Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy DS bullied by fellow giftie for being too gifted?!

DS11 is being bullied by his former best friend in his gifted program and I am at a bit off a loss in how to advise him. Sorry it’s a bit of a novel.

The other kid, let’s call him K10, skipped the last year of elementary school, where he was already young for grade, to enter the gifted track at a public college prep school for fifth grade two years ago. He is 7 months younger than DS11 (entered early himself) and at least a year younger than most of the other students. His rural elementary school appears to have a lot of issues (not teaching cursive, for instance, and DS11 spent a lot of the last two years reading the teachers‘ writings to him because he couldn’t) and appears to have counselled the kid out after third grade to get rid of a kid they couldn’t bother to properly teach or engage.

Because it was late in the year, or so his mom told me at the time, he did not take the mandatory group test, normed for grade level, but an individual test, which he apparently did very well in. My hunch is that the individual test was normed for age level, possibly in 3 months intervals even, and so he made the cutoff easily (which is intentionally generous at 120 points, though the actual IQs for the gifted classes tend to skew much higher, since parents of marginal kids tend to prefer enrolment in the regular college prep track classes), but wasn’t really ready for the skip.

DS11 tells me that, despite being made to study hard by his parents, K10 gets Cs and Ds, the occasional Fs, in tests which are curved to a C- for the whole grade level (five different college prep tracks at the school) whereas the gifted class usually averages a B, with DS11 among those who effortlessly pull As, occasionally Bs, simply by showing up. K10 apparently struggles socially, too, since he is not being taken seriously by the older boys, and often is made fun of for looking like a girl (not by DS11, who couldn’t care less!), wearing his hair shoulder length and holding it back with a silver glitter hair band. (From the neck down he is all boy, very athletic, unlike DS11, which HE makes fun of now).

All of which, I fully agree with what all of you are thinking, should be neither here nor there and not our business at all.

However it appears that K10 has now decided to turn his frustrations against his (now former) best friend. Seeking and provoking physical altercations, hiding his own stuff and taking DS11s, pushing his bed out of the room on a field trip once (seriously?!), making fun of him, trying to turn others against him (which works with some of the more socially awkward boys - DS11 himself is generally respected but not popular), whispering, pointing and laughing, the works.

DS11, who hates physical altercations, tries to engage as little as possible, avoiding him where he can, moving the bed back, taking his stuff back and so on, but that K10 will follow him around, kick him or trip him, and once he has some kind of a reaction, no matter how reasonable, will then yell at or otherwise abuse DS11, using vulgar language (“you f-ing disabled child” was a text that DS11 was really upset with).

Before I heard about those latest issues, I phoned the kids mom, who I was friendly with, to ask, vaguely and generally, how come those two former besties couldn’t get along anymore. The mom was evasive, insisting she knew her kid wasn’t an angel, but that the problem was their interests in sports and fiction diverged too much (again, seriously?) and that her own kid, struggling and having to work hard in school, couldn’t take that DS11 didn’t have to and, she claimed, was condescending about it. She also felt that DS11 was frequently standoffish and arrogant (which I recognise as DS11 being socially awkward and insecure, but I hear her on how this comes across and we are working on this all the time anyway).

So, the parents aren’t an avenue I want to pursue any further. I don’t see any point in alienating the mom by describing DS11s point of view, in particular as another source has told me that K10 was kicked off a sports team for constantly and underhandedly provoking fights and the mom was in denial about that, too.

DS11, by the way, describes the interaction in question such: that, back when they were still speaking, K10 would constantly ask him when he was planning to study for some kind of test, then, when DS11 finally broke and admitted he wasn’t planning to study at all, and when asked why not, honestly and correctly answered “because I don’t need to.” Have I mentioned he can be socially awkward, and would never come up with a socially acceptable lie?

Nor should he need to. While I do understand that K10s mom probably feels under pressure to justify the skip into the gifted program as the right decision both to herself, the kid and the school, I find I can’t muster up any patience with the idea that DS11 should be made to suffer somehow for being the kind of kid this program was created for in the first place.

(While the school also welcomes gifted underachievers and tends to work well with them, keeping them sufficiently engaged until an instinct for self preservation kicks in sometime during high school level, I do not think of K10 as an underachiever - I believe he is achieving at his level, but he is in over his head and should either switch into a regular classroom or drop down a grade. The school will not enforce anything as long as he makes at least Ds, and probably not counsel a program or grade correction either - it would be up to the parents to pull the plug).

I just do not want to get involved any further at this point. The school has responded quite well to issues with bullying on the past, and I told DS11 to speak to his homeroom teacher, explain his POV, and ask her to monitor the situation and step in if she feels it is warranted. No changes or reaction so far. When would you step in to escalate?