I'm new to this forum and have a couple of questions. I have a DD6 who is in the middle of going through the testing to get a complete body of evidence together so that she can be tagged gifted. However, we all know she is gifted, this just seems to be the technicalities the school needs to do. She is currently in kindergarten but spend time in 1st grade for reading and math. She reads/comprehends at a 3rd grade level and her math is end of 2nd grade. My DH and I are trying to figure out what the best move would be for her next. She broke down during dinner tonight with cries of "why am I so different from everyone in my class. I don't want to be different, I want to be like all of my classmates." It turns out she has noticed recently that she thinks differently and works differently than everyone else in both kinder and gr 1 and she doesn't like it. We live in a small rural town and we are lucky enough to have a charter school in town she goes to, but there is little or no money for much of a gt program and the school has little experience with gt kids this young. They keep telling me that "the other kids they've had have been accommodated by splitting grades like she is currently doing. But they've never had a student like her before." (If I hear that phrase again I may scream.)
So, My questions are, 1) how do we help her understand that she is different from her classmates, but it is not a bad thing? and 2) If skipping a grade is the thing to do should we have her moved now so she finishes the year off with 1st grade and then goes into 2nd grade with them next year, or should we wait until next school year to make the change?
Sorry this was a bit long but it tore my heart to have her crying about being different at such a young age.
