Aww...does he have friends in school? I'm so worried about that for DS.

Oh, yes! DS5 is my social butterfly. We're lucky with him in that regard. In fact, for a long while I didn't think he was academically gifted, but we had ample evidence that he was socially gifted. He's the sort of kid that has a new best friend at every park he visits.

Plus he tells me EVERYTHING that happens at school. Every social issue, conflict, and bump in the road. Other parents regularly came to me to ask about what happened at pre-K. LOL! So if there were a problem, I'm reasonably confident that I'd know. (At least for now. I do realize that will probably change as he gets older.)

Good question though. It's definitely an issue to watch for. Social stuff was a problem for DS8 when he was in 1st grade. He did fine in pre-K and K, but he stopped fitting in in 1st.

But DS5 is either sick, growing, overtired, or underchallenged, I think. Or some combination. *sigh*

Are you seeing problems socially with your DS, Jamie? Or is it just the general fear of problems?

Kriston - that does sound like a good day!

JamieB - yes, I do think that it's a good thing that the counselor on the team thinks your son needs to move up. Keeping my fingers crossed for you.

You're so lucky that he tells you about school

I think it's more of a fear of problems. He never really talks about playing with the other kids but he doesn't talk about much of anything. One day he told me that the kids were all hitting him but later told me that he was just making up a story so I hope that's all that it is. I've heard other kids call him weird but never to his face and he's never mentioned anything about it. I think that even if he heard them say it he'd laugh it off.

Anyone you can ask?

I have a couple of parent friends I trade info with. One just called to ask me about a potential class bully, actually...

I don't really know any of the other parents but if he says anything of the sort again I'm going to go in and talk to the teacher.

Good call, I think. It would be nice to get some info under the radar if you could strike up a conversation with someone somehow. But failing that, it sounds like something to keep an eye on.

I hope it's just random kid silliness.

Another ray of hope, albeit a rather confused one because I couldn't get all the details straight from DS5 today...

Before DS5 got on the bus today, he was lamenting the fact that school was so easy. He said he wanted harder math. I encouraged him to self-advocate and even talked about why that was best. I said, "If *I* tell her to make your math harder, she might think I'm pushing you."

"You mean she might think you're forcing me to do math?"

"Yes. Is that what's happening?"

"No. I like to do math. It's coming from me."

Then we talked about what he could say to his teacher and when and where to say it. I don't want him to interrupt a group lesson or anything! And we talked about not making the other kids feel bad because he'd like a greater challenge. It was a pretty good 2-minute talk!

When he got home from school, he said it was a good day. He got to do some harder arithmetic. He said that he did talk to his teacher. That same day, perhaps in response to his request(?), the class--apparently the whole class and not just him, so no differentiation--were asked some addition and subtraction, though he didn't give me much in the way of details about this, and the teacher asked what 9x9 was. I got more details about this part because he was kind of excited about it. According to DS5, he was the only one who knew the answer. Another boy took what sounds like a wild guess (14 was his answer) and was wrong. Then DS5 was called on and he knew. It sounded like they were the only two who raised their hands.

If this had been more of a 1-on-1 thing, I'd be taking it as GREAT news. But since she asked the whole class, I'm not sure what it means. Was it in response to DS5's request or just a coincidence? Was she trying to see how unusual DS5 is? Was it just a random question she thought no one would be able to answer and he surprised her? Was it something else entirely and because I'm getting half the story from DS5, I'm totally missing the point?

I'm betting on the latter for now...

At least it seems like he's okay with self-advocacy and that she may well be responsive to it. That would be a good thing!