So sorry! For some magic reason, I logged in just now and it posted my last reply, which is now sort of out of date.
School selection -- I think Tigerle has it nailed re unlikely to find a perfect setting and flexibility being key. This is relevant to private schools in an important way. No matter what they say, in the end they are unlikely to be flexible enough in the particular issues our kids struggle with. When faced with extreme asynchrony/quirkiness/classroom disrupting behaviors, they will have to ask you to leave. Folks are paying big bucks to be there, and the school HAS to please their paying clients. I would want to have explicit, on point discussions and examples of extreme flexibility and tolerance before sending my son there. And for heavens sake - apply this especially to any school for gifted kids. They are highly focused on achievement. And this advice is straight from the admissions director at one of the best known gifted schools in the Bay Area. [This is not to say these won't be good schools for our kids in a few years. We still have them on our radar for middle school.]
YES , the big gifted school here, Mirman, is a poor fit for us, for these precise reasons!! And this came from his own psychologist, who is a screener for them!
I have seen now him be rejected from three different private schools, so I'm already seeing the sort of "we don't want to deal with this" attitude. And my guy is SO great! It's just clear that he is not "normal."
So, is the feeling that private school, because it's private, doesn't NEED to be flexible, whereas public is sort of required to because they have to? That's pretty interesting and something I'd not considered. I was thinking the other way around for some reason, like somehow private was going to fix everything.
Honestly - this was why we ended up at the local public school. I knew my son couldn't handle moving from school to school. I hear about PG kids who do that, looking for the right fit. But this would be devastating for DS. He needed a place that would fight through it with him. And no matter what - the public school has to keep working with you. Important caveat - I had good reason to believe that the principal had her head and heart in the right place.
So - we had a terrible K setting. But the principal worked with me to shepherd DS through it. And she mandated more appropriate discipline strategies that didn't work perfectly, but did help. And most critically - she FINALLY, truly believed that DS's behavior wasn't volitional, that he wanted so much to be "good" in school, that he really was trying hard. It took a few conversations with me and with DS, but she got it. That was the turning point. And most critically, it led to the optimal teacher assignment for first grade. Hopefully the same will be true in the future (I'm already losing sleep over start of second grade in a month ....). FWIW - we have never explicitly discussed his neuropsych assessment or IQ. But I'm fairly certain she knows he is far outside the box - even for our crazy Silicon Valley demographic.
And yes - I sometimes just give my little guy days off to help him get through the week. I try to have some colorable activity in case somebody asked him where he was. But sometimes it was nothing more than going over to the ocean for a particularly low tide, or visiting a friend's lab at the university for 30 minutes, or even just doing a science experiment at home. Once, I had a (really) huge block of ice and he just spent an afternoon smashing it. But I always sent email to the school saying "DS has a doctor's appointment and will not be in school on [insert date]." So the absences were excused.
And the email wasn't false if you read it carefully! He does have a doctor's appointment. And he does miss school on [date]. He just didn't miss school FOR the doctor appointment.
If anybody ever asked, I planned to just say that the appointment got re-scheduled. But nobody ever asked.
I seriously love this and used to use a version of this for getting out of work.
And things are getting better now. Stay tuned for second grade! I hope we don't have any dramatic plot twists.
We're with you Hildy,
Sue
This is all such amazing advice/tips/experience. Thank you. I hope second grade is excellent for you.
I can see all of this taking place for us, especially the constant advocating. Preschool has been like this. But luckily we've had such GREAT people on our side. So, yes, we'd have two to three hour long meetings what felt like every few weeks, but stuff was being heard and problems were getting solved.
We've been through a complete evaluation for him and would love to be able to just give a teacher or principal the info (IQ, diagnosis, etc) and use it as help/bargaining, but I'm not sure how much a school would appreciate that. I hear they bristle at the word "gifted."
