Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy How to deal with unresponsive teacher?

DS6 is in a 1st grade gifted class. They're doing plain old 1st grade level work. DS reads 4th-5th grade books and does 3rd grade math; they're learning "the cat sat on the mat" and "3+1." My son is SO unhappy and bored.

A few weeks ago, I asked the teacher for a conference; she asked me to wait till after open house. After open house (2 weeks ago), we were able to secure a parent-teacher conference date for October 4. I have asked a few times since then if she might find a sooner time to meet, and she hasn't.

Finally, DH and I wrote a letter to the teacher, detailing my son's educational strengths and learning style, and asking for a few specific accelerations: math on the computer at his own pace, a reading group at his reading level with other high readers in the class, more complex science assignments for him. I gave her the letter on Monday, and have heard nothing back from her.

I can't speak to the teacher's teaching style per se, but she otherwise seems organized, and this is the first year that I haven't gotten complaints about DS's behavior. So I'm eager to keep her on our side if I can.

Nonetheless, I'm getting no communication from this teacher, and DS complains bitterly every afternoon. At what point do I stop worrying about alienating the teacher, and just go to school administration?

I went through same thing last year.We ended up homeschooling him one day a week and I finally talked to principal in January and now I think I waited way too long.Nothing got accomplished some kind of IEP that what useless and my son loss interest in learning and started to have self esteem issues.

This year we are homeschooling and he is so much happier.We got him tested indepently and he got inconclusive WISC but he's 6yo doing 4th grade math ,reading at 8.5 grade level.I still believe he is gifted.

So for your situation don't wait too long because if she's like my son's teacher they promise lot of things and they don't do them.

good luck

Since you do have a meeting set for October 4, and you're eager to keep her on your side, I'd think it would be helpful to wait to see what comes of your conference before going to the administration. Also, do you know that the administration will support your requests? Our administration can be wishy washy and leaves a lot up to individual teachers, so it can be a crapshoot going to them at our school.

I've gotten more response than you from our 1st grade teacher, but no more action than you have - so I'm not convinced that quick responses mean much. Our teacher typically responds to emails about a week after I send them (as did our K teacher last year, who was a fantastic teacher). If you sent your email yesterday, your teacher may need more time to process your email, think about a course of action and get back to you.

I've also let our teacher know I'm happy to talk to the administration if she prefers - phrased in a cooperative manner with her, but nonetheless making the point that I'm serious about our requests (my DS is supposed to be accelerated in math, dependent on schedules, and schedules are not working out, leaving us with the need for creative solutions that have not yet been forthcoming). That might be a tack worth taking if you hear resistance from your teacher at your Oct. 4 meeting.

Whether my strategies so far will work out, I don't know - we're still sitting bored in 1st grade math 5 weeks into school - so take my experience for what it's worth, as someone in a similar situation with no success story to share as of yet.

This is a gifted class? I would think the other parents would be as dissatisfied as you are! Do you know any of them or have opportunities to discuss the curriculum with them?

I am not suggesting that you "gang up" on the teacher, but if the whole class is supposed to be doing more advanced work, then she is really not doing her job here!

Yes, this is a gifted class. I have asked the other parents . . . including the mother of my son's best friend, who is the highest reader in the class. They've all said something along the lines of, "Oh, well, he's pretty easygoing, so he doesn't mind the easy work."

Meanwhile, DS is setting up challenges for himself -- refuses to use his book to take open-book tests; will only go to the fiction section of the library because "it's the only place I can learn anything new in this school."

I think the administration will help us. The school is well-regarded for its gifted program, and they take pride in that. DS's kindergarten teacher described him to the principal last year as "probably profoundly gifted," so she might be aware that he may need more acceleration than the typical gifted student at the school.

That's what I hope for anyway. After all, it make no sense to take a kid who raeds fifth grade books and make him do "the cat sat on the mat" all morning. And I'm still optimistic enough to think that the world should make sense.

But to the poster who recommended waiting till Oct 4, you're probably right, especially since he only has 3 days of school next week because of the Jewish holiday.

Thanks for the advice.

Good luck Coll, excellent suggestion!
I'm glad that Oct 4 is rolling around finally - and maybe the meeting will go well, but there is such a thing as 'LOG' or 'levels of giftedness'

It may well be that no teacher in the world would be able to met your son's needs in a first grade room, because (it's possible) that even amoung a gifted class, his educational needs are profoundly beyond the other kids in his class. That doesn't mean that the other kids aren't 'really gifted' - just that there is as much vaiation in the range of gifted as there is in the range of Developmentally Disabled.

I would send an email to the kindy teacher and ask if she wouldn't mind 'just happening to bump into' the first grade teacher and asking after your son. She likely can do it in an inoffensive way. If she can do it before the October meeting then you are likely to get more done, since you won't be in the position of convinsing the teacher that your child 'really, really' has unusual needs.

BTW - it's great that your child is behaving. It may be that the misbehavior is directly related to the lack of academic fit in the classroom. Maybe not. There is a lot not to know when a child is an outlier, and it sounds like your child is - even in this classroom devoted to gifted kids. I just wanted to let you know that this is quite possible. I also wanted to steer you away from thinking what I would have though when I was in your shoes. It isn't that the other families are 'bad' because they are content for their children to become lazy and unchallenged at school. It isn't that you are odd for wanting what no one else seems to care about. It's that your child might be different in LOG and in personality to the point where the gulf between what is being taught and what he NEEDS to do is much much larger than for the other children.

My hunch is that you'll need to be asking the First Grade Teacher's blessing to take this up with the administration, because (maybe) your child has very different needs than the other children -even though they are all gifted by someone's definition - in the room. So if there is a gifted 2nd or 3rd grade classroom, that may be were your child needs to spend some or all of his day.

The best way to know is to sit and observe the classrooms. Maybe you can get permission to do that while you wait for October 4.

Also - make some notes about how your son's distress expresses itself. Painting the social-emotional dimensions of the problem explains why you are so worried and upset in language that school folks who haven't lived with a child like yours need to hear.

Good luck, Let us know, Happy New Year!
Grinity

Thanks, Grinity.

DS is definitely an unusual kid, and just requires a whole lot of intensity. Having read all the data on the advantages of whole-grade acceleration, I'm still not sold -- he's very small for his age, and immature. He'd have to skip two grades, I think, to improve his life, and that's a hard thing to swallow, socially speaking, as he does have at least one very close friend in the class.

I suspect there's an ADHD component here too. BTW, he's not exactly behaving -- I think this is just the first teacher not to complain. DS tells me he's out of his chair every few minutes at school, as he is at home; I think the teacher just knows how to manage it -- a rare find, in my experience!

I think you all are right -- wait for October 4th meeting with the teacher, then set up an appointment with administration, with the goal of amending the IEP.

In the meantime, he's added "plasma" to his science report on states of matter (solid, liquid, gas). And I've allowed him to move forward in math at home, since he's bored anyway. He sees the math as a treat. Go fig.

Update . . .

Turns out, the teacher is leaving for England tomorrow for a week to take her daughter to Cambridge (guess she probably knows what it's like living with a smart kid).

So I took her aside at pick-up and asked if she'd read our letter. She said that she had, and she's passed it along to administration to get the ball rolling on whatever we need to do, so I should expect a call from them in a day or two.

She also said that she thought a grade-skip would be the best choice. I need to look and see if there's research about skipping really short kids -- should that make a difference?

Anyway, we have things starting, and something should happen, hopefully!

Congrats on having responsive school personnel!

I don't know if there is any research out there regarding skipping really short kids, but I can offer anecdotal evidence from my perspective.

My parents denied me two grade skips that were offered (I later found out that school personnel begged them to let me skip) because they didn't want me to be the shortest in the class. I was always the shortest in my class anyway. I'm currently in my mid-30s, and I'm 4'9"; they would have had to retain me in grade at least a couple times for me NOT to be the shortest in the class. Although height may be something you want to consider in a grade skip, I think that making that a primary criterion (in absence of other considerations such as school sports) may sometimes not be the best choice. For me, at least, it was not helpful, as I desperately needed and wanted something other than what I was getting with agemates.

If you haven't looked into the Iowa Acceleration Scale, you should. Physical characteristics are included in the evaluation, but so are lots of other things.


It's nice to hear that the teacher was aware and working behind the scenes and that she suggested the skip. Having support from the school goes a long way. The communication thing, though, appears to be a work in progress!

My DD (already young for grade but about 50th percentile height-for-age) cared very much about not being the shortest kid in the class when we were planning her skip. But it was important to me because she cared about it - I was always one of the shorter kids, and never minded it.

Social immaturity would worry me more, but forgoing a skip doesn't always help with that. The oldest kid in DD's class last year was a very bright kid who had been held back purely for social reasons. Before I knew that, I'd figured him as either young for grade or skipped, because he was still socially immature compared to his (year younger) classmates.

FWIW, my DD's social situation appears to have improved after the skip. She's not the type to have a lot of friends, but the friends she has now are bright kids who are well-liked. (Prior to the skip, her friends tended to be academically struggling kids who didn't have many other friends.)

I've been around here for a few years, and I've seen this sentiment come up fairly frequently.

As a parent (especially a parent of a young child), it seems that respecting the professionals and waiting for them to move is the obvious and best way to go. In my case at least, experience has taught me to act as soon as I'm sure a problem exists (though waiting until the 4th of October seems quite reasonable).


To me, this statement sums up the problem. He's unchallenged and is so unhappy, he's trying to compensate. Have you thought about writing things like this down and giving them to the teacher?


What's the cutoff for admission? Do they have other HG+ kids there? If the cutoff is 120 or 125, the school may be dominated by very bright but not really gifted kids, which means that your child may be very different from the others.

If they use the ERB or some other test, there could also be a lot of bright, prepped, but non-gifted kids.

I suggest asking the teacher how she typically approaches kids who are highly gifted or beyond. Phrase it just like that and don't define the terms for her unless she asks. That way you'll find out about how much she knows about levels of giftedness. If she doesn't know much, give her some information and see how she reacts. Describe your son and the kindergarten teacher's belief that he may be profoundly gifted and see how she reacts. Take notes.

A dismissive or dubious reaction from her may be a negative sign. If she promises to give him different work, that's a good sign (but follow through every day for the next week with your son and make sure that she does). Take notes.

My advice: if you don't see big improvements by the following Monday, get in touch with the principal via email or a letter (don't call; you need to write stuff down). Define the problem using the notes you wrote about how your son is very frustrated and then use your notes from your meeting and afterwards.

It sounds like you're sending him to a private school. If it's designed for gifted kids, they have an obligation to your son. As a customer, you have a certain amount of leverage, and if you use it wisely, you'll increase your chances for success. By "wisely," I mean referring back to their marketing material or website and indicating that one of the reasons you chose the school was because of THIS and you're not really seeing it happen with your son.

It's a public school in an established upper-middle-class neighborhood of professionals. The cutoff for the gifted program is 130 on any subsection of any number of tests; it's well known that there are psychologists who will test a kid in who might not belong there; 45% of the student body is staffed as "gifted." DS is regarded by the other moms as the brightest kid in the class.

That said, there are a few other kids in the class who are also clearly very smart. Certainly there are enough kids in the class to hold a 3rd grade level reading group.

It's my perception that the teacher seems reluctant to give differentiated work. She made it clear to me that she'd prefer to skip him. DS has actually ASKED to be skipped, but DH is adamantly against the idea. The teacher has been teaching gifted for a long time, and she wasn't surprised we asked for differentiation; she said, "oh yeah, every couple of years you get a kid who needs to be moved up." I did make a point of telling her about the refusal to take the test open book; I thought she might find the sentiment that he never learns anything new in her class a bit insulting.

At any rate, she's in England until the first week of October. I'm hoping to make an appointment with the Asst Principal (chain of command and all) and get some of this hashed out.

As far as homeschooling goes, I consider that a last resort. I'm not the most patient teacher, and DS isn't the most patience-inspiring kid.

One other thing -- DS scored 142 on the WPPSI when he was five -- but he spent most of the processing section staring out the window. Is is usually helpful to re-test to get a more accurate IQ score? Guess I could wait and see how things go with administration too.

Thanks to all of you for the support and advice!

I think 142 is plenty high enough to argue for acceleration, honestly.

Testing at slightly older ages is more reliable, because you are less likely to have a child sit and stare out the window, but I wouldn't wait to have new scores to move forward here.

Have you and your DH filled out the Iowa Acceleration Scale? It can be very helpful when trying to evaluate whether a grade skip is a good option. It is an objective and independently validated way to assess what kind of acceleration is appropriate, and that evidence sitting there in black and white can be a useful thing to have when dealing with a school administration - or a family member who may not "get it".

I don't see DH agreeing to a skip no matter what the Iowa scale says. He believes in science and understands the research, but he can't get over the idea of how small my (1st percentile for height) kid would be in a class 2 years older.

I think we have to see what the school can do for us, and perhaps revisit the grade skipping conversation at a later time.

Personally, I'd gladly skip him, and he wants to be skipped. So we've got that going for us.

Have you and your DH actually gone in to observe the classes in the grade level into which your DS would skip? I'm not sure about your school, but in our district there is a huge range in student size in any grade, from kids who are young and big for grade to those who are old and small for grade. I get that you wouldn't want to put your DS into a situation where he would be at more risk for awkwardness than already necessary (i.e., give him yet another reason to stand out from the crowd). But you may find that even your very small boy might not be the smallest by much. Not saying it's not a valid concern, just that you might want to go observe before you make a decision.

Just another thought. Being very tall growing up and having very tall kids, I have seen that very big kids often get teased just as much (or little) as very small kids. And being small or large doesn't necessarily have the end-all be-all affect on athletics that is sometimes supposed. I think of utmost importance is how these situations are dealt with when they occur. It's never any fun being different, but yet everyone is in someway. So, IMHO, size should be one of the considerations when considering a skip (and it is in the Iowa Acceleration Scale), but there are a lot of other considerations that size needs to be weighed against.

Does your DH have a past experience that is informing his thoughts about the grade skip? Do you?

At least you have a school that has given you the option of a skip and admits your DS needs something different. Hurrah!

Anecdote alert: a small-for-age boy in my son's second grade class skipped first grade, and he had a late fall birthday. He was a lot smaller than everyone else in the class, but they all accepted him. Young kids can be very accepting if the grownups all said that this is the way we're doing this.

Suggestion: How would your husband feel about letting your son try the next grade for a week? That way no one is biting off a whole skip at once.

If DS comes home happier, your husband's concerns might ease. Alternatively, if DS hates life in the higher grade, he'll be less unhappy in first grade.

To be fair to the teacher, she's offering a skip. So it sounds like she gets it.

You could also remind your husband, in a very diplomatic way, that he seems to basing his no-skip stance on an arbitrary reason that bothers him and may not bother your son. He may also be ignoring the fact that his son is very unhappy. But don't say it that way! Find a less direct way. Here's one: sometimes kids who are forced to do or not do things for arbitrary reasons feel very resentful, and often for a long time.

HTH

Just a bit on size and a grade skip from personal experience.

My DS6 is tiny. He is a July kid, so he would have already been one of the youngest in first grade. He is about 42" tall and 39 pounds. His size was a huge factor in the grade skip. It was, in fact, the main thing that was causing me to be hesitant. They are now 5 weeks into second grade. He fits in perfectly. During the first week, some of the kids said he was small. Some kids still ask why he is small. He just tells them that he is younger than them and they move on. No big deal

My eldest has skipped two grades. He's taller than average, but not a lot (at the high end of one standard deviation above the mean). He's not the shortest kid in his class, in spite of the fact that some kids are 2.5 years older than him.

Remember I mentioned 'LOG or personality' as being reasons why some kids don't tolerate not getting their 'Daily health requirement' for learning?

Ok, so personality is sort of a polite coverall for things like 'Stubborn' and 'ADHD component' - so you are in a pickle! He's immature/ADHD/intense enough that he needs to learn to help him stay focused at school and increase his good behavior, but his '2Eishness' itself makes a skip (or 2 if needed) very scary. We were in your shoes, but it was easy because DS behaved in ways to get the teachers to complain enough that we 'had to do something.' Problem was that by the time we figured out DS's code, the public school wouldn't skip him because they saw him as 'so immature.' So we had to go to a private school, try and see that didn't do it, then a skip, etc. A lot of time was wasted.

Meanwhile I sat on the fence about the ADD - how much was boredom? How much immaturity? How much ADD? I felt that until we got the challenge level to be 'somewhere in the ballpark' that I 'just couldn't' do the trial of medication thing. Sadly, there is no blood test for ADD - science is at the primitive stage of 'try some medication, see if it helps, then pick a diagnosis.' This drove my fears and perfectionism into a log jam.

So advice time -
1) Hot house your child's behavior at home until you and he have ironclad security in his ability to control himself. This can be done kindly, but is time and energy consuming. Read 'Transforming the Difficult Child Workbook' by Lisa Bravo for explicit instructions. I will help any way I can to answer questions.

2) Take him to a local ADHD diagnoser and see what they say. Children know if they can't do what the other (less bright) kids can do, and it colors their self perception and closes many doors (musical instruments/academic confidence/developing work ethic) Don't diagnose him to make a teacher happy, do it so he can feel comfortable in his own skin and have the full benefit of his mind, instead of a constant feeling of 'something isn't right!!!' on the inside.

3) Demand that DH sit and observe the classroom. This will work if DH has any clue at all about what DS is doing at home. (My DS was hiding his abilities and 'learning needs' from DH at this stage - I worked on that too!) Once DH sees what DS is up against at school, he will change his tune about the skip.

4) Check out what community sports are still available by age group, so that DS still gets to hang out with his age-group peers.

5) Whatever they offer from the school, make sure that he gets to have learning peers. I'm just not impressed with the idea of a lone kid sitting in the back of the room with an upper level book or computer program. Fine for short sprints, but not a long term solution.

6) Remember that every step in the right direction makes such a large positive difference.

7) It's tough to negotiate between 'equal partners' - in some families there is a parent who takes on the majority of the childcare duties and gets more of the 'say.' I had the worst of both worlds. I 'believed' in equal decision making, but was doing all the work. Then I felt that I had to 'explain and persuade' as if doing the actual work (plus a 9-3 job) wasn't enough. But I had a picture in my head of what a 'proper' marriage was like and I was going to try my hardest to make it happen. (When said by an intense giftie, those are scary words, I know know.)

If one parent isn't willing/ or able to observe the school, read the books, go online, attend the meetings, then they get a big say, but not an equal say. They need to 'deputize' the involved parent to have the final say. If they don't see the need of this, then I recommend that the other parent 'self-deputize' because the job of figuring this education question out is too important and too big to turn into a relationship issue.


About the 'short issue.' It's entirely possible that you DH who grew up short blamed all of his normal emotional cuts and bruises on his height, while in fact the bumps were either a) normal and important steps on his path of development, or b) due to an IQ difference or c) due to an IQ difference plus a '2Eishness' such as some degree of ADHD. We are human, and it is a human tendency - particularly as children - to pick some visible difference and blame everything on that. I know boys who are very very small and well beloved because they have amazing social skills.

No doubt your DH was gifted also, and we gifted people have a tendency to view situations through a lens of 'how could that have been better?' instead of the lens of 'what do I have to be grateful for there?' And we often have such vivid imaginations that we 'live' in that pretend 'better' world. (See me and my ideal of 'proper' marriage above.)

Do you resemble these remarks?

Love and More Love,
Grinity

My son would have to be demoted from 6th grade to about 3rd grade to be considered average (I know what it is like to have a kid not even tall enough to be placed ON the chart). But get this his cousin is 2.5 years older and she is even shorter than him. Because we are not getting him shots of growth hormone, we just deal with being short at the beginning of every school year for about a month and then everyone is over it and move on. He doesn't get bullied for being short.

The cousin's dad is my brother and he was a profoundly gifted child who probably should have been grade skipped (but that would have meant he would have been in my grade or even placed a grade above me so it didn't happen) but he was short his entire life and still is. The school wanted him to wait another year to start because he was such a little first grader (K back then was done privately in a separate school)...my mom held her ground and said he will always be short, we could hold him back 3 years and he would be still be short.

I guess we have a long standing family tradition in short.

@mnmom: You hit the nail on the head. My husband has a chronic illness which impacted his height, so he was always the shortest. He was in his "age-appropriate" grade, in a 2x/wk pull-out gifted magnet, and there was a lot of "go at your own pace" material in the classroom. Intellectually, my very brilliant husband was just fine in elementary school, but when kids started being interested in boy-girl stuff that he wasn't ready for, it was difficult for him. Being short was tough too.

My experience is different. I started kindergarten at 4 1/2, but was still bored to the point that by 2nd grade I was reading books under my desk, not participating, etc. I didn't really study much after that until medical school. Socially, I didn't do well either. I always blamed it on the acceleration, but in retrospect, perhaps I should have been accelerated another year.

So we each have our own perspective on this. DH is very involved with DS, and certainly deserves an equal say. When I had DD5, we divided the work so that I had the baby and he had the toddler, and it's stayed that way to a large extent. DS and DH are very close.

So as far as grade skipping goes, perhaps the IAS would convince him, but I doubt it. He's not concerned about 3rd or 4th grade; he's concerned about what happens when the other 5th-6th graders get into boy-girl stuff, and the boys get all alpha-male, and DS would be about nine and out of the loop, not invited to boy-girl parties, etc. DH has said he'd rather homeschool than skip, but I can say affirmatively that DS would be dead in ten minutes if I'm the one homeschooling.

As far as the ADHD stuff -- Ginity, thanks for the phrase '2Eishness' -- love it! I'm a pediatrician, and very comfortable with the medications, which I write for every day. I am NOT my kids' pediatrician, and their pediatrician isn't convinced about DS's need for that -- plus, a major side effect of the stimulants is decreased appetite and growth slowdown, which would be of particular concern to us. I'd personally like to have a little ritalin around even to use "as needed" for tests, etc. Might get the Vanderbilt scales filled out and give that a try. Even just for standardized tests. Will get the workbook; have used 123 magic with a lot of success too; I'd recommend it highly.

To the sports issue, he's in gymnastics, which is ability-grouped (yay!). The gym coach understands my kid better than anyone, it goes well. Wish he could be his teacher.

Does anyone have experience with pull-out to a higher grade for one subject, like reading? The school doesn't have specialist teachers for science or anything like that.

Tht's great - So get DH into that classroom to observe.
I don't hear DH volunteering to homeschool, so he has to see first hand what your son has to deal with every day.
And when DS complains to you about school being frustrating, direct him to DH for lessons in the manly art of handling frustration in a calm controlled way. Continue to work behind the scenes, but if you aren't going to give him that skip, I would disengage from emotionally reinforcing the idea that your son has a right or need for educational experiencing at his level. There are a lot of kids - (like you) for whom it just isn't possible for one reason or another to start to learn to love the challenge of learning during elementary school. It's far from the worst thing that could happen to a child. If your child is willing to internalize a bit, he may respond well to the 'just suck it up' approach. Not my kid though. Some will and some won't.

Remind your DH that when the boys start changing you can always switch schools and reverse the skips, or do a few years of homeschooling. Try to use any shread of resource to use what might work right now, right now, and just accept that you have to take more of a 'Chinese Menu: One from column A and 2 from column B' approach to education than a 'walk down the road' approach.

Also go up a level medically from your kid's peditrician (or get your pediatrician to visit the school and observe DS there - it's really tricky to untangle PG (profoundly gifted) from ADHD, especially in a novel setting with 1-1 attention from an adult. Get the WISC IV done so that you can apply to Davidson YSP in the process, and your DH will be able to socialize with other families who have walked this road. It's weird to suddenly be 'normal' in this particular regard.

You might like to read Misdiagnosis and dual diagnosis of gifted children
www.sengifted.org/mis_diag.htm by JT Webb

Or if you want something more bricklike, try - Different Minds: Gifted Children With Ad/Hd, Asperger by Deirdre V. Lovecky

Best Wishes,
Grinity

I'm curious what you think of this bunch of data here:
IRPA - A Nation Deceived
www.nationdeceived.org/ - CachedSimilar
You +1'd this publicly. Undo
The Institute for Research and Policy on Acceleration (IRPA) is dedicated to the study of curricular acceleration for academically talented students

Remember that even if he has to skip 2 grades eventually, that doesn't mean that it has to happen all at once. He can skip one now, and then add some subject accelerations later in the year when he hits the wall again, and then go to the 2nd full skip the year after - etc. Over a period of years it's less of an emotional jolt. But it's suprising how little it takes to get your son excited and happy again. For at least a while.

Smiles,
Grinity

I whole heartedly agree with this. DS6 is doing work well above the grade he was accelerated to. But, just moving him up one grade has helped so much! The kids are closer to his level both socially and academically. I am pretty sure we will keep him on this track now, and possibly skip again from 5th to 7th.

I did read it, and it absolutely convinced me! I'll work on DH a bit more; it's a good point that we could always switch schools or homeschool rather than start middle school at age 9.

Great news...among parents of kids with scores high enough to by in the Young Scholars Program, if we can get a school situation to work well academically for even a full year we count that as a great victory. So go make some hey while the sun shines!

Smiles,
Grinity

My DYDS 7 (just turned) skipped 1st this year and is now in 2nd. He is small and immature and ADHD. We were all worried including DS about the skip. The first week he kept saying that he felt weird and that he was not ready to talk to anyone in his new class. He also felt weird because somehow some of the kids knew he skipped and kept asking him why he was is second grade. But he has adjusted very well, made new friends, and his behavior has even improved a lot. So now after all the worry he is happy that he got to skip. He had a bad experience over the summer being the youngest at science camp, and we were all wondering whether it was a good decision, but I have seen him grow so much in the last 5 weeks. It is still a bit slow and too much work but he is participating in class again and trying very hard to keep up his good behavior.
We are still trying to figure out how to deal with the ADHD and improve social skills.
It is scariest right before the skip as you second guess everything, but for now it was the right choice.
The one thing that will make it easier for him is that your son knows that he wants to skip.

Thank you thank you thank you! That's just the kind of thing I needed to hear about.

I brought up the idea of a single-year skip with DH, and he may be amenable to that.

DS's major complaint is the slow pace of subjects like math/science -- there's a great deal of review of the same topic over and over again, especially in math. Does that sentiment improve at all after the skip because the work is harder?

Guess it matters whether the skip was enough of a skip.

Every kid is individual, and so is every school and every bunch of kids in each grade....so it's too soon to know what the final answer will be, and if the tradeoff are worth it until you monitor each step of the way. Some kids are happy with a single skip and some subject accelerations in particular subjects or outside mentoring in a single subject. This idea is to get started in the nescessary direction and keep flexible.

Even though Math and Science is what he is complaining about, having classmates who can get his jokes or play games at his level might go a long way towards soothing his will to complain. Or not. But the older his classmates are, the more likelyhood that the teacher or a specialist can create a flexible group to do special projects from time to time. Rule of thumb is that differentiation works when the child's level is within 3 grade levels of the classroom average.

My son just liked being treated the way it's natural for teachers to treat older kids.

smiles,
Grinity

We have a meeting scheduled with the principal for this Tuesday afternoon!!!!

Good Luck.
Think about all the things you would like to be seen done for your DS in terms of differentiation and discuss with principal how his need can be met even with a 1 grade skip.
As an example for DS, he is in an accelerated/gifted 2nd grade class. The class works out of 3rd grade reading and language arts books. DS can pick books out of the school library at his own reading level. For math, they were not able to coordinate schedules for him to go to 3rd grade for math, so he is working out of the 3rd grade book in his class. His teacher has agreed to pretest him each unit and move on if he has mastery of it. There are about 9 gifted kids in the class and they get pulled out for science enrichment 2x a week. This has helped in the science area being able to explore at a much higher level. Math is still not prefect and we will see how it goes this year. He learns math at such a fast pace that one grade of math a year will not satisfy him, but we found a class locally (well 40 min away) that has approaches math through logics and he is really enjoying it. He gets to use negative numbers and multiplication. The teachers at the math enrichment have had other DYS and during the initial assesment for placement saw him abilities immediately. So for now he is enjoying learning again.
The other thing is that there are still a lot of basics that he is learning especially with grammer and writing, even though he could be going ahead he is learning that he needs to pay attention in class more so that he picks up on some of the basics. He realized on Friday that he missed a question on his reading/language arts test because he was not paying attention when his teacher was going over what a fragment is compared to a sentence. That in itself was a learning experience for him, it is the first time he realized that he missed something he needed to know because he was not paying attention.

For now it is good enough and we will see as he goes forward when changes will need to be made again. The school was also honest enough to let us know that they may not be able to meet his needs through 5 grade. Another skip or homeschooling may be needed in a few years. We will see.

For now it is important that you think about what you can ask of the school to meet his needs. Further assesment of his math level may be needed and how can his school accomodate it.

The one good thing is that your school seems to have acknowledged that he has special needs and it will be a matter of working with them to see that those needs are met.

Upadte: Meeticng rescheduled to next Monday becuase principal has to go to a funeral.

Thanks, Whattodo, for the advice. I have a list of goals for our meeting:

Math: placement test; work at his own pace in math on the computer in the classroom (EPGY/Destination Math/something similar).

Science: More in-depth instruction, which may be in the form of reading 4th grade level chapter books from the school library on the same topics the school is covering in class, followed by some sort of project in lieu of homework sheets. Another option might be pull-out -- I didn't know until this weekend that the older grades have a separate science teacher.

Reading: Reading group at his reading level, by the teacher, reading specialist, or pull-out to another grade. He already gets books from the library at his reading level.

Psych: ADHD assessment, achievement testing.

More and more, I'm not convinced that a skip is the best plan for him. He's immature, has attention problems, and can barely write a sentence, despite his rich vocabulary and general well-spokenness. Also, if he's doing 3rd grade math, 4th grade reading, and 6th grade science, I'm not sure 2nd grade will make him happier anyway.

Any suggestions for math testing?