Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy feeling overwhelmed!!

A link you may be interested in- "Faster isn't Smarter"
http://mathsolutions.com/documents/9781935099031_message18.pdf

Cathy Seeley is Past President of National Council of Teachers of Mathematics- her logic seems to play better, in my experience, with teachers than gifted research for whatever reason.

Thanks CAMom!! Interesting article

CAMom, do you have the book? The Amazon review says that she answers this question, "This book of forty essays includes topics for new teachers and veterans on everything from specific mathematical material to general ideas, such as, it is a teacher s job to keep students interested, or is boredom a developmental stage?". What was her professional opinion?

Oh, yeah, apparently these fact sheets are sometimes optional, if you go and speak with the teachers, etc. We have 'team' meetings for my ds10 sometimes and early on this year the math teacher just dropped these annoying, discouraging math fact sheets. At least in his case they do more harm than good.

I have to highly recommend epgy beginning algebra as a way that my ds10 has been able to get back to liking math, at least compared with other school work.

Bone is a great series -- a very high quality graphic novel with interesting stories. There are at least 10 books. For novels, has he tried Percy Jackson? I've not read them, but according to my son, the main character is a very smart boy with ADHD and dyslexia. His difficulites in the "real" world turn into "gifts" in some sort of parallel mythical universe. They are pretty long novels, but my son really liked them. Hunger Games and the Aretmis Fowl books were also popular.

Wow - that is some high working memory score! That's a great thing to have with ADHD because even when he get's distracted, he's probably still able to keep some of his mind on task. Also the Verbal and Perceptual scores are very high, but not so high that that mismatch between him and the other kids in his gifted class would have to be a problem in itself, it still might be, but less likely. Try to get allowed to sit and observe that gifted day and see what is going on in there - true intellectual challenge for your son or more of 'this is boring, I can get more from causing trouble than from keeping this seat warm.'

I agree that 100 might not qualify as a Learning Disability in some school because it is average, but I call that a 'bottleneck' as it sure feels like a LD to your son! So that means that every time he has to work on 'timed math facts' he has to face feeling "Maybe I'm not really smart after all."

If you can get your son alone and connected, it would be great to ask him about how he sees the similarities and differences between himself and his sister. It may be that because she is a girl, she 'doesn't count.' Or not. Is he older or younger? In the US, in most families, if only one child is 'family-identified' as gifted, then that is a boy. Of course the one exception I know is a family with 3 ADHD Gifted boys and one gifted daughter - in that family it was the girl who got all the parental 'certification' for smartness.

Anyway - lots of 'unusually gifted' kids I know have very little interest in jumping through hoops for good grades at school. And lots of 'unusually gifted' kids do well in school, and don't even seem to notice that there are hoops to jump through. So much has to do with personality. Kids with 2E issues seem to find the hoops quite noticable!

Love and More Love,
Grinity

Oh boy, do I ever feel where you are coming from. I often feel like I am letting my DD8 down or failing her in some way. She was identified as PG last year to our complete surprise. We thought it was just her ADHD.. and to some extent her issues in school do stem from that. Our biggest struggle is that she is the most unmotivated smart child in the history of the world. She does not want harder school work or different school work. She hates what she has to do now. She gives the bare minimum that is required, and that is with much encouragement. Her school is happy to challenge her but she wants no part of it. She would rather focus on recess and playing with her friends. On one hand we are happy that she has great relationships with her peers and is well-liked. On the other, I feel like we are failing her somehow.

DD's psychologist is a big proponent of following the child's lead. She said that we need to focus on her interests at this point in time and forget about the word 'potential'. It is DD's choice as to what she will ultimately do with her abilities. I am trying my best to be supportive of keeping her a normal and happy kid at this point. I think parenthood is fraught with doubt and worry that we are not doing the right thing. I wish you luck with your journey.

I don't have it but I've been debating buying it! Our library doesn't have it and I can't get it on interlibrary loan either. I need to just suck it up and buy it because I've used several of her essays in working with my school's teachers and in advocating for my DS.

Are you sure we don't have the same kid? Research the issue of underachieving gifted kids. It really helped me. I also had to determing that my son is an intrinsic learning and couldn't give a flip what other think about him. He does not suffer fools lightly (takes after mom) I have to be careful that if he feels a teacher doesn't know their material he tunes out and becomes an issue. Does he throw out the "its too hard" excuse? This was so funny from when he was talking physics but doesn't know facts. The whole automaticity of facts can be an illusion. I learned that sometimes our kids are busy trying to entertain themselves by doing it in some long abstact way instead of playing the game.

I don't know Kathleen'smum....I love the idea of following a child's lead, but in the end I'm more of a 'supported push' type parent. Afterall - our kids won't know that we believe in them if we don't push from time to time. And what about environment? If all a child is ever surrounded with is kids who don't have her potential, then who will she look to as a clue to what is possible? I think one of the key things we miss as gifties is a reasonable peer group to compare ourselves to. And for our daughters, what about sexism, or any possible 'natural' tendency of females to blend in and not make waves? Expectations for females are lower enough in some cultures that what if 'following her lead' is just 'following her perceptions of artificial limits?' See the problem? But I agree that forgetting about the word 'potential' is a good idea - but that still leaves goals like 'getting to know one's true self through hard work' and 'learning how to engage with the challenge of learning material at the top of ones readiness level.' These are goals for all children - it's just that the ND kids get them without anyone having to articulate and plan and scheme. By definition, yes?

Love and More Love,
Grinity