I felt that by saying my son was bored, that others felt uneasy/threatened b/c if my son was bored, then it meant their kid wasn't as smart (didn't know he was gifted back then) since their kid wasn't bored.
I almost lost a good friend because of this recently, Dazey, and to be honest, things are still a bit strained. Our DDs are in the same class this year. When we were at a crossroads with DD6 about whether to pull her out of school or ask for acceleration, I shared what was going on. She blew off DDs complaints as typical or being as a result of my questioning her about what she was learning each day in school. The school ended up offering subject acceleration, and I shared with my friend that they did this based on some achievement testing we had done. I thought I was sufficiently vague about the actual score but yet made it clear that everyone involved thought this was what DD6 needed.
A few weeks ago another child in the class was moved out because a parent complained about her not being challenged. It set my friend off. What came out was that she thought we were wrong to have ever gone to the counselor or principal to express concern about DD, that it was just 1st grade and it's supposed to be easy, that I thought my DD was "beyond brilliant," and that I had probably hurt the teacher by my actions. Apparently getting achievement testing was an overreaction because she's my oldest child and put too much emphasis on the fact that she's gifted. All kids should learn the same things in PS, and there shouldn't be special accomodations for anyone. I need to just tell DD to enjoy the fact that school is easy right now.
Clearly I had hurt this friend and annoyed her by sharing our concerns and DD's unhappiness. I had never really wanted to share it with her but I felt I had to let her in on some of it if we were going to pull DD6 from school. And I only shared with her, too, because I believe her kids are GT. Every time we talked about it before the blow up I focused on DD's personality, not her GTness, until the achievement testing came up. It still didn't matter, though, because even after the fact, I think she took my focus on personality to be insincere and believed I was really saying that DD is smarter than everyone in the class. And if I said DD has needs (based on the achievement testing), it's saying her DD doesn't.
So I too wonder if I focus on the "gifted" part of DD too much. I'm sure her teachers probably think so because they don't really understand asynchrony. When I try to explain to the 2nd grade teacher (DD6 goes there twice a day for subject acceleration) that DD6 can't physically write like a 2nd grader but understands everything, she looks a bit like she's frustrated that she has to make a few changes to accomodate her. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but it seems like she thinks DD6 shouldn't be coming to her class if she can't do all the work exactly like the other 2nd graders. Maybe she shouldn't. I can see where "giftedness" could sound like an excuse.
I still don't know exactly what happened to cause my DD to become so unhappy this school year. Could it have been because she picked up on my concern? I don't know. But I do know that my daughter went from being a kid who loved to learn and loved school to a child who begged me to homeschool her so that she could learn something she didn't know. I don't know if "bored" is really the best word to describe what she felt. She simply wasn't learning anything new, and had no academic satisfaction. That seemed to suck the life out of her, and I do think it's probably more related to her personality than to her GTness. Whatever the cause, though, I truly believe it would have been detrimental to have kept her in her 1st grade class without any acceleration.
