Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Number of school changes

My daughter is in her fourth school and she is in fourth grade. I wish we hadn't had to move her so much, and so does she, but that was how it worked out despite our extensive efforts to interview schools before sending her and to make careful choices. We are planning on sending her to the same school next year, which is nice.

DD11's count is at 3: public / magnet / homeschool. But if you think about it, homeschool supports switching things up all the time. One year you could be in a co-op with the same group of kids, that summer you're at science camp for 3 weeks, then you switch it up and get tutored for math and join a writer's group.

My daughter doesn't deal well with change (when she was little she hated anything in her environment changing), but she deals with a bad educational environment even less well. She always made friends, but also felt different and isolated -- I don't think the changes made that worse or better.

I'm sad that she can't have the educational experience she wants (walking to school with her friends, continuity from year to year) but the emotional effects of the lack of appropriate education were so much worse for her.

As for the study, I don't know that you can extrapolate the experience of children in different cultures. There are cultures where continuity, tradition, and local networks are prized a lot higher than here in the US. The experience of moving and changing schools would be very different in these cultures as well.

My DS is at his 3rd school at age 6. We are looking at 2 more changes at the very least - for 4th grade and for high school. He is very social, funny, outgoing and easily makes friends. So, he seems to enjoy the oppportunity to meet new people and make more new friends - no psychotic symptoms, yet
The good thing is that each change put him in a more acdemically challenging classroom. We did have problems during the changes because we found that the increased academic demands were directly proportional to the writing requirements. My slow writer struggled on that front at every change but his writing has caught up mostly and he will not have any more problems on that front.

I didn't say "major role." I said "outsized," as in "more influence on the results than would be expected given the size of the group."