I posted on other threads about dd9 earlier in the year. We were preparing to take her out of 5th grade to homeschool, but wound up keeping her at the same school due to some serious assistance from the GT coordinator who really likes dd.

Dd was already in the GT reading class and seems to be doing well in there this year. She got a B in the GT reading class in 4th grade, I'm sure somewhat due to doing the mere minimum and somewhat due to reading being her weakest subject. I wasn't horribly concerned either way and she seems likely to have an A at this point in that class.

This year, she is being subject accelerated into a 6th grade math class taught by the same teacher. The school year started off well with dd's MAPs scores in both reading and math having come up significantly from the end of last year and her having done quite well in math class on the first unit. The GT teacher told me that she was doing really well at P-T conferences.

Dd's confidence has soared; she has a new group of friends; other than one test she brought home on which she got a C+ and on which she told me that she understood the mistakes she had made, all seemed well.

So, come yesterday, I get a call at home from the same GT teacher. Dd is apparently not turning in work, spending much of class time talking with other kids, and not paying attention in class. Her overall class grade is now hovering around a C+. As the teacher and I discussed, we aren't necessarily expecting an A right off the bat, but dd doesn't appear to be trying and part of her low grade is lack of effort and lack of completing work.

The initial plan had been to keep her in the class if the work was too hard and have her work independently on EPGY in order to save her the embarrassment of moving back to the 5th grade class. That, however, was a back up plan if dd was working and couldn't do it. I see no reason why she cannot do the work. She is hiding things from us and not asking for help when she doesn't know something. She has a persecution complex where she insists that we are yelling at her if we even try to explain something to her and she blames everyone else for her problems or tells me "so and so got a 79% too," which is true but irrelevant to her situation.

I did, of course, have a good talk with her last night and went over one small piece of math with which she needed some assistance. She seemed to understand it quickly once I explained it, but it is hard to trust her b/c she has been lying to us and seems to find it shameful to not understand anything or have to do any work.

She should be able to be at a B easily by the end of the quarter in 2.5 weeks if she starts doing the work and doesn't bomb the last test, which is what I told her both the teacher and I expect for her to stay in this class.

I am not sure what bothers you, the grades or the lying?

It seems that she can do the work but the trend is that she is not motivated to do her best. That would be the problem I would focus on and try and solve.

Ren

Yes, that's exactly what is bothering me. She is abusing the privilege she has been given and she wants the positive accolades that come with being accelerated, but she doesn't want to work for it. She just wants everything handed to her. It is a personality characteristic that is not at all positive and which we have had a really hard time combatting. Putting her in non-accelerated classes hasn't worked either b/c it reinforces in her mind that she is stupid and her achievement scores sink. She feels better about herself and gets higher achievement scores when in advanced classes, but she is unwilling to do the work.

I think what you are experiencing is her new found friendships and socialization taking priority over the work. I'm reading between the lines here but from what you wrote it seems that this is new to her and perhaps last year she didn't really have any close friends or if she did they were not to the level of excitement that she is experiencing now with the older kids. We all know it isn't uncommon for GT kids to be attracted to older kids and it looks like your daughter is one of those and is focusing her attention on that. So and so who got the 79% might be one of her new close friends and she might be sabotaging herself to ensure she stays in the good graces of her friends. She doesn't want to be the best for fear that she will alienate her new friends?

My angle of approach would be to talk about it and help her make the connections that if she doesn't perform she won't be in the class with her new friends.

Dd is very, very extroverted which I have come to recognize as making this all a lot more difficult for us. She has never had friends at this school and, yes, this is the first year where she is being accepted by the "smart" kids and has a group of friends she really enjoys not just kids she hangs out with in order to avoid being alone at lunch. And, yes, the other kid who get a 79% on that one test is her new best friend.

Oh Cricket, I feel your pain. This has to be a hard position to be in. (I'm pretty sure I did this to my parents.)

Really, at this point, what are the options you have?
- DD could stay in the class, regardless.
- You could keep her in the class and communicate with the teacher on a daily basis so DD can't hide things. This could be ramped down as she improves her study skills.
- DD could be moved back to her other class.
- DD could be "sentenced" to EPGY.

Either of the last two options would separate her from her new friends, and not necessarily be the best fit educationally.

Maybe she needs to understand that she's putting you in this position and that if she wants to stay in the class with her friends, she needs to work for it. This may not work with your DD, but I know it will for some kids.

This is hard, but being challenged now will give her better study skills later on.

I believe, having spoken with the teacher, that EPGY is off the table. That was for if dd worked hard and couldn't keep up (to avoid the embarrassment). B/c she isn't working hard and her grades are suffering due to goofing off (plus she's creating problems for other kids by talking to them throughout class), her options right now are as follows:
- Bring her grade up to a B or get it awfully close and show the teacher that she is working hard to improve and stay in the class; or
- Go back to the straight 5th grade math class.

I think if I were her, it would be worth it to me to put some work in to get to stay with my friends.

You could ask DD what she needs from you in order to help her. That would open the door to daily communication with the teacher. But I'd make it clear it's her decision and her responsibility. If she hides things or doesn't do the work.....

Sounds like she needs to know the rules and the boundaries. Does the teacher enforce boundaries in class or has DD been skating because she doesn't feel that it matters to the teacher? Sometimes kids may need it explained that following the rules matters, even if it doesn't look like it does. Conflicting signals may have led her astray.

Good Luck!

I hope that it is worth it for her. I believe that it is, but she has somewhat of a victim mentality where she thinks that there is nothing she can do to make stuff work -- it must just be too hard and she isn't smart enough b/c she can't get an A without paying attention and doing the work. That really bothers me and is something we have been working on for some time.

The teacher has, apparently, spoken with her but said that she does handle dd in a "gingerly" fashion. I suspect that is b/c dd cries when confronted and is sensitive. She really does feel bad, but she doesn't have enough of an internal locus of control to feel like she has the power to change things when it appears to me that the control lies entirely with her.

I'll let you know in a few weeks how the quarter ended.

I haven't read it yet, but I will - thanks ! I just majored in Sociology and Public Health in undergrad and grad school so I took enough classes that dealt with health beliefs and psychological ideas that I'm familiar with the concept of locus of control.

I think this is something we all have to teach early on and stay with it. Like dieting.

I spend time with DD on piano practice and telling her that she cannot quit because it teaches her discipline and she has to work to do things well, not just good because it comes easily to her.

She said, about a week ago, that she didn't want to go to Harvard. I said that was OK, she didn't have to have nice things, she didn't have to travel and she didn't have to have choices on what she ate. She turns 6 tomorrow but I want her (since she is so spoiled) to start making connections about having what she has and what it takes to get them. I repeat the message at least once a week during piano practice.

I focus that she has to learn to work at things and strive to be as good as she can possibly be. I said no one is great without practice. A lot of people can have talent and be good easily but no one is great without the practice. She was skipping rope and getting frustrated that she couldn't do it fast. Everywhere I see the attitude of "why isn't this coming easily?" that too many gifted kids fall into.

I hope my strategy works. It is so, so trying. When she goes off to college, I am off for a 2 week stay at a spa.

Ren

Please tell me you aren't telling a 5yo that unless she goes to Harvard, she's not going to be able to have nice things or travel?

I do tell mine that she needs to either pick a career path that supports her in the lifestyle to which she wishes to be accustomed, or a spouse who will do the same. But there's nothing magical about Harvard for getting you there. My Ivy degree got me a space in my parents' un-airconditioned attic, and an $7.50/hr job through a temp agency.

Not to mention that a kid with a stellar application still has no guarantees when it comes to the Ivies. Harvard had an 8% acceptance rate last year, and the vast majority of the 92% they didn't take were both highly qualified and completely capable of doing the work.

Okay, so having read the article CFK linked, I am still at a loss as to what to do other than what I have already been doing. I am familiar with the Learned Helplessness model (studied it in grad school). I haven't done anything differently w/ dd9 than I did with dd12 and dd12 is very internally motivated and believes that she can control the outcomes.

Dd9 epitomizes someone who believes she is helpless. For that matter, dh does too. He's a huge pessimist who thinks that the world is out to get him, but dd is my focus at this point, not him.

I have spent years telling her that effort is more important than ability assuming that there is no major intellectual disability involved -- which there isn't in her case. We've tried getting her into classes in which she has to exert some effort but have not thrown her in over her head as far as I can tell.

She has had some very bad schooling experiences, but there is nothing I can do about things that happened in the past at this point. I really do believe that her 3rd grade teacher spending much of the year telling dd that she was just a good guesser and not that able did a lot of damage to her self image. She's really never been the same child since that year, but again it's in the past.

She has had some non-academic successes in the past year in terms of lead roles in musicals through the theatre group she's involved with and placing in the top 10 in the state in a pageant she somehow talked us into letting her enter last summer (I'm really not a pageant person!). She attributes the musical roles to all of the other kids being really bad singers, not to her effort. Honestly, I can't say that she is doing anything to get these roles other than having a good voice and acting ability, though, without any serious practice.

Any ideas other than continuing to harp on the kid that effort and desire to learn is what matters here?

Well, this is just my opinion, but it seems to be a bit early to be planning her college choices. Did you mean that if she doesn't want to go Harvard , you'll withhold vacations and other things? Or were you saying that only people who go to Harvard can choose their foods and take a vacation? (Added) By this, I mean, that only Harvard grads will earn enough to do these things?


Maybe she doesn't want to be great.

Val

When my kids do something they thought they'd never do, I make a reasonably big deal out of it. The speech always goes something like, "Wow! You thought you'd never be able to do that and you did! See what can happen when you don't give up?!?"

Then, the next time they're feeling defeat before they've really tried, I remind them of the time(s) that.... It seems to help.

Val

It could be, as others are saying, that she's dumbing down to fit in, but putting this together with other things I recall you saying about her, I wonder if this may be more about home? Maybe she's feeling something like that she's expected to be brilliant but that she isn't good enough? It's clear from your word choice that you're feeling pretty frustrated with her, and your highly sensitive DD is obviously aware of that. Clearly you have to do something about the acute situation in this class, but I think I might be trying to deal with that in as low-key a way as possible, while giving her lots of lots of reassurance that she's loved and valued for herself, in ways that are not praise for anything and don't have anything to do with her being good at anything. I'm sure you're sending that message anyway, but it seems possible to me that she isn't receiving it.

Other people have commented on other aspects of what you wrote here, Ren, but I can't let this one pass. Please, please, don't teach your daughter dieting. Teach her healthy eating, teach her about the obesogenic society and how to counteract it, by all means, but don't set her up for anorexia any more than she's inevitably already set up for it by circumstance.

Since my kids were small, I have taught them how important it is that we don't squander a gift we've been given, but I have also made sure they know that how they choose to use their gift has to be in a way that brings them fulfillment. The only advice I can add is to be very careful to separate out your own dreams and beliefs about what it would mean for your daughter to succeed and what she actually wants to do to be successful.

Disrupting class, not turning in homework - those should be dealt with as behavior issues with whatever punishment any of your children would receive for not behaving appropriately in class, in my opinion. But the lack of motivation - that can often be a sign that a child is showing passive resistance to being pushed in a direction they didn't want to go.

I'll give more thought to whether we are pressuring her. The problem is that she isn't happy in the non-accelerated classes. When we don't push for her to be placed in accelerated classes with the school or tell her that we expect her to work hard, she doesn't do much and winds up in the average groupings.

If she were feeling fulfilled there and had friends that would be one thing. However, she's spent the past two years asking me to take her out of this school and being very lonely b/c she has no friends. She doesn't learn much in the way of work ethic in non-accelerated classes and the kids she meets there are people with whom she hasn't seemed to develop a real connection.

This year is the first time in years I can remember her really being happy with school. She has friends and the way she presents herself is evidently different. She just seems more confident and happier. It is hard to explain.

I really feel that having her in this math class has made a lot of the difference for her. As I said, I really think that she wants to be viewed as intelligent by her peers and to be accepted by the other kids who fall into that group. I wish that she wasn't so worried with what everyone else thought.

We're in a tough spot where we either risk pressuring her b/c we believe she is better off emotionally as much as academically when in the GT programming or we remove all pressure and watch her self image wilt b/c she feels like the stupid sibling b/c everyone at school knows that her older sister skipped a grade and she isn't doing anything like that. This seems like the first time where she hasn't felt like she is in her sister's shadow.

I really don't compare the kids at home. I think that the comparison is coming from dd herself and from her perception of things that other kids say.

Just one thought that others haven't touched on, but how did you handle the lying? I was wondering if you have included consequences for that behavior, or if you feel it was because she didn't want you to know for some reason (not sure if the lying was about homework being done, grades, etc?).

Dd feels pretty bad at this point. What I am gathering in trying to look at this through a lens of compassion is this:

Dd is already much younger than the other kids and this is her first year accelerating whereas the other kids have mostly been in accelerated placement for 1-2 years.

They are moving through the curriculum quickly. In the past five weeks, they have covered graphs (bar, circle, x/y axis), samples and biased samples, other aspects of probability and stats, scientific notation and converting btwn that & std notation, exponents, decimals (adding, subtracting, dividing, multiplying), and possibly some other items in those same general areas.

Some of this stuff I honestly think could have been taught in earlier grades, but Everyday Math doesn't teach division beyond the real basics prior to 6th grade, for instance.

So, there's a lot of new material and dd didn't expect not to know anything. She froze up and got scared when there were things she didn't know how to do and kind of stopped doing the work.

The lying entailed the teacher giving her work to do and bring back which she simply didn't do and then, obviously, didn't turn in and her hiding quiz and test scores from me that caused her grade to drop from an A to a C+.

She was embarrassed and didn't want to ask for help. We do seem to be seeing an attitude adjustment so I think that the game plan is to have her study for the next unit test (as opposed to not even telling me there is a test coming up) and see how she does on that. She's being pretty contrite which I hope continues.

I'm not going to come down too hard on her about lying at this point b/c I think that it was done out of fear and embarrassment moreso than being truly lazy. (and she feels bad enough as it is right now)

Hooray! I'm glad to hear that it's more of a learning opportunity than her unwillingness to work.

I guess this is exactly what you wanted with the placement. It's hard on her now, but she's going to have to learn some skills that most kids already have: asking questions, asking for help, studying, etc.

This will serve her well in the future.

Sounds like you've done a great job in communicating with her.

I do have another question if anyone is willing to stick with me a bit longer. I've been conversing w/ dd's math and reading teacher, who is the school GT coordinator, via email to follow up on this.

One reason she feels that some of dd's test scores have suffered, and I see this too, is that dd doesn't tend to see what the test creator is asking. She has very divergent ways of looking at things. The teacher's mention of this was that:

"For example, one of the questions asked for the lowest altitude. The table had a column of highest altitudes and a column of lowest altitudes, and [dd] gave the lowest of the highest altitudes. Then, for the question about the range for the state with the greatest difference in altitudes (Alaska), instead of giving the range for Alaska, [dd] gave the range of highest altitudes. [Dd] may be thinking of online quizzes or riddles, where the answer is tricky, but test questions in school (including MAP, CSAP, ACT, etc.) aren't trying to trick kids with plays on words."

I don't agree about the online quizzes or riddles in that I can't recall a time when dd did any riddles of that sort online or off. She just doesn't look at things in a traditional way.

Any ideas on how to help her see what the test creator is likely getting at? When I discuss with dd why she got these types of questions wrong after the fact, she always understands, but it just isn't the way that she reads them when she is trying to answer them the first time.

Secondly, she is making sloppy mistakes such as overlooking one number or adding in one number too many when calculating the mean or range, for instance. She really is not detail oriented. I don't know if that is something one can correct.

She is extremely creative, though, and she is the type of kid who sees the answer without seeing the intermediary steps that I have to go through. She has a math sense that I just don't have. What she doesn't have that dd12 and I do is detail orientation and an ability to think in a convergent manner (which isn't all good, of course).

Cricket,

Sounds like DD has really thought about what happened and feels poorly about the situation - a great lesson in learning from a mistake. And I suspect the teacher will now communicate with you a bit more as well.

Re: your last post. I think school can be very hard for out of the box thinkers, which your dd sounds like. this is great because she will be the type of person who makes some amazing discovery that needs a creative solution, but may be harder in the present. Maybe you can talk to her and help her practice finding the "right" answer and teacher can reassure her that there are no tricks on the test (although it sounds like that isn't the case here).

Cat

We work on detail orientedness by encouraging DS to slow down and check work. Sometimes being forced to read the problem aloud helps him see his own thinking mistake (obviously this is better for homework than for in-school testing).

Logic puzzles are good for practicing this, especially ones that require inference to understand the clues-- they do have to read the clues several times to find all the relevant information. This slows them down and forces them to consider all the information before coming to a conclusion.

There's also a perspective-taking component to this; how is her perspective-taking generally? If you find situations where she's misreading people's intent, she may need a reasonable explanation that helps her see what's in other people's heads ("Oh, when people ask X, they're generally wanting to know [this particular kind of information]") Can you get the questions and do an "autopsy" on where her perception goes astray, and practice with her understanding what's meant?

I do think both the detail-orientation and the perspective-taking are teachable skills, though it will probably require a lot of commitment to get these skills generalized to all situations.

DeeDee

I doubt if you can change the fact that she's not detail oriented, but what you can certainly do is to help her learn techniques that lower the chance that she misses a detail which is important. For maths questions involving calculation, I've had some success lately in getting my DS in the habit of doing a "reasonableness check" after he's done the calculation. E.g., if the "mean" of a set of numbers lands below them all, that would fail his reasonableness check and lead him to realise that he'd missed a number out if he'd made that mistake.

There is such a thing called gifted underachievement. Gifted underachievement has become a growing phenomenon. I wrote an article that provides strategies to parents to help their children who are gifted underachievers. Read my article at

http://www.suite101.com/content/the-child-who-is-the-gifted-underachiever-a282346

Hopefully, this helps.

Cricket, My dd also is an "out-of-the box" thinker and has struggled with standardized tests. In every case when I have had the opportunity to see the question and ask her why she answered the way that she did, her response is a legitimate interpretation just not the standard one. I've read that this is not uncommon with gifted kids. I don't have any words of wisdom but know that your dd is not alone.

Dd is definitely out of the box. This was drilled home to me when she came home with a math exercise in 3rd grade that said something like, "how many rectangles in the figure at the right." On the right side of the page there was a figure that showed a rectangle cut into fourths with a cross drawn down the center. Dd answered "three." I was at a loss as to how she'd come up with that in that there were a minimum of four rectangles if you only caught the four quadrants. She was looking at the right side of the figure (i.e. - the figure at the right) rather than the entire figure and counting the two quadrant rectangles as well as the one bigger rectangle that enclosed both of those quadrants.

Gosh. Tell me about it. We signed up for Noetic Challenge Math this week and there was this straightforward math question that should have been a piece of cake.

A wire is 80inches long. Sarah (or a name like that) cut some out to make an equilateral triangle, one side with a length of 12inches. Doug took the remainder and made a rectangle that had a length of 15inches. How long was the breadth?

In a flash, DS wrote down 8.5inches. It should be 7. And why?

He said he suddenly thought 12inches was 12 dots (there was a question about dots earlier in the paper). Since this is an equilateral triangle, the next side should have 11 dots, and the third side 10, giving a total of 33 dots. This magically transformed into inches again. And doing the math, his answer was 8.5 ...

Didn't know what to say. He looked so happy to have stumbled onto an "interesting" question!