Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy requesting help with math advocacy

Very well said indeed, Neato! You have just described the path towards underachievement. Then, when the gifted child finally strolls across material that is fact challenging, they begin to doubt their own ability, which has gone into hibernation from lack of use.

Val, I like your spray bottle idea!! Think of all of the ideas that we pass around on this board. If we could distill the essence of them down, pour it into a bottle, and spray on teachers and school administrators.... Bwa-ha-ha-ha.... the mad scientist comes to life!!

I think this is an important point, but must be kept in perspective. Yes, people need to learn to do some of the mindless chores of everyday life like dishes and laundry. But the reason we do these chores is that they have a purpose. We need clean dishes and laundry. There is value in the task even though it is boring and tedious. There is no need for a worksheet full of simple addition and subtraction problems when a child is two grade levels advanced and has his/her math facts memorized. There is no purpose. Gifted children understand this. All kids, but gifted kids, especially need to see a purpose for what they do. And realistically a human being can only do so much "because I said so" stuff.

During WWII at one of the concentration camps the Nazis had the prisoners move huge piles of rocks from one location to another and then the next day the prisoners would have to move that same pile of rocks back to the original location. This task was repeated day after day. Eventually the prisoners began to lose their sanity. On a small scale this is what is happening to our gifted students who spend day after day doing tedious, unproductive work. No wonder they rebel against it.

I agree that we need to teach children to respect authority, but we also need to teach children how to appropriately question authority. The very freedom we enjoy in our country came from questioning authority. Much of the turmoil and suffering in the world, especially during WWII, has come from not questioning authority.

In general the education system in the US does not do its job in appropriately educating our gifted children. That authority needs to be questioned. We need to advocate for our children but we also need to teach our children to advocate for themselves.

And perhaps also: Depression, Anxiety, Repressed Anger, Low Self-Esteem, and Imposter Syndrome. Did I miss anthing else?

I think Oma and (((you and I))) are also talking about different things, right?



Wholeheartedly agreed! HOWEVER< Age appropriate. My six year is NOT responsible for this. The adults in her life need to check their ego's and work together to make this right.

TexasSummer, I will continue to disagree, but I'm done beating that horse.

Thank you Oma, I will not have to call PETA on you or me!

For the record, I think we are not talking about the same issue concerning the disagreement.

I purposely use the work excessive.I think(?) that's the key word that Tex is reading

Well, it depends. Every place I have worked, I can do my assigned tasks and stay on schedule one hour a day compared to my peers. That gives me the rest of the day to do what I want, priorities permitting.

The key is to teach them to use that downtime productively.

A lot of kids aren't allowed by the teacher to use their downtime productively! If getting done early just means you're given more of the same work or have to sit silently and wait, why bother? They'd have to be idiots to agree to that system. Adults are usually given a lot more leeway than kids are in that regard.

And what about when the repetitive, boring work is assigned as homework? As far as I'm concerned, that's the kid's personal time that the teacher is cutting into. For what? More of the same ridiculous work that s/he gave the child all day long. Ugh!

The other issue is the age-appropriateness. A 12yo, say, is much more capable of putting into perspective boring, repetitive assignments and is much more capable of using the self-control necessary to complete said assignments. Early elementary school kids--even GT ones!--often do not have those same abilities. That's not related to character so much as it is normal child development. It's simply not fair to expect a 6 or 7 or 8yo to "buckle down" and practice good time management skills when they don't have those skills yet! We're supposed to be teaching those to them! And from what I've seen, the majority of kids will refuse to learn those skills--will in fact learn bad habits instead!--if we try to teach those skills through the eternal drill of things they already know.

I guess what I'm saying is that I think the principle you're citing is right, Austin, but the implementation of it just doesn't usually work with young GT kids instead of with adults. And in fact, it usually backfires!

But I think that's easy for an adult but much less so than a 7yr old. After spending 6hrs+ being unchallenged, then to come home to more of the same as homework, was just too much for him. And it never sunk in that the longer he balked, the less time he had for more fun things. But he just couldn't understand why he had to do it in the first place.

His teacher even noted that he would sit there forever doing a worksheet. Finally, she'd take it from him, incomplete. She'd then hand him a more challenging worksheet and he'd fly through it.

Tag-teamed that one, didn't we, Dazey! LOL!

Gotta love those crossposts!

LOL Yes!