Sorry - this is just a vent that has been a long time in the coming, so please don't feel obliged to read on! Just had to get it out there
I had diner with a friend last night, someone who until I started making noises about my daughter being gifted, I would have considered possibly my closest friend since high school. Now don't get me wrong, I don't usually got around telling people dd is gifted, but because of the relationship we had and the fact that she is a teacher, I had told her.
It all started out well enough - she'd witnessed dd reading and doing basic maths when she was 2 or 3 and obviously it's quite hard to deny that that is unusual. But as dd got bigger, she was less inclined to demonstrate her skills publicly. In addition to this my friend has no children of her own and teaches upper primary school students, so she doesn't have a lot of knowledge about what a 'normal' 4yo does (the only other child of a similar age in our circle is also gifted I suspect). So from time to time she would see things like dd draw a letter backwards or something similar and she would make concerned noises along the lines of "oh... she's having trouble writing her letters properly isn't she... hmm...". Any other 'mistake' is met with a similar kind of response. When I pointed out that most of dd's preschool class couldn't write their own name, I got the sense she didn't believe me. We had dd tested in preparation for choosing a school and I mentioned the results to my friend. It was like they became a catalyst to prove that dd was not gifted and each time we catch up, she drops in another little hint that perhaps dd isn't so unusual at all (dd'd scored in the 99.9 percentile and is a good solid 4 in Ruf's levels, with some cross over in to level 5). My friend is the literacy specialist at her school. She had always been clear that she didn't have any experience of kindergarten kids and the first thing she said last night was that she had witnessed two of the children in the kindergarten class reading at a grade two level. She had evidently come to diner armed with this fresh first hand experience of kindergarten kids (who are a year older than dd) to test dd's reading - having never done so before she asked dd to read to her, which she did, choosing a Dr Suess book (dd read me a page of a Famous Five book the other day, so the Dr Suess book was not indicative of her reading level). DD read fluently, with the exception of getting stuck on 'laughing', which she figured out once she looked at the picture. This was what my friend focussed on "mmm, she reads very well at that level. But... one of the girls in class read 'scientific' to me the other day... your dd struggled with 'laughing'" - as if that somehow proved something (fortunately this was not in front of dd). When I pointed out that dd has no trouble reading 'scientific', she gave me a tight little smile - the one I am sure she reserves for those particularly 'proud' parents!
My friend is very highly regarded as a teacher. She is currently undergoing principal training and is seen as an up and coming leader in her region. She has however, had no gifted education training (other than whatever might be part of her standard teaching qualification). She places - rightly so I suspect - a very high value on her ability (when she has spoken about what she has done with kids who are struggling, I've always come away very impressed). I on the other hand am not a teacher, but I have done A LOT of reading on gifted education - much of it from those who teach gifted education to teachers. In this day and age where teachers seem to have been assigned the role of expert in ALL matters concerning children and parents are seen as simply neurotic and doting, my knowledge and experience of my own child is, I feel, viewed as less valuable and less reliable. This despite my knowledge on this topic coming from respected sources and hers from educational 'folklore'. My friend will admit she has "never come across" a gifted child (hmm...) and has certainly never seen a child accelerated. When I mentioned to my friend that the ed psych who tested dd had suggested she would in all likeliness need to be accelerated twice my friend looked aghast and almost shouted "you can NOT accelerate her". I mentioned what I knew about acceleration and asked her why she thought kids shouldn't be accelerated and she said - and I quote: "because kids who are HELD BACK a year really struggle socially" (my emphasis). Riiiight... So I asked how that related to acceleration and she said "I don't know, I guess I've just always seen them as one and the same thing". When I said during another conversation that two of our local schools would not return my calls as soon as I mentioned my daughter's high ability (I didn't even mention the 'G' word), she said that was to be expected. When I showed her a handout one school gave me - double sided - on why all kids should be held back, she said she'd love to introduce it at her school ("it's what we all think, we just can't say it"). I find all that quite shocking. My friend is a smart woman, but if this is what we're up against in trying to advocate I'm not sure I've got the will - and this is someone I've known since I was 11.
I suspect that this has lead to a change in our relationship that is likely to be permanent. Our mutual lack of trust in each other on this issue has permeated to other areas of our friendship, which I do feel is a real shame.
If you've got this far, thanks for listening and apologies if I have not been entirely rational!
