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Hello All,

I have been reading through this forum for a while, trying to figure out DS6. The problem is I have too many questions that I don't know where to start.

DS6 just finished K. We had him tested and know he is HG but schooling and attention seem to be the big issues for us.

These are his WISC IV scores (I have all the subtest score as well, coding was low (11)due to fine motor issues):
VC: 150
PR: 151
WM: 123
PS: 121
FSIQ: 149
GAI: 160

WJ III
Broad Math: 159 grade eq: 4.7
Broad Reading: 132 grade eq: 4.6

Most recently he attended a logics summer program here in FL and the teacher said DS has developed a really bad habit where he pays attention enough to get the beginning and has become use to thinking that is all the information he needs to figure out whatever it is he is doing. Has anyone else experienced this with HG kids? The tester said that she saw possible sensory issues, sensory underresponsive and sensory seeking. This also maybe playing an issue.
He will read for 3 hours straight when interested in a book, and even though math is his real strength that is where he has the most difficultly staying focused. Worksheets are too boring and doing problem after problem tends to make him go physically all over the place.

Lastly what to so with schooling? We are in Palm Beach county, FL. He is in an "accelerated class" in our local school going into 1st. The tester recommended grade skipping, which will be difficult with a new incoming Principal, I imagine. While his K teacher tried the best she could to challenge him, even giving him the 2nd grade math book, he still thought K was way too easy. When we had our meeting at the end of the year with his teacher and the ESE/Gifted coordinator, I brought up pace of work and making sure it is adequate particularly in math. The gifted coordinator's response was DS has to learn he cannot always go at his own pace. My response was he goes to school to learn not to learn that he is not allowed to learned. She said they will run out of math curriculum to teach him in elementary school if the move him too quickly.

And the school we could transfer for full time gifted is adding a new grade each year, starting this coming school year they will add 1st grade. When I spoked to the ESE coordinator there and asked about my DS math situation, I was told that they would not have advanced him into 2nd grade math as his teacher in K had done in our school. In 1st the most he could do is 2nd grade math book along with enrichment work. I honestly do not see that working for DS.

The only way we could transfer him to the another F/T gifted program at a different school with 2nd grade would be to get the grade skip at our home school. DS6 will be 7 in Sep as well which makes him one of the oldest in his grade. Does anyone have experience with HG kids in F/T gifted programs in PB county, FL? Do they provide any curriculum differentiation for kids who learn at especially quick rate? I am a bit afraid of the F/T gifted program working 1 year ahead with more enrichment work. He does not need more work, he needs to move at a quicker pace and be challenged. I'm sure many of you have felt this way, how do you deal with this?

DS is quite social and I would like him to go to school for as long as possible, but I am worried that he is already developing poor study habits. He is a handfull, he does not conform or go along with rules that he does not see as important. And he has to touch EVERYTHING, which at times is not appropriate.

It's really wonderful that this forum exists to communicate with others in similar situations. For the most part, I don't personally know anyone in a similar situation and could really use some advise.

Thanks,

Whattodo?

The following are only my opinions, but with my experience trying to advocate for my son in Florida schools, I'd advise the following:

First, apply to DYS immediately.

They can help you advocate for your son, who is exceptionally gifted, and they can help you figure out what kind of educational environment is going to work for him. That said...

Second, consider homeschooling.

Your DS has a much better chance of finding kids he can connect with and relate to in mixed age groups and in groups that self-select for giftedness than he does in an age-grouped classroom. It is also extremely unlikely that he is going to get an appropriate pace and depth of learning in a regular classroom, or even a GT classroom. His GAI is two standard deviations above that of the typical student in a GT program.

Welcome! Your situation sounds familiar. I would say that even a grade skip can't be a full solution for your son, since he has already learned second grade math skills.


I'm actually shocked to hear of a gifted coordinator saying such things. I mean, it's true that we have to be happy sometimes with a rough fit instead of a perfect one, but your son's extraordinarily fast learning pace must be taken into account. And that last statement... I'm just shaking my head.

Your thinking so far is accurate. Your son needs to be at an appropriate level and allowed to proceed at an appropriate pace, which are not the same thing. If his need for a faster pace is not addressed, it will just cause more frequent level-sets and he will stay bored much of the time. Ideally he would be at an appropriate instructional level for all topics (which in your son's case to me implies at least a further pull-out for math), be able to skip past things he already knows (this is often called "curriculum compacting"), do less repetition on new material because he doesn't need as much, be able to explore topics of interest in depth, and in general be able to stretch himself without boredom.

Is home schooling a potential option? Are there other private schools in the area that might be an option, and would be more accommodating?

DYS sounds like a great idea. I'm kind of sad that here in our part of NH there aren't many kids for DS5 to play with that are really on his wavelength. I'm hoping that you will meet a fair number of young DYS kids near you in Florida after you're admitted. That might make it a lot easier to decide to home-school your son, if that becomes an option, and in any event it would let him enjoy the company of other kids like him.

Thanks aculady,

I have been thinking more and more about homeschooling. I'm a bit scared about knowing what and how to teach him. I have no idea about curriculums or anything.
Also DS likes going to school and socializing everyday. He is the type of child who can play with almost anyone especially if they like legos.

As for DYS, we sent in application yesterday. I just hope they accept the Evaluation Summary with his scores (it has a lot of info), but it is not the complete official report, I won't have that for a few more weeks. That would push us back to after school starts.

lucounu,

There is a private gifted school that I have to look into, but without financial aid we would not be able to pay for it.

In Jan 2010, before I knew as much as I do now about gifted, we had him tested to be eligible for gifted programing his WPPSI was 150 and WIAT Math was 141, (just short on the WIAT math for DYS.) Now a year and half later after working more on math and teaching him more than preschool level math his achievement scores are much higher. As for the ESE/Gifted Coordinator, she insists that they have dealt with kids like DS and they have had social problems with kids who are accelerated in math too quickly. That is why we had him retested with someone who is more of an expert in gifted that providing more direct recommendations of grade skipping, curriculum compacting, etc. We felt like we needed a better expert in our corner after the meeting in May.

whattodo? (funny name btw!)

We home school in FL and I am a home school consultant and evaluator in FL. It is my opinion that this is the best option.
Feel free to pm or email me!

We are in Florida also and we hear the same excuse from the gifted "experts" about schooling:

( Adding on to that, our gifted peeps said DS doesn't even need to be in school for academics, he needs to be in school for social skills. )

If your school has offered you a skip, take it. Then next year maybe they will give you another, or you can advocate for another. I hope you have better luck than we have. The Florida public gifted school DS is in will not skip him, despite being in DYS and having DYS help us advocate.

As someone else mentioned to you, get your DS in DYS for all the help you can get!

Add us to the list that has heard this from schools in Fl too. Ours was with respect to language arts rather than math, but they managed to use exactly the same words!

We were also told DD8 (just finished gr 3) shouldn't be grade skipped to gr 5 because even that would probably not be enough and then what would we do - "this could put her on track to graduate at 10, then what would you do?" Then we were told that the other problem was that there is no teacher at the gifted magnet program she was in that could keep up with her even if they wanted to! (Gives you a lot of hope in the program doesn't it?)

We have decided to start homeschooling our DD this fall because of the complete lack of flexibility of the schools in our area. We have 1 last hope, that would be partial schooling with radical acceleration to gr 6 rather than full-time school, and we'd home school the rest. (We'll fill you all in on the details when we find out if it will happen or not - I don't want to jinx it ).

Welcome whattodo. I'm sorry that you're having such a hard time. I'm not in Florida, so I can't help there. But your story sounds very familiar. We had our DS in the local kindy when he was 5, and they gave him 2nd grade math, and then we advocated for a skip. After much work, we got the skip into 2nd, and with much more advocacy, we finally got things a little better, thanks to the school staff and GC being flexible. We are in a small district, so they didn't have a lot of experience with HG kids, which I think helped as we were able to suggest things. Is there any chance that the school would allow your DS to work on online math such as Aleks or EPGY while the other kids are doing grade level math? Are there any other schools near you, not necessarily identified as GT schools, that might be more flexible? A lot of GT schools just work a year ahead, and that's that, and they're not too flexible. Smaller schools with less experience with GT kids but with more flexibility might be a better option, if available.

We did end up transferring DS mid-year to a school for HG kids, which does work a year ahead, but faster too. And they group kids by ability as well, and it's been great so far. So if you find a school that will skip your kiddo to 2nd, which it sounds like he needs, then maybe a mid-year transfer to a GT school is also an option, though obviously not an ideal one. Just throwing that out there.

The one thing that has been harder for our DS7 is writing, both handwriting and mechanics. He is way behind the kids at his current school, and it's been kind of tough for him since he notices he's way behind. I highly recommend working on writing over the summer if a skip is a possibility (if writing is an issue for your DS).

Oh, and the best advice is to stay friendly with the GC. We had a few run-ins before our transfer where we got really upset, and that didn't help anything. Try to remember that the staff at the school really does care about your kid and do want him to learn, but the reality is there are 20+ other kids too. I would suggest getting your hands on the Iowa Acceleration Scale and filling it out with the school. That finally convinced our local school that a skip was a great idea for our kid.

Good luck! Thanks for the info and advise. It's sad that there is so little flexibility for our kids to be able to learn.

Thanks. I do my best to try to keep it under control and make sure DH goes to every meeting with me. He is much better at verbal communication than I am.
DS does have handwriting issues. While he enjoys writing crazy stories, they can be hard to read.
I will look at the Iowa Acceleration Scale. We did not have a Principal anymore at the end of the school year. When grade skip was brought up, GC said that could be an option, but thought that 1st grade was an important year and would not recommend skipping 1st. The biggest problem he has is with following rules and directions, making advocacy more difficult. When he gets an idea in his head it is hard to make him stop. One day in gifted pull out, they were learning about FL birds so he decided to turn his chair upside down and take the teachers stapler off of her desk. I got a note sent home because he would not stop when asked, and when I asked him about it, he said the said the chair was a bird's nest and the stapler was food for the baby birds. He is only 6 and likes to pretend things, but those are the type of things he gets in trouble for.
Anyway, I will have to go in this fall and see if and when a meeting can be scheduled.

Bringing the husband along is a good plan. I think some teachers just respond better if there's a united front, and some just respond better to men.

Did the GC say why she thought 1st was an important year? In our area, it's important for learning to read and learning basic math, which your DS already mastered, so hopefully she has a better reason. I can see how behavior issues might cause difficulties, though. I guess I lucked out having a teacher pleaser.

I'd try to get a meeting before school starts if you can.

Both his K teacher and GC said that in first grade they work more on writing and in reading introduce more about plots, characters and interactions. Basically the accelerated class works 1 grade ahead in reading and math (math if the student is ready, similar to F/T gifted. Other subjects are also given more depth than in a regular grade class.
Writing might be difficult because of handwriting more than lack of ideas or sentence structure.
I actually thought K went better than I had expected. Should I not be pessimistic again about 1st? I don't know. He needs more challenge, he as always been in his own view "the star of the class". I don't want him to get used to everything being easy and never having to really strive or compete. Math just makes it more complicated. He knows how to do multiplication, division, know some fractions and decimals, and knows how to add and subtract all kinds of numbers, millions, negatives. But he can't seem to memorize multiplication tables. He'll get the right answer after thinking about it.

What I do know is we have to figure out ways for him to cope with sensory seeking and underresponsive issue and attention issues. Going to get an eval from OT next week.
Has anyone taken their son or daughter to OT? What should I expect out of it?

My son was in OT for about 4 years. It took a few tries to find an OT who understood his issues, could establish rapport with him, and manage not to be manipulated or distracted by him when he was trying to get out of doing the difficult thing he didn't want to do.

From what you say, the OT will probably give you a "sensory diet" for your child, a list of activities to do at school and at home that will help your child develop better awareness and modulation of sensory input, and, given the handwriting issues, may possibly also include exercises to develop proximal stability, and strength and motor control. It might seem like all the OT is doing is playing games with your child, once the initial evaluation is over, but, ideally, all of the activities have very specific purposes.

We saw huge improvements in all of the areas you discuss, but I do have to warn you that, in our experience, frustration thresholds dropped dramatically just before the greatest gains were being made on a pretty consistent basis. Don't assume that because behavior deteriorates that the OT "isn't working".

Hi Whattodo - Welcome!
Homeschooling is great, but you may be able to have a 'good enough' fit with one of these other options. I would contact the new Princp, with the scores and Iowa Acceleration in hand and state what you believe he needs and request the skip at the home school so you can transfer him into the F/T gifted program at the different school.

Also check out that private gifted school and let them check your son out - it may be that they will be very helpful with the financial aid, or not, but worth a try.

It also helps to listen to GCs and other official types with 'half an ear' and then restate what you believe is best, with sort of an,
"I can see how running out of curriculum might be a problems, but we believe that X is best at this time." They may not give you what you want, but at least you tried.

It seems to me that your child's scores indicate unusally high strengths in many areas. You goal is to get the overall challenge 'in the right ballpark' - if they won't give a Math subject acceleration, perhaps 'enough' can be reached by a full skip. It takes a lot of fine tuning!

Welcome,
Grinity

I thought hearing about my DS7 might help your thought process. We were where you are now about a year ago. If you are not going to homeschool, you should work on a grade skip now and then further math acceleration. If I had to do it over again, I would have pushed for my DS to start the 2010-2011 year in 2nd. My DS has an early November birthday so was one of the oldest in his class. He has similar WISC scores as your DS (a little lower and tested when he wsa 7.5).

Even though his scores are lower he still needed a mid year skip and could have used further acceleration in Math (he learned almost nothing in math this year) and his Broad Math was 148 � so your DS will likely need another year acceleration or some sort of compacting in math. My DS has average PSI so he is slow at writing, timed math facts, etc. The writing and speed was not a big problem when he skipped.

My DS is going to go to a HG school in a neighboring district in the fall to which he could not have been accepted without the grade skip. I am optimistic about next year because I think it will be a much better fit for him.

Finally, I also think that some of the other issues - ie being a handful - could be dealt with by more challenge. An idle mind is the devil's playground applies to my DS for sure - so keeping him intellectually engaged has always been a priority for us. I have a hard time dealing with some of the comments and situations we have encountered and my husband comes to everything too - it's great to have that united front. It seems overwhelming and it is a lot of work. Hang in there!

We saw huge improvements in all of the areas you discuss, but I do have to warn you that, in our experience, frustration thresholds dropped dramatically just before the greatest gains were being made on a pretty consistent basis. Don't assume that because behavior deteriorates that the OT "isn't working". [/quote]

Thanks for the heads up on being patient and with OT. I think I expected to notice changes more quickly. I am hopeful that it will help him in the long run.

Thanks I really appreciate the feedback!

Thanks Deonne,
It does seem overwhelming and I feel like I have spent so much time over the last year and a half researching what gifted was, what the scores meant, how does it all relate to our son, etc.
Yes I feel more educated today but still overwhelmed. I guess we have to take it one year at a time to see what will work best.
I hope we can make a clear case for grade skipping, for now I think it is our best option, but if homeschooling is the only way to go then I will have to go that route.
It is reassuring to see that you have been able to come up with good options for your son. Good luck to him at the new school, sounds great!

Hello Grinity,

Thank you for your advise. I will look up the Iowa Acceleration. I hope to have as much knowledge as you some day when it coming to gifted issues.

I'm always late to the party!

My DS8 has scores very similar to yours and he has been accelerated several times. His coming year is as follows.... (2)7th grade
(1)8th grade and (2)9th grade classes. He is supposed to be starting 3rd. This is just to give you an idea of where you may end up.

Be VERY careful not to look too far ahead. You will make yourself crazy. Take it one day at a time and be flexible. The perfect situation today may not work tommorrow. It isn't an easy road but you can do this!!

Thanks for the encouragement Shari! If I may ask, is DS8 in a special gifted school that provides those type of opportunities or where you able to work that out within your public school system?

I set up a tour at the private gifted school next week, so we will see what it is like; my understanding is they do provide quite a bit of flexibility. Then we will have to see if and how we can afford it.

my son would do the same. He's not HG but very talented and all MATH. Once I started partially homeschooling him I saw that following instructions was an issue.

As a result of NEVER having to follow them b/c he'd put it all together, he got frustrated when harder material came that he actually had to sit through the instruction.

For me, as a parent, I sometimes forget the other piece of the puzzle to being gifted: he's still just 8! Meaning that just b/c they're gifted or exceptionally gifted, they still need to learn basics - which for these kids seems difficult b/c they have to slow down. Once learned that this is part of their process - full steam ahead!

Learning the life skills to cope is important but I do think the schools seem to rely on that heavily to not have to make alternative adjustments.... JMO.

Good luck - I've had NONE with the schools - but you have hard core data that should speak loud & clear for you.

My son is also highly social and an amazing leader (much of that feeds into his confidence & high self-esteem) so taking him out for full time HS isn't in his best interest.

During our partial HS, I can help him with coping where he needs it (like not teaching the teacher) and other social issues related to boys, being gifted and the like.