Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Bad Day: The "He's Young..." Conversation

Am I the only one getting this reaction from teachers that aren't used to working with HG or PG kids?

Today's conversation for our gifted class teacher (she is not trained in gifted ed. just teaching this summer class) went like this...

"I just didn't want you to be surprised... We had good days and bad days.... He was distracted in class.... He is very young... It's one thing if you don't pay attention because you don't want to and another if you are just too young to do it...He is very polite.... He loves to help in class.... He keeps wanting to take everything apart--like the stapler.... I think he is just young."

What I saw is that the curriculum was way too simple for him. It needed to include more science vocabulary, more hands on activities, and more complex thinking.

In my head I was thinking, this woman doesn't understand that he is distracted b/c her class was boring. He was interested in the subject and says he enjoyed the class but the differences between this class and the first one he took are astounding as far as complexity of content.

I listened to her and said very little. It was a one time class and today was the last day. I was afraid anything I could say would sound elitest. He is 4.5 but has been a yr ahead in preschool since we began the year he turned 3 so I know this is not a maturity issue for him. I feel so frustrated when teachers want to label him as "young" for their class rather than consider that they might not be stimulating him with any new information.

Am I the only one hearing this? What have you done with teachers like this? Is there any way you can explain in a helpful way that won't get them on the defensive? I need to learn how to do this. We have a long way to go.

This was our entire year last year at preschool. It was a very academic Montessori, and he just didn't fit the mold. His teacher told us at every conference that he had a problem paying attention.


Eg is not mg, and log is vey important. I wish more teachers knew this!

Well, asynchronous development is real. It sounds like this was just a bad experience following a good one, so you would have no way to predict your kiddo's behavior. But for my DS, we didn't put him in classes that were for older kids until he was 6, since he was a frustrated outburst kind of kid. Well, at least at home; as it turned out he's a well-behaved teacher pleaser kind of kid at school.

There was another developmental reason we didn't put him in classes for older kids. For some of the fun science classes where part of it is dismantling things to see how they work, DS would not have had the hand strength for the tools they were using, and it would have been frustrating for him and for the teacher who would have had to do it for him.

But I hear your pain. We have had similar "he is young" conversations at schools where it had nothing to do with his behavior, but rather about what the staff thought he should be learning at that age (not the same as what we had asked for).