We went with the let her discover him, gentle nice advocacy. It was SO hard but in the long run totally worth it. At the first meeting, my DH was like why were you so quiet. DS's school is a gifted school and filled with THOSE parents, who drive teachers nuts. Since I knew we were going to have to advocate eventually I didn't want to waste goodwill early. DS was tested for reading levels and if you go by the ones on his progress reports he went from I think an N to an S - both probably underestimate him. drove me nuts at first but I didnt say anything - although did ask for more help getting library books actually at his level. So he didn't really get to read books that pushed him in school - instead he got books at his emotional level and on the level that the other advanced readers in the class were. I think that was good for him, for the most part. I do wish there had been more for him in the last third of the year because I do think he was a bit bored but not much. However, what we found K really good for is filling in all the stuff DS would not bother to learn about - and they are working with him on writing.He has an IEP and we are basically repeating his K HWT workbook and journalling over the summer and I can't wait to turn this back over to the school - much rather have the professionals deal with this!!! The approach to math they took really intrigued DS - could he move faster - yes - so we got him murderous maths and books and stuff - he is loving it but again school will fill in all the things he skips or glosses over in his desire to get to the stuff that interests him.
The real trouble for us is in his area of interest/expertise - science - they will never provide what he needs and I am not sure what to even advocate for. Hopefully this is something DYS can help us with.
But our nutshell - started K with teacher thinking he couldn't pay attention, didn't sit in his seat, couldn't write - she saw his negatives none of the positives and slowly he either unfurled or she unfurled him, not sure who took the first step but by the end of the year - she wrote his letter of recommendaton for DYS.
But if you ask DS 6 what he thinks about school - he loves it - but he learns at home.
DeHe
