Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Discouraged and need help

DD 9 is in third grade at a small private school. She is unchallenged academically and her teachers are at a loss as to what to do with her. She is bored to tears and easily works three to four grades ahead. Her WISC scores easily meet Davidsons criteria I just have not filled out the application (I should probably get on that:)). The problem is that in every other way her school is wonderful. She has great friends, nurturing teachers, an elementary robotics league and math team etc.. and I constantly feel torn as to what is more important. She can do a grade skip to fifth next year if we want her to, I just worry the social pressure that comes with fifth grade girls may be to much. We have done several classes (young readers, cryptography) through CTY and she enjoyed those and she works with a retired math professor a few days a week doing advanced math and loves it. She is starting to develop wicked perfectionism and is shutting down when anything is even slightly difficult (this was never a problem before) and there does not seem to be an appropriate environment for her. I would love to homeschool but work full time and cannot. Any suggestions? Just feeling very discouraged!

You are not alone. :-)

If she's nine and in third grade, would it really be that different to advance a grade from an age-mates standpoint? I ask because our child is nine and in fourth grade (no full-grade acceleration, started K just at age five). That wouldn't be a full solution, but it might be worth considering. If the school is supportive, could she sit in on a few fourth grade classes now and see what she thinks?

All that said, if she is at DYS level ability wise, it is hard to find a perfect schooling match. In our DYS' child's case, a half-day acceleration schedule has been worked out by the school and that, along with friendships w/age-mates and the enrichment classes (gym, music, art, Spanish) is a decent compromise. For now. Sixth grade for math and English/language arts (three hours worth of classes, roughly) and fourth for all else. We know he's not fully challenged, but there have been enough challenges in keeping up with managing a higher daily workload (homework, bane of our lives) to give him something to work on...

DD just turned 10 and is in 5th grade. She did a full grade acceleration back in kindergarten. If your DD is at least average in terms of social maturity I don't think it would be a bad decision to do an acceleration, although I doubt it will solve all the problems. The work would still be way too easy. Have you talked to the school about having her go to a higher level classroom just for certain subjects, like math and reading? DD and DS both go to 6th grade for math (DS is only 8 and in third grade but the school allows this and they say it is going well).

I will say, though, that girls this age (5th grade) seem to be much more "mature" than in the past. I saw one of DD's skype conversations with a school friend who I thought was a sweet little girl, and both girls were swearing in skype, the other girl wrote "LOL, you don't scare me." (as a sarcastic remark to something DD said). Then they were talking about how some other girls pushed DD at school and DD got mad. The other girl said "You were laughing at first, why would you laugh if it made you mad?" And DD said "Because I want to keep friends" and the other girl said "Why do you care so much about pleasing other people? Why not just focus on school?" and DD said "I'm more of a social type person than an academic person." and the other girl said "Give me a break, that's a bunch of B.S.! Why do you get upset so easily. I don't get upset that easily and I am a poor girl who does not have a computer, minecraft, or nice clothes. If you can't figure out how to act normal then I don't know if we should be friends." (just to note, this girl actually lives in a house that's twice as expensive as ours, and eariler in the conversation she said something like "I agree, school sucks @ss"). The conversation was appalling to me (both girls, not just the other girl). It sounded like something that I would have discussed with a friend at age 16 and these girls are both 10. They did end up working it out and are presumably good friends again but I'm waiting to see when the next episode occurs. DD talks frequently about catfights between girls at school and she sees herself as a sort of "peacemaker". Luckily the drama doesn't seem to get turned on her very often, although it's scary how quickly the dynamics can change.

ITA with ConnectingDots, she really shouldn't be one of the oldest in her grade. If she is nine already and not otherwise socially challenged, grade skip her now. You should also add a year or two of subject acceleration in math, which should bring her to Pre-Algebra this year or next year as 6th grade is typically Pre-Algebra for the advanced/honors/GT track at many decent public schools. Obviously, the academics should still be too low for her but at least it will be closer to her level as well as enable her to get to higher level materials sooner. Even a NT kid with several days of private expert teaching a week will likely advance at least a couple of years of elementary math at this young age, much less a DYS level kid. There is no way that 3rd grade math isn't going to drive her crazy!

If perfectionism is an issue, I really recommend exposing her to math competitions such as the American Mathematics Competition series (AMC 8, AMC 10 and AMC 12) where it is extremely hard to earn a perfect score and where even the top 1% usually miss at least several problems out of 25. There were less than 100 perfect scores out of over 144,000 competitors for the 2015 AMC 8 in November. Both my younger kids (1 mathy and 1 not) competed in their first AMC 8 at age 9 so this is probably a good time for your DD to at least try out the old exams in a non-competitive setting (next competition is in November 2016).