Gifted Bulletin Board

Welcome to the Gifted Issues Discussion Forum.

We invite you to share your experiences and to post information about advocacy, research and other gifted education issues on this free public discussion forum.
CLICK HERE to Log In. Click here for the Board Rules.

Links


Learn about Davidson Academy Online - for profoundly gifted students living anywhere in the U.S. & Canada.

The Davidson Institute is a national nonprofit dedicated to supporting profoundly gifted students through the following programs:

  • Fellows Scholarship
  • Young Scholars
  • Davidson Academy
  • THINK Summer Institute

  • Subscribe to the Davidson Institute's eNews-Update Newsletter >

    Free Gifted Resources & Guides >

    Who's Online Now
    0 members (), 100 guests, and 26 robots.
    Key: Admin, Global Mod, Mod
    Newest Members
    streble, DeliciousPizza, prominentdigitiz, parentologyco, Smartlady60
    11,413 Registered Users
    March
    S M T W T F S
    1 2
    3 4 5 6 7 8 9
    10 11 12 13 14 15 16
    17 18 19 20 21 22 23
    24 25 26 27 28 29 30
    31
    Previous Thread
    Next Thread
    Print Thread
    Page 1 of 2 1 2
    #147443 01/30/13 10:00 AM
    Joined: Oct 2012
    Posts: 178
    M
    moomin Offline OP
    Member
    OP Offline
    Member
    M
    Joined: Oct 2012
    Posts: 178
    gone

    Last edited by moomin; 08/09/14 09:38 AM. Reason: gone
    Joined: Feb 2011
    Posts: 5,181
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    Joined: Feb 2011
    Posts: 5,181
    Not really sure if you've explored these at all--

    crippling anxiety?

    sensory integration issues?

    Both of those would lead to difficulties under "load" which would disappear in more ideal environs.


    ETA: Okay-- I just re-read your earlier thread about the saga with the preschool. Wow. Clearly, your DD (with the social precosity that she evinced for the evaluation above) was manipulating the entire situation for her own entertainment at least part of the time, and the teacher's response was a HUGE part of the problem there. I can't say that surprises me much in light of what I know about K-3 teachers as a group. They do NOT handle such children well, on average. It sounds like this one was outgunned and retaliated in the only way she had available-- by labeling your DD in any way that would allow her to eject her permanently.

    {sigh} So. Here you are.

    I don't think that your DD can return to a "conventional" classroom. She's demonstrated that she either can't tolerate it-- or that she WON'T-- which in terms of maturity and emotional regulation is more or less age appropriate and therefore amounts to the same thing.

    The anecdotes that you shared in the earlier thread provide glimpses into the head of a person who is truly TRYING to meet others where they are... but experiencing severe frustration when they suddenly CANNOT understand her (and lacking the emotional regulation to 'fix' it or let it go in a graceful manner).

    She isn't going to behave well unless she's engaged academically and has at least a few true peers. Good luck with that unless you live in an area with a fairly large pool of kids, because HG+ kids are not "common" by definition, and even if they were, kids have different interests and compatibility on the basis of personality. Ergo, she probably needs to have 3-6 children in her life who are at a similar LOG in order to function well socially.

    That's my take. If that is all true, then it may get better with age, but the only real cure is going to be to get her to practice empathy toward less-bright children, and to TOLERATE them better... which probably comes as a package deal with gaining more meaningful academic and social interactions. I think that her fuse is so short because she keeps getting stuck with extended situations which feel completely stultifying and overwhelmingly, mind-numbingly bad.

    For the record, I'm also APPALLED that you were told that high IQ can't cause social problems. That professional ought (truly) to be ashamed. I think we can safely note that such a person is clearly not beyond ideally intelligent themselves, at any rate. smirk



    Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
    Joined: Feb 2012
    Posts: 756
    K
    KJP Offline
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    K
    Joined: Feb 2012
    Posts: 756
    Our OT has noted something similar in DS5. She works with him three times a week for sensory processing issues. Once individually, once in a group of about six and once in a group with around twenty. At this point one on one he is great, in the group of six he is fine and in the large group he is iffy. The group classes are yoga/gymnastics so he is watching, listening and following instructions. In the larger class he sometimes makes the choice to watch instead of actively participating. So he isn't disruptive just making the choice to watch instead of doing the activity.

    He was way more trouble a year ago. He was iffy one on one depending on if it was a new person in a new place, he was generally not good in a small group and was sometimes horrible in a large group. Group learning did not seem like an option at all. We had taken him out of PreK because he hated it and was in trouble all the time.

    Now he is in a 16 kid preK/K class and is not disruptive, has friends and participates in class appropriately. There are other issues like avoiding certain types of work and suspected dyslexia we are looking into but the inability to learn in a group stuff seems to be behind us.

    Whether is has been time or OT, a year has made a huge difference.

    Joined: Feb 2012
    Posts: 756
    K
    KJP Offline
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    K
    Joined: Feb 2012
    Posts: 756
    I should add that his classroom is probably outrageously academic. Reading is at the level of the kid, timed math test starting soon on addition, subtraction or multiplication depending on the kid, and science isn't cutesy (the geology unit has included among other things an hour long lecture from a visiting PhD, crystal growing and viewing under a microscope, documentary on volcanos, a rock sorting activity very similar to one I did in an undergrad lab, and a plate tectonics map activity)

    So add challenging school to list of reasons we have seen improvement.

    Last edited by KJP; 01/30/13 11:18 AM.
    Joined: Jul 2012
    Posts: 1,478
    Z
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    Z
    Joined: Jul 2012
    Posts: 1,478
    Does she actually experience group learning? How does that work when a kid is so far from mainstream intellectually combined with extremem working memory?

    Can't someone give her a library pass, a computer, a notebook and just stay out of her way?

    Given extreme social skills, then maybe the wider range of issues and behaviors are not all that subconscious in the way that anxiety or overexcitabilities would be?

    Joined: Sep 2011
    Posts: 3,363
    P
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    P
    Joined: Sep 2011
    Posts: 3,363
    moomin, this is by far the most difficult part of an assessment process - you have a tidbit of information from the evaluator, but not the full picture. I'd try to take it in stride, think of how it applies to your dd, but also not overthink it until the neuropsych has put together his/her report and you have a chance to meet with the neuropsych to discuss.

    This is also just something to throw out there - have you ever taken a few minutes to write down and compare/contrast the situations where your dd loses control & has social challenges? List everything you can about the environment at the time - how many people, outside/inside, noise level, lighting, what was going on, what your dd did before she was there etc... plus specifics about her behavior. Look for anything that seems to be a common thread. Note - this may seem silly and you may think you have a good idea of common ties etc in your head without writing it out, but I'm wondering if maybe there's something else really "out there" going on that you haven't quite stumbled onto yet. This is just an example - not related to your dd at all, but an example of the type of thinking-about-the-situations - my dd who presented as extremely sensory and occasionally severely anxious when she was around 4-5 years old (so anxious we couldn't get her to go into crowded rooms or any kind of new situation)... also has food allergies. We knew that, and we had that under control. What we didn't know was that she had mold allergies - severe. But we weren't looking for that. We knew she was a sensory kid, she likes to move A LOT, etc. We eventually discovered the mold allergy when she had a severe reaction to having dirt sprayed across her face on the playground at preschool during mold season - and her allergy dr figured out that she needed to be tested for mold. BUT when we looked back over the journal we were keeping of behaviors etc, trying to figure out why she was having such a tough time in new situations... the places where she had trouble were old buildings, closed in spaces that didn't smell right, things like that. Places that most likely had mold issues.

    Our same dd, when she was younger, and having allergic reactions to food, never said something obvious like "My stomach hurts" - instead she screamed - like the world was ending. She too was almost kicked out of a preschool because of her behavior, and the preschool teachers were very concerned about her thinking she had to be either deaf or cognitively challenged because of the way she screamed and wasn't compliant. We thought the problem was the teachers. Eventually we figured out that the bad behaviors and inability to cope were inevitably occurring 20 minutes after lunch... when she was drinking a ton of milk and eating cheese because those were her favorite foods - this was happening before we found out she was allergic to dairy. So she was screaming, acting perhaps even psychotic after lunch... because her stomach hurt. We would get called to come get her, we'd take her home, and she'd be fine - because the adverse reaction was over by then.

    Anyway, I'm not suggesting your dd has allergies! Just suggesting that perhaps there's something that's adversely impacting her, that she can't communicate to you or doesn't know how to communicate to you or simply doesn't connect the dots herself enough yet to see the connection... and that it might be clearer if you start tracking the places/times/etc surrounding her behaviors.

    Best wishes,

    polarbear

    Joined: Oct 2011
    Posts: 2,856
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    Joined: Oct 2011
    Posts: 2,856
    Originally Posted by moomin
    In the end, I'm not sure how I can help to bring down her resistance to group learning... it all seems impossibly complicated.

    It seems obvious from your other comments that everyone is learning in the group but her. For your DD, it's a bit like being trapped in the fast line behind 40mph traffic.

    And the solution is, find a group that learns at (or at least near) her speed. That may be placing her in a group of kids that learns as quickly as she does, or it may be placing her in a group at an activity that doesn't come so easily to her, like gymnastics.

    In other words, it's not group learning that's the problem... it's the group.

    Joined: Feb 2011
    Posts: 5,181
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    Joined: Feb 2011
    Posts: 5,181
    Just worth noting that partially compensated sensory issues can be like that-- where the only time you'd know it was an issue is "under load."

    It's like a circuit breaker-- it requires a surge to 'trip' it, or excessive load.

    For an introvert, crowding IS that load. My own sensory issues are FAR worse when I'm in socially claustrophobic environs. Otherwise, you truly would never know-- not even if you knew me well.


    I really hope that you can get answers from your evaluation-- and that the HG magnet provides a much better educational fit for your DD.


    Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
    Joined: Nov 2012
    Posts: 2,513
    A
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    A
    Joined: Nov 2012
    Posts: 2,513
    What type of exclusion diet was your daughter given, and for what duration?


    What is to give light must endure burning.
    Joined: Apr 2011
    Posts: 1,694
    M
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    M
    Joined: Apr 2011
    Posts: 1,694
    Crowded classroom / playground = noisy. Quiet classroom / backyard = quiet. That's a pretty basic connection there. Furthermore I will add that she may have a speech sensory issue, not just straightforward "noise", or only certain kinds of noise. My DH cannot cope with noise that I am able to filter out an keep functioning (even if I don't like it), I have other kinds of noise I find harder to filter and get tired/cranky very fast. But speech is my major auditory trigger. I cannot cope with multiple people speaking at once, especially multiple people I "should" be processing simulataneously, that i can't just ignore. Makes it very hard for me to be in the same room as all I my children and husband at the same time :-). If she's trying to process every conversation in the room/playground she may be overloading....

    As for food allergy and intolerance present differently, intolerance is a load issue and there are good chemicals that are present in foods you would never think of as connected (oranges, chocolate and cheese are all strong amines). So I would not rule out food either.

    Page 1 of 2 1 2

    Moderated by  M-Moderator, Mark D. 

    Link Copied to Clipboard
    Recent Posts
    Testing with accommodations
    by aeh - 03/27/24 01:58 PM
    Quotations that resonate with gifted people
    by indigo - 03/27/24 12:38 PM
    New, and you'd think I'd have a clue...
    by astronomama - 03/24/24 06:01 AM
    For those interested in astronomy, eclipses...
    by indigo - 03/23/24 06:11 PM
    Son 2e, wide discrepancy between CogAT-Terranova
    by astronomama - 03/23/24 07:21 AM
    Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.7.5