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.


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(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.