Hello Sweetpeas,
I just arrived on the forum and your topic caught my eye. That's probably because, in our own experience, placing our two children in a gifted private school was the best decision we made for them. Your two are still so little, which is wonderful; you are starting armed for the journey! If anything I write can be helpful as you forge your road, you�ll be ahead of where we were as we began!
We did not arrive early at our conclusion to send our children to a gifted school � it was a year-by-year, trial and error process, unfortunately. We had them in a very small, private school first. That was good because 1) it was personalized to each child 2) the Headmistress was an extremely broad-minded individual, who was not afraid to allow children to progress at their own rate and in their own style of learning. I consider admin. and staff perceptions/understanding a fundamental indicator of where a gifted child might fit. Our daughter had some similarities to yours, started talking at 6 mos, continued to a vast vocabulary, and early reading. She spontaneously read and loved the whole Narnia series between ages 5-6 � I just helped her through the last book. The first problem we ran into was when she was 6 in 4th grade (plus, it was a school that worked 2-3 grades ahead). Most of her peer group was 9-10 years old, and the greater social maturity in her friends became noticeable at that point. For example, their pre-teeny-bopper music phase was beginning, and also some girls were beginning their periods, etc. - we felt she didn't need to be going to those places yet!
We moved when our daughter was almost 7; our son, 5. We looked at the exclusively gifted school then but, in the end, decided to put them in a larger, more traditional, academically rigorous school, with grade-age peers. It was the �safest� choice, I think, and nothing had gone wrong yet! The first year for our daughter was fine, both socially and because she had an amazing teacher, who I believe now, understood giftedness. Again, I think this is key. But from 4th grade up, we began to hit obstacles. The hardest one was trying to explain to subsequent teachers, who had no training in recognizing differences in gifted kids (and how that presents in different situations/personalities) that something was not working. We gradually found that situations were being misinterpreted and we were being given a negative rather than a positive angle. We grew used to seeing a blank stare across the table during parent/teacher conferences, and we saw ourselves turning into two of the many parents advocating for their darling children! If I could go back, I would have changed things from this point.
Long and short of it, we stuck with a school system too long that kept promising to work with our children to provide �accommodations" to help them succeed through school! Oh boy. And this was a school with a great reputation for teaching smart kids! So again, keep assessing your situation and realize that what you perceive is probably correct. Watch how your children behave and respond over a period of time. Gradually, we became aware that giftedness (when it means �different� and not just super smart) was actually more of a handicap to our children than a benefit. We, as parents, in the thick of everything, were really quite slow at realizing just what we needed to do for the best. It's pretty much an extreme situation at home and school when you have intense intelligence around!
All changed dramatically in 10th grade when our daughter just stopped. She was exhausted from trying to fit a model of learning that was hindering her. She just could not go on jumping through inane hoops. We pulled her out of school for her own health and finally placed her in the gifted school, with teachers and admin. staff who finally understand giftedness. She literally came back to life over the next couple of years � but from the very first day she came home and said, �Mum, I LOVE these kids!� She'd found her soul mates. All gifted students are different to each other, but they all have a common bond in their difference from the norm. They enjoy each other enormously, whether they are moderately or profoundly gifted. In fact, I would suggest that it is beneficial especially to the profoundly gifted to have a mixed range of gifted students together � they help to balance and socialize each other, as well as finding a place of acceptance, and they all respect each other's differences. We placed our son in the same school the following year. Personality-wise, he is completely different to his sister, he managed his environment in the traditional setting much better � not because he was thriving but because he is extremely sociable and everyone loves having him around. So, you will also have to balance who your children are in terms of their personalities. As a parent, I love watching how gifted education allows the students to develop in a more protective atmosphere while they are young.
