Hmmm, sounds like an excuse because he doesn't know everything. Was he testing above level? The estimation thing sounds "advanced" for 1st (?). And median is just about exposure. If he was testing above level, what did he get right? Was it a high "enough" percentage(ile)?

I remember when DS first tested for grade advancement. He would have been 6.5. I think they said he was weak in "elapsed time". I remember having some sort of aha moment later that it wasn't the elapsed time that gave him issues. I think he confused something like "quarter til" with "quarter after". I can't remember. The point is twofold...

1. What he didn't "know" wasn't what they assumed
2. He filled in the "gap" without pause somewhere along the line

I'd focus more on the big picture. Does he know the other 25 concepts of 2nd (3rd, whatever), and is this a stand alone "weakness"? Fortunately in our case, they did let DS accelerate based on the fact that he did know everything else they tested.

I was hoping the estimation thing would pan out like DS's, . His "issue" back in 2nd/3rd was that he couldn't estimate something like 18+31. The "correct" snswer there was 50 (20+30) which seriously messed with his mathematical mind. In Everyday Math this was called a "Ballpark Estimate", and that concept was particularly hard to my little budding mathematician. He saw no need to stop there when it took him milliseconds to be exact. Ironically, the other group that had trouble with this concept was the seriously behind kids, .

Sweetie - a lable is only any good if it helps you see clearly 'who' your child is. I hate that show 'Family Guy' but it's a great example of a Mom totally missing the boat on her baby's reality. Most kids, unlike Baby Stuie, are pretty good at figuring out what is expected of them, and if we don't 'make it ok' then they may hide before they even get to school.




My guess is that you buy the items because they appeal to you! We are often, not always, that tree that the little appple didn't fall far from, so what we like, usually the child likes. The only way to know is to get them off the shelf and give it a try! Then we have a chance to observe and nurture, or box up those items. trust your powers of observation - a person who's tagline is 'questioning is what I do' isn't going to fall into a black hole of anything (except self doubt, maybe)


How about seeing yourself as creating a real sense of work ethic? I wouldn't push a toddler, but showing her that there is a whole interesting world out there of learning, and that learning for fun is 'natural' you are setting the stage for tommorow's work ethic.



Keep a journal if you are afraid of loosing your objectivity, but is raising a child who is cut of from her inner love of learning because she 'wants to be like Mommy' a better alternative? I'm might be being a bit extreame here, but I really think that if sexism had never existed, and the U.S. had a healthier view of smartness, a Mother would natually 'share' bits of academics with a toddler just like you toss a soft ball to her or take her to the playground. Can you imagine a parent afraid to toss a kid a ball because she didn't want to be dissapointed that the child really didn't have what it takes to be on the Olympic Softball Team?



I've been there, done that, and it took me years to change signals and really 'be there' for my son. Problem is that being on the other side of the fence involves willful disregard of reality, and that can't be good for a parent-child relationship. Also I put DS into situations that would have been fine for a ND kid, (Daycare with agemates) but let him to believe that the world was full of 'Babies.'

But yes, I totally understand wanting to be able to 'forget' gifted. ((wink))

I would say that as long as 'Character' is your first focus, and 'Gifted' is a servant of 'character' you'll be fine.

Best Wishes,
Grinity

LOL! But what if he wants to study Bariatric Zoology ? (animal obesity).

Dottie, I hear you loud and clear. DS6 is in 2nd grade and got 88% on their own 3rd grade level testing (they require 90% to accelerate - to 3rd). They say this is "survey" testing rather than mastery testing. *sigh* I just don't know eduspeak. He skipped 1st math and I'm not seeing any gaps at all.

How can I get the teacher to understand?? Any suggestions for brief articles that she might get? When I talk about LOG, she puts me the same category of parent that she has to convince aren't that much smarter than the other kids.

It's tough, really tough! And I know it's not very helpful to say "it will be better in a few years", when you are in the throes now. But we have finally reached the point where it's just obvious and impossible to ignore. Part of me wants to go back to his teachers from <3rd and say "See? I told you so!" Until the gap (between DS and grade peers) gets obnoxiously large, they'll continue to resort to their canned lines and training, .

From the "other side", I guess I would focus on persistence from you in getting the best you can for DS. You probably won't convince teachers at this point, but you don't necessarily have to if you can get some accommodations along the way. I think the teachers in the higher grades are much better prepared to see abstract thinking and unusual levels of intelligence. The lower ones aren't often looking with that thought in mind, .

P.S...I also want to share our experience with DD14. When DS was first accelerated in math, I started having some regrets about DD, and wondered what I'd missed in my years of cluelessness. She was not identified as GT until 5th grade. Anyway, I made the same request for her, at least to have more "PLEP" testing, and she was given a higher level of the testing done for DS. Her results were easily gifted, but MUCH lower than DS's (relatively speaking). From those more manageable results, I didn't feel the need to push, even though she might have done okay with acceleration.

Flash forward a few years, and she's doing beautifully with the basic "top level" of work for that same grade (she was an early K admit, but only by mere weeks). I don't think this is the case at all for Jool, but I did want to present a balanced viewpoint. My mantra is not all about getting the most acceleration possible, and that all GT kids should be accelerated. To compare to Jool again, keep in mind that I never really had the "mama gut" feeling that things weren't right with DD. She's always topped her classes, but never in that way that insulted her intelligence, kwim? There was clearly a difference.

Anyway, I think Jool's son is more in DS's camp than DD's, but I did want to share a greater spectrum response to the "am I making a big deal out of the whole gifted thing" idea.

Jool, I'd say relax. You are doing the right thing, but it doesn't mean that it will work out everytime you try. Of course we parents all want to make sure that our kids are in an ideal environment, but kids are resilient, if once in a while things don't work out exactly the way we like, chances are kids and parents will be able to cope.

I say this out of my own experience. My DS8 had a terrible year in last year. He was bored silly during math--and he had no weak areas whatsoever--yet the teacher refused to give him any challenge. We talked with the teacher a few times. The answer that we got was "well I know your son is smart but there are many smart kids in my room, some smarter than your son, and none of THEM is bored with my teaching". We didn't fight, because for various reasons we weren't ready to switch DS to a different room or a different school in case that our relationship with the teacher went completely sour. Instead we helped him find interesting material to work on at home, and we made sure that he had enough intellectual stimulation with his extracurricular activities.

This year the new teacher immediately saw that DS's math ability is way ahead of other kids in the classroom, and she gave DS advanced material from the very beginning of the school year and DS works on it at his own pace--as soon as he finishes one level he gets the next level. DS's enthusiasm for math is completely restored.

So what I'm saying is that we should definitely try to arrange the ideal situation for our kids. But we should not put too much pressure on ourselves. If for part of the time in school the kid is not fully challenged it's probably OK. With different teachers each year, things will go better or worse. We can use other means to satisfy our kids' need when things at school don't go so well. So, enjoy the challenge!

I'll be honest, "gifted" never occurred to me until I had a kid heading to K and I'm very grateful for that. I can't see that my kids missed anything by not having math workbooks at 3 and two managed to learn to read and add/subtract/multiply from helping me cook and asking questions while driving in the car and watching "Blue's Clues". They learned other things from leappad type games, but they were all just games. Even in elementary school, I provide a lot of materials, but I don't engage with them. I just got a shipment of Horrible Science, Horrible Histories and Murderous Maths that made some people in my house *very* happy. I got some Life of Fred books last summer and one kid learned a lot of math, but the others never looked at them. No problem -- I think of myself as the resource supply, but I have no agenda of things I want them to get through or cover. It avoids any power struggle over learning and makes it something they "own" which I like (one of the benefits of public school is that I don't have to be getting them through a particular topic ever). I don't want them to learn to please me or to learn because I'm invested in it. I want to teach them to find their own passions and for me, that requires being rather hands-off in my approach.

While my kids certainly went to the library and picked books and read things we had in the house as toddlers, otherwise, they were just about getting messy and playing around with sidewalk chalk, play-doh, etc. I am very grateful that I wasn't worried about readiness level or achievement when my kids were younger. I'm not even sure I should be that worried about it now . . . I realize that some kids, especially only kids, may have different needs from the parents, but I had a "pack" who could learn together through play, so we let them play.

I think it's easy to become too focused on the whole GT thing as some kind of defining characteristic of our kids. If I think about what I want for my kids, not much of it depends on being "smart" but rather finding things they passionate about, building good relationships, having a sense of themselves as embedded in a community, family, and being responsible towards others while taking good care of themselves. I do think my kids are more likely to find people who share their passions at MIT than elsewhere, but I think they have enough interests that are divergent enough that they can also find friends and companions at the park, music world, etc. If I see them as teenagers heading towards a path that will preclude getting to a decent college, I'll intervene, but that hasn't been necessary in early elem.

Jool -- I am sending you a PM. I am also struggling with an unhappy kid at the moment and I wonder the same thing. What's the worst that can happen if a kid is bored for a while? I don't see that leading to catastrophic consequences or permanent damage. I'm trying to decide how hard to fight for more when what we have is at least pretty good.

I understand that all kids are different. I think I might need to be more involved if my kids just wanted to watch TV all day and weren't inherently active. But all we really need to do is limit video game and TV time, and my kids seem to do the rest. We have a really funny video of a 20 month old who had just discovered numbers and letters. His sister is horrified that he's in another room playing with refrigerator magnets while Elmo is on TV in the living room and she keeps coming in and yelling at him to go watch Elmo, but my son was having none of Elmo with letters in the world. He's still the same. I let my kids watch something on DVR last week, and my son sat for two minutes before we went back to building robots.

I don't want to hijack the topic so we can move this to a new thread if need be.

G3 wrote:

I think it depends on the degree of boredom which of course depends on the kid. As we discussed in another thread, kids experience boredom differently and it's not always related to IQ.

What part of the day is boring? Just one subject? How many years has it been? My son *suffered* for 3years. I see the damage that was done. Do I know w/ 100% certainty that being under-challenged caused it or is it just personality developing? Nope but all I know is I sent an energetic, loved to learn, highly focused kid and when I pulled him out of 3rd grade he is unfocused, no mental stamina, low energy and that bright spark is gone. I do see it returning but it's been a tough several months.


Back on topic: on the subjects of workbooks. I think people get bent out of shape about workbooks. They picture a parent spending HOURS/day with the kid. I had workbooks around the house and if we happened to pick one up for 5min we did. DS liked the "what's wrong with this picture" type books, mazes, connect the dots but we also did tons of play-doh, were outdoors all day spring, fall, half of summer where we did tons of nature study. It's all about balance.

A great curriculum for prekers is FIAR. it's a list of quality books and it gives geography, science, math, social studies, relationships, history etc to point out while reading the book. Things like notice the shadows in the books and figure out where the sun would be located. Many of the books have themes such perseverance, loyalty, stewardship.

I completely agree, Dazey.

I know for a fact that within HOURS of entering a positively intelligence-insulting 1st grade class (where MG girls who had never so much as breathed loudly before were missing recess because of boredom-related bad behavior!), my son's whole personality changed. Changed! Drastically!

He reverted back to his usual sunny self within a day or two of being out of that environment, but he was only in it for a few weeks. I shudder to think about all the harm that "a little bit of boredom" can do to a kid like this!

Granted, this was a pretty extreme situation: an HG+ kid in a class that was really being taught as a remedial class with GOBS of repetition, and there was no differentiated work of any sort. Of course I recognize that there are degrees of boredom, and we had pretty nearly the worst case scenario. Even so, I really do think that a kid who is acting out because of boredom is absolutley crying out for help. (And many kids NOT acting out but who are bored are in danger, too. Perhaps even *more* so in their own way.)

Truly, I don't think you can let it go in anything but the most minor of cases of boredom in school. I think real damage is done: to personality, to self-concept ("I'm always in trouble so I'm a bad kid..."), to ability to accept less than perfection (or more than underachieving), to the child's whole understanding of what school is and why s/he is there at all, and to his/her feelings about parents and teachers and communicating with them or trusting them.

I really think there's an abusive sort of thing going on in many of these situations. We wouldn't say, "Oh, that kid didn't eat enough again today. Well, he's just a little hungry. He needs to learn to accept hunger. It's a part of life." For GT kids, learning is like food. It's not a want, it's a NEED! The responsible adults must see to it that that need is met. Period.

Certainly there are levels of boredom. 15 minutes here or there isn't the end of the world. But if more than just a little of the day is boredom, I really think damage is being done to some degree. The greater the level and amount of boredom, the worse the damage.

I'm sorry to soapbox, but I feel very, very strongly about this.

Here is another take on boredom from http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/03/09/the_joy_of_boredom/?page=1



I wouldn't argue that we are doing our kids a favor by subjecting them to long hours of boredom, but I think there is a middle ground we should be shooting for. I do want my son to be able to tolerate a certain amound of boredom. I do want him to learn how to have a rich inner life and not count on the world to entertain him 24/7. I do want him to appreciate that life is about more than being productive and entertained. I worry that in our high tech, high stimulus, busy world that there is a genuine risk that a child will never have a chance to learn to genuinely entertain himself in his own mind.

I know, Kriston, that you are going to disagree with me on this because we have argued this point before. So let me just say that I think it's right and good to try to get a child into a situation where they are learning and being challenged for as much of the school day as possible and that a genuinely bored kid needs a change of situation. I just don't live in fear of being bored and I don't want my child to be either. If we panic every time a child is bored, I think we send the wrong signals about what their lives ought to be like.