At a recent parent-teacher conference, my kid's teacher expressed some concern over her behavioral quirks. She sometimes focuses too intently on her work, especially when doing something creative or artistic, and loses awareness of her surroundings. She's often the last to realize her group was called or the bell rang and to get in line. She lacks time management skills, mostly because she gets absorbed in an assignment and loses track of time completely. She takes longer than other students to "switch gears" during transition periods. She once became obsessed with making an assignment "perfect" right down to the slant of the letters in her name.
This teacher had nothing but praise for my child, saying she participates well in discussions, is well behaved and social, and is doing "A" work, until I asked about giving her more challenging Math assignments. Then she brought up these "quirks" and told me challenging my daughter academically might stress her and make her worse. She used words like OCD and Autism.
Our daughter is very social, loves adventure and change in routine, and has no consistent ritualistic behaviors or tics to indicate OCD.
I believe what she has is a common symptom of gifted children -an overdelevoped ability to focus which can be exacerbated and misused when a child is bored or underchallenged. My mother and grandmother both claim these behaviors are common in the children of our family, showing up in more than half the kids to varying degrees. They call it "Absentminded Professor Syndrome".
Am I right? Are there any articles or studies that confirm my case? This teacher is using this to hold my daughter back academically, so any resources I could get to help inform her would be great.

Well, if the teacher is suggesting that suspected autism may be interfering with your child's emotional development to a great enough degree that her assignments need to be limited to prevent damage, I think that a full evaluation is in order.

Teachers aren't permitted to diagnose. If the teacher really thinks this is an issue, then a referral for a disability evaluation through the school should have been made immediately, and should be made now that it has been brought up to you as a reason to deny advanced work. Such evaluations typically include IQ and acheivement testing as well as other relevant diagnostic tests. These tests may well reveal that your daughter is exhibiting such perfectionism because she is seriously underchallenged.

Make sure whoever evaluates your child has read this book, or is at least familiar with the material in it.

That sounds like me. Whatever it is, it doesn't sound like OCD. The letter slant thingy sounds perfectionistic.

My wife periodically tries to amateur diagnose me with Asperger's syndrome. I point out that I am more likely to have inattentive-ADD than a form of autism. Mostly, I'm bored.

It doesn't sound like OCD to me either. It does sound rather like my own daughter, who does not have a dx (yet?)

chuckandchel,
you don't mention how old your daughter is but I suspect she is probably lower elementary years? Have you had your daughter tested privately in an effort to advocate for her giftedness? Do you live in a state that requires that they accommodate her for giftedness or at least test? Not that the school would readily accept it, but it’s a place to start.

Your family history info is very valid and sensible so keep it stuck in the front of your mind. There are lots of people who used to be kids just like the ones in school now who didn't go to school with NCLB and all the pharmaceutical possibilities there are these days, it's an entirely different world.

You can find lots of articles about gifted kids and the specific behaviors that they tend to have, and what they "look" like to people who aren't seeing the child in the gifted framework. This site has a database of them, and Hoagiesgifted does too, you could just search on different description/word combos. One of my favorites you could find by searching on something like “Characteristics of gifted children that can sometimes be seen as ‘problems’”

I agree with aculady that the teachers aren't permitted to diagnose and it's unprofessional (maybe even unethical?) for them to throw those words out to you in a conference. That would make me very uncomfortable even if they were otherwise praising her.

If the teacher is sincere, giving her the benefit of the doubt and the school wants to explore the possibility of these things, they need to something very formal and specific with gathering information. I’d even be cautious about that because if she is evaluated, their part is just to fill out checklists based on observation. It’s very subjective and they can say or check whatever they like. So if it’s as you suspect and it’s the worst case scenario, that they’re going this route to block gifted accommodations, they can align their feedback for the checklists to the one or more “diagnosis” they are thinking of.

The biggest thing to remember about diagnosis like autism, OCD, ODD, AD/HD and whatever they might come up with, with an otherwise healthy and adjusted child (perhaps not in school, but that’s environmental), is that there is no blood test or other medical/scientific method of determining whether a child or adult has that or not. And the child might show some indications of these issues in some environments or not. If you have diabetes or some medical issue that can be determined in a purely scientific way (blood tests, etc.), you don’t have it at work or school and then it suddenly disappears when you get home. But for the more behavioral type issues, you might be more defiant or “quirky” (nervous?) in some environments than others because you’re reacting to boredom, lack of fairness (gifted kids are big fairness radars), being misunderstood, etc. Also it’s the framework that the adult sees the child in that’s crucial.

If your daughter is actually doing something that they are genuinely concerned about or disrupts the class, they should be very specific, and you would need patterns observed over a period of time, like maybe six weeks or so? to really brainstorm or pinpoint a “real” problem. If you’ve never experienced your daughter doing the things they say it's something to do with school. If she does start carrying some behaviors over to home, she's likely getting more stressed out and I would keep a close eye on her. If that disappears over a long weekend, vacation, summer, again...environmental.

If it’s something with the math, find out what it was, very specifically. Try whatever the math was at home with your daughter. Maybe it’s just a new reaction to being challenged, like a perfectionism thing, if she learns quickly and isn’t used to it. Maybe she does have an LD issue that needs to be explored (not autism or OCD but something about transposing numbers, or not understanding it the exact way it was taught (needing a different approach) or a processing speed issue.

I think you brought up good points about how she is at home and adventurous, etc. When we got that “she has trouble with transitions” or otherwise inflexible line with our daughter, we’d always remember what a good traveler she is. Especially air travel, you know how unpredictable that can be and we’ve had some real whoppers of trips with delays. She never showed any signs of frustration, and thought the whole thing was fun and very exciting. The transition thing at school with alot of gifted kids is because they want to explore deeper or take more time, but the way they school day goes the kids have to move to the next thing as a group (a herd) and if most of the other kids are average they’ll just be okay with that, since the timing is designated for the typical student. So the gifted child will look unusual compard to the "norm" of the average group.

I’d caution you on a couple of items before finishing this long reply.

-If you really suspect that the school is going to go down this path to fight gifted accommodations, do your homework. Hopefully it won’t come to any battles...maybe the teacher in the next grade will jump on board with accommodating your daughter...but it doesn’t hurt to have all the information you can.

-Learn about your state, about whether they have to accommodate her giftedness or test her for this and any other rights you should know that you have.

-Find out ahead of time (if you can, the schools don’t like to let you know this) who in your area the school district uses for their psychological type testing. Is it just the school psychologist or do they also contract with a neuropsych/psychiatric person or practice in the area for more “serious” things? If you think it might come to that, that they might formally ask you or order you to have her tested for these more serious things they’ll set it up with their person who they have a contract with. Regarding this...assume that if you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to...but find out for sure (they might come back and say they will take you to a hearing but you can just keep dragging it out).

If you haven’t done so already, and you can afford it, you might want to have your daughter tested privately. If you do, try very hard to find someone with special knowledge of gifted kids, maybe even 2E kids, just to be on the safe side. Get a really good profile on her now, and you’ll probably guess that I’m going to say...don’t use the person/center who is contracted with the school district, if there is one! But they'll also give the checklist forms to the school, so just keep this all in mind.
Good luck.

I would sue her for practicing as a psychologist without the training.

Mine has similar issues, it was actually the school that suggested these may be traits of a gifted child. They did ask us to take her in for a psych eval to rule out ADHD, who did eventually assess her as being gifted. He actually recommended that we take her to see a local gifted specialist to help her with this and some other issues that she has resulting from her giftedness. Shame we can't afford it now that our insurance company won't cover it.

Absent-minded Professor Syndrome: I call this phenomenon "hyperfocus," and yes, it's very common in gifted people (at least by my own observation). And it turns out to be an incredibly useful skill, because how many times do we find ourselves needing to think clearly in a world full of distractions?

It also turns out to be useful to embarrass people. I'm an average pool player at best, but one day some practical joker I'd never met decided to grab my cue stick as I was lining up a shot. That maneuver put me in hyperfocus mode, and I proceeded to run the table.

So yeah, don't let the teacher convince you that a strength is a weakness.

As for time management skills... what early elementary-aged kid has that?

I'd also suggest that both the slanty-letters thing AND the difficulty-switching-gears thing are related to perfectionism, because maybe the reason she's having trouble switching assignments is because she wasn't happy with the previous one yet?

I agree.

Keep in mind that excusing quirks as simply being "related to giftedness" can mask real, treatable disorders. My DS was diagnosed late with Asperger's because everyone attributed his quirks to his giftedness, when there was a genuine problem staring them in the face. I'd love to have those years back as a re-do, because he'd have gotten therapy he could really have used, and his life and mine would have been easier.

Only a professional can tease this out for you. But if a teacher red-flags a child as different from peers in not a good way, I'd pursue it rather than fighting her on it.

DeeDee

This is interesting. I have a kid who often has trouble with transitions as well, but who is also a wonderful traveler. I would take her anywhere in a heartbeat.

We have often joked that our kids attention spans' are too long and that's our main problem with them.

Somebody has to have a long attention span...seriously!

There is a boy in my daughter's class with a "special ed" designation. He loves to hug but is only supposed to hang on until the count of 3. I saw him do this to my daughter and the teacher counted and after 3 he didn't let go and the teacher gave him his warning. He didn't let go. My daughter then hugged him harder and said, very politely but firmly, to the teacher (with her dagger eyes) "he can stop the hug when he is ready to stop the hug". Though technically she defied the teacher, if her classmate needed to "feel the love" (school can be a lonely place) and my daughter didn't mind why not? He wasn't hurting her.

In the past my daughter would have stuck up for him in some growly way, but she's not giving up her defense of what she thinks is right, she's just learning to do it with more grace and self-control. (phew)

My DS with Asperger's is a fantastic traveler as well. I have often thought that if we could just move to a new city every week, he'd do better.

This does not keep him from having trouble with other kinds of transitions, however. Being pulled away from something he's in the middle of is very hard for him. Or a disruption in the plan of the school day-- sometimes he handles it, sometimes it disappoints him too far and he is upset by it.

DeeDee

I second this.

Wouldn't travel generally be considered challenging for people with autism or Asperger's, though? A quick Google on Asperger's +travelling reveals tons of "survival tips."

I have a hugger who has trouble knowing where the line is. It's hard for me to get her to understand the difference between who she can and can't hug, when someone I have explained as not falling into the appropriate category decides to offer her a hug. All of my work is undone, and while they obviously meant no ill will, it's extremely frustrating for me.

It's lovely of your daughter to let him hug her as long as he wants to, but he'll wonder why the next person he hugs doesn't want to do the same.

My DD (who is not AS-ish at all) is a kid I'd describe as slow to warm to new situations, which often comes out as "has trouble with transitions." "Has low tolerance for expectations mismatch" is likely the real issue.

She is the best travel companion ever, and is totally unfazed by the vagaries of airline travel. I think it's that she makes no attempt to guess what the travel experience will be like, so has few expectations to be mismatched.

"I'm not sure you and I will be sitting next to each other on the plane" does not faze her. Grandpa (an authorized pickup person) picking her up from school when she thought it would be me created a tantrum of such proportions that the school declined to release her to him, and kept both of them in the office until they could get me on the phone.

Okay, maybe we all need to go on a trip together! This is actually a trait I really love in DD. She also is pretty much always willing to go anywhere and try anything, at any time. Her new thing is to want to try something she's never eaten before whenever we eat out. (At just-8, she now seems to be turning into the foodie I always suspected she had potential to be.)

There is no one feature or symptom that rules Asperger's in or out. Lots of people with autism have trouble traveling (those with sensory issues sometimes find noisy transit to be a problem) but many don't.

My DS is not even borderline-- he is unmistakably, definitely a person with AS. But he is truly happy being on an airplane to somewhere new, and a long delay in a smelly, noisy airport does not faze him. Go figure. Maybe because we took him places a lot as a baby?

DeeDee

I think the whole issue of transitions while traveling vs transitions in the classroom setting is comparing apples to oranges - I have three different kids with three different personalities and they are all over the board on transitioning, but traveling even when we've had to wait for hours due to cancelled flights etc has never been a transition issue... because we're usually going someplace fun, plus it's different and it's not school.

I agree with the posters above who mention that although a teacher isn't allowed to (or qualified to) make a diagnosis, there is good reason to pay attention to what the teacher has said is going on with your child - the teacher is spending a good deal of your child's day with them, and seeing them in an environment that you aren't (usually) seeing them function in as well as seeing many many other children function in the same type of situation. It's possible that the behaviors the teacher is seeing are due to gifted quirkiness but otoh the teacher may be seeing something else entirely.

Our ds' 2nd grade teacher tried over and over again to tell us she felt she was seeing signs of ADHD in our ds (or possibly IQ low enough he wasn't able to handle the classwork). We *knew* our ds was extremely high IQ both from living with him and from previous testing, so we immediately put off her concerns to a combination of teacher not liking him, classwork being too boring, visual-spatial thinking, and gifted quirky behaviors. Eventually we found out we were really, really, really wrong - ds has a relatively severe disability which was impacting him at school, and like Dee Dee, we wish we'd been open to what the teacher said the minute she first mentioned something - ds' previous teachers had also noticed signs of it and simply let him slide by because they realized he was very very smart. DS is *fine* and a-ok, but it would have been tremendously helpful to him (and to us) to have known earlier in his academic days that he was struggling and that we could have put accommodations and tutoring in place to help him out.

Chances are, with most kids, it's just gifted quirkiness - but there's still a chance that the teacher is seeing something beyond that. Looking into the possibility of something else isn't going to cause any problems and will at least give you data to take back to this or any other teachers who are tempted to suggest something is up in the future; overlooking something when there are signs is something you may later regret.

Best wishes,

polarbear

It really depends on the circumstances of the travel and the sensory and transition needs of the particular person with Apserger's or autism.

One of the possible symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome is "rigid adherence to non-functional routines". If a person with Asperger's is used to a very predictable daily schedule, and travel disrupts this (which it almost inevitably would), then I can see it being a huge issue. We never had a terribly regimented schedule, so this never became a significant problem for us. My son does hate it when someone changes plans or a schedule without telling him in advance, though.

Most of our travel has been done by car, and involves trips that end up at state or national parks, museums, and other types of places that he enjoys anyway. As far as my son is concerned, the trip itself is a great opportunity to either read for long periods, catch up on sleep, or ask questions and converse at length with us (while we are a captive audience) about all the new things he's noticing out the window, while still being in a controlled, familiar environment (our car) loaded down with pillows (a favorite sensory activity). He really enjoys going new places as long as he has someone else with him to help him navigate, and as long as the new places aren't disorientingly loud or too flashy/bright, and don't have smells that are too unpleasant to him. (He's considered becoming a perfumer at times just so that he has a fighting chance to get pleasant smells out into the environment). I think he'd hate air travel these days, with its long lines, crowds, loudspeakers, close contact with unpleasantly-scented people, and TSA checkpoints. Theme parks and other chaotic places are not favorites unless we choose dates carefully to minimize really oppressive crowds.

Kids who had greater sensory sensitivities and more rigid adherence to routines, or who had low receptive language, so that successfully preparing them for an upcoming trip would be difficult, would almost certainly be far more challenging to travel with.

Our DD was about 8mos old when DW enrolled in cooking school, so some of her earliest exposures to food involved things like mushroom risotto. DW would come home from school with her "classwork" in bins, and DD would earnestly greet her with, "Momma... NUM-NUM!!" She tried anything and everything.

So we figured she'd always be an adventurous foodie... imagine our surprise when she went through the typical picky phase around 2-6. I couldn't believe a child existed who would refuse to try caramel. Still, at least her picky phase was a lot better than most, since we'd already exposed her to a fairly large variety of foods. We have a neighbor whose kid only eats hot dogs, pizza, and chicken nuggets.

DD just turned 7, and she's showing signs of being completely over her picky phase. DW remarked that she never had to make a separate dinner for DD last week, and the one time we ate at a restaurant last week, she independently decided to taste my dish.

kikiandkyle,
I hadn't thought of it that way...I'll explain it that way so she'll follow the rule, that it's best overall for him to learn this. Because alot of the other kids complain to the teacher about the hugging I think my daughter is trying to make him feel better. I'm glad you mentioned it!

I didn't want to seem harsh! But I'm glad I managed to get the other side across. It's hard to tell your kids to not be affectionate

I totally admire your daughter's big heart and think she sounds so sweet. But as the mom of a kid with Down syndrome, it would be great if the teacher or you could somehow explain the reasons behind this rule in an age appropriate way. This can be a big issue with young adults with developmental disabilities out in the world and in the work place, and while it hasn't been an issue with my son yet I think it is great if they work on teaching appropriate social skills in elementary school. I know my son would love to have a friend like her--I love the spirit behind her actions.

I'll certainly speak to my daughter about it. She's almost always been in full inclusion classes and enjoys it but it takes special navigating on the teacher's part, and mine if I know what's going on and know what to do. In K they assigned her to help a girl learn her letters and my daughter, I heard after the fact, was really enthusiastic but ended up doing the work for her, and when the other girl's mother found out she, rightfully so, got upset because her daughter needed to do it herself to learn. So the teachers just cut my daughter out of the "program" all together and both girls were very sad. I asked them if they could just show my daughter "how to help" correctly and monitor rather than just cutting it out but they said it was too much management.

Thanks for letting me know.

I wanted to add again to the original post, that you might also want to explore having your daughter's hearing and eyes checked. My daughter has the type of sensitive hearing that when it gets too noisy or echo-y it's like she can't hear anything, and she does get "left behind". We even had a bad situation last year where her teacher left her out on the very noisy playground and she was locked out of the school since she was separated from her class. This of course is 100% the teacher's issue but it's scary when this can happen to your child.

You'd have to go to an ENT or audiologist type appointment, it's not the type of thing they check quickly in school where it's pass/fail.

Also my daughter's double vision was factoring into math issues where you have to keep everything lined up just so, also adds to coordination issues all over the place. Again, school checks or even ped appt checks don't always check for convergence.

It might not be the case with your daughter but it's my thought that it's better to look into these basic "organic" issues now and deal with them or rule them out (as the case may be) rather than letting things drag on. Hope this helps.

I don't think I explained my child's "trouble with transitions" well enough. It's not an emotional thing at all. She'll be absorbed in her work like all the other kids, and the teacher with call for her group to come up, or for the kids to get in line for the next class. She often doesn't hear the call because she's too intently focused and not aware of her surroundings. Then when she notices everyone around her moving, her brain needs a few seconds to switch gears and figure out what she needs for the next class. Other kids just get up, grab their stuff, and go the second they are called. So my child is often the last in line. If she's rushed by the teacher, she either forgets something or just takes EVERYTHING.

By contrast, she is NEVER late or unprepared for school. Her natural tendency is to be well organized and get ready early so she can take her time. She is on the couch fully ready and watching cartoons at 7:15 every morning, waiting for me to tell her it's time to go. She wants to get to school as soon as the doors open so she has time to organize her stuff, turn in anything that needs turned in, and relax and talk to friends before school starts.

After school, she's given up on trying to bring the right things home in the rush to get out the door with the teacher reprimanding her if she has to run back into the classroom. As a single child, she's in the first group to leave and is always rushed. So she just started taking everything home.

If she does have an attention disorder, it seems she's already doing everything psychologists recommend to manage it, like she knows what she needs to do to function and has developed a plan herself.

Anyone else have a kid like this?

My child does take longer than others to switch gears because she is absorbed, but she is also not naturally organized like yours. She knows exactly where everything is etc., it just looks chaotic to the left-brained eye.

If the teacher knows this about your daughter doing this at the end of the day, can't she make the simple fix of giving her a little heads up? That seems reasonable. It doesn't cost anything and could be done discreetly.

If the teacher is throwing those diagnosis words at you, I think it's very inappropriate. If your daughter has particular habits or something in the classroom that is legitimately distrupting the class or is of concern, she should tell you what those things are, not attach a diagnosis to it.

If the teacher can't back up what words she's throwing out at you with legitimate behaviors that you can start to talk about or investigate, she should not say anything.

Maybe someone else can give you better advice, that you should just ignore the teacher, complain or what...

Layman's reading of what you wrote: this kid has figured out that she can't trust herself on organizational matters, and is perpetually anxious that she's going to make a mistake. If this is true, I think she's brilliant to have seen her own weak point at this tender age.

However, I'd wonder if there is anything that can be done to ease the anxiety, because anxiety is real suffering. Planner, checklists, that sort of thing can help a person be less anxious. Bringing everything home is a strategy that will eventually not work, so she'll need a strategy that stays functional.

I'm not sure whether anything can be done to teach her to redirect her attention more speedily. Surely there's something (pretty much all skills can be taught).

In any case, I wouldn't ignore what the teacher is telling you. Teachers don't tell people about their kids' quirks for fun-- they do it when they see a substantial problem. I'd investigate.

DeeDee

I don't understand why the teacher could not give your DD a 5 minute heads up to transition. I also don't understand why this was only brought up after you asked for more challenging work. I don't mean to dismiss the teachers concerns out of hand, but I have dealt with many teachers in my DS's short school career who did not want to do anything differently than what they had been doing for many, many years and did not seem to understand that kids are different and therefore have different needs - whether that be harder math or a 5 minute reminder to get ready to transition. Your DD seems to have a system down outside of the classroom - can she employ her system to the transitions of the day - can she give herself a 5 minute heads up if the teacher will not? And regardless of her transition issues, if she needs it, she should get more challenging math.

We encourage our DS8 (who is also slow) to bring everything home - that gives him time to sort it at home and figure out what needs to be done with it (instead of everything piling in his desk)He has an accordion file that has a tab for each of his classes, but it also has a tab called DUMP which is where he can put stuff quickly and then sort it out at home.

I too don't understand why the teacher can't give your daughter a heads up about the end of class, but maybe is there some kind of electronic watch with an alarm, or a timer, that she could use to remind her when it's 5 minutes before the end of class? That might be all she would need.

We kind of have opposite issues--almost a complete lack of organization, no matter how much time is available. So I'm a little jealous

Two of the three engineers that I work with regularly will not allow anyone to knock on their office door. If it is open, you're welcome to come in and ask them a question. But when it is closed, they are architecting systems and solving huge problems with design, and they refuse to let anyone else disturb that process unless it is an emergency. And if you do ask them a question or even make a comment when they're focused on programming, it takes a while for them to "surface" to answer you.

The reason I point this out is that I've become very aware that a lot of the traits that make someone excellent at their job are the very same traits that annoy teachers and make kids feel inadequate in school.

My son also focuses deeply on projects, takes a bit to surface and pivot to something new, and will sometimes "waste" time in class that he could be doing work because he says it isn't enough time to get into it and get it done, so he'd rather wait until he gets home. I've had to come down on him for chatting and disrupting others when he's opted to wait until he gets home and am working on helping him break tasks down into 10-minute bites so that he can do parts of his work at school.

But to a certain extent, I'm not going to let him think focusing intensely is a bad thing, because it's not.

At least in my state, to suggest a diagnosis means that the school corporation must PAY for testing. We are encouraged to tread lightly when talking with parents about a possible disability and to discuss specific behaviors, but not a diagnosis. I find it surprising that a teacher would go there.

That being said, I wouldn't take the concerns lightly either. If the teacher felt compelled to mention it, he/she must truly be concerned. It's never easy to talk about problems that a child is having.

My dd9 hates transitions too. She also hyper-focuses on things and appears to ignore you... Makes my grandmother furious.

My guess is that it's a sign that you aren't showing "leadership".

Excuse me? I'd say you were assuming an awful lot about my leadership skills or lack thereof based on two paragraphs I wrote about people that I don't even manage manage.

These engineers own their own company and are very successful. They are not my employees; I only consult with them as a client with my own company but do know them all personally and as such am privy to their personal work styles.

The point I was hoping to make is that hyper focus is not a bad thing. You're certainly welcome to assume whatever you'd like.

My point was that such type of behavior in children would quite possibly be taken as a lack of "leadership potential."

I wasn't saying anything about your leadership or their leadership, or their success, or anything in the adult world, merely how such intense focus is likely to be interpreted by school teachers.