Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Is Public School enough for DD?

8yo DD attends a decent public school in our neighborhood. She's very happy there and has never complained of boredom. In fact, she will often state that math is "too hard", or other assignments are "hard". Yesterday her class was asked to read a poem then answer questions. She told me her teacher made her start over because her writing was too tiny and basically illegible. DD said the questions were hard for her, but when she recounted them they were not hard at all...

This is a child who gets only A's and whose GAI is >99.9% on the WISC IV. What is going on with her? Is she really finding the work hard, or is something else at play? Do we leave her in her school where she appears quite happy overall, or should we move her to a gifted program?

She is obviously extremely bright but perhaps not always self-motivated. She has also said at times that very few kids "get" her, though she does have friends. What would you do with a child like this? She appears to be happy but maybe we're missing something?

Really hoping for some feedback. Thank you,
Rachel

Is she a perfectionist?

What I've read here is that is called learned underachievement It comes from too much time spent in forced underachievement. Balance that with the hothousing and hurried child articles and try to figure it out if it's ok or not.

Also, I think the concern about learned underachievement has nothing to do with "they might have cured cancer" and more to do with spending eight hours a day learning to underachive, and restricting goals to social skills like "doing boring work", while other kids are learning to and better themselves by learning, advancing, and developing.
But those are just thoughts and the reality is many brilliant kids grew up in public school anyway, and the results have varied by individual.

I would google "gifted girls underachievement perfectionism" and start reading and reading and thinking about how to meet her needs. What you choose to do depends on many factors, but if her GAI is >99.9% I would say she needs some intentional advocacy in some area to learn how to work and exert effort and also some time around like-minded peers.

She sounds like my son (six today). Maths is too hard - it is stuff he could have done when he was four. School is boring and he hates it. This is new and I suspect it is boring but the main problem seem to be the "do your best every time" policy. He has a lot of trouble completing pages of basic maths neatly. The extension work he was given was more of the same.

Her being very happy at school is worth a lot; I'd be reluctant to move her. But maybe a chat with her teacher about how she's doing in school, and go from there? It is really important to have challenges other than perfection on easy work, but don't assume from another school's type that it'd provide that better. Could be the teacher is differentiating fantastically, could be your DD has an unidentified LD that makes things hard, could be lots of things.

Well, I'm noticing that you used the phrase "appears to be happy" twice in your post. Some kids are kind of quiet and compliant by nature, and aren't going to express their dissatisfaction in any direct way. It is possible that the "hard" comments are a quiet complaint of some kind. Possibly, there are some 2e issues that are in fact making the work hard. Maybe most likely, however, is the possibility that she is dumbing herself down to fit in. If the work is so far beneath her level that it is confusing and/or demoralizing to her to be asked to do it, then she might be choosing to act as if it is hard to be "normal."

We have always homeschooled, but I think my daughter might have looked like this in school. I think she would have "gone underground" very easily rather than have made any loud noise if she were unhappy.

50% of grades given are As, so I would discount grades as a measure of success.

My PG child has very real difficulties with reading comprehension. It doesn't mean everything else isn't streets ahead, but yes, there is grade level work which she can't really do.

Riding a bike at sixty feet per hour is "too hard".

Do you think she meant that answering the questions was hard, or that writing the answers was hard? Just what you said about her writing made me wonder whether she's been evaluated for any dysgraphia-type difficulties. Our DD has some 'mild' dysgraphia such that she can write answers to questions neatly but it takes her much longer than it does other kids and really slows her down (so she is totally at grade level, and probably even behind, for writing and thus also for the way they evaluate reading comprehension--i.e., by having kids write the answers out). It might be worth checking into for your DD, because if that is something she is having trouble with it might help her in school to get some accommodation for it (like being able to not write so much). Other than that, if she's not complaining about the level of work, I personally would not push it--at least that's worked so far for our DD. When she has wanted more advanced work (like in math), we have helped her find it, but we have not pushed. Of course, once she gets into junior high we will expect good grades, but we have not pushed her to do higher-than-grade-level work.

It does raise the question of how you get a kid to be motivated as in Mana's interesting post about the two different girls, but at least for our DD I don't think 'tiger mother' tactics would work at all and would be totally counterproductive. Not that that's what you're suggesting; just that I think the motivation for our DD has to come from inside her rather than from us, but every kid is different. Good luck!

My DS9 complains that anything involving handwriting is too hard, though the content itself is not. His handwriting is improving, but it's not great and it's work for him. You'll have to investigate more about what "too hard" means.

Another thought. When I was in school and not at all challenged, I didn't realize I was any different from the other kids, which made things kind of confusing. So when classmates didn't understand things or didn't know answers, I would not raise my hand to answer because if no one knew the answer, I must not be right. And for whatever reason, it never sunk in that i really did know all the material, even if it turned out that my answers were right. I doubted myself through college. I now realize that gifted people do learn differently, and I was probably the only one like me in grade school. Since I thought everyone else was just like me, it created all kinds of issues. Not saying the is going on with your DD, but it can't hurt to explain how GT kids think differently (only need to hear something once to learn it, eg).

ETA: my DS9 is also not very self-motivated, but he easily rose to challenges of being grade-skipped and then transferred to an accelerated program for HG kids. Parents know their kids best. With our kiddo, we knew he needed more and so we sought out other programs. He probably seemed happy to teachers before we made these changes because he is a teacher pleaser, but we knew from the work he brought home that he wasn't learning new material.

Rachel, there could be so many different reasons your dd is saying the work is "hard" - none of us can tell you why, you'll need to really listen to your dd and also think through the details of when work is said to be hard, what's going on, what type of work, etc.

The thing that jumped out to me from your post is you told us you're dd's GAI, not her FSIQ. Your experience may be different than my experience, but the psychs we've seen for testing don't report a GAI unless there is a certain statistical difference between FSIQ and GAI - so I'm guessing there is *something* on your dd's WISC in either the Processing Speed section or Working Memory section that lowered her FSIQ relative to GAI. If that's the case, she might really be experiencing "hard".


I'd try to really understand what she's saying is "hard" before making a school/program change decision.


The things your dd is saying sound like things a child who is feeling awkward, out-of-place or anxious at school might say. On the one hand, with a very bright child, it's easy to see this might be due to the difference in intelligence - but it's also exactly what my 2e kids have said when they were around the same age struggling with challenges related to their 2e prior to diagnosis. Soooo... absolutely, I agree, you need to try to do something to help her out - but first you need to figure out what exactly is going on.

My advice is to look back at her WISC test - what type of difference do you see in PRI/VIQ vs PS/WM? Did the person who did the testing note any potential reason for the discrepancy? How long ago was she given the WISC? If you see differences in individual subtest scores, look at what those subtest scores measure (or post them here) and see if any of the dips correlate to the types of work she's saying is hard at school.

I'll also second master of none, tallulah and dbat's posts

Best wishes,

polarbear

Thank you everyone for our insights. Lots to digest and ponder. I'll try to glean more information from DD, as well as her teacher. Right now I don't have a good picture of what she's doing in school, to be honest. She doesn't share much at all and she gets no homework. But she is indeed a perfectionist, that much is clear.

I'll also try to get more info re: her testing. Her school tested her and all we were given was her PRI, VCI and her GAI.

Thanks all. This is a whole new world for us and we want to make good decisions for our DD.
Rachel

Rachel, you can request a full report from the testing - send an email to the school psych asking for a copy of the full set of results, including all subset scores. It just occurred to me that one reason you might only have a GAI is that instead of giving the full WISC the school might have skipped the two sections on processing speed and working memory.

Was she being tested by the school for gifted services, or for a different reason?

One last note - sometimes struggles can look like perfectionism in 2e kids when they are your dd's age. So it might be perfectionism, it might not, it might be a combo of perfectionism + something else. Asking for the test report, and digging for more details/info from your dd, maybe thinking through her day at school yourself etc - those are all good places to start!

Best wishes,

polarbear

eta - when you make the request for the full report of scores from the school, I'd recommend making it in writing (you can make the request via email).

Yes, yes, yes to this.

Interesting I must bear that in mind.