I don't mean to be contrarian... but when I read this post, I see that the teacher DOES say that something needs to be done if a child is reading well beyond their peers or preferring documentaries to Thomas... I am not saying that she is making productive suggestions; but my reading is that she is ranting about parents who are pushing for more for their kids when their kids aren't necessarily gifted. And those parents do exist. Honestly, sometimes I think I see a few of them here on this forum.
I understand your point & we do have a lot of bright but not gifted kids filling the TAG programming in our local schools as well. Some of these kids do have arrogant, pushy parents. And some of the gifted kids are never recognized as gifted b/c they don't present the same way as kids who have done four years of tutoring and enrichment.
I think that the parental frustration comes from the assumption that this teacher, and some others, seems to make that being gifted is something that needs no accommodation before late elementary or later. Bright kids who will do well in advanced classes don't necessarily need pushy parents and lots of accommodation early on. Kids who are wired differently may.
We weren't pushing for anything for our girls until we had problems -- partially b/c I didn't know that they were gifted until we had problems in school. In hindsight, it would have been a lot easier to have had them taught by people who understood uneven development, OEs and all of the other stuff that can go along with being gifted. We would have had a lot less damage to undo if they hadn't been so harmed by some of their school experiences. Dd11 seems to have come through it okay none the less, but dd9 still has a lot of emotional damage from some of her elementary experiences, teachers who didn't understand her, and those who left her feeling like she was weird but not too bright b/c she didn't come across as gifted to them.
(I hope that I am not one of those parents on this board whom you referenced at the end there
! )
