I dislike it as well. I've been told I need to let my kids be kids and that I push them too hard when the reality is that I don't push them at all. I've been told, "we have many bright kids." I've been told, "well, third grade is harder anyway, so she won't need anything more." I've tried the argument about kids being as different when above 100 as kids who are an equal distance below 100. They always look at me like I'm delusional (in a generally polite way). The only person at the school who didn't was the gifted specialist who actually tested my daughter. My daughter is at a charter school now where she can work at her own pace and it helps because the difference is more dramatic than when all of the kids are doing the same work.
It's a little funny, though. I argued and argued for my daughter; she was deeply unhappy in kindergarten and it had to be done. When she started kindergarten, she was reading books like The Trumpet of the Swan and was clearly academically advanced. I had a hard time getting anything for her except when we switched schools (people seem to get much more helpful at that point). My son used to have serious developmental delays and is less obviously academically advanced. When he started kindergarten, he was reading only simple books and I thought he probably wasn't far from average. Maybe it's because he's at a different school, but people at the school keep telling me how advanced he is. It's a little bizarre because that didn't happen with my daughter and she was much farther ahead. They spontaneously accelerated my son a grade in reading and brought in the gifted specialist to consult even though they don't start identifying kids for the gifted program until third grade.
I'm not sure if it's just that he has different teachers, if they have heard about his sister, or if maybe he's more in line with their experience of gifted kids (or was before he started having behavioral issues because he was bullied and because he has trouble sitting quietly when he is bored). I'm grateful they have offered him these things, though. He will have some options for acceleration whether at the public school or at the charter school, while my daughter when through three schools before finally getting accelerated at the charter school (she did get a grade skip midway through kindergarten, but that was only because we switched schools and they immediately tried to reverse it once she was at the new school).
It sounds like you are doing all the right things. I hope it gets easier for you.
Last edited by apm221; 08/20/14 07:55 PM.
