one person, I accidentally sent it to the whole homeschool group. I said things like "C doesn't seem to have that much in common with the few boys his age in the homeschool group" and I complained that he didn't get OT when he was enrolled in Kindergarten because he was reading at about a 5th grade level and also advanced in math so the school wasn't required to provide therapy because he wasn't yet failing. I meant to say this only to her because she had mentioned at our last acting class that she thought her son needed speech therapy and she wondered if the school might provide it even though she is homeschooling. She also has a gifted daughter that is a little younger than my son and she knew from her own experiences at our public school that she would need to homeschool her daughter, so I thought I could talk to her about some of these issues and she would really understand.

I went on to say in my email that I had sent emails and letters to the superintendent of public schools, my legislators and even the governor's office asking for part time school, but that I knew some of the people in our homeschool group would not like it because a few years ago some of them told me they thought I was wrong to want to put my child in the "government school" for part time classes or therapy or anything else.

My son and I also feel isolated within our own family. My uncle always invites all the cousins and extended family over for holiday dinners and they are very much a sports family. His grandchildren are close to my son's age and very good in sports so they spend a lot of time talking about football and basketball. My son can't play sports and he can't talk about the things he is learning or the spelling bee that he participated in or musical theater, so he says he feels like he doesn't belong in his own family.

I even felt uncomfortable when we got together with my husband's side of the family including his geology professor sister to go digging for crystals. I felt uncomfortable because nobody asks my son about what he is learning or doing but they ask the other young people in the family about school. The geology professor only seems concerned that my son, who has a mild motor coordination disorder does not cut his food properly and that it doesn't look very attractive when he cuts up his food and she has the nerve to point this out in front of him twice even though she has been told that he has motor dyspraxia that causes him to have difficulty with this.

My son asked me a few days ago if I ever wished that he was a sports kid so I would fit in with the other people in our family and our town. I think he feels responsible for our isolation.

Don't get me started on this one! I agree with you completely. It's not only in math, but reading as well. Here the emphasis is on DIBELS and meeting a minimum standard of oral fluency. There is NO emphasis on reading comprehension and very little focus on fostering a love of reading. Fortunately, my girls love to read anyway.

As a high school math teacher, I'm seeing the effects of the focus on minimum standards. I have kids in precalculus who still ask me how to do arithmetic with fractions! Some days I go home very discouraged. I struggle to keep my bright kids challenged while trying to bring the weaker ones up to my higher standard. I have addressed this issue with the administration because we don't need to be referring so many kids to precal.

Sing it loud, Val! I could have written what you wrote. Dead-on target! Sad, but highly accurate.

Kickball: I'm sorry. I sympathize. I wish I had good advice for you, but I don't, beyond just keep using this forum as you are. It's been my lifesaver on days like the one you were having. I have yet to find much sympathy or undertanding IRL. Even in the GT groups I'm a part of, a lot of people don't seem to get LOGs. GT is GT is GT. It's hard.

(FWIW, I tend to have better luck among secular homeschoolers, who seem to either understand why public school is problematic for an HG+ kid, or at least see the general problems inherent in the current system. <shrug>)

As for DYS: what I always advise people is to try to use examples that distinguish not between and ND child and a GT child, but between MG and HG+. Try to show things that are 3+ years advanced.

And if I had been asked to submit more info for my DS6, I'd have sent video. Even PG 6yos aren't usually writing novels or curing cancer. Video tells the story of an HG+ child much better than a drawing or a page of math problems.

FWIW...

Agreed. I've seen those Spectrum Reading-type exercises that are two pages long and measure comprehension with multiple choice questions. I think of this as a sound bite approach to reading. It certainly doesn't teach any children how to follow a narrative and *think* about stuff.

Unfortunately, the multiple-choice stuff is too common in colleges too; I teach at a local college and see a lot of MC exams floating around. I see MC exams as teaching factoids and not encouraging students to learn to reason with information and to use it to create new ideas.

Val

As I read CFK's thoughts on parents of other gifted kids I did a little self-reflection. I wondered if I was ever guilty of this and thought that I probably was.

I get so used to DS being so far ahead of everyone he is around, I take it for granted. When a kid moved in to DS's school who was as good a reader as DS, it totally threw me off for a few weeks--"my kid is the best reader in the class; he has always been the best reader; where did this guy come from?" Consciously, of course, I actually knew it was a good thing (and it is--watching them talk books together is great fun!), but I realized that I did get a little of my identity from DS being amazing and I felt a little de-throned.

I'm long over it now, but I guess I see where some of the off-putting reaction comes from. So I have to be forgiving of it in others!

I understand the feelings of isolation. Many people are happy at our school. DD6 got into a program that required a lottery because of the limited space so I feel somewhat of an ingrate to not be thrilled with school. When I first told some of my closest friends about the testing, I was surprised about the range of support I got - from: truly wanting to help figure out ways to meet her needs, to: high IQ scores are just a way to show you're better than someone else.
DD's spark has diminished, especially since entering 1st grade. There's an edge to her that just wasn't there before. She's been referred to a weekly program that pairs students one-on-one with an adult. It's child-led and supposedly will hep her to adjust to the classroom better. The main reason we decided to go for it was because we felt she'd be thrilled to get out of the classroom for 30 minutes and play. I admit though that when I first heard about it helping children to adjust, my mind jumped to a brain-washing scenario complete with electrodes..."You will do whatever the teacher tells you to do. You will stop interrupting with so many questions and comments. You will work on whatever the class is working on, etc."