I'm thankful to have found this forum. Finally, a group of people who know the frustration that I'm feeling!
DS4 does not make the kindergarten cutoff for this fall. We live in Illinois where the law allows districts to admit students early. DS has been attending our local Catholic preschool and our intent has been to send him there for all of his schooling.
I started noticing signs of giftedness when he was 18 months, but chose to ignore them (I didn't want to be that crazy first time mom). We were looking at a book one day at my mom's (we go there once every month or two) with shapes, and he told me what the shapes were -- I had not spent any time on shapes with him. I'm sure I had said things like "Oh, look at that circle", but nothing more. And no one else had either. At any rate, I tried to put this out of my mind and just play with him. Over the next year, his interests turned to letters, so we bought lots of letter toys. And he soon learned all of them and began asking about their sounds. By 2 3/4, he knew all the letter sounds and a few blends. About 6 weeks after his third birthday, he could read simple books (Bob books).
Now, at 4 1/2, he can read at an end of 1st grade level. He does addition and subtraction, understands the concept behind multiplication and can do division (actually doing multiplication is tough for him). He can count by 2s, 3s, 5s, and 10s.
We have talked with his preschool teacher and the Catholic school principal about early kindergarten entrance. His teach is "worried about his social skills". But she cannot tell me any specifics. He is in the 4 year old class, with kids who will be in kindergarten in the fall, and she has not mentioned any problems in the classroom. Her biggest compliant: he'd rather talk to her than the kids in class! The principal seems to be unable to make her own decisions. She asked us to get educational testing done. So we went to the public school and he met with the psychologist for about an hour. During that meeting, the psychologist called in the (public school) principal and both of them were amazed at his abilities. She said his verbal and nonverbal IQ scores were both 135. Unfortunately, the superintendent in our district has chosen to take the hard line and not allow any early admissions. So, the psychologist called the Catholic school principal, who said she was going to do whatever the district did! (Oh, and also told her it was illegal to admit students early -- the same stupid argument she tried to give me 6 months ago, before I handed her a printout of the Illinois code proving otherwise.)
So we are now in a really frustrating situation. I don't know what to do -- I plan to sit down with the Catholic school principal again and try to make her see reason. We may also try to get him into a different Catholic school in the area. And I may try to talk to the superintendent. I just wish someone would recognize how harmful it is going to be for him to wait another year for kindergarten! If his social skills are the concern, do they really think hanging out with YOUNGER kids will help him mature? Ugh.
Thanks for "listening". I think I just needed to vent a bit. But if anyone has suggestions, I'll take them!
MJ
