Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy School/home disconnect

DS6 is in the gifted program at school and in the first grade. While we haven't had formal IQ testing done, my hunch is that he's gifted, not "just" a high achiever.

At home, I can see evidence of this all the time. However, at school, his teacher doesn't seem to see it all. Our parent conference focused on his inattention, not focusing, too chatty,not completing work etc. Shortly after the conference she emailed me saying he wasn't sitting in the listening center quietly and was asked to go back to his desk. He sat down and said, "I don't want to do anything." We also just got his gifted evaluation with his first report card. He received "No Progress" on two of the five skills, research and self-directed learning. His gifted teacher said he wasn't completing his work, he's off-task and he was easily distracted. I was in the classroom yesterday and he didn't participate in discussion at all. The teacher was asking questions, kids were raising their hands, calling out answers and he just sat there. This is a sharp contrast to last year when he got in "trouble" for calling out answers.

He seems engaged at home and disengaged at school. He obsesses about sharks at home, but won't write the facts down on paper at school. He likes the challenge of more advanced math at home (until he gets a wrong answer) but misses simple things at school and, quite frankly, seems to put forth very little effort at school.

What's the reason for the disconnect? Is he not being challenged? Does he just not care about his schoolwork? My gut is that he's not challenged and he can't see the meaning behind some of the work he's being asked to do...like writing lists of facts...and he's shutting down at school.

We are going to talk to the school counselor tomorrow and I think I'm just looking for confirmation that my instincts are in the right ballpark. I'm grateful for any additional thoughts you all have. All of this is still so new to me and I'm grateful for the feedback on this forum.

What you wrote could describe my DS last year. We tested to get to the bottom of the issues and it turns out he's 2e (processing speed LD). Writing is extremely challenging for him and he completely shut down at school because of the stress of having to write things. At the same time he was unchallenged by the content which makes for a fun combination of things being too hard AND too easy.

Does he fight written work more than oral? Does he perform worse in timed tasks than when working at his own pace? Is he extremely asynchronous in some way? Obviously I have no idea if your DS has an LD (and I've now learned there are a lot more variety of them than I had known about before this adventure). I just wanted to point out that there could be a lot more to the situation than simply not being challenged. In our case it all made a lot of sense once we had the test results. Hopefully you can find some answers soon. Good luck.

What does your son say the issue is?

Looking at your first thread, I wasn't clear if he is only in a 40 minute pullout for gifted? If that is the case, is it possible he is being bullied or teased in his main classroom because of the pullouts? Is it possible that someone (GT teacher or regular one) is giving him harsh criticism that has him withdraw.

Perfection also can inspire work avoidance and sandbagging. It is much easier (psychologically) to set out to fail than to try and fail; particularly bad if faced with a feedback/critique style that is condescending or when positive salted with negatives.

Chay, thanks for the feedback. I never would have thought of something like this.

I don't get this sense about him, although I don't know anything about processing speed except what you've mentioned above. His favorite way to study spelling words is for me to time him. He constantly wants to beat his best time.

I don't think he likes to write, but it doesn't seem to be a struggle. At least, not that I can tell at this point.

home and school discrepancies can be so hard to sort through - teacher remarks and impressions can sometimes illuminate and sometimes cloud the situation.

i agree with ZS - asking your DS for a little more information might be helpful. could he maybe try to compare this year with last - and then compare this year to his ideal experience? those kinds of open-ended questions can really work when kids are small...

You may wish to prepare for the meeting.

- What are your goals for the meeting? Staying calm is one. Not having test scores, you may wish to have your goal for the meeting be successfully advocating for the school to test for giftedness. They may suggest this on their own. They may readily agree if you suggest it. They may be resistant.

- An agenda with topics, who will be present, and estimated length of time is often helpful. Approaches for asking for an agenda have been discussed by other posters in recent threads.

- Read school policies. These are often found on a school or district website. Look for information related to identification, and any description of programs/services they may offer to gifted pupils. Print these pages to add to a folder or ring binder of papers that you will bring to meetings and keep as your paper trail. As the years pass, you may wish to tab your binder by year, adding new versions of these policies as they are updated.

- Read your state laws about gifted education and special ed in the event of any possible future 2e/LD diagnosis. Print these and place in your advocacy folder or binder.

- Look at lists of gifted characteristics. Make a checklist or inventory noting which of these characteristics/behaviors you see in your child. You may wish to include specific examples. Place this in your advocacy binder.

- Create an inventory of kiddo's milestones, skills, accomplishments, achievements to-date. Arrange the list by date... for example, when he knew the alphabet, first read, did math, inquired about certain things. Be sure to indicate what was child-led, initiated by child, done of their own interest & motivation. Include the child's current interests pursued at home, attention span, etc. Place this in your advocacy binder.

- Create a list of books read, by date. For emerging readers, be sure to indicate any books which were read aloud to the child, or co-read with the child, as opposed to being read independently (with questions on certain words, discussion about the book, etc). You may wish to look up the lexile or reading level of the books which he chooses and reads independently. A spreadsheet format may be convenient for documenting your son's reading list. Place this in your advocacy binder.

- Learn the grade level outcomes at the school. What is a child expected to know and demonstrate at the end of each grade? Place this in your advocacy binder.

- Comparing the inventories/checklists you created with what is taught at each grade level, what grade level do you observe your son performing at? Document this and place in your advocacy binder. It may be math, 2nd grade... reading, 3rd grade... science, 2nd grade etc. Meanwhile he is in 1st grade.

- Gathering this data helps you guide a discussion if a meeting should flounder or seem at an impasse. For example, rather than feeling that the meeting is family Vs. school, you might ask if you might all look together at the data and see what it may indicate.

- At the meeting, be open to receiving the school's data/observations. Take notes.

- Summarize after the meeting with a friendly e-mail to all attendees. This email might include areas of agreement, next-steps, open items for further discussion, requesting a follow-up meeting, etc.

Davidson Database has wonderful articles and lists of books on advocacy.

I also agree with ZS and see if there is any clues he can give you. In our case it was really challenging to get to the bottom of the problem. His behavior at school was completely different than at home and it was like we were dealing with two different kids. In the end for us an LD diagnosis made a lot of sense for him. At home he was focusing on the things he was naturally good at and was free to explore his obsessions and we were able to see his intelligence. At school however he was forced to do things outside that bubble (and in such a way that he wasn't able to compensate with the gifted side) and then the issues dominated and you'd have a hard time seeing anything remotely gifted about him. On top of that, add on him feeling like he was "dumb" and he did everything he could to hide it or distract from it. When we told him the basics of the test results you could almost see the relief wash over him that there was an explanation (other than "being dumb") for what he was going through and that it didn't mean he wasn't smart after all.

Anyway, definitely explore all possibilities and see what the school has to say but if you can't get any answers I'd suggest testing him and see if someone with 2e experience can make any sense of it. There are a LOT of different types of LDs and most teachers aren't trained to recognize or deal with them. Prior to this DH and I had only ever heard of dyslexia and that's where our LD knowledge stopped. Going in I would have never guessed an LD but once the results were explained it made a lot of things clearer. I just always thought he was a selective listener or that he was stubborn or that he just didn't like to do "x", or....

I'm sure there are lots of other possibilities and I'm obviously skewed based on my experience so that's what I default to. Whatever it is, hopefully you can get to the bottom of it sooner than later. It is not a fun place to be.

If he got in trouble for calling out answers last year (I don't know the specifics of that situation), it seems perfectly reasonable to me that he would refuse to answer this year.

Your gut instincts are correct and it is wise of you to listen to them.
I could have written every single word of your post last year. My child was shutting down in class though he was doing higher grade work at school. I am not aware if LDs are a possible issue in your case and you might want to heed to the suggestions of others and be aware of them.
In my son's case (he is 6 now), his way of shutting down was to go through the motions, get things done as fast as possible without being careful and move on to do something amusing for him - he learnt that compliance at school was important and he would do the basic minimum requirement, with probably 10% of his mind engaged in his tasks. And for the rest of the day at school, he was entertaining himself by chatting to other kids and distracting them, playing with legos and blocks, singing silly songs he made up loudly and trying to get a laugh out of the class when they were asked to sit and color or do art work etc. He would also tell the teacher "! don't want to do anything" on some days.
The teacher said that he was not ready for further acceleration because his handwriting was poor and that he made too many mistakes in his addition worksheets - he was doing 3rd grade math at home (with high accuracy) and he did a holiday camp at a math tutoring center where they also placed him at 3rd grade level.
I spent a lot of time volunteering in his calss to figure out the problem. My conclusion was that there was no challenge in anything he was doing and the fun part of the day were the PE class, music class and recess. The math challenge the teacher gave him was to add numbers like 14+15 (instead of 4+5 for the rest of the class), which was highly inadequate.
He takes 45 minute piano lessons, he afterschools math with me and attends 90 minute chess classes at a chess academy - the level of focus we and his coaches saw when he worked on content that was several leagues ahead of his school work was the polar opposite of what we saw at school.
We attribute it all to lack of challenge making the child give up on school and a lack of strict discipline/consequences for non-compliance (for e.g. the teacher wrote notes to parents when a child refused to do school work instead of handling it in the classroom).
My solution was to pull him out of his school and put him in an academically intense school and which also has a lot of structure and discipline. It has worked for us so far, though DS struggles with the discipline part of it. We still afterschool in math because he is doing 2nd grade math at school which is easy for him. But he gets a wide variety of subject matters like logic, history, literature etc that he is required to be "mentally present" all the time.
Find a way to up the challenge level of his work (either at school or afterschool). Good luck.

Off-task, inattentive, not focused are all code words schools use for ADHD. They are hoping that by using these words, you get it. Your DS actually sounds exactly like my DD when she was 6. I kept asking "Do you think she has ADHD?" and no one would give me a direct answer. Schools don't want to suggest "ADHD" because they are not allowed to diagnose kids and don't want you to sue them.

Is he focused at home? For instance if you asked him to write a couple paragraphs about anything that he wants, would he get down to work and do it quickly? Or would he need reminders to stay on task? If you give him written math at his level does he stay on task? Is he disorganized, messy, need reminders about everything? If he also has problems focusing at home, then I would seriously consider ADHD--otherwise you are probably onto something with him being completely bored and disengaged at school. But remember kids with ADHD CAN focus on things if they are engaged (for instance my DD can do complicated puzzles and read long books even when she's not on medication)--you have to give him something that is is not fascinating to him to see if he can focus.

I'd just like to note - lack of sustained attention in school isn't a particularly good marker for ADHD in a six year old.

A much better indicator would be consistently, easily distracted from their present activity, inability to consider the consequences of their actions (impulsiveness), and difficulty following multi-step directions.

It sounds more like your son has "checked out".

Thank you all for your input. It is so helpful. I don't want to be the parent that assumes my kids behavior is unacceptable because he's bright and bored. I have fought that argument because I feel like he does, at some point, need to learn how to operate in a classroom.

And then, he brings home another coloring worksheet with tally marks and I'm not surprised at all at his behavior. We were casually doing some multiplication and division with his pretzels when he got home from school...his idea. He's curious and he seems to get it, at least at this very basic level.

He does not like to write. Ever. Yesterday and today he was asked to write facts about apples in reading, facts about bats in science and facts about sharks in his gifted class. He can spit these facts out the first time he hears them, so why can't he go on to using this information in some meaningful way? Does he just need to learn to muscle through all the activities like fact writing? I don't know the answer to that.

It is clear that there is a disconnect and you all have offered some fantastic ideas. I want it to be clean and easy. If it's ADHD, fine. Let's deal with it and move on. Obviously, that's not the way this works. I'm tired and I feel the journey has just begun.

We had the opposite experience. They told us that he was ADHD-Inattentive and suggested that we test privately. We did and that's how we discovered his gifted/LD profile. I know of another kid that was told the same thing (minus the Inattentive) and he came out PG with OE. There are so many ADHD diagnosed kids in most schools that it is what they are the most familiar with.

I understand. So little seems to be clean and easy in our own journey. I do wonder whether the learning environment is just not a good fit based on what you've shared. He's six. Maybe he's just not ready to write as quickly as his mind works. Maybe he sees that the worksheets are so easy that the effort seems meaningless. These are experiences some of us have lived through/live through with our own children. It is possible that there is a LD at play. But be mindful of the tendency of many educators to want to find a label to fit their own perspective, rather than dig deeper to find the truth.

I worked in a different school district last year with kids one on one (reading) and I had a few where it seemed obvious they had ADHD. The teachers seemed very resistant to talking to the parents about it, and that was my experience as well with my own kid in a different school. One teacher actually told me what I said above...they can hint by using words like "unfocused", but they can't come right out and suggest ADHD. I think there are tons of kids that actually do have it and they are never diagnosed (and of course there are kids who do not have it, but are diagnosed, or worse yet, put on meds). It takes a thorough eval and if there are any concerns at all about focus or attention, I suggest parents take the child in for a private eval.

I'd suggest an experiment (or have the teachers do it) - ask him to write facts about "x" then repeat but offer to scribe for him (he tells you exactly what to write). This was one of the accommodations that came out of his report and it made a huge difference for us. He is still encouraged to work on his writing and we don't always scribe but it was great for getting things started and allowed him to get credit for what he knew not just what he could put on paper. His writing is now coming along so we don't do it as much as we did last year but last year it was key to keeping school from being a complete disaster.



I can totally relate. Take a deep breath. Last year was exhausting for us but we eventually managed to figure a few things out, advocated and got a FANTASTIC teacher this year and it has been much better. There is hope. I know we're likely not done but I'm enjoying the calm while I can. Hopefully, you're school will be amazing and help you sort out a better path for him soon.

Concerning the writing issue:

Is it that he has a problem writing the *kinds* of answers he wants to write? For example, most of the other kids might want to simply respond with "It is scary" while he wants to write a 6 year old's equivalent of a dissertation on the difference between white and nurse sharks. It's tough for a 6 year old to write that much, even if there aren't LD issues involved. He might also know the right words and their meaning, but not how to spell them (and if perfectionism is present, then we all know that a 6 year year old will believe he should spell everything correctly the first time).

I've just noticed with my child that sometimes the quality of the answers he wants to present can actually inhibit his ability to respond.

If they are hinting at ADHD remind them that the diagnoses requires certain things to exist after the age of 7 (I think 7 definately older than 6) for the simple reason the behavoirs are quite normal before that.

And yes they should only hint as they are not qualified to diagnose.

We had the meeting with the counselor yesterday. She was very nice and is going to observe DS and talk with him about school. (She specifically said that she was NOT trying to look for ADHD but to observe how he is functioning in class.)

I feel like I was direct, cited examples and scores and the bottom line is that our county and school are quite advanced. Our bell curve is highly unusual. Thirty percent of the fifth grade class qualified for the Duke Tip program. They have advanced content classes at the upper grades and have considered cross grouping. Their concern is that if they accelerate kids and then they can't handle calculus in 10th grade, for example, then they've set the kids up for failure.

She said that the teachers would not advance DS if he didn't show proficiency in lower-level tasks. She said there were kids just like him in his class. I asked why then, are there 6 worksheets on tally marks when everyone can do addition and subtraction with negative numbers like my son. (Okay, I wasn't that snarky, but you get it She said that, compared to the other 7 schools she's been in, this is advanced content.

I don't think they would ever consider subject acceleration. Not when there are smart kids everywhere. I don't think DS is PG. So, maybe he's in the right place and I just need to be very grateful. I'm not convinced about that, but it's something I need to consider.

Some of you suggested that I speak directly with him about what's going on at school. We talked for a while after school that day while we were playing in the backyard. He casually said his reading teacher asked him to hurry up and finish writing his facts. I asked why he thought it was taking him longer to finish. "I was thinking about it." Later, we were working on math. He was answering 30 questions on a computer game. I was checking on him and asked him to just enter the answer and move along. He paused and I told him again. He responded by saying, "I'm thinking. (Pause) Is thinking bad?" How sad is that? At six years old, he's picked up the idea that thinking is bad. That is NOT okay with me.

I apologize if this is not helpful. Also, we live in a high achieving district that claims to "get" gt kids and differentiates for them. (Our ds was tested privately last year- hg with vision issue)

I have had a similar experience with the school telling me my ds6 "has a peer group" and "some are achieving more than him". Ok. There is nothing I can say, really. (He doesn't like writing, has vision issues and is going to VT, and hates math fluency.) In comparing within the box, his output is not as great; BUT he has the knowledge and know how.

My ds similarly "acts" fine at school. Home life (before/ after school) is quite different. We believe he is holding it together at school and letting his frustrations out at home. He does have a pleaser type personality. I also think he realizes he is different from his classmates. (Btw, this year is slightly better than last year. Nice teacher. More flexible teaching style.) At this point, we are questioning whether this school "gets" our ds, and if they will service him at all.

You know your dc. If he is acting different at home. Something is going on. Trying to get the school to help may be more challenging. Maybe getting some testing might help you figure out what is going on.