I am curious about what to do with my dd7, in third grade. She is currently grade skipped and in a 'normal' public school, but one that caters well for gifted kids who "show what they can do". She's comfortably above the 99.9% and in a class with a number of kids with similar scores, though she'd previously been grade skipped so she's a little younger than most of them.
She is, as I have mentioned previously, not terribly motivated academically. This I get - I was much the same. Mostly this doesn't worry me - she's interested and passionate about ideas and stories and people so I have a sense of what's important to her. She enjoys school, has a group of friends and largely gets taken along for the ride academically with the other gifted kids and so is getting work above grade level.
What does worry me though is that she's kind of 'lazy' in her thinking (I would never use that word in talking about it with her, but it is probably the best description). She just wont even consider whether she knows how to do something unfamiliar and/or she'll often pump out the easiest most obvious answers in her school work. If an answer or a solution or some piece of understanding doesn't just pop in to her head, she just doesn't both with it. She had a maths assessment recently at school for placement and she said some of the questions has been really hard. "Like what" I asked. "Like 7 x ? = 56". I replied that she knew that. "Do I? Oh yeah, 8"
This happens all the time. Similarly she'll see something represented in an unfamiliar way and before she's even looked at it she'll determine she can't do it (this could be maths, grammar, projects, whatever). If I can actually persuade her to look at it (which can involved half an hour of cajoling, huffing - often from both of us by the end! - and, sometimes loss of privileges if it's something important) she will look at it, understand in a couple of moments and be on her way. Obviously I can't do this at school! It shows in the work she brings home and in her reports - which show her working a year or so ahead at school when in fact she is capable of working a number of years ahead...
It is not entirely unreasonable that the teacher has not discovered dd's capabilities, because she does often look for all intents and purposes like she doesn't understand more complex work. She will simply say "I don't understand what you mean" and, unsurprisingly they don't have half an hour to cajole her through to the point of actually looking at what they're asking for (and because they rarely see what she's capable of, I can see they think I'm mad to suggest they probe a bit deeper).
In terms out expectations of dd, we've always focussed on effort rather than outcomes, we talk about our own mistakes and point out how we've overcome them - I wonder if perhaps we've gone too far in that regard and she feels too much pressure to 'try', I don't know.
Any thoughts on how to deal with this? I'd like to say "hey, she's happy, get over it" - but I worry that it will become her general mode of thinking and approach to the world, the outcomes of which I don't see as terrible positive long term (not in a 'I don't want her to a garbage collector' kind of way, more in a 'I just don't want her to limit her choices so that if she wants to be a garbage collector it's a choice and not because it was the only option' kind of way)
Is this some kind of reverse perfectionism thing?
