This thread has been super thought-provoking for me and comes at a time where we are considering these same sorts of questions.
It seems that by refusing to challenge a gifted child, or being outright hostile to the idea of giftedness, schools set themselves into an adversarial position against parents. The result is that parents are forced to either a) defend the child against the teacher (Cola, I so feel your pain) or b) change the education to meet the child's needs (which we have done four! times now).
Well, them's the breaks right? Except that children can come away from this situation making some unfortunate conclusions:
* My mom or dad will take my side when I don't like something.
* If I express my unhappiness enough, they will change things to make me happy.
* If I don't like an adult, I don't have to do what they say.
* I'm different or special because school doesn't work for me without a lot of changes.
These attitudes are temperament based, not LOG based. A smart kid can come to these conclusions and use them to their own advantage the same as -- maybe even more-so -- than a typical kid.
Despite our best efforts not to hothouse or coddle or be all special snowflake about things, a kid can still come away with these attitudes. The kid can think that if things are boring, hard, or otherwise yucky, he/she can manipulate the situation to change things.
We find ourselves in this situation where, by trying to get DD challenged academically, she's somehow come away with the opinion that school is there for her amusement and should be adjusted to meet her preferences.
I find this so frustrating. I want school to be hard enough so that she learns grit. I want to be able to say "the teacher said so and you have to do it" because that's a critical life lesson (sometimes you have to do stuff you don't like because someone in authority SAYS SO). I want her to respect her teachers because they are worthy of respect (but how can we respect someone who'd threatened by a 9 year old or who can't bother to hide their distaste for my kid?).
And I want her to know she has to learn to deal with the world as is and that the world isn't going to rearrange itself just for her (though through her effort, she can change the world).
But that only works if the schools are willing to acknowledge who she is and give her what she needs to grow and be challenged. Because they could not, she never learned grit or to try. And because we had to fix it, we put ourselves in the 'change the world for you darling' camp. Now she's being pushed for the first time and it's HARD.
In athletics, she doesn't have this problem. She expects things to get challenging, works hard to meet goals, gets down and stressed sometimes but then moves past it herself, and is so proud when she meets a new goal.
But academically she's a ball of anxiety and crankiness. And it spills over into other ways that she's adamant on changing 'the system'. Now, I get that we need to question authority and change things that are wrong (as a principle I believe this). But when the system is her chores and being a pleasant member of the family, well that's not up for revolution. The dictatorship stands.
