Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy An interesting weekend discussion....

I had an interesting experience over the weekend while at breakfast with two friends. Both are teachers who stopped teaching full time when they had children, just in the last couple of years. One has her Masters degree and worked with Special Ed students and the other was a regular classroom teacher in a very affluent school district. Neither one of them knows much about Graham or, more specifically, what he�s doing these days intellectually. I tend not to talk much about it among my friends with school age children. The discussion they were having is the reason why.

Talk turned to obnoxious parents they have encountered over the years and both agreed that the worst were parents who �insisted that their children were brilliant�. Apparently, both had frequently run into the �hot housing� parents we previously debated and both my friends described parents who absolutely insisted that their children were �special�. Both teachers described withholding opinion, but seeing testing results that proved that these kids were bright but not GT. Both friends described a process where those kids were ahead due to involved parents but usually by 3rd grade, were merely considered �bright� as their classmates had caught up to them academically.

I was very interested in this discussion. Was this my kid? Am I over-involved? Is his early reading and aptitude at numbers just an advancement that will level out in elementary school? The public district we currently live in does nothing in the way of gifted ID until 3rd grade. I was really thinking that we may need to find a district that looks at things a bit differently as I have a 2.9 year old kid who is reading. What the heck am I supposed to do with him in the next 2 years?

But both my friends, who I do respect a lot, were pretty insistent that parents shouldn�t attempt to tell a teacher, especially at the beginning of the school year, about their child, but should let the teacher draw their own conclusions.

Overall, I was really disturbed by the conversation. They both thought grade skip was a really bad idea and both very much thought that boys (especially those with summer birthdays like my son) should be held until age 6 before starting Kindergarten.

I am perfectly willing to be an advocate for my child. But this conversation brought home the need, I think, to have Graham independently tested before school, at age 5. Otherwise, I really get the impression that sort of blowing off parents who ask about issues related to their kid and GT is the norm. I really think until I have numbers in my hand, I run the risk of being mocked as one of �those� parents behind my back. It was really very uncomfortable for me.

I've had the same sort of experience with friends who are teachers.

Whoever "those" parents are, they are apparently doing a tremendous disservice to HG+ kids! (Assuming "those" parents actually exist and are not merely urban legend...I wonder sometimes, having met loads of parents of GT kids, but never having met a single identifiable hothousing parent IRL...)

It drives home to me the urgent need for education of teachers about GT kids. It wouldn't take much out of an education class to introduce the idea that kids might have different learning needs. And you have to figure that over the course of a 30-year teaching career, most teachers are going to run across at least one HG+ child (though probably not much more than one) and quite a lot of MG-GT kids. It would be nice if they could at least recognize them if they saw them...

*sigh*

I think you are right to seek independent testing. If nothing else, you will stop second-guessing yourself Knowing that I am not wrong about my kids has helped me be a better advocate.

It is true that teachers don't take kindly to parents telling them that their kids are brilliant at the beginning of the year. Whether or not it is fair of them to react that way is another question, but knowing that can help you plan your advocacy strategy.

We enrolled our DS in K and did not start advocacy for a grade skip for several months. The reason is that even if you have scores, the teachers will want to see proof in the form of performance. So I made sure that DS did every boring scrap of homework that he received. I asked the teacher to assess his reading level. I didn't say, "DS is reading at X grade level." I knew where he was but I wanted her to find out for herself.

Ignore them on the redshirting issue. And the gradeskipping issue. I'm sure you've done more research on the topic recently than either of them.

Cathy

Hi Catherine,

How awful. So sorry.

(Part I)

The idea that other kids "catch up" to gifted students eventually is a major fallacy in education circles. While I expect that some catching up does occur, it's because the bright kids are HELD BACK, not because the others start to go faster. Bright kids don't run out of cognitive steam when they're 7.

A way to respond to this statement is to say that a child can't run down a road if someone puts a fence in his way. Teachers and school systems can be experts at erecting fences. My 5 year old's kindergarten teacher told me that "silent E is damaging at this age" when I asked if she could help him with his reading! Talk about erecting a fence. No wonder everyone else "catches up"!

> I was very interested in this discussion.
> Was this my kid?
> Am I over-involved?
> I have a 2.9 year old kid who is reading.

You are not being over-involved. You are responding to something your child wants to do, that he enjoys, and that is good for him. My 3 year old daughter loves reading lessons. She also loves making sand castles, and she's NOT missing out on childhood because she's learning how to read at 3.

A toddler can't learn to read because some "obnoxious" parent forced him to. It just doesn't work that way. If a kid isn't ready to read, he isn't ready, and you might as well try to teach your cat to read. At least she'll sit on your lap and purr the whole time.


-----------

(Part II)

The US educational establishment has some deeply wrong-headed ideas, and you came up against them during that breakfast.

The two worst offenders are 1) everyone must move at the same pace with age-mates and 2) gifted programs are "elitist". This is garbage.

These ideas are products of a philosophy of phony egalitarianism that's rampant in US education right now. The basic idea is that doing everything at the same time is good and accelerated programs for top learners are bad.

Many of these ideas come out of teacher education programs, which spend too much time on ideas like "diversity" and "promoting equity," whatever that means.

Take a close look at the syllabi for the courses for an M.Ed. at Stanford (see link below). For example, the titles of the math/science courses look good, but if you read the syallabi, you'll see that a lot of focus on how students feel about math and science and what it means to be a *teacher*. Where is the content here? This stuff strikes me as glossy yet lacking substance.

http://suse-step.stanford.edu/elementary/curriculum.htm

I'm writing about this to help you see where your friends and other teachers are coming from. It might help you when you have conferences with teachers.

Unfortunately, (certified) teachers have had these ideas drummed into them and many accept them without question. Far too many are taught that "socialization", whatever that means, is more important than mathematics and science and reading. There's a lack of understanding that socializing happens on the playground, not during math class.

I think most Americans are unaware of how abysmal our teaching training programs are and how much damage they do. I don't want to sound like I'm an angry raving fruitcake here. I just think it's time for this stuff to be debated openly.

Cheers,

Val

I have two teacher friends who have gifted children and one of them believes in holding kids back, even gifted kids, to give them an extra year of childhood. This is common practice here, especially kids with spring or summer birthdays like my son. My other teacher friend told me that this is the real reason the Kindergarten teacher recommended holding back my son for "not coloring in the lines" when he started Kindergarten at age 5 already reading at about a 5th grade level. He read his first book at age 2 1/2 and on the first day of Kindergarten, when the teacher handed me a note with instructions on what to do with the school supplies we had brought, I handed it to my son and had him read it out loud and follow the instructions, proving that he could read and comprehend something that he had not read before. I didn't think I needed test scores before he started school because his vocabulary and reading ability were obviously at a high level. It didn't make any difference.

I can't understand why some teachers feel that it is right to hold kids back from learning. It seems very wrong to me.

Another teacher at our public school, who thought my son was probably highly gifted, recommended that I homeschool when I asked for her advice, so that it what I have been doing since he finished Kindergarten and he just turned 10.

At our small town public school they don't allow gifted kids to learn above grade level and then they assign a lot of homework so that kids don't have time to really learn much outside of school, so if I had kept my son in public school it might have looked like the other kids caught up with him academically, but then again, maybe not. My husband's older highly gifted son from a previous marriage was similar in some ways to our son and he was academically advanced even though he was kept at grade level. He just refused to do the busy work the school assigned and spent a lot of time reading things he was interested in and also a lot of time on the computer. Even though he could make the highest scores on tests, he got bad grades, and eventually dropped out of school. He never learned to work hard and dropped out of college.

I am sure there are teachers who have talked about me. I have had to learn to not worry about what other people think and focus on what is best for my child.

Hi Kriston,

You are soooo right. And unfortunately, too much of what you're saying goes against the grain in US education circles.

Unfortunately, too many school systems accept that idea that a bright kid is doing fine because she's at the top of her class. And because the teachers don't see a lot of very bright kids, they can continue to believe that they don't exist.

Kind of along those lines, I've stopped keeping quiet about what my kids can do. I don't brag or even make a point of bringing up the subject, but I also don't hide what they can do. If the topic comes up, I'm honest. I guess I just think that, just like gifted athletes, bright kids need to be allowed to be themselves everywhere, not just once a week in pullout classes!

Gifted children: like to play hide and seek, love cartoons, can do algebra in second grade. It's all good!

Val

Val wrote:

"The idea that other kids "catch up" to gifted students eventually is a major fallacy in education circles. While I expect that some catching up does occur, it's because the bright kids are HELD BACK, not because the others start to go faster. Bright kids don't run out of cognitive steam when they're 7."

Exactly what I was thinking. I think this is true even of the bright kids. The kids who start out ahead b/c they are bright, are held back until the others catch up. I think for GT kids this can also occur - the love of learning is beat out of them and they begin to look like everyone else. I read a post once that said something like "I sent my very bright kid to PS and got back an average kid."

My Aunt who is a teacher said the ONE thing she hates most about her job (not poor pay) is having to tell all the parents that their children are not gifted. I've heard this from my other teacher friends as well. I just keep my mouth shut.

I too wonder if my son will even out by 3rd grade from not being challenged in school. The other kids are catching up skill-wise but I still think there are pace issues for DS. Getting all the testing done just seems to take so long and I wonder about getting achievement testing done now given he's not made much progress this year in school. I doubt achievement testing now would accurately reflect him.

I agree with the talented/not gifted students starting out ahead because they were brighter to begin with. Good point.

I address the pacing problem by being an unabashed hothouser. My eldest works on mathemathics with me for ~2-3 hours per week. We got halfway through grade 5 math a while back and skipped ahead to algebra. We fill in the gaps as we go. I do reading lessons with my kindergartner (plus paleontology) and my three year old.

It's amazing how far you can get with a little bit of focused instruction --- and they stay challenged.

Val

I think we've commiserated before about the current education fad of "equal but not fair," Val. I'll spare everyone my getting on that same soapbox since you detailed the problem so eloquently. But suffice it to say, I am 100% in agreement with you. And I think that educational policy stinks!

I like that you're speaking up about what your kids can do. Standing up to the pressure from schools and other parents to keep quiet and not make waves is not easy. You are a brave woman, and I think you're doing one of the only things we parents really can do to try to change the status quo: refuse to be quiet.

I'm still whispering. Lately I've been rethinking that policy. I like your way better.

I believe the best advocacy is having a clear picture about what you'd like the end result to be. Sometimes we have problems with this because we're not trained educators so we look to them for advice, but I think when it comes down to it, educators or not, we know what's best for our kids. Whining and complaining is ineffective. Having documentation, solutions in hand, etc. helps. Some things take time to change.

I read that Colorado's governor signed a bill allowing high ability 4 yrs olds to go to K and high ability 5 yrs olds to go to 1st grade. That's so wonderful! It makes me wonder how many cases had to come up to make it happen.

I think the other tactic I'm beginning to embrace is--just do it (thanks, Nike). I want DS 11 and DS 9 to take Alg 2 next year. The school has really put time & energy into trying to get this going, but I doubt it's going to happen. So I plan to just do it, whether it's at the college, online, whatever.

We could make one.

See new message, about to be posted.

Val

Ooooh! I have a feeling I'm going to like this...

Oh I had to laugh at the "unless it's actually true." Yep.

I remember hearing some say "oh my child's reading has really taken off" etc. Then come to find out, the child is reading the family members' names or a picture book which has been read nightly to him for the past 4years. When I hear comments like that, I just nod. Now I also ask "So what is your child reading" just to gauge where the child is at. The other is "My child knows all her ABCs at 2yrs old." Well then the child starts singing the ABC song. I didn't mention that my 19month old didn't know the ABC song but knows all the sounds the letters make and that C says both /s/ and /c/.

It really is difficult to have an open dialogue about this. I had a very frank discussion about this with a friend. I failed to de-gift the living room of my gifted books (currently reading "Re-forming Gifted Education" when she came over. She very shyly asked if I had DS tested and what clued me in to get him tested in the first place. We talked for the 2hrs lol. Her DS is entering K. She was told by the preK teacher that in all her 30yrs of teaching, she had never seen a child as advanced as he and is really pushing her NOT to send him to our public school. I have another friend who is very open about her son's ability so very quickly I knew she was someone i could talk to. My other best friend in town - not so much - I don't say a whole lot.

I hate the line "let's wait until 3rd grade b/c they all even out." I think that is partly as to not miss the late-bloomers. But why make the very high ability kids wait for instruction at their level so you don't miss the late bloomers? Why sacrifice one for the other? Why not assess yearly and give each child what he/she needs?

I have a good friend, a kindergarten teacher, who gave me the same advice. I tried following her advice and found it wasted too much time. It can take a teacher a whole semester to realize that a child is advanced, especially if there is nothing in the curriculum or in the classroom to allow the child to demonstrate his/her ability. If you have an HG+ child, it is important to realize that most teachers have never had a child at that level of giftedness so they have little or no experience from which to work. At this point, I try to get a teacher conference as early as possible in the year to talk to my dd's teacher and regularly offer suggestions for differentiation.

I can't thank you all enough for your perspectives on this. I have taken away so much food for thought from your responses...

Val, I admire your unabashed advocacy of your child. And you are so right. I need to give myself a free pass to do the math (yesterday he wanted me to write out 1 billion on the chalkboard so he could see what 1 and 9 zeros looked like) and reading stuff with Graham at home because he LOVES it, and as long as he does, I'll keep doing enrichment stuff at home. I have a feeling he's going to need it!

Cym, your comment on knowing what you want the end result to be is so dead on. Right now I feel like I am in the "gathering" stage. Gathering as much information, anecdotal evidence, etc. before Graham hits school. I have no idea what the end result for him should look like and I suppose that will become much clearer the older he gets. But I am looking to friends/relatives who are teachers for advice right now, and opinions are varied.

And Master of None's comments about the polite conversations are soooo true. I feel awkward talking about the full extent of Graham's abilities and so I tend not to. I have found just a couple of mothers in my circle of acquaintances who get it either because of their own children or their work roles, and it always feels like such a relief to talk openly about him.

Dottie, maybe Graham is one of those kids...bright but not truly GT. I suspect not, but testing in a couple of years will probably help clarify things. I hear what you are saying and I have absolutely no doubt that my 2 friends were not exaggerating their experience or their frustration at dealing with these types of parents.

But as gratified and so many of you wrote...a lot of teachers rarely if ever encounter a truly HG kid. So my friends' experience is the norm. I do believe that they can be right about students/parents in general and we (my husband and I) can be right about Graham. That helped.

Thanks.

The way I've put it before is that I can't blame others if they think I'm nuts, since I so often think it myself. HG is really really "out there" and even though we've got these kids around all the time, making them look pretty normal to us, no one else has that. It's not surprising that ours come across as somewhat unbelievable -- they really are tremendously unlikely!

I wanted to add one other thing about the polite conversation... maybe two... lol.... I generally don't talk about DS locally because I don't want him to be "open for discussion". Once you've raised the topic, it sort of becomes public property, and I don't want that. Gossip, however, gets the word around. I happen to be best friends with the one of the best gossipers in town, so I can "feed" the mill with what I want out there, without having to do the talking myself. It's a subtle difference, but it means that I can be perfectly civil to people that I know would be more than happy to argue about our schooling choices if I gave them an opening, and they don't bring it up because it would be admitting to knowing something they heard "under the table". But at the same time anyone who really needs a sympathetic ear knows where to find me. Yay for small towns....

Oh, Dottie, I know a child just like that ... he's still young but his mother keeps pulling the "overexcitabilities" card. I'm pulling the "naughty" card! I've watched this child/mother online for three years, and ... well, if this kid's GT I'll eat my pants. Really. So I know what you're saying here. Not that this is the situation the OP is in, but it's something that teachers could be thinking of.

Hear hear! This is one of those things that drives me nuts, and *so* many people seem to buy into it. I was just in a heated discussion on one of my other boards about evening out ... ugh. If the HG+ child entering K reading and multiplying started new instruction at that level instead of "learning" to count and spell cat, where would they be in three more years? Probably not third-grade level like the rest of the kids. If they actually received real instruction, probably higher than fifth grade, even.


Oh, how true *that* is. I've given up talking about anything KG is doing with friends who have children. It's not worth it. I love my single friends, though, because they don't feel the need to be competitive about it!


That's what I did. Didn't work. The K teacher never approached us, though ds was reading chapter books and doing math that was clearly above level -- if nothing else, she'd have had to know that he was adding double digits in his head because he does it *all* the time on random things. I wish we'd have had some test results in hand and approached the school before school had even started. Ah well ...

CatherineD -- I agree, hothouse away while he's young and enjoying it! Nothing wrong with following his interests. He sounds like a bright little cookie.

That conversation must have been awkward in the extreme -- but it's very telling and seems to be pretty indicative of the attitude toward "gifted" kids, whether they truly are HG+ or not. It's a giant bummer for the kids who really *are*!

Hmm. I suppose that 1:1000 or even 1:500 people are extremely rare in individual environments, but if you look at the population as a whole, there are a lot of them (~300,000 of the 1:1000 group in the United States alone).

From where I sit, that's a LOT of people, and schools of education should be addressing this group, not allowing their graduates to pretend they don't exist. These programs devote time to the severely disabled, who are the other side of the 1:1000 groups, right?

Val

Pud's 1st grade teacher had the extra 30 hours of gifted education training and it doesn't seem to have mattered for squat. She still doesn't get him. Although, as I think I posted elsewhere, in his 5th six week report card she wrote "Pud is doing above grade level math" and gave him "+"s, the highest you can get instead of the check marks she had been giving him. Wow, it took her 30 weeks of school to figure this out????

Stepping off high horse and going to bed.

Well I do think they "should" but I don't know that they will. If you consider that any one teacher with 25 kids in a class could teach for 40 years straight and end up with, on average, one 1:1000 kid... while at the same time having probably a kid every other year that the parents said was gifted.... First it's potentially a good long time between the Education degree and the eventual sighting of the one kid, and second she has people coming in regularly to tell her that their kid really is the one and time and again he isn't. Not that he isn't gifted, but that he isn't 1:1000. And she gets 24-25 kids every year who are all within a good solid middle band of average, reinforcing her image of what the range of possibilities is for that age of kid.

I'm not sure that we can really make a straight comparison between the 1:1000 at the top of the bell curve and the 1:1000 at the bottom just for the reason that the severely disabled kid will never be able to "pass" as average, where the HG kid very well might (and nevermind that he might be 2E, or might have other complications that affect how he presents himself). So now you have a teacher who might find one kid in her whole career, but with the twist that the one kid might not want to be found, or might look very different from any one model of "what HG kids look like" that the teacher might have been taught 20 years ago.

So I guess what I think would be reasonable is if schools of education taught our future teachers that HG/HG+ is a possibility, just as a bunch of other things are possibilities, but I don't actually hold out much hope that it will change things in general. Some teachers (no matter what they're taught at college) will be wonderful, adaptable and accepting. Some just won't. And as much as I'd like them to be required to accept that their model doesn't include my kid, it is the fact that he is unusual that makes it an issue to begin with... kwim? If they saw kids like him all the time they wouldn't be able to pretend they don't exist.

There is such a phamphlet - see Is my child Gifted?
at http://www.sengifted.org/articles_publications.shtml

It think if we all start bringing these around to the local pediatricians we could save a lot of heartache.

What do you think?
Grinity

I think it's a good start, but I kind of hate the lists like the one listed in that brochure. I would have read that as my child was a preschooler and thought, yeah he's a little ahead. But he's with a full time parent all day and he's generally ND. And I would have bristled at the "G" word, having no previous knowledge or understanding of giftedness. Or it would be easy for a parent of a ND to read that list and think their child was extremely curious and inquisitive and be on the ND spectrum. I also know a number of kids that were reading before kindy (who attended a Montessori full time) that are really not more than perhaps MG.

Every pediatrician we've had has commented casually on both our kid's precociousness. Maybe it should have been a heads up that the dr. couldn't get a word in edgewise with the questions that were flying every time we were at the doctor's office. I wish they'd be qualified to do a little screening to give you a heads up on where you sit. It'd probably be helpful for kids on all ends of the spectrum and might head off problems of all kinds before school starts.

Our school district does a kindergarten screening starting at age 3. It seems like this would have been a good time to do a level 1 screen for giftedness too. Although, every kindergartener is screened which is nice. (that doesn't mean they do anything about it however)

I think my pediatrician did a *great* job of warning me without making me feel like DS7 was a freak or something, as can happen in that sort of situation if the doctor isn't pretty tactful.

After DS7, then 15 months, pointed out his cranium and his ulna (since if they can learn arm and leg, they can learn the medical names, too, right?), the pediatrician said, "You know he's more than a little bright, right?" It opened the door to a conversation about giftedness and meeting DS7's needs in a positive way. I think the doctor was probably a former GT kid himself, and having met his kids, I suspect he knows GT kids from personal experience. Also, another ped in the practice had two kids who graduated from high school early, so they're all pretty comfortable with GTness. It's made everything easier!

Interestingly, at that same 15-month visit, the doctor was the first person to gently suggest that we might consider homeschooling DS7. I know I looked at him like he had three heads at the time! LOL! I reminded him of the conversation when we saw him this year, and thanked him for being supportive. He was just glad that everything was working out.

I'm not sure all pediatricians are as comfortable with and positive about GTness (let alone homeschooling!) as mine is. But if they were, I'd support your idea, kimck. Pediatricians probably interact with more different kids on a daily basis than just about anyone else. (Even teachers only see the same 25 kids every day for a year!) If any non-GT-expert might have the breadth of experience to spot a potentially GT kid in minutes, it's probably a ped!

In an ideal world, a pediatrician would have this kind of background and information before leaving medical school. It conceivable that many docs would be at least MG, but it's also conceivable that many would have never been identified as such (like myself!). It seems like it should addressed right along side with identifying possible autistic tendencies, speech delays, growth problems, etc. IMHO.

In my same dream world, teachers would also have this information in their arsenal before getting a teaching license. Ah ... it's fun to dream!

I remember my DS went for his two year old well child visit. The doctor asked how many words he was saying. I replied that he was very verbal and the he could read. She didn't bat an eye and rephrased the question as, "Can he say X number of words?" LOL, she did get him eventually, but at that point must have thought I was addled.

I'm guessing that many pediatricians are gifted (I think I heard that most specialists in the medical field have IQ >130). But whether they know it or not probably depends on how old they are and their elem. school's recognition of giftedness. We have a fabulous pediatrician - we found out later that there is a waiting list for him because everyone wants him, and they eyed us suspiciously because we got him (i don't know how!). Anyway, he noticed and commented on our son's early grasp of things, saying e.g., "my kids were early at that too." But when I asked if there were any resources/advice for gifted toddlers/preschoolers, he said there's nothing until school. Looking at the Seng pamphlet probably wouldn't have helped me much. What really helped me was finding this forum while searching the internet for answers about what i should do with my little one. Perhaps a list of websites and short descriptions on the SENG pamphlet would be helpful.

I think it is all complex about testing and levels.

I think it is hard to define "how gifted" for a parent. I think we know our kids are bright, but how gifted is tough. I knew DD was smart but when we did the test-screening for the gifted preschool, I did not expect the results we got. Maybe I wanted to down-play expectations in case...

But I also wonder if this is some aberation because of my helicopter parenting style and by 7th grade she will be MG or ND.

I do believe the DNA line up has to be there, but like a plant, there has to be some nuturing. And like Ruf (am I quoting Ruf?) said: it is not static, the child can shift levels.

Ren

I agree that the different levels of giftedness add to the complexity, but I think that it would be extremely helpful for pediatricians to give parents a little heads up that hey your kid might be more than a little different. Pediatricians are usually the first professionals to see our kids. Having so much experience with kids, one would think they would be a good first place to inform families a little about giftedness. But since very few schools for teachers even teach about giftedness, it seems like this public awareness issue is going to be an uphill road! But i'm willing to bring a few SENG pamphlets to my peds as a start, even if they're not perfect. Maybe i can insert my own addenda about HG+...

Ren, quoting Ruf?! What is the world coming to?

I just wish I could start a dialogue with our ped about giftedness. I'm not really sure how to bring it up, especially since the kids are present at the appointment...

My DD developed spoken language faster than DS. Her FSIQ is lower than his and I think that's accurate. Language is a huge area of strength for her, though. DS read earlier than DD. On the other hand, I was a late talker--didn't talk until I was three. My IQ is in the HG range. So personal experience makes me skeptical, too.

Good points, G3. I guess it wouldn't have mattered to me who gave me info -- the doc, the nurses, or even the wall of pamphlets in the room! I just wanted to be given some resource other than "wait until he's school aged." But I suppose the couple years of worrying that my child was going to be bored when he got old enough to be in school isn't really a horrible problem.

I guess when my then just turned 3-year-old was getting angry because he had to use the "baby" eye chart instead of the one with letters, I would have liked someone to point me to a resource to show I wasn't crazy in thinking we might have future educational concerns. We did get lots of comments from folks in the peds office and the ped allergist office about "kids don't usually do this/know this yet," so they were noticing unusual behavior. What was missing was a little follow-up of information. (granted, my kid is one of those who had more visible early verbal/reading skills - if his signs of giftedness didn't show up until later, the peds office wouldn't have noticed anything, and neither would I for that matter.)

I think even just getting confirmation from the pediatrician that you're not crazy and that it's smart to be thinking about future educational issues is nice.

For me, knowing that 4+ years earlier my kid's doctor had noted that we might wind up homeschooling certainly made it easier to think that our choice was probably a good one in our situation. It sort of gave me permission to think outside the box that is standardized education. And I think that for parents of HG+ kids, the biggest thing we have in common is the need to think outside the box--in any of the possible ways to do that, including HSing, grade-skipping, subject advancement, private GT schools, etc.--if we want to serve our kids' needs!

And if we learned something from the doctor's office, instead of some strangers on a public internet forum, we would have a little more credibility in convincing our spouses of our suspicions too...

(I'm very much kidding, because this forum is truly where I found all the information and support I was looking for.)

I love this forum, but it's true that the credibility of a pedigreed source is nice. My parents were wary about homeschooling, but they did back off a bit when they heard that our pediatrician recommended it! (And he's not a kook or a wacko, even! <sarcasm, sarcasm>)

Well, I do have a lot of conversations with myself, and "Dottie says..." works great!

Well, tell him, "Kriston says that I'm the brains of the forum!"

Surely *that* will impress him!

Well, I think that DD is MG. But she actually started saying "hi" when she was just two or three months old. I sort of didn't believe it myself until my mom noticed it and then one time we were shopping and DD said hi to a little girl in the store. The girl was surprised and said, "Daddy! That baby said hi to me!" DD also used to say "ickle" for "tickle" when she was that age.

DS talked earlier than average, starting about 8 months. His first word was "nuh-nuh" (his word for nursing). By the time he was one he would ask for "nuh-nuh" and then ask for "other side nuh-nuh."

My DH is equally dense, it does work on DS lately, though. And the idea that the person he knows IRL, actually IS Dottie, well that please him very much! He is so impressed!

I had a conversation today that made me think of the original topic of this thread--what professionals think of GT kids and families.

I was at DS12's school to drop off a form today and the principal stopped me. DS is in middle school 6th grade. I had met with her last spring to get DS set up for this year. I was nervous, but she listened to everything I wanted. She got DS in 3 periods of advanced English/writing/reading. One of those periods only had the 3 most GT kids. He got Algebra with the advanced 8th graders, Orchestra, and then the other usual 6th grade classes (keyboarding, PE, Social Studies and Science). He had a great year.

She said that there was child who was "almost as bright as your DS" who will be starting in 6th. Here is what she said, "The family has been meeting and meeting and meeting with me. They don't believe that we can provide what their DD needs. And I keep thinking we've done OK by your DS. So I wanted to make sure that we really were meeting DS's needs." I told her that they really were doing a good job. And she said, "I just don't know what else to tell them. Could I have them call you? Maybe you could reassure them." I told her I'd be happy to.

Anyway, the story is not to make any of you who have been advocating feel guilty. I advocated too. But I wanted to share the perspective of a hardworking principal who is doing a good job. I am sure that working with parents can be it's own challenge!

On the other hand, maybe their child does need something different from what your DS is getting. Or maybe they see that the principal is not really "getting" their child.

I run into this all the time with the food allergy thing. Principal says, "But this was fine for another student who has a peanut allergy. Why isn't it ok for your daughter?"

Your principal sounds amazing acs! I hope that other family is able to find a fit at your school. I'm sure it would be very helpful for them to talk to you first hand. I would love to talk to a family at our school at our school in a similar position. I have put feelers out, but I really haven't found anyone quite in our position.

At our school, the parent base is so hyper involved, I can almost sense the eye rolling and sighing that is happening when a parent repeatedly asks for "special treatment" for their child.

Wow acs - how wonderful! I am keeping my fingers crossed that I will encounter similar support when we enter the school system. I attended a meeting where it was discussed that the superintendent has made a real turnaround and is on board for getting better programs for gifted kids, but they're starting in high school (which I don't have any problems with, those kids have missed out long enough, I'm just hoping it trickles down sooner rather than later).

Kimck - we were lucky to have found someone with an HG kid in our school system. She approached us when she got to know our son (and she recommended testing before school). This person, whose HG kid is 9, was the pioneer in our district and has been very busy advocating to help these kids. You might find you have to be the pioneer.

I know what you are saying. Each kid is different and there isn't one approach that will work for all GT kids In many cases, I would say that this was the problem. And I guess it might be in this case as well. But what has struck me about this principal is her ability to propose a solution, listen to criticism of that decision, and make course corrections as needed. She had not met my son when we made the first plan. There was one teacher assignment I didn't like. I let her know a bit more about my son's personality and she saw it wouldn't be a good fit. And she placed him with another teacher (who was a perfect match). There was a scheduling problem they hadn't foreseen in the first couple weeks, which resulted in a detention for DS because of a tardy that was unavoidable because of the physical location of the classes he was going to and from. I sent her a quick email explaining the situation. By the next day, problem was solved and DS got an apology.

I actually suspect that if I do hear something different from this family about this girl that makes me think the principal misunderstood, I could email her and let her know my "take" and she would probably be thrilled to know what the problem had been so she could fix it. In fact, I got the sense that this was one of the reasons she wanted me to talk to them!

Yes, Dottie, I do think this is a family that has been burned before.

It would be interesting to see how DS and this girl get allong. DS is very verbal and has always done well around girls. But he will be in 7th and she's in 6th and probably they won't cross paths much. DS will be going directly to the high school in the morning for Geometry.

As I have said before, this is all happening at a public school in a lower middle class to lower class neighborhood. It would not be a school that you would pick based on its test scores or location. You just can't tell a book by its cover. Which may be another reason this other family is skeptical...

acs - it's exactly those types of schools which I"ve heard great things about as far as meeting the needs of gifted kids. I've read it's precisely districts like mine, that think they are so great and challenging, no kid could possibly need more than they can offer, everyone moves here for this district, which does very little for kids who do need more.

Your Principal sounds wonderful!

I hope you can help the other family.

Acs, your principal sounds like a conscientious, flexible person. When that other family has gotten to know her better they may relax a bit. Are they supposed to call you if they want to talk?

It is just so hard to tell what you are getting into with a new school. Sometimes they promise you everything and give you nothing. Sometimes you negotiate your heart out and get nowhere. Sometimes they actually listen and respond. But in the spring before the new school year, you really don't know what to expect.

So I hope I can reassure them. I should remember, too, that two of DS's strengths is adaptability and self-advocacy, so I do feel a little less anxious sending him into a new situation. If he were just as smart but with a different temperment, I probably would have felt more of an obligation to pave the way for him.

I gave the principal permission to share my phone number. It's a small enough town, there is a good chance I already know or know someone who knows the parents, so I am trying to figure out who it might be. LOL!