Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Should I be here?

It occurs to me that procrastination is something that I do to make uninteresting tasks more interesting. Putting something off until the last possible minute flirts much closer to failure and generates excitement and motivation. Granted, I don't do this with course work, only rudimentary tasks. Your DD's learning abilities are waaay beyond mine. But I wonder if your DD has the same motivations for putting things off?

I do this All The Time. It's not wise, but it is.

The behavior is also quite common among individuals who are not ADD/ADHD, but have a genetic predisposition to addictions impacting the reward pathway that depends upon biogenic amines like dopamine.

This pretty much includes everyone in my family, btw. We all get a rush from procrastination-- DD more than me, and me more than my DH. In fact, I guess it also goes in proportion to LOG, at least in my own family and DH's, now that I consider extended family as well.

You're welcome.

Yeah-- I suppose that we chalked a lot up to "enriched home environment" for a long time, too. DD started her life the child of two STEM professors, so-- yeah. Like the measured current in potential-stepped chronoamperometry, is how I think of it, actually... that's DD's "engagement/demonstration" level with new stuff. I don't usually share my kind of geeky/quirky thought process about this kind of thing. But this is the one place where at least a few other people inevitably know precisely what I mean with my peculiar analogies.


We eventually realized that most of our friends' kids weren't like this. Not even close to being like DD. It wasn't us, in other words-- it really was her being what she is. Because those other kids (some of them certainly moderately gifted) were being raised in highly enriched homes, too. DD was different.

Algebra in two weeks. Well. I've never actually told that story before, I don't think. It went like this-- DD was cyberschooled, and this was back in the day when assessment hard-copies were MAILED out to teachers-- and when there was only a sort of hard deadline at the very very end of the semester or school year. That's the background information.

So DD had more or less been blowing things off all term in the fall-- and the school kind of didn't press since they knew that this was in part due to the death in hospice of a family member, that we'd spent almost 6 weeks out of state, etc. etc.

So January rolls around, and I eventually get rather grumpy over the fact that she hasn't turned anything in since before October-- and sternly inform her that the deadline for all of that work is less than a week away. She cried, threw a major fit, screamed "I cannnnnnnnnn't!!!!" a few times, and then realized that I wasn't budging after I calmly told her that if that was so, then she was going to be failing the course-- her choice whether to do it with some degree of grace and a reasonable effort to stave off that outcome, or to just go splat.

Well, she worked about 40 hours during that week, and aced the semester. This feat frankly astonished my spouse and I. She was placed in the HONORS algebra I course intended for high school freshmen, and she was a nine year old 7th grader.

She kind of pulled the same stunt the NEXT semester, though-- but with a new twist. She basically blew off the material to such a degree that I knew that her exams weren't very good, but whatever-- I had a stack of them, and turned them in diligently to the main office (in person, even-- we were there for some kind of media thing that featured DD their pet Wunderkind), but then they never arrived in her teacher's mail-- really, really. He looked for them for three solid weeks-- they never showed up, and as far as I know, never have to this day.

She had thought that she was done-done-done with that class long about March, having just blown through all of the assessments (as noted, with lackluster work ethic, to put it euphemistically)-- until she found out that she needed to repeat ALL of those exams. All 8 of them, over the course of the 16 weeks. Oh, and complete a final exam that covered the entire year.

She had even less time that term-- only five days. We did concede that she might need an extension on that one, so she had an extra week available.

She aced that, too, but my goodness she was a touch resentful. Being nine (or was she ten? Nine, I think), she really didn't have a good sense that it was actually lucky for her that those exams went missing, given what I knew about their relative quality... after all, this was going onto a high school transcript.

Bear in mind that with a cyberschool, the "course" that students take covers the entire textbook, and isn't "adjustable" the way that B&M classes tend to run, too.



The following year, when she was taking all GT/Honors courses as a 10yo 8th grader, she did nothing from January through mid-March. Then polished off 87 lessons (that is, each "lesson" there is either one or two days' worth of instruction/work in a particular class, generally estimated to take students about 1-3 hours)-- in just four days. With straight A's; she was really doing the reading and the work, too-- I know. THAT is what "putting the accelerator to the floor" looks like, and it's why I say that PG kids do things that other kids simply cannot do.

As a junior (13yo), she took 3 AP classes and the rest honors, volunteered 6 hours a week as a math tutor, and spent three weeks in Europe, then missed 2 weeks due to illness-- again, with stellar grades and without even breaking a sweat. One of those classes was AP Physics.

Then as a senior, (also taking several AP classes and some dual enrollment college courses) she opted to jump into APUSH in March for the second semester-- nearly four weeks late. She made up the difference in a few days, and was privately sad that it hadn't been any more challenging than that to catch up-- she'd been hopeful that she'd have to work harder than that.

So.

To say that even with a 3y acceleration, even with GT placement, school was "insufficiently challenging" is something of an understatement.


The lesson to be learned, though, came THIS year-- when she tried the same stunt with Integral Calculus, which was an unmitigated disaster, to put it kindly. Well. She would still have passed the course, I think-- but it would not have been a grade she'd like on her transcripts. Still, it was rather impressive that she could cram 4-6 weeks' worth of a second quarter of calculus at the honors collegiate level into her brain at a mastery level in about 86 hours flat.

She has almost no real study skills-- she hasn't needed them.

She has no real work ethic-- again, it's never really been necessary.

Yes, she lives at home, but that is partly because she has a life-threatening medical condition which is very difficult to manage on a college campus, too, and-- well, I honestly cannot recommend any parent consider a regular dorm setting for a child under 17 years of age. Truly.


But she has friends, she is pretty happy, and she is able to "pass" as far older than 15. She is also struggling intensely with exam anxiety and not having the executive function that she needs in this setting-- never having needed it previously, see.

The lesson to be learned as a parent, though, is that somewhere along the way, DD figured out that, like a sideshow freak, or a circus animal, simply learning and being engaged isn't enough-- she's expected to Perform Extraordinary Feats! She internalized that formal school is about demonstrating what you know-- it's not about learning anything. It's about KNOWING. She struggles with socially prescribed perfectionism, which we believe wholeheartedly to have been caused by an inappropriate school setting and our failure to be able to provide one that was actually appropriate. It was as though the entire world was conspiring against our efforts to establish a healthy sense of self in our child-- by praising her for being "perfect" or "exceptional" they ignored the fact that someday, she was going to need to know how to struggle and wrestle knowledge to the ground.

Waiting to learn those skills until college is, um-- not recommended, generally speaking.

First - I think there is a nuance to "when parents suspect giftedness, they're usually right." When you are talking about gifted parents, it seems that if the (gifted) parents have any suspicion the child is gifted AT ALL, there is probably actually a very high level of giftedness. Search on "impostor syndrome" and you'll see why this is true and see how many of us struggle with this as to ourselves and as to our children.

When DS was in first grade, and I explained to his teacher how high he tests for math, I could tell that she was thinking that I had just hothoused him in math. He learned basic fluency, math facts, was taught the steps to do calculations, etc. But then she worked with him and realized that he is actually gifted in math. You want to look at how he does with word problems, and concepts that he has not been directly taught. For instance say you haven't taught him anything about ratios or proportions. You tell him that it takes 2 tsp. of butter to make 24 cookies, how much butter do you need to make 60 cookies? Kids who have been taught ratios would know what they need to do, but gifted kids would just know the answer without knowing what a ratio is or how to do the computations. Anyway, it's just an example, obviously you can't figure out if a child is gifted based on one problem. DS did the Woodcock Johnson Achievement and for math it breaks it down...applied problems, fluency, calculation, for example. DS scored lowest in fluency probably because he is so slow with writing.

Just to note--this test seems to give artificially high scores to younger kids who have learned multiplication, division, etc. and I wouldn't bother with it unless you need the scores to apply for DYS or some other program.

It's really easy to think that as a parent, but I would say that exposure and ability are radically different things. Obviously, a person needs to be exposed to math concepts to have a chance to demonstrate ability, but the converse is simply not true: someone does not acquire an ability simply because they are exposed to it.

Not yet, but he was accepted to that gifted school and we are going to send him there in the fall. Our decision not to "stick it out" with his current public school was, for me, advised by discovering his LOG. I remember talking with the psychologist who administered his WISC about our schooling decision. After assuring me that the WISC cannot over-report someone's IQ (I was concerned), she went on to explain to me that I needed to consider the bell curve of this gifted school. They have their own bell curve comprised of only bright and gifted students, of course... but she was quick to point out that DS would be on the high end of even their curve. That made me realize that he's so far off his current school's radar, they aren't going to have a clue what to do with him.

To be honest, puberty sucks no matter what. You hear anecdotal stories about how really young, smart kids get picked on. Is it because they were grade skipped, or is it because they would have been picked on no matter which grade they were in? But on this board, I've heard grade acceleration to be a much more positive experience. Personally, I wouldn't base a decision about grade acceleration on social concerns, particularly if that is what he needs to stay engaged in school. The benefits seem to outweigh the risks.

But also keep in mind that grade acceleration may not be enough, in and of itself. The issue with many HG+ kids isn't just a subject knowledge issue; it's also a rate issue. A grade skip may help for awhile, but then the pace of learning may still be off, particularly in a mixed classroom setting. Unfortunately, there aren't really easy answers. What works for one kid may not work for another. While DS is really looking forward to having age peers who will double as intellectual peers next year, it's also possible that this new school may not be the perfect fit. We'll just have to wait and see and take it year by year (or even week by week).

My DS loves his age peers as well from K. He seems to get along with nearly everyone. I think that deceived us a little, too... we slipped partly into believing that he couldn't be highly gifted because he does so well socially (that is, believing the smart kid stereotype of someone who is awkward and shy with few friends). I think you'll find a lot of people on this board that will tell you that nothing could be further from the truth than those stereotypes.

Mine as well loves being in school, even though he has told me point blank that he doesn't actually learn anything there. I think the relative novelty of the routine and the experience of having age peers every weekday to interact with still trumps academic insufficiencies, and he enjoys the "non"-academic classes (art, music, and gym) where age is more important than intellect. I do believe, though, that school would have gotten quite old for him after not much longer.

The long and short of it? Trust your gut, because it's probably right.

Thanks for the long response. It's good to hear that your DS has similar traits to mine (gets along well with peers, doesn't mind doing basic tasks along with the rest of the class). Since mine did so well at the Montessori, I have no doubt that he will do well in first grade. Though it is not a gifted school, it is one of the highest ranked elementary schools in my state (we use a 3 digit score called the API and this school is around 970). So one hope of mine (however misplaced) is that there will be enough kids in his school with his level of aptitude that they will be able to find ways to challenge him.

I hope your DS gets what he needs at the gifted school you're sending him to. Is it much of a drive?