Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy DS6 kinder version of existentional crisis?

i have posted various threads here.
basically, to sum it all up- my just turned DS6 is in public kinder. testing into kinder SAS program (school of advanced studies), they do not do proper gifted testing until 2nd grade. nor accept outside testing. Contrary to what I was told, there really is NO SAS program in place, the clustering & differentiation is NOT happening. Nor is it likely that it will begin…and mtgs w/ principal have proved to be futile.

PLAN: switch to 1st grade at new semester, jan 2013.
*he has a healthy social life, lots of playdates and does enjoy friends at school. I was hoping this would be enough to sustain him at school until switch. (note: he does learn some new things @ school, and he is happy about this, but then teacher continues to teach same concept for wks, he is typically ready to move on right away. He tends to dislike repetition, wants more…he is now pretty much zoning out at school, he has “think dreams” and tries to teach himself new things. (what he told me)

CURRENT "PROBLEM":
my DS6 is for most part BEGGING me to teach him at home.
NOW. (he knows he has to wait until Jan for 1st grade switch)
the social aspect of kinder is no longer enough for him, to sustain him all day.
he is late most days because he drags in morning,
somedays he flat out refuses to go...then he is really late.
He doesn’t try to say he is sick etc, he is honest about it.

Lately he has been asking questions like:::
"what is the purpose of even being alive if i can't learn new things?"
"i don't understand why kids have to go sit in class and just sit there. i just want to learn something new. How can I invent things if I can’t learn what I need to know. this is why humans are killing the planet earth, because most kids just sit there & don't care if they learn, they just sit there and then grow up and they are adults who don't do anything." *that one startled me!
i was dumbfounded he said this, i just sat with mouth hanging open. literally.

"i want to learn, i want to stay home and paint and invent new things"
"why do i have to wasted my whole day at school, just to be able to play with friends 2times at recess? can't you just teach me new stuff at home and i can just have playdates?"

"what is the point of being on this earth?"
(he asks a lot of “earth” Qs = like he has never understood why “humans” have destroyed Earth. He says Earth is dying and can’t be fixed. I laugh inside when he blames “humans” and yes, he knows he is one- a human- but he doesn’t want to be lumped in with the ones who’ve done “horrible” things.

===just wondering how common is it for a 6yo to ask these Qs and think about this stuff?
and am i incurring 'mental harm' to his psyche by having him continue in kinder class until jan? he is not allowed to make switch until jan...
finally, should i just homeschool him???
*sigh*

What I'd do: afterschool him with an emphasis on writing, ask to send more advanced enrichment from home until the skip (at least reading material), and get ready to possibly advocate for another skip (6 is not overly young for first grade, actually on the old side for K in most locations, and he may well still be bored with the level of material after only a single skip).

CC6,

Although he is only 6, he is mature enough. So tell him that school is where you learn social skills and not just academic skills. When he grows up, he would be working with others and the kids learn to be team player or team leader and those lessons will help him become a CEO (of fortune 500 company) one day.

Just one of those answers I gave my DDs.

He definitely needs to move to 1st grade but preety soon, it will come back to this stage again. We did some supplementing at home until they are 4th grade.

My DD would read her books after she is done with her classwork or the teacher is busy with one on one teaching on some kids who did not understand the concept. (1st-3rd grade) She was never shy about her abilities and she would bring in her 4th grade Singapore Math book during 2nd grade class and do it when she was bored.

Will the teacher allow him to work on other worksheets/books in class after he finishes her assignments? A lot of folks seem to have had luck with that, especially when it's the parent providing all the extra worksheets/books. When I suggested that to my DS's K teacher she took the initiative to go to the 1st grade teacher and get him worksheets from there (still wasn't really enough, in retrospect, but it was better than the K work.)

ETA: I've also never had a problem yet with a teacher allowing DS to read his own books after finishing the classwork. His teacher this year actually allows him to get up and go sit in the 'reading nook' (little semi-separated area with bean bags) and read. He loooooves this. I think the closed in aspect of it really comforts him, plus he gets to read his books!

Does it have to be all or nothing? Why not let him stay home on days he finds it unbearable? My ds went through the same thing and I didn't understand it at the time. But once we had testing, I realized how inappropriate the classroom setting was for him.

I started letting him stay home occasionally and he's felt much better about going. (I call him in "sick.") He only uses his stay-home option once or twice a month. He recharges by learning something at home and then he can face school again. My son actually likes school even though he finds it boring and slow. He likes the other kids and PE, art and music.

Lately he has been asking questions like:::
"what is the purpose of even being alive if i can't learn new things?"
"i don't understand why kids have to go sit in class and just sit there. i just want to learn something new. How can I invent things if I can’t learn what I need to know. this is why humans are killing the planet earth, because most kids just sit there & don't care if they learn, they just sit there and then grow up and they are adults who don't do anything." *that one startled me!
i was dumbfounded he said this, i just sat with mouth hanging open. literally.
[/quote]

The sounds oddly familiar- a very similar statement came from my DS6. He is in 1st and wants school to be more challenging. He was dramatic..."I think that I would be better off dead. School is never going to be hard and I don't know why the teacher keeps calling me a gifted learner because it's NOT a gift. It means that I'm going to bored for the rest of my life in school so I would rather die."

He didn't like Kinder either but it was only 1/2 day so it was tolerable because it was social and then he got come home, take a nap (he was 5 and has always needed alot of sleep I think because of his allergies) and then explore the world through music, art, playing, building, chess, ect.

It must be hard to be capable of learning so much and feel stuck repeating reading and math concepts that seem second nature. He says 1st grade feels like preschool to him, not in a mean way... just that it is frustrating to sit and "practice" things he knows when all he really wants is the chance to feel challenged.

We finally made headway by bugging the public schools and paying for our own private testing. Once we had scores to back up what we were telling the administration, it seemed to open a few new doors. We kept hearing "Your son is very bright, you should be proud" when the problem was not that we need confirmation... but that we were trying to advocate for a little guy that was melting on the inside from his learning environment, or lack there of.

Private testing might be expensive, but it might help advocated for a change.

i don't think the teacher will make any changes or accomodations for him, and unfortunately DS6 is sorta helping her out on that(!)
she gave him (and entire class) a math assessment.
very SIMPLE stuff that i know he knows.
he scored just 21/24, while MOST of the class rec'd 24/24!!
now this seems no biggy, but keep in mind it was simple stuff he's been doing since age 3. and stuff some of his fellow kinders just learned IE count how many objects, write the correct answer. IE which is fewer than 5? 4 or 7?
soooo simple.
and he does this all time in his "homework" each week.
but it is fuel for teacher to say, i give him tests and he gets them wrong, he doesn't need advancement.
yet DS6 is adding, subtracting, multiplying etc all on his own b/c she hasn't taught it yet...

i was frustrated and asked DS6 about the "test" and he said the teacher has never given him a test. of any kind.
so my concern is he may have not been aware it was a test, and b/c he is so bored, and for most part shutting down during school- he may have just gone thru motions. (no making excuses for him but it's all i can figure out since he can actually do this stuff.)

and finally, it could be he isn't a great test taker, maybe test anxiety except again, he never knew he took a test.

syoblrig-
hi, good info!
yes, he is having very frequent "sick" days...
we worked it out so it is not a complete untruth- he is sick of going to school and not learning anything, haha
but ummmm
he just says "yes" when teacher asks him if he was sick!
******

yes, it helps him alot as well.
he does regroup, energize etc!
but i am noticing it is also making him want to stay home more, b/c he does get so much more done as far as doing schoolwork, but also on his own creative projects etc

24 questions on a K test? Whoa...that seems like a lot. I notice my ds makes all sorts of careless mistakes on his worksheets at school. Mostly I notice that he gives up on trying with his handwriting when it's a crazy-easy worksheet (like makes 17 circles, 17 tallies, write the number 17).

My ds6, also in Kindy, is underperforming as well. I noticed that she has already bumped him up a reading level since first evaluated (still way too easy), but at least that's progress. My ds did say that the teacher is now doing individual reading time just with him because he's so far ahead of the others. So, that's a little more progress. I think doing the AR tests is what is A) giving my ds confidence in his test taking and B)showing the teacher that I'm not full of it when I say he is reading beyond a Kindy level.

Would you be able to start giving him tougher math sheets at home and sending them in as homework? My ds' teacher sent us a first-grade level phonics/reading packet to do as homework (in place of or in addition to). It's still quite simple, but I can pick and choose what he does, so we're working toward the back of the packet on sentence writing. I was thilled when one of the homework sheets came back GRADED (instead of smiley face stickers)! I let him do these sheets all on his own, so he didn't add a period at the end or put a proper space in between words. Yay...he'll learn much more from her corrections than mine. DS needs challenge and needs to have incentive to push ahead.

Ug... I'd keep pushing. This teacher would have HATED my son. He got to the point where he flat out refused to do worksheets. One bad day he took the stack of worksheets on his desk and threw them on the floor! lol