Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Help Please, Bored Six Year Old

I am new to the board and from reading here, have so many questions. I feel like I have let my child down and hope we can recover ground.

My daughter is now six and in kindergarten because her birthday fell after the September 1 cut off. I had her tested for early entry kindergarten and she did well. Since her zone school was not very good, I opted not to send her there. Instead, she enrolled in a combined preK/K program last year. I was told that she could not enroll in first grade this year because of the birthday, so I opted for a Christian school kindergarten program.

I have serious concerns that she is not being fully challenged. Most of the kids started out learning letters and letter sounds. The kids are now beginning to read, but my child has been reading for almost two year now. From when she did the Woodcok Johnson for early entry, her math scores were very high. In spite of this,she is learning the same math as the other children.

I am a single mom and work with her in the evenings on enrichment activities, but I cannot facilitate a whole curriculum and work too. I feel like her potential is being wasted and have had a little of the pushy parent bit thrown at me by the principal. The good part is that her teacher is starting to see that her intellect and drive is her very own and not imposed by me.

I would appreciate any advice you all have on how to positively advocate for her educational needs, any programs that I could facilitate at home easily etc. The bad part is my daughter is starting to get bored at school and that is not what I want for her and that is not the child she is.

Momofonegirl

I wish I had answers for you. We were in the same position. However even with a Dec birthday - all the schools we talked to including public agreed to allow our dd to skip K. Looking back, it was a heartbreaking decision. Now, it seems insane that we thought of sending her to K. I think it is a quote from the davidsons that sending a good reader to K is torture. I'm not a personal fan of montessori but if there is a k-3 program it might let your child work up to their ability.

The struggle is - to the choir here I say - is getting straight A's ok if you didn't have to work for them. Schools are so caught up in the proper socializing of our kids - it seems education ends up on the back burner. And the real problem to me isn't that she is learning the same things as other kids - but it is style. typical teaching style I believe uses repetition which bores our kids.

I don't know what to tell you. Uh, but yet I thread away - nice huh? It simply sounds like she's not in the right class. She's still young... mid-year skipping seems icky. But can you fight for this for next year or afford other options. Any charter schools - someone who understands. I always got a laugh - we'd call a school and ask do you have gifted programs and will you allow a grade skip? Many would come back with "all our students are gifted". The most expensive one in town is the one that made me laugh the most - and I wouldn't say this to my friends off here but - it was a week later when they actually looked at the fax with her WPSSI and Woodcock/Johnson and said - yes certainly she can skip (despite prior claims of how it was so wrong and how all their kids/classes were like gifted programs).

Sorry, focus. My daughter turned 6 in dec. i feel your pain.

Copy the chapter on Pushy Kids not Pushy Parents (or something to that tune) from davidson's book or a number of books. Or go mainstream and give them a copy of an august time magazine that covered gifted kids.

I'm not going to be the best one to advise you, but I can at least offer some support and reassurance and commiseration.

I know how lonely it feels, but you're in the right place. There's so much good help here!

My best advice to you is to let go of the regret as soon as you can. If you're not dead, you're not done! I can say this because I have had many of the same feelings for many of the same reasons. My DS is 6.5 and we went through this exactly at the start of the year, when he was newly 6 and starting 1st grade. You DD will recover. They're resiliant at this age, and you are such a good mom for catching the problem so early! Please stop kicking yourself long enough to pat yourself on the back, okay?!

(It's okay if you continue kicking the school, however! Figuratively, at least.)

Plus, since you can't turn back the clock, it's best to get through that (natural) mourning period for what is lost as quickly as you can, so that you can get to the more productive phase of this process--a process that we ALL go through, BTW: taking action!

Lots of people afterschool, so there's lots of help available there. What is your daughter ready for in math and reading? What can she do now? Details will probably help. Would she do better with a workbook or a computer program or manipulatives like tangrams?

As for the advocacy: I guess my first question is what do you think should be done with/for/about her? What does your gut tell you? What do you want? What would your ideal educational situation look like for her?

Starting there is about the easiest place, I think. Then consider what is possible in your school system. Do they ever grade skip? How would you feel about that? Do they allow subject acceleration? Do they have a GT program, and if so when does it start, is it likely to be good enough for her to make it worth trying to get her in, etc.?

Then consider alternatives to your school system. Are there other schools available in the area that might be a better fit for her? How about homeschooling? (Harder to do as a single parent, but it can be done, especially if you can find good childcare help.)

Above all, keep your chin up. You've just taken the first step on a long and twisty path, full of lovely high peaks and dark, sad valleys. It's normal to mourn the simple education you thought your child would have once you realize that NOTHING is going to be easy! But the big, bright spot is that you're coming out of a valley now, and now you'll have some great companions along the way.

Thanks for the reply. I am so new to this, what is the WIPPSI? What is the title of the Davidson book?

My daughter is able to read chapter books and can read and comprehend most things. She has good decoding skills and good vocabulary skills. As far as math, she is ready to learn more complex number operations and understands the concepts of multiplication. She picks up a lot very quickly and if exposed picks it up quick.

What is a DD or DS?


She is not in the public school system since our zone school is not good at all. The GT program begins in third grade and it is good so I am told. How can homeschooling be acccomplished if I work full time?
As far as the ideal educational setting, I want faster paced instruction.

Sorry! DD is darling daughter and DS is darling son. (DH, then, is a hubby, and XH is an ex-husband! And i had to ask, too, so I should know better than to use it without defining first.)

The WPPSI is an IQ test for preschool children.

BTW, I'm not necessarily *recommending* homeschooling, but I just wanted to note that if you teach her after work and on the weekends, it is possible to manage. I wouldn't call it ideal in your situation, but then again, if you consider how much time you're already spending on "enrichment activities" (i.e., actually teaching your child something she doesn't already know!), you can probably see that you wouldn't have to do *that* much more to just teach her. (Plus she wouldn't be tired out from a long boring day of school by the time you get to her.) Don't mistake homeschooling for "school at home." It doesn't have to be a 7-hour day every day for her to learn more with you than she's learning at the school she's at now. Right? That's certainly what we found.

Does that make more sense?

Thanks for the link and the explanation. From reading the links, it looks like my next step needs to be formal testing. We have Woodcock Jonson results from over two years ago and something I read said that they could not be older then two years.

It looks like I can get testing for about $700. Does this sound reasonable?

The 2 year limit applies to application to Davidson, but they ask for only one of the tests to be taken in last 2 years. That said the school may not be too happy with achievement tests which are 2 years old, they will not tell them what she knows now. You may first want to talk to school and see if they would be willing to test her and use any achievement test they would be happy with, like end of 1st or 2nd grade test. What does her teacher think about her?

The price of the test depends on where you live. It would be a little bit less that what we paid for 1 test (IQ and achievement would be double), but we live in quite expensive area.

Her school does not test in K. She took the Slosson to get admitted, but the school did not share the scores. Her teacher says that she is the model student and learns very fast. In her conference, she did indicate that DD did not mind reviewing material which tells me that she is not challenged.

I briefly looked at the criteria for DYS and I am not saying that DD is in the 99th percentile, though I do not know. Have you done the DYS process? What difference has it made? The only advantagedI see is that the school may be more apt to listen to DYS than parents.

Ask for the scores. Our school tested our DS and didn't share the scores with me either, but you have the right to know your child's information, including test results.

As for DYS, I think one of the biggest benefits is the connection with other parents and HG+ kids. True peers for these kids are hard to come by, and DYS can be a big help with that.

I also covet the free counseling about the child's education. (We applied to DYS in Feb. and hope to be admitted soon. Fingers crossed!) The older your DD gets, the more problems you're likely to have with placement, and I know that having a free expert on tap is sounding like heaven to me right now.

There's also financial assistance from DYS available for things like private schools and computers (etc.) for families that qualify.