Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Uh-oh, and validation

Unlike many of the kids posted about here, Hanni has always seemed to fit in fine at preschool. She seems on the same wavelength with the other kids in terms of pretend play, social-emotional development, and general four-year-old running and shrieking and being crazy. It also helps that she's at a preschool that's full of professor-spawn.

Then yesterday I was chatting with one of her teachers, and she said, a couple of times, with this kind of quiet emphasis, "Hanni is really intelligent." Kind of like, You know this, right? If you don't know this, you need to know it. And she said a few things about how Hanni is more interested in adult things than the other kids. I'm not sure, but it was almost like it was teacher code for "she's not fitting it."

So, complicated feelings here. On the one hand, I'm feeling this rush of validation. I just want to hug this teacher and say "You 'get' my kid! You really 'get' her!" I'm a single mom, so I'm usually lacking reality checks about what I think I'm seeing. (Doting grandparents don't count.) And it's nice to feel like you're not crazy after all. Why do I think my kid is so different? Am I just making it up? Is this just some twisted thing about my own ego? Etc. So, yay for validation.

On the other hand, this is the first sign I've seen that Hanni is really splitting off from her peers, even within a MG-HG group. I guess I've felt fortunate, and maybe somewhat complacent, that she gets her intellectual ya-yas at home with me, and uses preschool to have gooey messy shrieky fun. But maybe not? How long till she starts to realize that she's different? How long till she starts trying to hide who she is? I think this may be the beginning of some of the issues that y'all talk about a lot here.

Anyway, just wanted to share with some folks who might be able to understand my complicated feelings about this.

I can totally identify with your reactions. One suggestion would be to follow up with the teacher for more info. - i.e., get the teacher to articulate any concerns related to her comment about Hanni's intelligence. Hanni may well start to hide who she is, and you should be on the watch for that. Many here can give you advice on that. But I also wanted to add that she may never do that - every kid is different.

My only kids are 12yo twins who are both "really intelligent" (and teachers (at our kids' professor-spawn school) still say that to us too). But my kids are also still the middle school equivalent of the "gooey messy shrieky fun" kind of kids as well. Our kids are now finishing up 6th grade in the neighborhood public school, and have not had grade acceleration. And while they could have benefited from more advanced curricula in some areas (they are in 9th grade math, but that is their only subject acceleration), they are having a blast and are very comfortable with who they are. We feel very fortunate that way. (They both just started online courses in areas of personal interest through NUMATS, so we're doing a bit of enrichment.)

We had a similar experience here, about mid-year. Isaac ADORED his preschool. He was grouped academically with the four year-olds as a young three year-old, and was blowing through all THEIR work, but socially it was just perfect for him. His favorite playmates, as far as I can tell, were two fellow three year-olds... one boy who didn't speak much English but shared his love of zooming cars around for hours on end, and one girl with whom he loved to "play princess," whatever that means. From what I gathered, he played the part of the baby; I'm not sure how that fits into the princess game.

We had kind of clued his teacher in to the fact that he was pretty close to reading, and that he could add and subtract, but didn't push much because he was having so much fun. Then, one day, she stopped me and did the whole your-kid's-really-smart-never-had-one-like-him song and dance. I just kind of nodded and smiled.

We'll see how he stacks up next year in 4K. We're moving from a very low-SES area back to a college town, so things might look different there. However, he really enjoyed his classmates, socially. He loves playing burying cars in the dirt with the five year-old next door. One the one hand, I'm so happy for him when he reads a book about space, but I'm equally happy that he still seems quite happy rolling in the dirt.

I worry about how much information to pass along to his 4K teacher. I worry about him losing his passion for reading and math because he's not challenged enough. I worry about him losing his childish ridiculousness too early because he's (or we are) overly academically focused. It's all a big huge question mark.

OK, I turned your post into a ME-ME-ME! post, but my original INTENTION was to say "right there with ya."

So, yeah... I'm right there with ya.

The other kids have a vote as well. How long until the other kids begin to mature, too, and begin to shun her due to her difference?

For example, she will be talking about the books she is reading and movies she is watching they will not even be reading or be capable of sitting through a movie much less understanding it.

Quick answer? In our case, around first grade. Kindergarten was okay because it was only 2.5 days per week, but once she started first grade, the differences became more stark.

The real "stuff" started happening in third grade: crying every night because she hated school, tummy-aches, headaches, etc. We skipped her to fifth and she did GREAT for a couple of months before it became boring again. But at least now she's not quite so miserable.

From talking with other parents, it seems like ages 8-10 is when this stuff really starts to manifest itself. Then stuff starts to get better around age 11 or middle school, whichever comes first.

And--yay for validation!

Yup, BTDT (including the nursery full of professor-spawn, thank goodness for it!)

Is the person who said this to you someone you can have a chat to another time and say, "you know, I had really mixed feelings about what you said last time, because she's great but I worry about how she'll fit in as she grows up - should I already be concerned?" or some such, and get a useful answer? It may be that your worries are making you read too much into a remark.

Just to give you an optimistic data point, DS-now-8 has never yet seriously hidden and hasn't had any very serious problems with being shunned by other children either. (He had some issues with older children, 2 years above him and older, teasing him, but the school dealt with it firmly and well. He's always fitted in well with his own class, even though he's doing his own work some of the time.) It may be, of course, that this will fall apart later, but so far, I credit the excellent, friendly, caring school. He's also, like Hanni, quite happy to enjoy age-typical running and shrieking games some of the time, which really helps balance the other stuff! Do you have a school plan you're happy with, or is that still open or a worry?

I think that for many kids the idea that profoundly gifted kids behave markedly differently from other children in all social settings is a stereotype. When the activity being done is something like swimming/soccer/playing tag, etc. many gifted kids look just like everybody else.

For our son, however, ages 3 and 4 were the worst. Kindergarten would have been pretty terrible if the school hadn't realized that they needed to make accommodations for him.

We also had him in a daycare full of the children of professors/law students/medical students, and our daycare provider told us when he was 8 months old that he was the smartest kid she'd ever worked with. We wrote her off as having rose-colored glasses about him because she adored him so much, and we didn't think a baby could do much to set himself apart from the other babies. We pulled him at her suggestion and sent him to a preschool (not her suggestion of school) and it was disastrous.

Now, the test results we have show that he is in fact probably the smartest kid she'd ever worked with, but he still behaves like a regular kid most of the time.

I don't really feel much need for further conversation with the teacher about it, but I will definitely keep my antennae up.

I don't really have any immediate worries that she's heading towards major shunning or anything. It's more like, you were pretty sure you were raising a baby goat on a lamb farm, but when you see those horn buds popping through you think "oh boy, here we go."


There's a small private school that I like a lot, and I'm still considering the option of homeschooling. Hanni has another year at this preschool, which I'm very glad of.

My DD loved preK, despite the fact that her teacher openly declared that she had nothing to teach her. It was just a few hours a day, it was a social experience (DD is extroverted), and she got to do stuff like read stories aloud to her classmates, so her abilities were celebrated. At the end of the year the teacher was all set to start the process to skip DD to first grade, but we were moving to another state.

Kindergarten came, the new district would not entertain a grade skip, there weren't any other reasonable accommodations made available to her, and DD crash landed. Her year was such a disaster in every domain (but primarily intellectual and emotional) that we were forced to homeschool.

Ah, yes, you talked about the school before, didn't you? Sorry, I had forgotten.