Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Help....new school, old issues....now what?

We had a very unhappy dd age 10 last fall. Lots of issues with her school and she was very depressed. We had her formally tested and it confirmed what we expected, she was HG and wilting instead of flourishing in her envirornment. We transfered her to a school for the gifted and for the first several months everything was great, she was happy and engaged, loved her new friends who "got her" and was respectful to her teachers. Life at home was MUCH better, her creativity came back, she is interested and excited about everything again.

We are now seeing some old issues creep up, namely being disrespectful to her teachers if she is not interested in what ever the assignment is for the day. She will state quite loudly that she is not doing the work, that it isn't interesting. Now when she is on a project she likes she works like a fiend and is thrilled with finding new information. She has also started saying she wants to go back to her old school, which I don't really think is the case because she was mostly miserable there. But, she does miss the "stuff" they had, large facilities, lots of kids, great art and drama program. She has literally gone from a mini college to a one from school house.

She has also started making up little lies, which everyone knows are lies, nothing harmful to others, but stuff like. "I speak Dutch", "my French tutor says I should do Spanish because it will confuse me".....she used to take French, but does not have a tutor and the only option at her new school is Spanish.

I am not sure what to do. I have just signed her up for some art classes, because I know that is a passion of hers and is not being met by the new school. Regarding the work she is not doing in school, she will bring it home and it will take her 5 minutes to finish, so she spends 45 minutes at school complaining and procrasting for something that is not a big deal. And yes, I know she doesn't like rote work, but there will be times no matter where one is in life that you have to do rote work. Her new teachers are beginning to worry about how her behavior will effect her peer relationships.

ACK!! How can I help this kid?

I forgot to add...she is a very empathetic kid....my husband has been going through a lot of stress at work and just resigned today. She has hear a lot of this talk and has been very worried about him....could this be setting off other behaviors or am I grasping for straws?

Sorry to hear your DD is struggling. I'm not sure I have much advice I can give you, but parts of your post did make me think of some things. Maybe some others will have more advice for you.

It could very well be that your DD had great expectations when she started at her new school and then found out she is still not being challenged. It sounds like she had a nice "honeymoon" period for several months, then realized she was right back in the same situation she was in at her old school. If her old school had interesting options (art/drama, etc) that her new school doesn't have and on top of that she is still bored and under challenged I can see why she would long to be back at her old school. Basically the lesser of two evils - bored with bells and whistles and interesting options or bored with no interesting options. Getting her into some art classes may help with her no longer having those options, but it still doesn't solve the bored part.

I also agree that our children will have to deal with doing rote work, but if this is a gifted school they should know that rote work is toxic and they should know how to deal with gifted kids. One could assume your DD should not be their first student to ever have these issues.

OR....I could also see a different side of this. Maybe she has coasted through school for so long and now this new school IS challenging her. She is so used to things being easy and now that they are more difficult she is doubting herself. This idea could be a real stretch since you say she brings the work home and gets it done quickly, but thought I'd throw it out there anyway.

The stress from your husband's job may or may not be adding to the other issues going on at school - hard to tell.

I think I would ask for more challenging work for her and see if that makes any difference. See if they will drop some of the repetitious rote work if she can show she already knows the material.

Just my thoughts - good luck!