Does anyone here have PG kids at private gifted schools? We were declined in all but one of those schools, but chose not to attend the one that accepted us, because we were worried when we sat down with the parents community for tea. Some parents mentioned that their family member was "genius", verbatim in their own words "not self proclaimed genius, but real genius". We didn't feel like we had a genius in our hands, nor did we want to label him genius before he had anything to show in terms of breakthrough contributions to the society and not just excelling at school. We were very worried about pressure to hot house him causing him to lose his childhood and us our family life, and decided to not go for that school.

He is now only a second grader, and I am unsure what we'd do for high school when it comes time. We are going to do private school all the way, since we don't live in a good school district, but our experience applying for kindergarten was rather traumatic if it is indicative of high school application process. If they still require test, I don't know what I'd do. Make sure that he is not his best self when testing? Tell him to tank it a bit in visual spatial so he looks just normally gifted? I don't like to think that the schools don't like my son because he is too far from the norm, but it looks like that's the way it is. He is on the mellow side, occasionally push limit just like normal kids his age, but is mostly on the conforming, rule oriented side, and went to a preschool that emphasized social emotional development, so we were surprised when he was rejected by nearly all.

Indigo, we are in Silicon Valley where athleticism doesn't seem to be valued as much as academic achievement. There are a lot of immigrants who came here on their academic achievement, working in tech and a lot of kids who don't have a lot of life outside of academics. Sometimes I feel as if I intentionally swim against the stream when I am trying to give my kids as normal childhood as they can have and for us to have as normal family life together as possible. I am actually surprised he does so well in martial art, but I think it is because of memory, a lot of it involves memorizing steps and understanding the technicalities of the kicks and stuff and then applying it to your body. I think it is a healthy workout for him. I let him choose his own extra curricular activities. Maybe one of the reasons of his blooming later (if he would) is our own choice, but he doesn't seem to mind it. But also maybe that is because there are a lot of areas where he could just learn together normally with his friends in the classroom setting, since outside of VS he might just be a normally gifted kid.

Last edited by peanutsmom; 09/03/16 04:53 PM.