Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion DS5 is speeding through elementary school

DS5 was moved from preschool to the K-2 classroom in the spring. By May he was the top student in the first grade group. He's attending summer school because it serves as daycare. He's on pace to complete the targets in the second grade curriculum by the end of the summer. In September when he's supposed to be starting K, he'll be mostly working in third grade material. His teacher says she's never seen anything like this.

This school goes through 8th grade and allows each kid to work at their own pace with an 8:1 student/teacher ratio. There are no administrative stops on progression. He can go, go, go which is in line with his personality.

His handwriting, attention span and work habits are all on pace with his work. This is very different than his 2e older brother.

Should we look at more depth to slow the pace? He'll have basically finished 3 grades in six months.

He is fiercely competitive and wants to be the tallest, smartest, fastest, etc. We have a few types like this in the extended family and they're successful but a bit annoying.

This isn't the type of gifted kid I'm used to dealing with. Up until a few months ago everything was play based with him.

My thoughts would be to let him progress at school according to his own will and talents... and supplement with depth/enrichment at home, according to his interests which may go beyond the offered curriculum. If his interests do not go beyond the offered curriculum, you may wish to help him develop interests, and nurture his curiosity.

And work, work, work with him on social, emotional, and interpersonal skills, including developing the grace to accept that he will not always be the tallest, smartest, fastest, etc and that he will still have intrinsic value as a human being. His ability to accept this in himself may be necessary for him to be able to truly value others.

What is different about him is that he doesn't seem to have intellectual curiosity.

DS8 loves learning despite his learning disabilities and will learn without a gold star reward. He watches documentaries, loves museums and applies knowledge in novel ways.

DD5 seems to view the classroom as just one of several arena in which to show off. I am thinking about signing him up for piano. He doesn't seem to have any special music ability. I'd like him to have to work at something.

The high level of competitiveness can be a red flag for this: being externally motivated. The goal, over time, is for individuals to develop internal locus of control.

Asking him open-ended questions such as "what are your thoughts about... do you wonder... (virtually any topic, such as: what happens next in a process, how stalactites and stalagmites formed this way, why people choose to eat different foods, how we could make this at home...etc)" may help him develop his own internal conversation about the things he is seeing and learning. These internal conversations can help him make connections between different ideas/concepts/facts and can also help with raising awareness of a budding curiosity on any particular topic.

Expressing your own curiosity to learn more about something, and role modeling strategies you utilize to satisfy your curiosity on that topic may help him as well. For example, this could be wondering aloud if you could make a dish at home that you enjoy at a restaurant... tasting it carefully and talking about what the ingredients may be, researching online for a recipe, and declaring some early attempts unsuccessful but worth another attempt at adjusting the recipe. Or this could be learning a new knitting stitch. Or learning about gardening, some element of home repair, or a new language, or a new vocabulary word of the day. Virtually anything which allows the child to see happy, well-adjusted adults as life-long learners with struggles and a desire to meet the challenge and try again.

There are some great books, such as Unwritten Rules of Friendship and others frequently mentioned on the forums which may help you teach him an approach which will serve him better in life.

This could be a great strategy, as long as he is supported in his struggles and failures... otherwise it may backfire and cause him to avoid anything new which he will not be instantly good at (or the best at). This avoidance is sometimes called "fixed mindset", and may be related to procrastination and perfectionism. The more flexible approach which accepts struggle and failure as learning opportunities is sometimes called "growth mindset".

Depth comes with higher grades. I wouldn't be too alarmed at his progress. The lower grades are incredibly repetitive, the progressions from one grade to the next are not significant.

My son's intellectual curiosity is limited by his expectation that everything should be easy. He's a naturally lazy guy. 😂 He is motivated by acceleration though!

I vote to let your son go. Let him learn at his pace. Don't worry about flying through grade levels because Common Core instruction is incredibly repetitive between grade levels. He'll eventually find something which is academically challenging - and the sooner he finds that, the better. The younger he is when he struggles, the more you can guide and influence him through it.

My son skipped 2nd and 3rd grade math, half of 4th grade math, half of 6th grade math, and also is skipping 7th and 8th grade! Math is not his strength. I'm not bragging on my special-snowflake brilliant kid. I'm illustrating how repetitive Common Core standards are.

I suggest figuring out your "worst" case scenario, and making long-term academic and social plans for if he continues to progress at this pace. Understanding my son's academic options relieved some of my anxiety, and helped me figure out how to have my son in middle school, high school and college level classes - all at the same time!

What options do you have if your son completes one grade per year and he graduates high school at age 15? What options do you have if he completes 2 grades per year and graduates high school at 10 or 11?

Below is a list of things I've done to figure out what is available for my son.

Find out what options are in local district,
Learn my state's laws and loopholes.
Investigate under what circumstances my district might pay for college courses
Join the charter school board
Decide whether early university (living away from home) or gap years works better. State child labor laws influenced my decision, as did the state's legal definition for compulsory school attendance
Investigate my state's requirements for homeschool and under what circumstances it might work for my family
Investigate what the local community college and nearest state university require for early entrance

I would let it go as well. What I wouldn't do was formally skip him at this age. His current (until 8th) school is capable of providing curriculum at his level, so keep him with K kids and let his academics go. That sounds ideal.

My priorities would indeed be social (as it is with my own boys), since academics is such a strength. I would also ensure that the school is expecting grade level output (second grade output for example) before moving on. Lots of homeschoolers scaffold their children and don't expect high levels of output; that's a mistake because high school and college don't care if you understand the material if you can't communicate that effectively.

Sounds like you have a great setup. My theory is also to keep doing what is working, and worry about problems when they come. It sounds like everything is working, so that's great.

Thanks for the advice. The teachers don't tolerate bragging, etc. He acts like a humble little gentleman at school and is well liked. I just know how he works because when he gets in the car after school I hear "I had fifteen assignments for today but I did thirty! Most people did not even get their fifteen done." I asked his teacher about him being so competitive and she said she didn't really see it. So when I said he shows off it is not really to others. He'll set up parameters to make anything a competition even if he's the only one really keeping score.

Unfortunately I think he just doesn't see kids in the K-2 class as being competition. He's comparing himself to his brother's 3-8 class. Those students sometimes help out in the lower class and DS5 overhearing one of DS8's friends saying things like "I was in the K-2 and your little brother is a math machine!" is high praise and motivates him even more.

Today he answered "How was tennis camp?" with "I am in the top four best but the youngest in that group".

DS8 would've said "Oh it was fine. There were some huge ant colonies near the court that I observed most of the afternoon. I just told the tennis people I was not really into sports so they could just focus on the other kids. I stayed nearby so they could still keep an eye on me and get paid for doing that."

I realize it might seem like a dumb concern but like Indigo mentions, I can tell his drive is coming from a different place than his brother's.

Interestingly DH and I both have siblings like this. It makes me wonder if it is a nature or nurture thing.

My first thought is, he's only 5, so everything comes with a big caveat. I agree with others that there is so little conceptual content in the elementary school curriculum that it's pretty easy to plow through it at light speed if you simply aim to check all the boxes.

My personal sense is that it is not a bad thing to let him rush up to a level where it becomes more feasible to offer more challenge. It sounds, though, like he is a child who could benefit a lot from adding as much depth to his work as his grade level allows. Hard problems, whether in math or language arts, that require slowing down, thinking, analyzing, and especially struggle. Where there isn't a straightforward process to get the result, but rather many ways of getting there, and maybe more than one right answer. Where the person who is "the best" may be the one who works the hardest at it and produces a lot of wrong answers on the way, rather than the first one to check the box.

(Materials like competition math and AoPS are good for this; I know the Math Kangaroo starts at grade 1. I'm sure others on the board could suggest equivalent "stretch materials" in other subjects).

So I don't think he needs slowing down just for the sake of slowing down - the pace itself (especially at this age) is not the problem. But it does sound like depth would help him learn and grow, and not build a vision of education as a "to do" list of items to be struck off as quickly and with as little thought and effort as possible. Given that, I think it would be better to build the challenge into his regular school day rather than have it as an after school add-on.

What I read in your description is a classroom/school which seems to feed to your ds' natural competitive ability and perhaps doesn't provide the environment that makes intellectual curiosity obvious. Please know I'm not knocking your school - just observing that in a place where progress can be counted in the number of worksheets that can be finished in a school day, or in the grade level a child is progressing through vs other students, it's easy for a child who is naturally competitive to compare himself/herself to others. The schools my kids have been in are very different from that - few worksheets, and an emphasis on working in groups on projects. The potential downside for an HG+ student is that they have been also more of a mindset to have all students working on the same thing (not necessarily at the same depth/level). There is a lot of discussion and active teacher involvement, and what you can see is children who are actively engaged in following their intellectual curiosity. Again, I'm not saying that one type of school environment is "better" in any way than another, each has it's strengths and drawbacks, and I would imagine in any school, it's the teachers who make the largest difference, no matter what the educational philosophy.


I am not sure if you're simply looking for an activity that provides challenge for your ds, or a way to help him not always be "the best" in order to develop understanding or empathy or tolerance for others who aren't at his level. If the purpose is to simply challenge him and perhaps also to learn music, it's a plan that sounds reasonable. If there's a concern over his focus on competing I would tackle it in a slightly different way. Even if piano is challenging for him and he's not "the best" at it, he's still most likely going to head into it with a competitive bent, because that's his personality (I think - but of course I don't know him). What's worked the best for my kids (including one who's uber-competitive and likes to always come out on top), is participating in group activities (sports/camps/whatever) with others, even if they happen to be the highest IQ or the best athlete or the best-at-whatever in the group. Having to function in a group has helped my highly competitive loves-to-be-number-1 kid see in action the values we try to talk about at home. Hope that makes sense.

Best wishes,

polarbear

How does he deal with something he doesn't know but is asked to try?

Starting in 3rd grade I used to tape a question or two from a past math counts or AMC 8 on my sons math folder. It would be something that I knew he would understand (with a little help) and wasn't to hard, usually a "tricky question" where the answer might seem obvious but not correct.