Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Preparing for a school meeting

Hi,
I am new to the forum. My son is going to start 2nd grade this summer and I feel very uncertain as to how to properly advocate for him in his school. He is extremely bright and is also a very driven child, excelling in just about anything he picks up. His MAP score in spring was 259 for math and 215 for reading. So far he did struggle with boredom and even started refusing to do some tasks that were too trivial and repetitive. Right now the only thing that the school is addressing is his social development, as he did have ocasional meltdowns and showed anger and frustration when he felt "trapped" and forced to do a task that "made no sense" to him. I am not sure what I can ask for, as I am aware he is very different from most kids in his age group, and the school can't do much with a child like that. However, any kind of accommodation would probably help, as opposed to just needing to "fit in" in his class. If anyone has a similar situation and/or helpful suggestions, I would greatly appreciate it!

Welcome!

As a starting point, here is a roundup of advocacy resources (including crowd-sourced tips on meeting prep) which may prove helpful.

Thanks so much, indigo and spaghetti, I will definitely use these are excellent resources. Also, I agree asking my son what would make things more fun for him at school is probably a good starting point. My meeting at school went fine, the school is well aware of his academic level, yet the most stress is placed on his social development, which I agree, is not something to dismiss. I just feel he is so out of balance with his academic level that it will be excruciating for him to sit in school for six hours, with no additional stimulation during that time. I will see how it goes when the school starts. His last year teacher said she never in twenty years had a child this bright, and that she believes he simply needs a one-on-one work in math where his MAP math score (259) now in first grade is at the 11th-grade level.

While your explanations for his behavior are likely correct don't use them with the school. In general they expect kids to do tasks when told not question whether they are meaningful.

My son is going into Grade 2 as well. Do you know much about the school, and how they are structured? What I mean is, if they were to make accomodations, how would that be accomplished? For example, does the whole school have math at the same time? Or does it differ depending on the individual teacher? Do they have leveled reading groups? Any ability-based groupings? For me, they may place our son in a grade 2/3 split, and if that happens, I'll ask for him to do grade 3 math. But in general, in the whole school, any accommodations happen just with the one teacher, so they may try to personalize things, but it is hard when dealing with a full classroom. But reading works out better, because everyone gets placed in a group with just 2 other kids, so it is more level based. And our neighboring school district tests all the kids at the beginning of the year in math, and then places everyone in a leveled class, which sounds great, but too bad that's not in our district.

Have you also considered looking into other schooling options if the school won't accommodate him?

You may need to consider having alternate plans if this does not work out. We are already on our plan B after we slammed into the wall at age 3 with a preschool that is run a lot like most traditional schools are run - when DS told us he was bored and hated going in (and was starting to mess around with other kids behind the teacher's back - never a good sign), and we had to look at alternate options for his pre-k onwards.

If the school has all maths at the same time (or whatever subject), you might choose to propose that he be placed in 3rd or 4th grade for math class. Then, have a list of ways that this would benefit your child, such as developing study skills, developing the need to pay attention in class, developing the ability to get along with children of different ages (which can be related to a real life need in the workplace and elsewhere), and showing your child that school is the place where learning occurs.

Even if they are open to this idea, be prepared that they will want to do a lot of testing. Some schools will test for end of 3rd grade math and have a reasonable expectation of 85-90% mastery to move on. Some schools want your child to fail and will say he needs to get 100% to move on.

Some schools will get really caught up in this idea that it is unfair to all the other children if you child has advanced teaching. I would be ready with an argument that all kids ought to be expected to be learning new things at school. They also may push back by saying that your child MUST behave a certain way to get the advanced materials.

There are other options such as taking pretests so your son can do alternate projects instead of having to pretend to relearn ideas he has already mastered. That requires a very dedicated teacher to do it well.

If the school is very negative, you may prefer to see if there are other schooling options. I hope this helped.

Schools may focus on "behavior" in the early years as a means of identifying any learning disabilities. These old posts may be of interest:
1) article comparing/contrasting gifted and ASD characteristics
2) gifted characteristics, "quirks" which may reveal learning disabilities
Addressing any learning disabilities with appropriate remediation allows a child to soar.

Well said, and great advice. Here's an expert article which expounds on that idea.

AuroraAKP, as you have fewer than 5 posts to-date due to being a new member of this board, your posts are subject to moderation which is causing a delay in the timing of your posts showing up.

Glad to hear the meeting went well. And yet I'm not sure that it did, if there has been no movement toward a plan to meet his very advanced mathematical needs. To thrive, kids need both appropriate academic challenge and intellectual peers.

There are resources for direct teaching of social skills, body language, perspective taking, friendship, etc. Many resources are available for a parent to use with their child at home. Here is a brief roundup of a few examples of resources:
- book: 100 social rules for kids (hat tip to sanne)
- direct teaching of non-verbal cues
- direct teaching of friendship
- direct teaching of perspective taking
- link to an article on the Davidson Database, Tips For Parents: Gifted Children's Friendships
- post with roundup of articles on friendship.

Is it possible to suggest/recommend/invite your son's teacher to join the Davidson Educators Guild?

Ah, I see the the post moderation made it hard for us to follow this thread. I would watch your son closely when this school year starts if you decide not to pursue this further beforehand.

If your son is unhappy, if he continues to have trouble sitting through material he already knows, he may start to resist school more.

Your school did give you some very standard "lines" about social development. I agree that it is very important, however, we send kids to school primarily to learn, and if they aren't learning (like all the other kids are), this isn't going to work how it does for the other kids (in my opinion.)

For the record, I went through a similar situation, and eventually we did need to skip a grade, skip an additional grade in one subject and then we had to find another, more flexible school that allows you to work at your own pace.

Just to emphasize that AuroraAKP is getting great advice in all these posts, I have begun piggy-backing on some of them...

My advice to AuroraAKP would be to post at least three more responses, just to pass the count of 5 posts... each post could be a quick reply such as "Thanks" or "Great" or "Got It"... they need not be time-consuming.

Yes, this is so common there is a phrase for it - "school refusal."

A roundup of acceleration (grade skipping) threads here... discussing pros and cons and pointing to resources.

school refusal - DS had a classmate who had run into similar problems at his old school - started to act out, get frustrated that carried over into home and hated school so much that his parents realized he had to get out because he was so frustrated and angry, and yet being told he had to behave way older than his age.

He started in DS' class in first grade with a lot of scars from that - we saw a very defensive child who was quick to lash out and we could see that he was bracing himself for "punishments" that did not come in DS' school. It took him at least a few months before we saw real improvement, with the angry bursts decreasing - and we could see the happy and sweet child he really is. His parents said that he lost all his anger, and they were glad to have their boy back - a happy boy who loves school.