Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy looks like our path is shifting - need advice

Our story is that my DS7 is currently partially homeschooled. He attends his public school in the morning and comes home in the afternoon to do all academic subjects. He had been accelerated in school in math 3 years. We actually made the transition to homeschool math just recently as they have stopped teaching anything new in his math class, now that the state tests are done. I started him on EPGY a few months ago as they were already slowing down and just doing test prep. To my surprise (one would think that nothing would surprise me at this point), DS blazed through another year of math in just the past 3 months.

Originally, our plan was to stick it out another year at this public school and do part time homeschool. DS loves seeing his friends and doing his special at school. As he told me recently, it's a "perfect" arrangement. After next school year (2014-2015), we were going to skip him a full year into a local private school that I was thinking would be a good fit for him (I once worked there and know that they are acceleration and gifted friendly.) Recently, I have been chatting up old colleagues and friends from the intended private school. It sounds like the administration has changed and the student population has changed. Not so gifted friendly. We were kind of full-steam-ahead for this school, as this was really the only private school in the area that I would consider - especially given my intimate knowledge of it. Now I am reconsidering. It's a lot of money, a separation from my son's friends (who he really enjoys) and a huge shift that may pan out to not improve my son's education.

My question to you all is: do I work hard at trying to establish a relationship with this private school's new administration with the hope that they will listen and ultimately give my son what he needs (the old administration would have), or do we stay put and continue to partially homeschool?

Did you meet with the private school? I would at least meet with them, ask the questions that need to be asked, and then go from there. When I go and talk to principals I can usually tell within a few minutes whether they are sympathetic to the cause or not, or willing to work with you. Some principals will initially seem agreeable so you need to ask detailed questions about how things would be handled (or what options would be considered). So you could ask something like "Would you consider accelerating a child either a whole grade or for certain subjects, and if so, under what circumstances? Do they need certain test scores? How much would they be accelerated? If they are not accelerated (as in sent to a different class) but still advanced, then what would be done instead?"

If your son thinks it is a perfect arrangement, I would stay where you are. He has his needs met and is happy. Why change course?

Even if you decide not to change current course, I would think it is still good idea to visit the prviate school and see exactly what is different and whether it is something that could develop into an viable option if the current situation no longer works.

We visited a local private gifted school a few months ago, thinking that it is most likely not going to be what we will pursue and had our focus on the more traditional path... Until we got the test results and at that same time, DS telling us out of the blue he does not want to go to school. It was so out of the blue (both the results we got and the sudden attitude change towards his class) that we found ourselves frantic with what to do, and ended up completely shifting our plans - ended up applying to the gifted school after all with our son asking us when his school situation would change.

Things can change suddenly... In our case, I feel it was a combination of recent boredom (he loved the class and teacher when he first moved up) and sudden change in how a few classmates were behaving towards him that got to him. So we found ourselves pushed into reversing our orignial positions on things like acceleration and private schools (and whether we would need to consider homeschooling at some point).

This. It's working well for your son, so I would leave it alone until it isn't.

Thanks all. I have spoken to the new administrator. Her responses to my questions were not great...."all the children at this school are gifted" so acceleration is not necessary. Just more of the standard bad responses I read from others on this website.

Part of the issue is that we would be applying for DS during the prime entry point for this school. He could possibly get into the school during a subsequent year, but I wouldn't count on it. And I'm not terribly concerned about changing schools, if we thought it was going to be a (somewhat) permanent change. DS makes friends quickly and effortlessly. He would do very well with the change. HOWEVER, if we switched to the private school and then realized that we needed to switch to another school, all within a year or two, DS would not like that too much. (And I wouldn't like wasting the money on top of this.)

What I am realizing is that I am afraid of homeschooling DS for the long haul. I actually LOVE homeschooling him. He loves it too. I just don't see how I could possibly be qualified for the whole run of it.

Oh thanks! This actually makes me feel a little better. DS doesn't seem to ever break a sweat on anything. It is amazing and scary at the same time. He will be 8 and starting algebra and I assume 2-4 months after that, on to the next thing. (And he still asks me, "when does any of this actually get hard?") We've been doing high school chemistry this year too. Nothing too challenging - except related to writing and executive functioning, of course.

My husband likes to point out that he thinks that I am far more qualified than most teachers to either teach my son or to outsource a particular subject to an appropriate teacher. That makes me feel better since DH is PG and skipped multiple years of school.

These kids are completely exhausting. So often when I come to this site, I am 15 mins before sleep and can barely get coherent sentences out. So, thanks for all the replies and I welcome more!

You don't have to be qualified for the whole run of it. You just need to seek out resources that are such as a mentor, online classes, and the MIT lectures, http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm, and guide him to them.

There are online schools even for elementary, and khanacademy.org, and museums, and books. I wish we could home-school full-time as we're having to educate him in the evenings anyway, just to keep him engaged. School for us right now is just one big, fat daycare and DS8 is only HG.

Personally, I would just keep him where you are; he's happy with it and the private school does not sound accommodating. Why waste the money trying to make it work when you already have something that is working?

Yes to all of it.

We did partial homeschooling for a few years with #2, until #1 started homeschooling, too, at which point it made more sense not to truck one kid in and out. It really was a wonderful arrangement (we did 1-3 full days a week, depending on the year, month, or desirability of that week's agenda), with all specials and whatever throwaway academics happened to occur on attendance days.

As long as your school is willing to be flexible, and your son is happy with it, I would run with it. And if you switch to fully homeschooling, do as much as you feel comfortable with, and outsource the rest.

And what makes any of us think we are qualified to be parents, anyway?

I agree with some of the previous posters and your husband. I also fear sometimes not being able to teach my son for the long haul. No school is going to be able to realy give him the individualized education that you give him access to. You don't have to know everything and teach him everything, you just need to support him and give him access to these opportu ities!
Our school made the decision to ft hs very easy by being a completely useless and negative environment that was resulting in obvious damage to my son. :P
They set the bar extremely low!!!