I'm at my wits' end. Truly. Please forgive me, this is long and desperate, and I could have put it in "educational environments" but it seems more like a parenting issue. I guess.
DD11 has been with a virtual school for five years. I've told that story elsewhere, probably
ad nauseum. She is now an 8th grader, but she has a high school placement. This year was supposed to be when everything finally "changed," but the only real change has been that DD seems to feel that she's been sold a pig in a poke in a big way. I sense that the adults (maybe including us) have lost a lot of credibility as a result of just how much MOTS high school has turned out to be.
Our options are:
virtual school
homeschool
This isn't just because of the giftedness issues. Like Bronxmom, we have a medical limitation we're working with, too. In the right environment, however, DD is for all intents and purposes NON-DISABLED. That's important.
Each winter, (~November to about March, roughly) we have an awful time getting her to work. It isn't that the
quality] drops off-- the motivation and effort to do ANY OF IT does. The work that she produces is still easily top-notch relative to the standards set by the curriculum, and it doesn't really take her any longer to actually produce that work-- when she can be badgered into compliance, that is. The school sets very few "deadlines" on the kids-- they are supposed to work as scheduled, but if they get four, or even six or ten weeks, behind, it doesn't matter... until it matters. That is, the end of the semester, IT MATTERS; anything left incomplete becomes a zero at that point. These are her high school transcripts, even though she's 11, and she seems to take that quite seriously. She likes earning top grades and is an honor society student.
Now, we're not averse to push-parenting-- which is a good thing, since DD is not and has never been terribly good at self-directed learning for any length of time or outside of her flavor-of-the-day interest. She's easily as gifted
socially/interpersonally as she is academically, so she is about as skillful a manipulator as I've ever met, including adults in academia.
There's
no way that we are "unschooling" material; not happening.
Here are the problems that are long-standing (most of these are related to being an EG/PG kid without a good educational fit, obviously):
- refusal to do work
- perfectionism-- meaning that she "hoards" assignments like a paper dragon in her lair until her fear of our wrath > fear of "failure" (missing a single question on a multiple choice quiz/other assessment... which is not entirely irrational on her part... more on this later*)
- failure to focus on work for any length of time unless under DIRECT supervision (and I do mean 'direct' as in same ROOM isn't always enough unless you pay attention)-- she will read, draw, or play computer games at CoolMath or something instead of working)
- you can't get two days of work out of her in a row-- I'm lucky to get three a week.
- snappishness and anger when parents make suggestions/inquiries re: schoolwork
- strenuously resists any and all attempts by us to schedule her school day... and even when SHE helps to devise a schedule, she seems to take some perverse pleasure in wrecking it after a day or so-- it's really odd
- lack of study skills-- because she never NEEDED to learn them when they were teaching all this stuff back in 4th-6th grade, she simply ignored it and compensated by doing things her way... which has now devolved into something fairly dysfunctional at the high school level.
- sleep disturbances-- mostly insomnia, but some oversleeping and sleep deficit problems in a general sense, too.
- loathing of "school" as being boring/torturous/MOTS/repetitive-- so generally, lack of any kind of motivation.
- general lassitude that spills over into every area of our family's life-- "school" becomes endless, consuming every evening, every weekend, and making home a living Hades for us all.
* The reason that we don't categorize this as purely a 'perfectionism' issue and also frame it as a curricular one is that some of these courses rely as much as 70% on multiple choice assessments-- and as many as 2-5% of them are ambiguously worded or technically incorrect-- which DD definitely notices and stresses out over. Her problem isn't that she's OVER-estimating the relative importance of missing a few things-- but that she is
too precisely aware of just how costly they are. If that makes sense. She has a
few perfectionistic tendencies, but this is a different type of stressor overall.
New and worrying:
1)lies-lies-lies.... my gosh, I can't trust ANYTHING that she says... she lies with such ease and fluency that it quite literally boggles the mind. She lies about crap that doesn't even MATTER-- and she
knows that lying, above ALL other infractions, is the fastest way to get into very hot water around here with mom and dad,
2) she's almost stopped eating, claiming that "nothing tastes good" and that she just feels nauseous all the time... though she's still sneaking candy, so we don't think it's necessarily anorexia or anything like that... might be stress, could well be a medical problem related to her known medical issues (heavens, that's ALL we need)
3)she's finally reached the critical point where her
ad hoc and unorthodox methods of 'study' are not effective (well, okay, in geometry, anyway-- and the fall-off grade-wise is VERY stark), and she has no idea what to do, but she's angry as all heck at US for suggesting she do anything different. This is the first time that she doesn't "just know" the material without effort, and she is furious with the world over this.
4) flakiness/lack of motivation has now spilled over into some extracurriculars that she previously was VERY committed to-- piano and a youth organization she's part of. It's been so bad at times that we've speculated that her poor piano teacher needs
hazard pay. 
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Here's what I have tried to ask for from the school--
- placement options to minimize bad fit (this is about as good as it gets without writing curriculum especially FOR her)
- is this "normal" in terms of psychology?? (the level of defiance/resistance just seems SO extreme for a child this age)
- should we be having her evaluated by someone?? For WHAT, exactly?? (I mean, the bottom line is that this is pretty clearly existential depression combined with something else... it's seasonal, and it seems to be progressive and entirely ameliorated during June-October.)
- Help... just... help... from special ed (she has a 504 plan for her medical condition, but our state doesn't offer GIEPs at all, and does little but "identify" gifted children... and then throw extra worksheets and projects at them while teaching them in undifferentiated classrooms.)
I'm getting NOWHERE with any of that. We don't
think that this is truly ADD, since it seems entirely situational and voluntary (other than the affective issues) and from everything we can tell, differentiating that from GT-related problems is practically impossible here anyway. Are her EF a little less than required for high school? Probably-- she's eleven, after all. The trouble is, I can't find anyone associated with the school who will even talk to me about executive skills and what "normal" even LOOKS like at this age. I've had it up to HERE with other parents who are looking for flaws in DD or our parenting, and offering criticisms about how their own optimally gifted or teacher-pleaser kids are so responsible and organized at this age, however. Yes, DD is like the Pigpen of PAPER... but she always has been (at home), and up until recently, she had sufficient working memory that she really could just sort of track all of it just fine. It's a
skill deficit, not an inherent limitation, we think. That coupled with the fact that there isn't really any peer pressure to conform, and, well...
She also has a best friend(probably HG and ADD-- she's like a hummingbird) who
is (alluringly-- nay,
tantalizingly) UN-schooled-- yes, endless summer vacation (Augh-- sure, DD, what kid wouldn't love that idea... have your friend talk to me again when she's 30, okay?) This is my daughter's ONLY real friend, though, so much as I worry that it may be contributing to DD's manipulation of this situation, we're very reluctant to limit contact.
Kindness and understanding don't work, threats and screaming
work... but at such a high cost that it can't possibly be "right" (can it??) and I truly don't know what else to try. I can't work outside the home until DD is more independent, so even homeschooling conventionally is going to present us with some serious financial challenges. Plus we have the problems associated with going it alone, then-- no transcripts, etc.
Help! I could really use thoughts from other parents that really do have kids like mine. Is some of this just normal adolescent, hormonally-fueled angst?? Would removing her from the virtual school help? (That may be a one-way ride, fwiw-- there is a lengthy waitlist and an enrollment cap if we withdraw her) How on earth do we help her?? The stress is just about intolerable for all three of us.
