Please don’t come down hard on me. I KNOW it’s not my monkeys, not my circus, but I need to get this out of my system somewhere so that in real life, I can keep repeating that mantra. (And I do have a bit of a legitimate interest, I promise).

Context:
Unlike his older siblings, DS7 is not accelerated, in fact his early October birthday makes him the oldest in the grade. We did explore early entry for him but he panicked at the very low key assessments (have a chat with the principal, have a trial day in the classroom) and decided for himself he wasn’t ready for school.

Even though we felt he would have been ready intellectually, we figured we had to trust him to know what he could and couldn’t handle, because unlike unlike his older siblings, he was born with a birth defect which results in major physical disabilities (for which surgery was coming up, so getting that done was a factor as well) and some brain damage. The brain damage so far has manifested in a massive speech delay in his early years (appears to have been fully caught up since) and IQ scores two deviations below his older brother - which are still high enough he could enter into the same gifted program his brother is in, so anyone else but you all would laugh me out of the room for saying this is evidence of brain damage! However, hopefully, YOU get why I still HOVER? And monitor his academics in ways I never ever did with his older siblings?

Luckily things seem to be going very well so far. He has an aide for the physical stuff, and a nursing service comes in twice daily for a medical procedure, but he does the academic stuff on his own and does it well. They don’t get grades yet, but have continuous assessment, and the kids aren’t stupid - they know that 20 out of 20 on that math sheet is an A.

So, enter little A who was entered early with, I think, a May birthday. She’s so little her mum needs to carry her backpack into the classroom, so when the teacher noted as an aside that she had seated her next to DS7 “because she often needs help, too” to have the aide support them both I figured she was talking about being little. Organising her desk or tying her shoes, whatever. Now DS7 has begun mentioning, as kids do, who else does well and who doesn’t, and to my surprise, little A “never does well”. The other day, he mentioned getting 60 on a reading comprehension assessment, out of 100. I immediately went into worry overdrive and asked whether that was sort of good, or sort of medium, and did he get things wrong or run out of time, and he said probably medium, and he’d run out of time, but no one had gotten more than 60 on those ever, and it was still 10 times more than A got. Huh, 6? Told you mom, she never does well in anything.

Yeah, I don’t love the situation, and I don’t like that DS7’s aide may be somehow caught up in it. I’m not worried at all that he may be missing out, clearly he is doing fine, or begrudging little A the extra support, because I feel an interest in having all accelerated little gifties do well and be happy, I was one of them myself and am raising two more, and little A’s parents have been super helpful when DS7 has needed support with integration in the classroom. If the situation were working for everyone, it’d be a total win win as far as I am concerned. But it appears it is not working at all for her and that there may be fallout at some point.

Also, so help me god, I am having thoughts about whether little A should have been accelerated in the first place. Her dad told me that they’d insisted because they felt they’d “missed the boat” with accelerating her older brother and that they were unhappy with her preschool and wanted her out. But why didn’t older brother just move up into third grade from the 1st/2nd split grade classroom he was in, together with DD9 and one other girl, I asked, dumbfounded (never having heard his acceleration was even on the table, even though I had a number of talks with the teacher about how much I was wishing for DD9 not to be the only one, and there was never more than “possibly one other girl student” in play). Because his handwriting was a disaster, apparently. So was DD9s, I said, she worked her ass off all summer. Which is when the dad changed the subject. Aargh. How can I help thinking something is wrong here?

Tl;dr: It appears that very young accelerated giftie is floundering, and that the teacher is trying to use DS7’s aide to rescue the situation, and I can’t help having thoughts about it and worrying, but also have no idea whether there is anything to be thought or done but “not my business”.