Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Anecdotes Requested Re: Early Ed Experiences

One of the things that's struck me having read this forum for the last few months is how many of your children were unhappy in preschool and early elementary school (if they even went) and that so many of you either withdrew them to homeschool or found other solutions such as switching schools or acceleration. As we discuss how to deal with DS7's continuing unhappiness in school, we continue to get comments like "I never liked school and I went." Therefore, I thought it might be helpful for DH to read your experiences in one thread, rather than my showing him many different threads.

So, for those of you who don't mind the repetition, could you please post your children's early school experiences (preschool through 3rd or 4th) here and what, if anything, you did and why?

Thank you!

Don't think i can add much yet to this post, as DS4 is in 3 hours/2-day-week preschool. Except to say he doesn't hate it too much now (his teacher "gets" his giftedness and was the first person to mention to us that he would probably need acceleration at some point). It's mostly a play-based preschool, and teach engages DS in things that will challenge him.

i sent you a pm with other thoughts.

My DS (HG+) was disappointed with preschool when I enrolled him at age 2:9 in a class with 3 year olds. He had been asking to go to school and I think he imagined it would be like Kindergarten (his older sister was in K.)

He was already reading simple words but his class was doing letters of the week and gluing macaroni to them. Several times he said things like, "I'm tired of preschool. I would rather go to medical school." And, "I want to get to Z!" (in reference to the letters of the week.) He didn't seem to connect with any of the kids in his class, some of whom were barely talking in sentences.

The next year I enrolled him in the preK class with "math" and reading pullouts. The reading pullout was good but the math consisted of identifying shapes, ABAB patterns and counting. DS could already add and subtract. His teacher observed that he was not making friends.

After the winter break, he was switched to the K class at age 4:2. At first, he was thrilled but when the K teacher started excluding him and saying that he wasn't really part of the class and was "just visiting" K he became very unhappy. He refused to do any work and he developed phobias. The teacher's handling of these behaviors just exacerbated them. The teacher's attitude was picked up by the other kids in the class and none of them would play with him. Nevertheless, he finished out the year there.

Due to his age, he was enrolled in K again at the public school the following year at age 4:9. At first, he was happy to sing the songs and do art projects but even these began to pall when they sang the same songs every day and did coloring and cut-and-paste every day. He didn't really play with the other kids, but he did interact with some of the older girls (age 6). The kindergarteners have recess separately from the older kids. He began to ask me if he could go to second grade so he could go to science and music classes.

In the spring, we made the arrangements for him to attend first grade in the afternoons and it was so successful that he was accelerated to first grade full time at age 5:4. This is a much better placement for him although he is starting to tune out during the more repetitious parts of the day. For example, his teacher does a calendar lesson every morning where the kids recite the days of the week and months of the year. DS has known these since he was 3 and I'm afraid he doesn't participate much during this exercise. He is not disruptive, however. He is very happy to be able to go to the "specials" which are science, music and PE. These were not available to kindergarteners. He is enjoying recess more because he runs over to play with the third graders.

Contrast this experience with my older DD (MG). She was an early reader and started school in PreK at age 4:3. She was reading easy readers at that time. She is a very social and highly verbal child and her teachers love her. She quickly made friends with other girls in her class.

She enjoyed K just as much (ironically with the same K teacher who later excluded DS) and was the top performer in the top reading group.

She has enjoyed first thru third grade at the public school because she loved being with her friends. Writing has been a challenge for her so she doesn't finish her assignments too quickly. She has been free to pursue her talent area (reading) at her level in her free time.

Her teachers have recommended her for GT screening. Especially her third grade teacher has recognized that DD is verbally gifted and also strong in math.

DD loves going to school and would hate to miss a day.

I'll try this again...

Here is my first post which summarizes up to my son's 4th grade year.


Originally Posted By: delbows

Our daughter attended a private kindergarten before her 5th birthday and excelled. Even though the school recommended she be admitted to 1st grade at the public school it feeds into, the principle refused based on age. She attended a second year of kindergarten with the public school and was labeled as gifted and a delight to have in class. I was assured that the 1st grade curriculum would challenge her because she was put with the teacher who offers a differentiated curriculum. This often meant that she and a few other students were allowed to read their chapter books while the teacher instructed the rest of the class.

About halfway though her 1st grade year, my husband and I began to make appointments with the superintendent and write to and address the school board at its public meetings. Our request was that they adopt a method to access readiness for early entrance and grade acceleration. We knew that our son would not be as compliant as our daughter and feared he would be incorrectly labeled because he would not tolerate being “taught” in kindergarten what he had know since he was 18 months. Our motive was to help other children as well as our own. We were met only with indifference and hostility from every angle on this issue. The exception were a few educators who privately said they agreed with us and a few parents who wished the same for their kids, but said they didn’t have skin as thick as ours.

At literally the last hour-one week before our son was scheduled to begin K at the public school, I called our local Catholic school again and literally begged for them to meet him. At the conclusion of the evaluation conducted by the assistant principle, they had no reservations about putting him in 1st grade. Two months into the school year, we removed our daughter from 2nd grade at the public school and placed her into 3rd grade at the Catholic school. We consider it as a 1-� grade jump because the curriculum is far more demanding at the private school than it was at the high standardized test scoring public school.

We believed that early entrance to 1st grade was an easy fix, but were rather concerned about actually skipping a grade. It turned out to be so easy it was almost spooky. The only time I became concerned was the next school year when she entered 4th grade. Non of her prior public school experience had prepared her for the organizational skills and work habits necessary to efficiently tackle the homework required in 4th grade. She was over-whelmed for approximately 6 weeks. I understand this is the same problem many under-challenged gifted students face in high school or college when they finally reach a point were they have to study and work at a subject after coasting along with no effort for so many years.

Our son does well in school but really needs to attend a school for highly gifted students. He does not have a natural tendency to “think inside the box” which is what students are required to do in the lower levels of grade school. He could handle the subject content of two or more grades up, however, his hand writing is not fast enough to keep up with the note taking required for six grade and up. He exemplifies the asynchronous profile found in many highly gifted kids. He is a young scholar with the Davidson Institute and we are very grateful for their support. We know it will continue to be a challenge to appropriately educate him.

In conclusion, (if anyone got this far) my opinion is that a single grade skip in combination with a differentiated curriculum in a safe first step. Especially given the fact that your daughter is telling you what she wants. I believe that inattention and frustration are a result of lack of challenge and that as long as the task isn’t unrealistic, children do meet the high expectations their parents hold for them. My caveat, is that strait A’s may be unrealistic in the short term, however meaningful education will replace “excellence without effort”.

To up-date our situation:

Early entrance was not enough and ds did not enjoy the curriculum through 5th grade. Additionally, he has not really found any peers in his class even among the smarter kids although he does enjoy talking with the smartest kids two grades up (21/2- 3 years older).
He has also encountered hostility from a few teachers and been told by one of the kinder teachers that he should not seek math subject acceleration (despite being offered to skip 6th, then offered to skip directly to high school from 6th).

If he had been offered to skip 2nd, 3rd or 4th grade, he may have found a niche.

Since the administrators at our present school could not give assurance for continued math acceleration to Alg1 in 7th grade, as explained to him by an administrator that he is a minority and they had to concern themselves with the needs of the majority first, he will attend another private school next year. This one is expensive, but we received a considerable financial aid/scholarship award and they have also made arrangements for him to take Alg1 with older students.

You know all this, but here it is for your DH...

Pre-K #1: age 3, he was in a half-day, non-academic pre-K 3 afternoons per week. Socially that seemed to work great, but it certainly wasn't stretching him academically.

Pre-K #2: a 5-afternoon per week class, and though the director had promised me that DS #1, who was reading books quite well by then (age 4), would be able to go at his own pace without all the pre-reading things he'd mastered literally half his life ago...they didn't do what they promised. In fact, they thought he was *behind* in reading because he never used the language arts area...never ever! I advocated gently, and they ignored. I was frustrated.

In January, we had our conference and DH was NOT gentle with his advocacy. The school finally (and very reluctantly) agreed to skip the first pre-reading step that DS #1 flat refused to do. Once they skipped that, he did a week's worth of stuff in 20 minutes or so, and they were finally sold. He *raced* through the curriculum after that, and was the sole child in the school allowed to read books only once and get checked off for them. They knew that if he read it once, he could probably repeat it to them verbatim. Still, I felt like we paid a whole lot of $$$ for a school that had really pulled a bait-and-switch on us and just didn't get him...

Even so, he was happy, he loved school, and he did well socially.

K--half-day, non-academic, public--went pretty well because he had the first teacher who got him. She should be the poster child for effective differentiation, because she was able to give him slightly different directions than the norm and yet make the assignments much more appropriate to his needs. He took great pride in his perfect behavior record, and admonished other kids who weren't doing what they should be doing. He continued to enjoy school thoroughly and had friends there. However, he began to say things like "I'm the smartest kid in my class." This worried me.

His K teacher is the one who recommended him for GT testing in the spring of K, and it was when I saw these scores (not until fall of 1st grade) that I realized that DS #1 was not "just" MG.

1st grade: His first foray into a full-day, academic classroom. It wasn't pretty! The differentiation he'd received in K meant that he was well ahead of 1st grade curriculum, yet this 1st grade teacher didn't differentiate. In effect, he was being held back because he'd had a good teacher followed by a bad one.

He came home the first day of school, threw down his backpack and said, "I'm not going back there again. And if you MAKE me go back to 1st grade, then there's no WAY I'm going to 2nd because it will be even LONGER and MORE BORING!!!" He was miserable, cranky, acting out in class and at home. When he didn't pay attention or acted out because he was so thoroughly frustrated, his teacher took recesses away, which devastated DS and left him feeling like he was a bad kid. The change in him was dramatic and immediate. There was no doubt that underchallenge was the cause.

To top it off, he didn't seem to have friends at school anymore. No one wants to play with an angry, frustrated kid. And he was becoming a perfectionist, so anything hard for him--like kickball or basketball--set him off. He was isolated and unhappy, clearly a child at risk.

I e-mailed the teacher expressing my concerns about his bad behavior in school and supporting her. This was my "I'm on your team" e-mail. I got back a long and defensive e-mail that made it clear that she thought I was out of line. She said she felt that I had no confidence in her ability to teach DS. I sent an apology, taking full responsibility for what must have been a misunderstanding...I got no response, no acknowledgement. Nothing. I volunteered in class that week, and she said nothing to me about it.

DH and I spun our wheels trying to decide what to do. Go to the principal? Well, if she felt undermined by me, that would only make it worse. Agitate to get him into a different class? Well, without a grade skip, we feared more of the same, and that wouldn't be worth the trouble it would take to get him out of that class. Grade skip? Well, if the school would even allow a skip--a big if!--we weren't sure that a grade skip was right for him. (I think it might have worked for him, now that I know more about grade skips. But at the time, it looked like DS might want to play football, and he'll need the time to mature if that's the case, especially given the number of red-shirted kids in our area.)

Truly, I felt like this teacher was holding our whole family hostage. We had no acceptable alternative.

Then we considered homeschooling, and the clouds parted. Yes! In this way we could go deeper rather than faster if we wanted to, so DS wouldn't have to be bored, but he also could return to school at age level in middle or high school, when more challenging classes became available, and sports would work fine.

The decision was made easy for us when we (finally!) saw his K scores on the WJ-III achievement test, and we realized that even without any real special attention, either at home or at school, he was performing at DYS levels. That cinched it--our particular school was unlikely to be able to serve him regardless of what we did. And my two brushes with advocacy had been so deeply unpleasant and ineffective that I just couldn't imagine going through all it would take to even make a little progress toward what he needed. Homeschooling was our answer.

And what an answer! His attitude and behavior reverted to their former level literally the day he didn't have to go to that class. It was an immediate change. And now that I have sufficient childcare time so that I'm not going insane (!), HSing is working like a charm. It's been hard sometimes to find ways to go deeper rather than faster at the elementary school level, but I am getting better at it the longer we do it. We're doing things like reading about archeology and codes and engineering, things that he wouldn't get any chance to study in school at all. This seems to work better for slowing him down while keeping him interested than anything else I've tried. It's hard to go deeper with times tables and addition...

He's loving geometry (complete with theorems and a soft approach to proofs, since logic works well with him), and he reads whatever interests him and no one tells him to stick to the "little kid" section of the library. He's back to the easygoing kid who makes friends easily--even kids his own age.

It was a rough road, but we've found the right path at last!

I agree completely. What happened to my son's attitude and behavior were giganormous, lightning-bolt-sized signs that things were very, very bad. If he'd been whining because he wanted to play video games, I'd have told him to suck it up and get his coat on because the bus was coming.

Interesting that you make the statement, has always been unhappy with school, even in pre-k.

I have two very gifted, very intelligent daughters.
First daughter loved her first pre-school. Then we moved. The pre-school we sent her to in our new town was supposed to be the best and oh so experienced with above average kids. She was sad from the first day. I won't go into it, but I had a bad interaction with her teacher and my gut told me to pull her immediately. I re-enrolled her in her old pre-school and drove 40 minutes each day and she loved it. The next year I found a new pre-school in town which she also loved. K wasn't perfect, but she was reasonably happy.
She's had some sticking points in school, but luckily the administration has responded and tried to meet her needs and she is relatively happy now.
Youngest daughter had a great year in 3 year old pre-school. The next year was awful, she had a different teacher who didn't "get" her and was bored out of her mind. I pulled her mid year and placed her at our church pre-school. Again, miserable experience. Kindergarten year and she hates it. The teacher is not a good fit and certainly doesn't get her. The school is making an effort but I just am not sure it will ever be a good fit for her.
Thus, my location in purgatory. One is in heaven, one in, you know, the other place. That put's me uncomfortably in the middle.
There is not a whole lot of difference between them in terms of intelligence. It's their personalities that are so different.
We will try with the school for next year, but I am prepared to homeschool if it doesn't work out. Only the child suffers in a situation where the school environment is not a good fit.

Complaining wasn't just a matter of losing face for me. I had a terrible time fitting in during grade school which really seemed to distress my mother. If I had complained, it would have been like confirming to her that something was wrong with me--and I really did believe that something was wrong with me! I had no idea there were other kids like me until I started attending a GT school in 8th grade.