I agree, 'Neato, that's it's certainly not no-risk, but I do think it's a lot lower risk solution than many others you could try. Worst case scenario: you decide it's a dismal failure and return to full-time public school. Even if the teachers and adminstrators were pulling for you to fail (and I don't think they are, at least not the majority of them), then they're happy that you're back. Fail, and they're happy to have you! Not so bad.
As for alienating the teachers, well, that's always a risk with ANYTHING you do for a GT kid. Teachers have a great deal of power over our kids and, frankly, over us. But I think the way you approached it was the best one possible, keeping the risk of alienation to a bare minimum. In fact, I might argue that in some ways it might minimize the risk of alienation, vs. say offering materials for differentiation. That sort of advocacy always seems to me to be ripe for making a teacher feel like we're telling them how to teach. Not a popular move! Doing it yourself, if done right, seems like it could be a safer approach. They don't have to know that you're doing the teaching because you don't think they'll do enough, as they would figure out if you advocated for more and more and more.
As for the highlighting their intelligence: I think that's inevitable, so I wouldn't even put that on the list, frankly. The only way to fly under the radar with kids as smart as yours is not to provide them the services they need...and even then, they'd probably act out in some way to show that things weren't working for them, thereby drawing attention to their behavior, if to not the cause of it. And I'm convinced that if you get an anti-intellectual teacher, it's game-over before you even begin. I don't think you can make ANY decisions with those people in mind.
The parent rumor mill may get your situation all wrong, but that's not a big deal (said Spock...
). Certainly not a big enough deal not to try the solution. Heck, they might get your girls wrong even if you kept them in school full-time!
The social and self-esteem risks for your girls are bigger deals, I think, but no bigger than the social and self-esteem risks of doing nothing.
And being used as a cautionary tale for other parents of GT kids is a valid concern, but not one that you can worry about, I don't think. I mean, of course I'm all for advancing the cause, but your own kids have to come first.
So did I refute every point?
See? Relatively low-risk!
Feel any better now, or did I just annoy the fool out of you?
But seriously, it may be scary, but I think things like this feel scarier in the moment than they really are. (And I can say that because I've BTDT, and I was TERRIFIED!
) That's why I added the point about reversibility. If you can reverse it, it's a relatively low-risk decision. That's not to say there are no ramifications. But you're not ruling out other solutions by choosing this solution, so ultimately, the risk of truly screwing up with no way to fix it is pretty low.
Realizing that helped me to be less scared about our choices. Truly, the weight of the world does NOT hang on this decision. You can go back if you have to with no significant penalty. Sure you might be considered the weird family who homeschooled part-time for a while, but that's not the end of the world. Pretty much no one is going to care what you do.
It's the up-side to not being all that important to other people, I think. They're just not that into you...or your choices!
