Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Too early to be concerned about this?Opinions pls.

I am in need to talk to someone that won't be judgemental and think I am crazy, about this issue I have with DS3 (almost 4). So glad I can come here! This is the story.

DS3 was allowed into PreK early after I pushed for a PreK "readiness test". So I was happy and relieved about that. BUT, here we are, 2 months into it and I am hearing complaints from him. He says things like "They won't LET me try hard". "I am only learning THIS much when I want to learn THIS much" (Showing me the amount with his fingers). I can understand his frustration when I hear them working on letters, numbers and colors....DS is reading chapter books, doing double digit subtraction/addition beginning multiplication and writing LONG, full sentence stories on the computer...

My question to you experienced parents to gifted children is, DO I WORRY ABOUT HIS SCHOOL SITUATION AT THIS POINT?
Thoughts go through my mind like,

* Should I get a tutor for him a couple of times a week to satisfy his hunger to learn?

*What can I demand from the school?

*Should I just leave it alone and let him sit around and listen to things he learned at 20 months of age?

*Will it take away his passion to learn to not feel like he IS learning?

They have been working a lot on handwriting which was not a strength of his 2 months ago. Well, since he started school ALL HE DOES IS WRITE! Seriously, hours every day. He has moved on to lowercase writing and is getting excellent at it. I am assuming up until now he felt he WAS at least learning handwriting in school. But now that he has reached a level he feels is acceptable for now he needs more and more and more...

I keep thinking that they always say that the social part is what is really important at this age...well, to be honest, DS doesn't relate well to kids his own age. He prefers much older friends and adults.

Please, any comments are appreciated! Am I stressing about this for no reason? I just keep thinking, if the issues with not learning enough is starting already what a struggle we will have down the line...

EDITED to add: I am thinking about enrolling him in KUMON classes. Probably just math for now. Any thoughts about this program?

Thanks a million! Annie

Some thoughts:

1. I think Kumon is not the ticket. It seems to be based on repetition to achieve mastery, which some gifted children at least seem to find boring. Montessori or some other preschool might be a much better option.

2. You could after(pre)school him. There's no need to pay for a tutor, unless your time is so valuable that you can't spare any. It could be a time to share with your child and have fun. This would be far superior to Kumon, in my opinion.

3. The handwriting practice is valuable. Lack of handwriting skills seems to often be an obstacle to early grade acceleration.

4. That said, a poor fit is a poor fit. You should consider that for highly advanced young ones, you might not be able to find a good preschool fit. It happened to us; we took DS-now-6 to a highly touted farm school in the area, where they were supposed to encourage academic development, and he was bored out of his skull.

5. You generally can't demand anything from a preschool.

6. You can also challenge your three-year-old without moving toward rigorous academics. There are plenty of play-based and building activities that could provide challenge. Monopoly can build on simple calculation skills; ThinkFun and other games such as Logic Links can foster logical development; building sets such as Capsela, Erector, Lego, etc. can develop visual-spatial problem solving; studying art history with parallel art projects can encourage art ability and appreciation; etc. Even jumping in mud puddles can be a learning experience at that age; keep your options open and respond to his interests. There's plenty of time for academic focus and acceleration later.

I broadly agree with Iucounu. I think you're right to be stressing, purely because he is not happy there. (If he were happy, I wouldn't think it mattered a jot that he wasn't being stretched academically - that's strictly optional at this age, I think.) Don't know what the right answer is, though. What happened to the 2nd grade maths book? Did he finish it? More broadly, you said earlier that you were happy with his teacher - have you/can you talk to her about how he's feeling and improve matters that way?

Thanks for your input!

Lucounu, I was thinking about Kumon as a supplement to everything else we are doing. DS is very much into mastery of specific tasks and will focus on one subject until he feels he knows it enough for the time being. Only then will he move on. Like with the hand writing. He obsesses about one task and will not stop. I find him in his room early morning writing and then he pretty much writes all day. This has been going on for a few weeks now so I am wondering when this phase will end. Before writing it was the game SHUTES & LADDERS. He used 7 dice instead of the spinner though and was obsessed with calculating the dice. His math skills obviously soared from doing this. So with you knowing this is how he is do you still think it might not be a good fit?

I do work with him as much as I can although with a 21 month old in the house it gets really hard...Also maybe it would switch things up a bit to have a tutor for a few hours a week instead of just working with mama IYKWIM.

Great suggestions for other educational ideas. He does love games and we do math bingo a lot and also Sorry. I will look into some additional ones. Seems though everything he does HAS TO turn into something educational. His favorite toys were always letters and numbers....:-)

Colinsmum, I am not sure he is UNhappy there just longing to learn. He does ADORE his teacher and she tries to do things with him. The thing is though that I don't think she knows how far advanced he really is. The other day she was going crazy over the fact that he wrote down what the picture he had drawn was. Like "My family at the beach"....She obviously doesn't know that he is writing the whole Jungle Book dialogue OFF TOP OF HIS HEAD including periods, exclamation points, quotes etc...and pretty much perfect spelling...Should I bring this up to her? I am not sure what else she could do for him. About the work books. He has worked on them but when I ask he says he didn't have the time. I think what is happening is that he HAS TO participate in all the activities even if he already knows them. Leaves little time for anything else. I don't want to offend anybody by asking for him to do other things making it sound like the teacher is not doing a good job. We do love her! I guess I will have to get over that fear though eventually..right...:-)

I really think that Kumon tends to be too dull to hold the interest of a gifted child for long. There are plenty of other options I'd explore first.

Here's a bit on the Kumon philosophy, which intentionally avoids challenge and stresses the familiar (i.e. repetition) to increase a student's comfort level:

This is the exact opposite of how I want my son to learn. I don't think true self-confidence comes from easing into a subject so that there is no point of difficult challenge; I think it comes from toughening up to face more and more difficult challenges successfully. I don't see how keeping a challenge level low, and managed to the point of complete evenness, could ever result in the ability to persevere in the face of tough obstacles.

I would COMPLETELY agree with you. Neither my husband nor I ever took the easy way out. I have always been one to challenge myself. Life is full of obstacles and it takes a great amount of discipline and focus to persevere. Since DS is only 3 I try not to push him too hard though. I am not thinking for Kumon to be a long term thing. Just something laid back that might fit him at this point in his life when he is just looking for learning opportunities. We already do all kinds of 2nd-3rd grade workbooks and he loves it. Just thinking Kumon might help me organize what he is learning a bit more. As of right now we are all over the place. We have a scheduled appt. on Saturday to go in for an assessment. It is free and I thought it wouldn't do any harm to just check it out. We might hate it...:-).

THANK YOU for all your input!!