Wow. I was almost afraid to open up my post again. Thank you, everyone, for all your encouragement and compassion. I am feeling the love...

I feel better having gotten it all out there. It is hard not to look back, but that won't help my DD. I am pouring over all the information on this site and on Hoagies. I still may not get it right, but I am trying:-)

Kaitlyn'sMom- I guess they were trying to suggest ADHD in early elementary. But it didn't ring true to us. Our pediatrician dismissed the idea out of hand when we brought it up, so we just decided it was part of the mass over-diagnosis of AD/HD we heard so much about. We really attributed her behavior to too much energy and innate ornery-ness!

As far as her social issues go, it is still a concern. She doesn't have a best friend although she is friendly with all the kids in school. She is close to her cousin, age 11, and they instant message all the time and have sleepovers once in a while. She hasn't been in one class long enough to make lasting friendships. I am hoping she will find that special friend in highschool so we really want to find the right place for next year, a place where she can spend 4 full years with the same kids. We live in a very rural area- no neighbors to play with.

I think the conflict resolution rubric they use at her school has really helped her get along better- maybe she just needed to be formally taught what most kids know instinctively? The teachers like her and, while she still visits the Principal occasionally, it is for relatively mild stuff- incomplete homework, caught listening to an ipod or pushing the dress code to extemely, er, creative places.

I will look closely at SI. That might explain a lot. Most worrisome, she seems to be having more of a problem with social anxiety. Forgive this long example:

She had a meltdown on her birthday this month over going to a restaurant with three friends who were at our house. First she wanted to go, then she didn't, then she wasn't sure where, then she got really angry and said she didn't care. DH said okay, then let's just go to get pizza. Then she started to cry. We offered to get take out, and she got really angry. By this time her friends were looking at her like she was a nut. I sent the other kids to wait in the car so I could talk to DD. She started hyperventilating. I tried to calm her down...eventually we all got to the restaurant. But it was crowded and DD got upset again, "I didn't think there would be people here!" Huh? We ended up back at home with take out from Subway. Happy Birthday. And she wouldn't go into the movie theater last weekend because there were too many teenagers around. (PLEASE, Mom, let's just GO! There are too many people. Please, I am begging you, just take me home!) It seems like more than just teen angst. Could these be a sort of panic attack? She will have some weirdness like that about once every week or two. The rest of the time she is okay. It seems to happen more often when she is hungry...

A few episodes like that in the dorm will not be good for her social life. In every other way she seems mature enough for boarding school. Physically she looks 15...very tall and wearing a size 11 shoe! She really wants to go. We have not told the potential school about the ADHD. She hasn't needed special accomodations in the past, but may in the future as the challenge increases. Also, we have been compensating for some of her executive function deficiencies, especially in regards to time management and organization. I guess the school will have to be on board with these issues.

I am assuming that giftedness won't be as much of an issue at a prep school...all the kids will be pretty smart. Do we even need to talk about giftedness with the school? I don't want to turn them off by acting like a parent that thinks their child is soooo special. We are considering The Cambridge School of Weston in Weston, MA if anyone has any experience with that school...

Yikes. I did it again. Another looong post. Thank you so much for giving me a place here on this board. You don't know how much you have helped me already. It means so much to be able to talk about all this.

Lisa