Gifted Bulletin Board

Welcome to the Gifted Issues Discussion Forum.

We invite you to share your experiences and to post information about advocacy, research and other gifted education issues on this free public discussion forum.
CLICK HERE to Log In. Click here for the Board Rules.

Links


Learn about Davidson Academy Online - for profoundly gifted students living anywhere in the U.S. & Canada.

The Davidson Institute is a national nonprofit dedicated to supporting profoundly gifted students through the following programs:

  • Fellows Scholarship
  • Young Scholars
  • Davidson Academy
  • THINK Summer Institute

  • Subscribe to the Davidson Institute's eNews-Update Newsletter >

    Free Gifted Resources & Guides >

    Who's Online Now
    0 members (), 167 guests, and 10 robots.
    Key: Admin, Global Mod, Mod
    Newest Members
    parentologyco, Smartlady60, petercgeelan, eterpstra, Valib90
    11,410 Registered Users
    March
    S M T W T F S
    1 2
    3 4 5 6 7 8 9
    10 11 12 13 14 15 16
    17 18 19 20 21 22 23
    24 25 26 27 28 29 30
    31
    Previous Thread
    Next Thread
    Print Thread
    Page 1 of 2 1 2
    #80610 07/19/10 08:14 AM
    Joined: Jul 2010
    Posts: 6
    R
    Junior Member
    OP Offline
    Junior Member
    R
    Joined: Jul 2010
    Posts: 6
    Hello all, I have been having a great time reading and reading this board for weeks and finally decided to chime in and see if I could get some input on the dilemma that brought me here. This is going to be long, many thanks in advance to any of you who have the time to read it.

    I have twin girls who will be 5 in August. We have had a pretty wild parenting ride so far! A is tiny for her age and has always been behind B in development. I have suspected B to be gifted since she was very young, based on her insatiable curiosity and ability to figure things out... we used to call her the Little Engineer around 18 months. But by age 2, both girls had lost most of their early speech. A wasn't talking at all and B only occasionally. I started the process to have them evaluated by EI, and while we were waiting, A started drifting further and further away from us and started several self-injurious behaviors.

    Just before age 2.5, A was diagnosed with autism. By then, B had started talking and within about a month had accumulated a few hundred words, learned the entire alphabet within a couple of days, and developed one-to-one correspondence for counting up to around 10 items. I was completely distraught about A (could barely eat or sleep for weeks) but thought B was just fine. She had completely flunked her EI evals, however, due to refusal to interact with any of the evaluators except to check out their cool toys, so both A and B qualified for speech therapy and someone started coming to our house.

    In discussing a major ramp-up in services for A, she mentioned that there would also be a spot for B in the preschool autism class. WHAT?!?!?! I had no idea they were thinking B was on the spectrum too. But the SLP pointed out that B had a huge vocabulary and essentially no pragmatic use of it... she went around labeling things all day but would just tantrum if she wanted to "ask" me for something. We reluctantly scheduled an autism eval for B, and she tested only a couple of points lower than her sister on the ADOS, definitely in the autism (not PDD-NOS) range.

    I read a couple of huge stacks of books and decided to get a home ABA program going very quickly. 6 months later, B had progressed with everything so well that I was able to enroll her in a 3's preschool class 2 mornings a week with no one aware of her diagnosis. 12 months later I had both girls retested on ADOS and language. B tested off the spectrum on ADOS and her language had reached the average range, 60th percentile. A made a huge leap as well, her ADOS score was in the very mild PDD-NOS range, but her language was still in single digit percentiles.

    We moved to the Washington DC area last fall and kept going with ABA. The girls were both in a typical preschool this year with no disclosure of the diagnosis. I was worried especially about A, as this was her first experience in a typical preschool environment, but as it turned out there were several kids in the class with issues a lot worse than ours (several with completely clueless parents), so it was fine for the most part. Until the end of the year, when B started refusing to sit for circle time and just generally giving the teacher a hard time. I figured this is evidence she is still socially immature and it gave support to the plan to wait an extra year to start K.

    I had pretty much determined a couple of years ago to redshirt the girls for K. They were due in September, born early because they are twins, and given all the developmental drama we have dealt with, it seemed best to give them a little extra time to bloom before throwing them into school. Also, in this area it seems redshirting is very common, even for typically developing summer babies, so by putting the girls in on time, they would be the youngest by 15-18 months.

    We are supposed to be going to a private pre-K in 6 weeks. Having spent the last couple of years almost exclusively focused on social development and language, I have been largely ignoring academic stuff for them. We knew that B could read quite a few words at 3, but weren't trying to follow that up; bigger fish to fry, so to speak.

    Then we all got stuck together in the house for around 10 days in February with the major DC blizzard. After a few days we were desperate for something to entertain the girls. So I went online and found some reading and math programs that looked fun for a 4-year-old. Both kids loved getting to play on the computer for the first time, and started zooming through the reading. In math they placed out of most of the K curriculum and were doing 1st grade in a couple of days.

    Even this did not dissuade me from the preK plan, especially with B kind of flipping out at school in May. When I see other girls a year older, they seem almost like teenagers to me in their social development. She has a really low frustration tolerance and has a hard time sitting still. Her attention span seems very short to me. I think if I had her reevaluated now, she would get an ADHD diagnosis. Also, around April, she lost all interest in reading and refused to even let me read to her for a few months. She just did not seem K ready to me at all.

    But a couple of weeks ago, she suddenly started nosing back into the books, read a few Sandra Boynton ones, and then a few days later got out Little Bear and read the entire thing out loud. Also spontaneously started writing full sentences when given some paper to draw on. It seems like a bunch of things just clicked for her at once.

    Now I am second guessing the school plan all over again and wondering if we need to do K.
    1. The girls are twins and I really want to keep them in the same grade, but I think A could use an extra year. We have never approached our new school district for an IEP (seeking to minimize the "record" on the kids until they get to school and we can figure out where we are at that time).
    2. B is still pretty immature, maybe Aspie, maybe ADHD; has residual "issues" that seem likely to cause problems in school.
    3. B is reading 2nd grade books independently and doing 1st grade math. Even if I put her in K this year, they are not going to be working anywhere near on her level. PreK will be almost all fun and games, so probably not as boring? I can work with her on school type stuff at home. Then we could put her straight into 1st grade next year, as I read the state law.
    4. A is reading and doing math beyond K as well, just not quite as advanced as B. A is very tiny, uncoordinated, and much more obviously spectrum-y, she still "zones out" a lot, especially in a crowd. Many kids one year older than her are twice her size.
    5. DH is gifted (probably PG) and thinks we should put them in K this year and let the chips fall where they may. His mom turned down a grade skip for him and he still wishes she hadn't.
    6. I am HG, a June b-day, and was socially miserable until college. I never could fit in with the other girls. I was hoping to spare my girls some of that by getting them closer in sync with other girls their age before starting school. But maybe that is just a losing battle...

    Would greatly appreciate any thoughts on the wisdom/stupidity of redshirting a 2e kid.

    Joined: Oct 2008
    Posts: 1,085
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    Joined: Oct 2008
    Posts: 1,085
    I know someone with more 2E experience will be around to offer their opinion.

    I just wanted to point out that Kindergarten is more in line with preschool and 1st grade is where you see the shift to the more academic approach where they are required to sit in their seats and follow the instructions. Many a gifted child has had problems with 1st grade due to the focus on academics and it being below their ability. If your daughters are already at a 1st grade level just imagine what an extra year will be for them when they finally do start 1st grade. It seems like you have done a wonderful job acclimating them to the environment and Kindergarten is an extension of the preschool environment. But I do understand your concerns with the added pressure of their 2E diagnoses. I'm not sure what I would do if I was in your shoes, especially since DD B sounds like she is ready but A might need some more time. I suspect I would be more in line with your DH's attitude. Are you against them being labeled at school? I know a lot of people fear it, but labels can be useful in that they allow the children the help they need to succeed.


    Joined: Jul 2010
    Posts: 6
    R
    Junior Member
    OP Offline
    Junior Member
    R
    Joined: Jul 2010
    Posts: 6
    Thanks K'sMom. I noticed that experience of K and 1st in many stories of posters here, and it led me to consider that maybe the least-painful option for the next couple of years would be to go ahead and do preK and then do K next year, then try to skip 1st. Our preK would be half-day, and K is also half-day here, so that would still give us half days for the next 2 years to do our own thing. However, this assumes the school district would let us skip 1st, so it is a risky plan.

    I am pretty biased against having the kids labeled by the school if at all possible, but I am starting to come around to the fact it may be inevitable for A. DH is much more in the camp of, again, letting chips fall where they may, going in with our 2/2008 diagnoses, and getting an autism IEP for both kids. He says get what they need now and worry about later, later. But I feel like once we have that label, expectations will be permanently lowered, and teachers will not try to challenge them. I have seen some of it already with our old school district, who knew of A's diagnosis and had her for special ed preschool ("well, she is doing SO well, considering...") It seems 2e is not understood very well, if at all.

    Joined: Feb 2010
    Posts: 462
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    Joined: Feb 2010
    Posts: 462
    Your situation sounds very similar to mine 2 years ago! Except I only have ONE child...how DO you manage with twins??? Anyway, DS was diagnosed with autism at age 2.5 like yours. Like you, we have focused on ABA and developmental therapies and completely ignored academics. I even said to his preK and K principals that we didn't care about academics, he was smart and could learn what he needed easy enough. We wanted to focus on social skills, etc. He went to an autism school, then regular preschool (age 4) and regular K (age 5).

    For us, K was a disaster. Our K is a full day of kids sitting in chairs surrounded by toys they cannot play with. He did NOT do well. It was at this time he was ID'd officially as gifted so they ran around trying to get him in the appropriate reading and math groups. By then, he had behavior problems due to his autism, poor communication, poor social skills so it was hard for anyone to want to "let" him do more academically. I still did not know enough about gifted kids to even think that a lot of it may have been due to boredom. I wish we had pushed to have him bumped to grade 1 at that time...but I was still thinking he needed the social skills that kindergarten could teach him. I completely blew off his academic abilities: I laughed when he went to the front of the class and read the teacher's instructions in the reading book while the rest of the class was struggling with "B is for Bear."

    Anyway, if your girls are gifted like my son, you shouldn't hold them back in school. I am now trying to convince the school DS should be in 3rd grade instead of 2nd, but it's hard. We are going to a new school (it's a school for the gifted where supposedly 2nd grade is like 3rd grade) and they will have to see for themselves DS's level.

    If I had it to do over again, knowing what I know now about gifted-ness...I would have had my son skip K and go straight to 1st. He would have still gotten the social skills training in a 1st grade class that he got in K. So, that's my story and opinion!! Nan smile

    Last edited by NanRos; 07/19/10 01:08 PM.
    Joined: Apr 2010
    Posts: 2,498
    D
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    D
    Joined: Apr 2010
    Posts: 2,498
    Hi-- I am a parent of a 2E boy with Asperger's, now 8. Your mileage may vary from ours-- girls with Asperger's are less-charted territory. There are no easy answers.

    We sent DS to K on time, on the young end of his class (summer bday), because he was so far ahead academically that we couldn't imagine redshirting him. He had a truly awful year in K, a moderately awful year in 1, and a better but still taxing year in 2. I don't want to scare you, but DS's K year included lots of meltdowns, inability to fit in, difficulty following the rules, and failure to participate, pay attention, or even physically be in the circle at circle time. This stuff can be worked through (ABA is great), but it's hard and takes time. I assure you that things are much, much better now for DS.

    In our district, K looks like grade 1 in terms of the expectations for sitting on the floor in a group, listening, hand-raising, following directions-- a big step up in social expectations from preschool, which is precisely what kids with autism struggle with the most. What our DS needed was something with advanced content and still having explicit teaching of school-related social skills like you get in preschool-- which doesn't exist here.

    I still don't know whether it would have been better to redshirt him and then gradeskip later, or not. The school has been accommodating the 2E better lately as they have gotten to know his needs firsthand, giving him teachers who can deal with differentiated instruction and allowing him to have appropriately accelerated math. This has been a big process, challenging and consuming for us as advocates.

    Honestly, if you can give them another year of ABA and part-day preschool, they may enter elementary school better equipped and more ready. It is easier to develop good play skills in preschool than in K, and play skills are likely to come hard to your kids. On the other hand, if your school district is ready to give them good help in the classroom, you may want to enroll them, and then let them repeat K if you find they're not ready for the full day of grade 1. You might want to talk with the school principal and the district special ed people to see what's actually available. What I would not do, given my experience, is put them unsupported in the kindergarten classroom and expect them to do well.

    (The district is responsible for giving them services already from age 3, did you know? So you could potentially keep them out of K and still get help, possibly a preschool program more targeted to their particular needs.)

    Another thing about autism that may be relevant here is that some deficits show up later: while the early grades play to our kids' strengths in rote learning and categorizing information, once the shift is toward critical thinking, reading comprehension, and so on, often they fall behind. We are finding that our DS comprehends fiction only a little above grade level even though he decodes and comprehends nonfiction at college level-- that kind of unevenness becomes more manifest as they get older. It is sometimes better for them not to be tied up in how "smart" they are, because when they hit grade 4 and suddenly don't feel "smart" any more, it can be a terrible blow to them. Not that this should necessarily affect your redshirting choice now, but it could become a factor in your long-term planning.

    You may find this website useful: it has a very nice discussion forum about issues particular to autism, with lots of experienced parents. Redshirting has certainly been a topic over there, with pros and cons weighed carefully.
    http://www.aspergersyndrome.org/Home.aspx

    On the issue of labeling: I am strongly pro-IEP. It gives your children legal rights and protections that they really need. Those protections may give you trouble with teachers who are unwilling to deal with "different," but you can advocate for your kids not to be placed with that kind of teacher-- and the IEP gives you power to call meetings and solve problems with the school staff whenever you need to. We bring ABA staff to those meetings, and that is helping the school learn to "get" 2E.

    It's a process. But if you aren't frank with the school about what the problems are, your kids definitely won't have the support they need to be successful, which means they'll be facing more problems on a daily basis. And it's surely better for them to go into school labeled as "autistic" than as "poorly behaved" or "problem children."

    Feel free to PM me if you want more info. I could write a book.

    HTH,
    DeeDee


    Kate #80623 07/19/10 11:12 AM
    Joined: Jul 2010
    Posts: 6
    R
    Junior Member
    OP Offline
    Junior Member
    R
    Joined: Jul 2010
    Posts: 6
    Thanks for your story, NanRos! I have followed a bunch of your posts here as it seems we do have very similar issues. I am laughing about your story of blowing off the reading the teacher's instructions. Toward the end of this year, our preschool teacher (4's class) made up a poster with the days of the week. It was a co-op preschool and it happened to be my day to work in the class, so A,B and I were there early and the teacher was getting them to help her put up the new poster. A backed up and read the whole thing out loud. The teacher was so shocked, especially since, as I said, A still zones out a lot and didn't ever talk much in class. I was kind of amused and then went back to obsessing over how to get her to speak up that day in circle time.

    I would think you would have better luck this year at the gifted school. Will be hoping to read that it works out great for your DS. smile

    Joined: Jul 2010
    Posts: 6
    R
    Junior Member
    OP Offline
    Junior Member
    R
    Joined: Jul 2010
    Posts: 6
    Thanks so much, MoN and Dee Dee, for your thoughts. This is exactly the type of thing I was hoping to hear about when posting, so don't worry about scaring me. I am not nearly as scare-able as I used to be!

    MoN, we are in Fairfax County. I heard about the MoCo program and we considered maybe living there, but I think it started in the later grades, and it would be a really unpleasant commute for DH. Also, both of us lived in Arlington back in single days, so upon moving back (we had moved to Seattle around the girls' 2nd b-day) we stuck with NoVA.

    I understand that eligibility may be tough at this point with the school district, based on present levels of performance. We had an IEP in our old school district that was based on their original EI testing, and included full-time preschool with some really nice teacher/student ratios. But even if we were still there, we would be dealing with the triennial now, and I would imagine losing some services.

    DeeDee, sorry to hear your DS's K experience. I do think another year of preschool/ABA would be very helpful on the social side. But B is definitely the type to have behavioral problems when bored, so I'm worried the redshirting will actually create more problems than it solves. Also, she is oblivious to all this now (doesn't even know the word kindergarten) but if redshirted she will figure it out someday and that could really mess with her self-image. I am terrified of making the wrong move here. Sorry for going on and on, I really appreciate all you guys offering some help.

    Joined: Sep 2007
    Posts: 1,134
    K
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    K
    Joined: Sep 2007
    Posts: 1,134
    That is incredibly hard. I think no matter what you choose, you will be doing plenty of leg work to advocate for a good fit. Nothing will be perfect. Could you have a full GT assessment done? That might be really helpful in letting you know exactly what you're up against. Have you looked at all your school options? Have you consider homeschooling? Even for a couple of years? Sometimes it helps to think outside the box.

    I have a son who is not 2E, but is an active boy. He has an October birthday and went to kindergarten on time (at close to 6). Kindergarten was a fabulous fit socially for him and he had a flexible and accommodating teacher. So he had a reasonably good year. First grade was a nightmere for him though - no flexibility other than a parent volunteer that came every 2 weeks for a pull out. Behavior went down the tubes. So that led to us homeschooling. If I were to go back and try to make it work at school, I would have advocated for the first grade skip. I'm still not sure that would have been enough long term, but I don't regret starting K when I did or having another year at an open ended play based preschool. There were a couple younger, bright kids in K that year that did struggle behaviorally and socially (this was a full day, structured K situation). I know one child really had self esteem and confidence issues after that.

    So, I think if your girls could benefit for another year in a smaller classroom with more attention (our preschool teachers were much more flexible than anyone we met at PS), then go with that and deal with the ramifications later. If you have no choice in schools and this school MUST work for you all the way through, then it might be good to jump in sooner rather than later. Half day might be an easier choice than full day?

    Good luck with your hard decisions!

    kimck #80629 07/19/10 01:58 PM
    Joined: Apr 2010
    Posts: 2,498
    D
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    D
    Joined: Apr 2010
    Posts: 2,498
    On boredom: yes, it is certainly a factor for a 2E. I'd say 20-30% of my son's difficulties at school were due to the fact that he had long since mastered most of the material, and that this percentage is increasing over time. (Luckily, the gifted services available also increase over time-- should be OK.)

    HOWEVER-- compared to autism, I would say that for us, boredom was a secondary concern in K and 1. In K, the main problem was that he had not mastered certain essential social skills that would allow him to function properly at school. We were told by the school with all sincerity that he was just bored, that "clearly he was learning just fine while hiding under the table because look how well he reads"-- and so on-- and on that basis they tried to deny him the IEP. He really needed support, but they wanted to use his giftedness against him and just let him muddle along in school because he was so smart.

    Because of this experience I would be careful about even mentioning giftedness to the school so early in this negotiation, because in some districts they do deny absolutely necessary services to kids with disabilities if they think the kid will scrape through based on smarts alone. They are not required to give you a Cadillac, only a Chevy. If they think the kid is struggling but appears to be compensating and is achieving at average levels-- they will sometimes deny the child services for the disability even if that means the child will not reach their potential. (Never say "potential" in a school meeting, and never say "best"-- they are not required by law to give you the best or to help the child reach his potential, only to provide "appropriate" education.)

    Our best strategy in this context was to push hard to address the autism first, and let the teachers gradually realize that the gifted services were just as important to his success. (They did notice, and differentiated instruction meaningfully from grade 1 on.)

    I felt that the academic mastery really gave us some breathing room: in grade 1 when every other child was struggling to spell and add, mine was struggling to maintain his composure. In some ways, it was really nice that he didn't have to give any effort to spelling or addition. Struggling in everything at once would have been awful. He was just following his own, alternative curriculum. And he continued to magically absorb math and reading and all sorts of other good stuff practically out of the air that year, so it's not like he lost a year of academic progress. On the contrary, the social learning makes a lot of other learning possible.

    The giftedness won't go away; but the social stuff makes life difficult forever, and the sooner you get a handle on it the better. Our family chose to make that the priority in the early grades, and I still think it was the right choice for DS. The need to get the social and play skills ASAP is probably all the more acute for girls-- because female peers are less forgiving of social deficits.

    Best,
    DeeDee

    DeeDee #80638 07/19/10 07:33 PM
    Joined: Jul 2010
    Posts: 6
    R
    Junior Member
    OP Offline
    Junior Member
    R
    Joined: Jul 2010
    Posts: 6
    DeeDee: fantastic info. Extremely helpful. Thanks so much for sharing your story. Great food for thought. smile

    Page 1 of 2 1 2

    Moderated by  M-Moderator 

    Link Copied to Clipboard
    Recent Posts
    Testing with accommodations
    by aeh - 03/27/24 01:58 PM
    Quotations that resonate with gifted people
    by indigo - 03/27/24 12:38 PM
    For those interested in astronomy, eclipses...
    by indigo - 03/23/24 06:11 PM
    California Tries to Close the Gap in Math
    by thx1138 - 03/22/24 03:43 AM
    Gifted kids in Illinois. Recommendations?
    by indigo - 03/20/24 05:41 AM
    Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.7.5