Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy What to do with a 5yo choosing to underacheive

Ahh the joys of underachievement�

At the start of this term my nearly 6yo dd was skipped to grade 1. Her teacher is happy with her work, which she felt was now at grade level (which for a kid who reads 6+ years beyond grade level and is teaching herself 4th grade maths at home, is another issue in itself), but said she felt dd�s writing was below grade level.

Her teacher has given her homework of writing something every weekend as practice because the kids in her class are writing a full page and dd was only writing a couple of sentences in class. At first, for her homework, she was asked to write about her weekend and dd really, really struggled. As a result I initially thought the teacher must be right. It surprised me because dd has a wonderful ability to tell stories, many of which I had copied down for her. What soon became apparent though was that the issue is not that she can�t write, she was just confounded by the idea that anyone would want her to write about anything quite so mundane as what happened on her weekend (or whatever other topic they were doing in class).

(I explained this to the teacher who completely missed the point and told dd she wanted to hear about what dd 'had on her pancakes for breakfast and so on�. You could see from dd's expression she was thinking 'really??')

In the end I got a couple of books about writing, how to structure a narrative and so on. For her homework task I told her to write a story rather than about her weekend. She wrote three pages of a very funny and creative story. She's done the same thing every week since (though not with much enthusiasm). The kid can write fine.

This weekend she had to do a class related piece of writing relating to a set of games she had brought home, which she had been playing since she was very small. She was so bored she got stuck after 2 sentences. I told her if she wrote two more sentences she could stop. She agreed and brought her finished work to me with a look of glee. She had written "My mum won the first game. I won the second game." I just looked at her (we have a look in our family for a humorous "really??") She just raised an eyebrow, smiled and said "well, you said two more sentences" and we all burst out laughing (including dd). It was hilarious and dd knew we had her pinned. I explained to her that the school thinks she can�t write terribly well and pointed out if this was what she was doing at school they didn�t have much evidence of what she is capable of. That obviously hadn�t occurred to her and she went back and made some changes which made it much better.

We�re having problems too with her maths, in which she is doing the bare minimum. I suspect she�s doing it across the board. When I had a meeting with the teacher and one of the school�s Vice Principals they told me they could see no reason to do more (the teacher had been forgetting to read dd�s homework stories).

I just have no idea what to do with her. She is already 2 years younger than most of her class mates. We�re hoping for some better luck next year because she will be in a smaller class with a cohort of gifted kids. But she is SUCH a fly under the radar kid I know all the cajoling in the world is unlikely to get her to produce work to the level she can. All the talking to teachers in the world is unlikely to convince the already unconvinced that she is capable of more. She�s not really motivated by grades and the like and yet none of the work is interesting her enough to become intrinsically motivated (she�s not a kid who is passionate about specific topics either � well, other than Harry Potter). She�s been tested >99.9 % and they have her test results. They�re meant to be experienced with gifted kids.

DD is saying she is bored and I wanting to know why she has to go to school. The first time I said "to learn", to which se replied that she never learns a thing. Problem is, with a few exceptions, I believe her. What does one do??

We�re looking at achievement testing, but it�s apparently not widely used here and so I�m not hopeful it will make much difference. We've already moved schools too, so I am conscious of just uprooting her again. Wishing it were easier...