I think a super smart kid with a certain kind of personality can get away with a whole lot even if the parent is paying attention.
I was immature and determined to do whatever the h@#$ I wanted to do and smart enough to fool ALL the adults involved. My parents weren't the greatest, but certainly not neglectful. They did the best with what skills they had.
I just read a book that I heard about at OGTOC. It's called Help is on the Way by Jenna Forrest. She basically tells her life story growing up and it focuses alot on extreme sensivities. It's an interest read especially if you want to understand someone who suffers from RE!- hee hee hee.
Seriously, though, there was a part of the book where she was like 9 or 10 and she walked right up to her teacher and told her that her mom was picking her up for a doctor's appointment and was going to be waiting outside. The teacher told her to go ahead. She just walked out of school, went home, her mom was at work so she just let herself in with her key and hung out...AT NINE!
In the book she eventually gets caught, but I did that stuff all the time and I never got caught! In fact, at the end of 8th grade the vice principal came up and said what a model citizen I was. You would die if I told you what all I was up to that year!
I never got caught so the behavior escalated. I kept upping the anty and I think there was a small part of me that wanted to get caught. It never happened.
That's too much heady power for a little kid.
Which brings me back to wanting to make sure really smart kids are engaged at school. Like my eight year old says, six and a half hours is a really long time to be sitting around doing nothing. Mix that with a certain personality and you could have some really regretful results. It especially upsets me because it's really not that hard to fend that off by keeping the child engaged during the day.
