Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Any suggestions appreciated for behavioral issues.

Seeing you and Crisc struggle reminds me of our last fall. DS5 (at that time) was in K Montessori at that time. We hit quite a rough spot. At the beginning I thought it was all due to him having no current obsession. He just got over his huge geography stage and there was no new interest on the horizon. Usually as long as his brain is busy he is pretty good otherwise he tries to use his brain power to get into mischief and trouble.

That was all I thought about it when it started but things got much worse than usually. The kid had me in tears on a few occasions and trust me it's not easy to get me crying. He never acted out at school but he was a terror at home. One of his worst incidents happened about 2 weeks before he asked to be homeschooled. A week after that I upset his teacher (another Crisc's post) and a few weeks later we had him finally tested.

Things did eventually get better, he got more challenging work at school and calmed down. He got into math (after the testing, of course) and things were sort ok in winter.

The thing is that I never realized that the school could be the culprit. I though that perhaps somebody was bulling him and quizzed both him and his brother about it. It didn't really occur to me that the school might have caused all that. I considered pulling him out for a few days and see if he was better but he was so awful at home that I really didn't want to try that and loose the few peaceful hours when he was at school.

I completely forgot how bad he got. This really wasn't a typical behavior for him and now it seems impossible to even imagine that he behaved like that. He gets in trouble these days too but it's very different from then. A few months ago I was looking for an old post on my blog and came across this stage. I couldn't believe that I didn't put two and two together. I still don't get how I could have missed that. If any of you told me that in last month that your child
1) faked being sick
2) has been acting horrible at home
3) asked to be homeschooled
I would tell you that chances were quite good that the school was the main reason for all that.

May be if you are in the middle of this you don't see it. I wasn't new to gt, I should have known better. I didn't have his tests scores in my hands yet but I knew he was gt. Perhaps because the school did give him better material than he would have gotten in PS K I thought it was ok. There were a few new things he got to learn (like another language and such) there and he was slowly getting moved up in math.

I should have pulled him then but I didn't. I freaked out when he asked to be hs. It was obvious enough to him or anybody who talked to me at that time. At the end I gave him a few days to think about it and told him that we would do it if he insisted. He changed his mind. I guess because I did look quite shocked and unprepared.

JBDad and Crisc, chances are your children have really hard time at school. I don't think 6 is a bad age. I think it's more about your children's first year in a f/t school. The kids realized that being at school is no fun that they are asked to do things which are boring and make no sense to them. They don't see the point in doing so. They just got back from a Christmas break which might have made things even worse by highlighting the difference between free unstructured time and school where almost nothing interesting is done. DS was 5 at that time and only in p/t K I don't even want to think how things would have turned out if he had been going f/t.

May be the reasons are different or there is more to it but I wanted to offer my point of view and personal experience.

Yup. I completely agree. We hit F/T 1st grade with no differentiated work, and the dam burst.

At least our DS was VERY clear about what the problem was. He left no doubt. He is his mother's son, I fear...

Ya' know how some kid's 'fit' certian parenting books? ((humor alert))

To me this sounds like a kid who has read Dr. Sylvia Rimm's 'Why Bright Kids Get Poor Grades.'

I have a love/hate relationship with this book. On one hand it has plenty of great parenting advice that specifically appliest to bright and gifted children. On the other hand, she spends 381 pages on 'it's all your fault' and then on page 382:



Imagine that!

I still find the book very useful because once you have a noncompliant defiant kid, you still have to parent it, even if the cause is school, and you have no particlar parenting problems. Mercy Me!

Remember that when Rimm talks about gifted kids, she is talking about the top 2 or3%. She is well aware of LOG, but sticks to advice that mainstream parents need. If a this is true for a kid who is '1 out of 50' then how much more true is it for kids who are 1 out of 500? Add in the frustration of being surrounded by age-mates who 'only want to play baby games' and you have the recipie for a 'I'm OK, You're NOT OK' worldview. IMHO.

So is it gifted-related?
You have two choices:
1) assume it isn't and get very sharp in the parenting and maybe things will resolve and maybe they won't.
2) suspect that it is and get very sharp in the parenting and maybe things will resolve and maybe they won't, but hold on to great hope that getting him in a more challenging educational environment will make a huge difference.

I'm betting on #2.
Best Wishes,
Grinity

JBDad, we had problems with our dd starting when she was about 6 that lasted months. She was in 1st grade and because she wasn't used to FT school, I didn't schedule any other activities that she usually does throughout the year, just kept violin. I wanted to give her a chance to adjust to all day at school. We started having problems at home. She became so angry and we couldn't figure out why. Our well adjusted, well mannered 6 year old just started acting out, being openly defiant, tried to argue about EVERYTHING and would throw the worst tantrums (screaming, hitting, etc.). We would punish the bad behavior, but it just kept re-occurring and we were at a loss for what to do. We finally figured out that she was so terribly under-challenged at school and on top of that she didn't have her usual after school activities, yet she was too tired when she'd get home, so she never wanted to do the enriching activities we used to do during K. Eventually everything worked itself out. Her school step up the challenge a bit, we keep her busy after school with a variety of activities and with age she's less tired by her day at school so we do enriching activities too. We haven't seen that angry side of her since. I hope that once the GIEP is in place you'll see some improvements. You're not alone!

Hi JBDad, and Crisc,

Hope your troubles are abating a little? I've been reasonably open about ours, and in response it turns out that a couple of friends are having similar issues with their sons. The parents, parenting styles and boys are all quite different, but all kids are definitely bright, all around the same age, all having some unhappiness at school, and all saving the aggressive behaviour for home (though disruptive or inattentive at school). That one of these boys was behaving this way really surprised me - he's such a gentle soul.

This doesn't really help in terms of solving the problem, but knowing that the behaviour is less unusual than I had thought did calm me down a little. Calmer is always good. I'll need it - it's apparent now that NSDH isn't up to any sort of consistency, and it doesn't look like we can get the boys into the GT school this year - they could give a place to DS6, but not to DS4 (they're already overloaded with siblings of existing students).

Best wishes,
bk

BK -
Is it worth sending DS6 this year and hoping to send DS4 next year? Or send DS6 and find some other accomidations for dS4?
Just a thought (maybe better to start a new topic for this question, yes?)
Grinity

Well... today was a very, very good day. DS had a very positive report in his behavior chart from school. It was nice to see the little guy get a win today. Everyone needs a win every now and then...

JB (hoping that this wasn't only due to the 2 hour snow delay...)

So a good strategy might be to do a snow dance every day?

We took route number 2 last year, when ds-then-5 was alternating between "beast-child" and "defeated sad child" after starting K.

When defiance and minor fighting started to crop up at school, we instituted a zero-tolerance policy for school behavior, and stiff and enforced consequences to behavior he *knew* was inappropriate, ie looking a teacher square in the eye and saying "No!" when told to use the bathroom. He knows better, and I don't care how bored you are -- you still need to listen to and respect your teachers. His immediate behavior improved ... he was still *not happy,* but at least he wasn't coming home with negative behavior reports every day, which weren't helping his self-esteem. Making him responsible for his actions at school helped him with the lack of control he was feeling -- and my ds likes to feel in control! So the power to avoid an early bedtime and possibly earn an ice-cream trip at the end of the week was a big motivator for ds.

By late October last year, we started realizing what the real culprit was (and yes, testing was a *huge* eye-opener) and working on it. We upped the challenge level at home, with Beestar.org and "tricky maths" worksheets and word games, basically un-afterschooling, if that makes any sense! And we started advocating with the school; when that was going nowhere we started searching for alternative schooling arrangements.

It did become clear, with added challenge at home and the enormous turn-around in attitude with more-appropriate placement this year, that under-challenge *was* the problem last year. He couldn't stand not using his brain all day; it was frustrating to him in a way he couldn't put words to. He knew the other kids enjoyed it, he knew he "should" enjoy it, but he didn't. And he didn't have the words to tell us what was wrong at the time. Now he says he likes his school (it has the word "Academy" in the name of the school) because, in his words, "It's an academy and you learn new things at academies."

Sooo ... for us, taking a two-pronged approach worked well. We had to assume it *wasn't* GT-related, because GT-related or not the behavior was inappropriate. But we got to work on solutions for the GT factor.

I think that is a post full of loads of BTDT wisdom, Mia. Thanks for sharing that.

Treat the symptom even as you try to fix the root cause. Smart!