Hi MommyGiraffe,
I sounds like you have a lovely daughter. I think you are wise to be concerned during this transition. Sad to say I have no experience in this area as all my efforts to get the challenge level right for my son have "undershot" and he hasn't had the chance to "be a little fish" yet.
But I keep my ears open for information on this transition, and hope to work it out soon. In the book The Social and Emotional Development of Gifted Children: What Do We Know? by Maureen Neihart, Sally M. Reis, Nancy M. Robinson, and Sidney M. Moon there is dissussion of these types of transitions being one of the common areas where a child will need extra support.
Degree of giftedness, and type of giftedness also affect what you can expect at such transitions. A big problem is under or over placement. Some transitions fail because the child is still underplaced. Some children (like my 10 year old son) seem to have gifts at right angles to the curriculum, he can talk social politics on an almost adult level, which does him almost no good at all in his school environment, where 5th graders are supposed to pour their energies into quick recall of multiplication facts and pretty handwritting and timed writing responces to prompts to support their school is testing. I want him to learn all these things, but it makes him a good example of a highly gifted kid who just doesn't seem to be that impressive to the school teachers. They have tried to provide him with some activities that engage his strengths, with good results, still I don't want him to be in your daughers shoes in 14 years.
(no offense intended - and honestly - I don't think that my efforts will nescessarily pay off - so you may have gotten a very good value out of not beating your head against the wall and letting life come to you. After all, 14 isn't so very old. Many kids "reawaken" in high school, college or graduate school.)
Some kids are fail at transitions because the gap is too great or the support is too little, or not the right kind. Re-Forming Gifted Education: How Parents and Teachers Can Match the Program to the Child (Paperback) by Karen B. Rogers is filled with down to earth tips about providing the right kind of support. She talks alot about "grade skips" but I'm guessing you could consider this a "grad skip" in a way. It also will remind you of all the things you've done right to prepare her up to this point, which I'm sure are many. Each kid is different, and each stage of life is different, so each path will have to be different, yes? I'd rather deal with a new fishpond at 14, with my parent's support, than "away at college" like I did. I was quite impressed with my classmates, and concluded that my strength were more "in the social realm" and didn't think about gifteness again until DS hit the school system...(shrug) It's not that I want to be critical of our current culture, but let's say that I'm hopeful about the energy that can be released and harnessed once we, as a culture, do better here. I think an Intellectual Golden Age is very close at hand.
Love and More love,
Trinity
