Just wondering how common it is for parents of G/HG kids to make special accommodations for schooling. Private schools that offer accelerated curriculums for kids to learn at a quicker pace? Magnet schools with special electives/AG classes? How for do you travel for school and is it worth it? And the price of private school...just wondering how everyone deals with this choice.

I do not think anyone should go bankrupt so to speak to send a child to a private school. Plus, I am not convinced that the majority of private schools can accommodate a gifted child. I believe that home schooling or public cyber charter school are a potentially better and cheaper choice for gifted kids;)

Currently, we use a public cyber charter school for my ds that has a rigorous and flexible curriculum. We tried a local private and it was not able to individualize enough to meet my ds's needs:( Plus, we cannot afford it.

classicsmom - what is a public cyber charter school?

I would like to check this out.

I'm interested too...

I think the degree of sacrifice involved in educating a highly gifted kid is largely a function of luck and where you live. We bought our house before giftedness was a thought in our minds, and yet, INCREDIBLY, we just happen to live only 10 minutes from a small, relatively affordable, private school (K through 12) that truly does provide an individualized curriculum for all kids. My 4 year old son is being taught fourth grade spelling and grammar in a kindergarten class of less than 10 kids, for $6,400 a year. That is no more than I would have paid for another year of preschool, where my son was "learning" the ABCs in a class of 18 kids. I've been reading this forum long enough to know that having this school as an option is akin to winning the lottery, so I think of the money as a pretty small sacrifice (although my husband feels the pain more than I do). I don't know how we'd manage in a place where the public schools are no good and good private schools are hours away or $20,000 a year.

Amazing.

DD7 goes to a private.

DH drives her in the AM usually. This adds about 30 extra minutes of driving onto his day.

I do afternoon pick up which usually involves checking in with a teacher if available. (DD is accelerated in some subjects and is in enrichment for others. So I feel like I need to touch base more often than most parents.) Afternoon pickup takes about 60-90 minutes round trip.

I volunteer at the school about 5 hours a week. It breaks up the driving and helps me stay informed on what's going on. Okay, I spy on dd a little too.

Legally, we are entitled to public bussing. Originally the bus drop off time was 4:10 which is about we get home if I drive. So we were really happy to use the service. For some reason the routes have been combined and the new drop off time is 5. She's the youngest and the last stop. Because of her age, I have to meet her at the bus stop. Now with the later time, evenings were getting to stressful. So I am back to driving every afternoon.

So the time feels like the biggest sacrifce to me because we deal with it everyday. It impacts us financially too. I don't think I could handle working full time and be at the school as much as I am. (I have small part time job...)

We do get help with the tuition bill. We try to live frugally. We drive small, older cars. No wii or disney trips...

We are also all taking music lessons. DD practices after dinner. Sometimes I practice with her, and sometimes by myself. DH tends to practice after bedtime. So there's another 3*30 minutes of our day.

I don't really know if HS would be more, or less of a sacrifice in terms of time and money. I'm guessing HS for us would mean me not working at all. There aren't any gifted schools in our area, public or charter. I'm sure if dd was schooling for "free" we would end up spending more on music and dance lessons and probably add robotics or something else spendy. DD's GPs are a lot more sympathetic to large tuition bills than they would be to HS - that's just us, but there it it.

I am a SAHM in order to homeschool my DC. So we sacrifice half our income. We do not have any private or other public options within a reasonable distance. There is a possibility of a high school one county over but the drive would be more than 2 hours a day.

Unfortunately, it is not available in every state, but it is definitely worth lobbying for. It is public school at home essentially. The school provides you with a loaner computer, scads of textbooks, art supplies, science and math supplies, etc. They also supply the curriculum and spell it out for the parent on how to teach each lesson. They also have teachers that oversee your child's work. In older grades, a child may have a teacher for each subject. Currently, my son has 2 mandatory online classes with his teacher each month. He also has 3 face to face sessions each year with her as well. He has 3 classes each month for the advanced learner program as well as a foreign language instructor with a weekly class. He has the option to take numerous supplementary classes if we choose it. Plus the school offers numerous field trips and the like. They also offer extensive tutoring if desired. Our school uses the K12 curriculum which I am quite please with since it is classical like and rigorous. A student can advance in math and english as much as he wants. Plus it is possible to placed at a higher grade level as well. It is also flexible enough to allow my son to explore other subjects and attend a weekly, all day co-op.
I find it to be a great option and it is free:) You just need a parent or other family member to help teach and supervise the child. Some schools in our state offer extensive online classes with a teacher to relieve the parent of teaching duties so to speak as well. I hope eventually every state has this option. I also think brick and mortor (sp?) public schools benefit if they offer individualization via online classes in school.
http://k12.com/schools-programs/online-public-schools/

Wolf is in Independent Study through a neighboring public school district. It takes me a half an hour +/- to get him to class once a week and up to 45 min (sometimes more) to get him to the field trip each week. It took A LOT of effort to figure out a good placement for him and even more to get him into it.

The nearest private school that deals with gifties (I interviewed them and didn't like it...) is around half an hour away with no traffic and he would have to go 5 days a week. It's also $10,000! So not going to happen...

I twitch at the subject line, because I don't think of what we do as making sacrifices; it's just that fostering DS's intellectual development, for example (but not only) by choosing the best school for him, is a very high priority for us. This has influenced us in big ways: our family shape and timing, and the attitude that I take to my career for example. Concretely, we considered all our educational options and picked a school that is an hour from us (by bus or bike) and is fee-paying. Our second-choice school, which I think is also a very good school, would have been far far more convenient and also cheaper. Not settling for second-best is working out pretty well for us so far. However, every family's situation is different: e.g., if we had less flexibility in our jobs or if there didn't happen to be a good cycle path most of the way, it could easily be that that kind of travel time would cause stress enough to outweigh the benefits. I think what is true is that we think what happens to DS at this age educationally may well be very, very important for his long-term development and happiness. I see a lot of people not thinking that about their 6yos, but generally not here!

I read the recent threads, not realizing this topic was age specific to elementary aged students. I�ll still share our current situation. My son is in middle/high school and daughter is a sophomore.
Yesterday was usual, but I spent almost seven hours behind the wheel and sat at a desk at my workplace for approximately five hours in between. The morning drop-off is two hours (there and back) every day, while the evening pickup is three hours minimum. Recently, activities have really picked up, so now it is usually it is longer. Yesterday, my daughter had music practice after school until 5:30pm, so I drove past her school to pick up ds at 4:30 after his water polo practice. We then had to make our way back to her school through detoured rush hour traffic. Next, we drove back the other way again to pick up dh from the airport, arriving home close to 8:00pm.
I work part time at my job, meaning I don�t go to work everyday, so there is the sacrifice from a second income. I also feel that I have had to give up a career focus to arrange the best school situation. My fulltime occupation is to facilitate their best education. In our case, the best solutions are these distant schools with many �experts from the field� (especially at ds�s) who provide incredibly instruction and one stop shopping! DD�s school is expensive by our middle income standards and ds�s school tuition plus various additional fees would be out of reach without financial aid.
We do believe it is all worth it, but we are tired.

In a light hearted manner my DH and I were pondering the educational opportunities avenue the other day. We got that email from EPGY that they were now accepting kids for the online school would we like to consider enrollment, for only $13,000 a year. So we went throught the math with 5 kids and decided that we'd still like to eat, and the kids still need new clothes, even if we never do, so sadly that email went in the trash.

I think we all make "sacrifices" and we all do whatever we can within our means to do what is best for our individual children. Like everything else that has many faces.

I think my adult daughter would see this as sacrifice more than I do. My pretty, very social and very fashion conscious daughter would have a really hard time adjusting to not buying new clothes and wearing "mom jeans" that she told me I wear. She didn't realize that I needed to spend every penny on homeschool materials and other things for my twice exceptional son. At least all the other homeschool moms in my area dress like I do and don't spend money having their hair done so I am not alone.

I don't see any of this as a sacrifice because I feel lucky to have my son. I was an older mom when I became pregnant with him. I had always wanted another child but I had been married for six years before I finally got pregnant. During the birthing process, my son's heart stopped beating and it was very scary. I thought we would lose him and I knew at that moment I would do anything, give up anything for this child if he would just live. He was delivered with forceps but there was a delay getting him out. We were told by the neuropsychologist that this could be the reason for his hypotonia and motor dyspraxia.

My husband and I only buy a few very inexpensive gifts for each other at Christmas so that our son can have what he needs. Instead of buying a new house and having new furniture and new cars like everyone else in the family with their two incomes and the choice to send their kids to public school, we live in an older home that will be paid off in two years and we hope to be able to leave it to our son.

Because our son is twice exceptional and our state does not require an appropriate education for twice exceptional children, we have to homeschool. There are no private schools near us and if there were, we could not afford it.
We live in a small town with intermittent high speed internet. Without dependable internet service, online classes would be difficult. We have no other choice but to homeschool.

We tried our local private day 'college prep' school for 6th and 7th grade. It was scary expensive, things just are in our part of the country. Think small liberals college.

They did give him his needed gradeskip, which the public schools just didn't see the need for, and they did give him support to reverse his undeachievement, which by the end of 4th grade in public school with only 1 teacher that 'got' him, he sorely needed. So I believe that it was money well spend, but Oh! was I happy when we brought him back to the public school for 8th grade.

Now I spend more than I would have on summer programs and travel to weekend events to get his social needs met, but only about 25% more, so I feel comfortable with that.

A bigger sacrifice was the years DS lost in elementary school, being convinsed that he was 'bad.'

Of course the biggest sacrifice was not having more than one child. At the time we didn't know what was going on, just that baby was unconsolable, and attached to mommy at the hip, and we sort of figured that we were bad parents and better not try for more kids. (All our local friends and family members agreed with this assesment and didn't hesitate to share this info with us!) Plus who had the time or energy? If I had understood myself and DH as gifted people, or LOG, then perhaps that would have been enough to give us courage to have more children, maybe not.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

Aw, Grinity, this makes me so sad! You're SUCH a good parent! I hate it that you felt this way, and I hate it more that people affirmed this hooey.

I agree whole heartedly with the first and am very sorry you got such bad information on the second.

We sacrifced this year and sent DS6 to private school. He is already back (and doing much better) in public school. When he was younger we moved him from a preschool/daycare where his siblings were to a private (more expensive) Montessori school. This not only add more travel time but we lost some of our sibling discount from the other place. I actually agree that it's not really a sacrifice but as a parent I try to do what is best for each of my children.

Thanks Kriston and Melissa - and I'll tell you what, I wouldn't have been so quick to believe people that I was just 'bad' if I hadn't myself gone through 'not fitting in' all through elementary school and believing that it was my fault. I was supposed to be more patient, more loving of people of all different ability levels who were preventing me from learning much at school, more careful not to make errors from not paying attention, more 'living up to my potential' through being more complaint. And I was SO compliant!

Of course, part of my being willing to believe I was bad was also from having impossibly high standards - inner directed perfectionism from not much working at my readiness level, and never having reasonable peers to compare myself to.

So glad, glad, glad to be done with all that now!
Yippee!
Grinity

Good for you for coming out the other side so solidly and for using your experiences to help others. You're a good egg, Grin!

The road not travelled is always tempting to rehash in our minds. But you've got good kids, Dottie, and they are doing well. I vote for not doubting yourself. You've done very well for all your kids IMHO.

Just honest.

Grinity -

I so agree with Kriston and melmich! Hooray that the other stuff is behind you.

On the upside, now your awesome parenting skills/insight/wisdom is helping all of us be better parents too!

hugs,

EW

We've made decisions over the years that might be called sacrifices, but to be honest for our family it is all about peace of mind. When I feel comfortable with a schooling decision, the weight off me is tremendous. There have been times in my life of having gifted kids I've gone without sleep for worrying - and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone judging by the timing of some posts. Peace of mind is priceless!

eeeexACTly!

And I second what Kriston said about Dottie's parenting! Go Dottie! Getting the fit through a public school system is awesome!

Love and More Love,
Grinity

I have applied to the Davidson Academy for my dd. If she gets accepted this year moving to Reno would be a big sacrifice!

Thanks Dottie. It would be a big move, but it just seems like the logical next step...

My dd is in 6th grade. I guess we have made some different choices than others in this forum that have resulted in some sacrifices. Although we have not had a full scale IQ test on her, she has always scored the max on all subjects in achievement testing. Last year she was given the TOMAG and OLSAT. TOMAG score was 147 and OLSAT was 142. I think the OLSAT test was lower than what a full-scale IQ test would show because it caps out at 150. My dd said that the other kids in her "gifted" class struggled with the test. She said it was super easy and that she finished it quickly. If a more difficult test had been given, I think it would have showed a mastery of more complex subject matter.

However, my dd has been a chatter box from a young age and enjoys socializing. She is on the small side- her growth rate has been in the 10-25 percentile. Therefore, we did not try to accelerate her to the next grade. She joined the gifted program, which starts in 2nd grade in our school district. She easliy gets straight As and her teachers love having her in their class. Of note is that she said that she does not learn anything in school. In our school district, they lowered the standards to be in the gifted program, to be more inclusive of others in the population. Therefore, it seems to be more of placing kids in ability grouping rather than in a gifted class. I think the classes are geared towards kids who have IQs of approx. 115-125. Therefore, all the material is very easy for my dd.

My dd had a growth spurt this past year and continues to complain of how easy her classes are. We discussed advancing her into 8th grade instead of 7th grade. She said she has a lot of school friends and wants to try out for cheerleading, so she does not want to do this.

Soooo... our sacrifice has involved extracurricular activities. She does competitive dancing, for a cost of 8-10k/ year. Now she plays a musical instrument in the marching band and the band teacher has told me he is very impressed with her progress- he said she sounds quite "adult-like" with how she plays her instrument. We have added tumbling too so she can do cheerleading. Interestingly, she is quite the artist as well.

Anyway... I work so I am gone from 6:30 AM until 9:00 pm on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday nights and until 8:30 PM on Monday nights, because she has activities these nights. She has rehearsals on Saturdays from 9:00 - 2:00 and tumbling from 2:30 - 4:00 PM. I am exhausted from all these activities. However, dd has no problem keeping up because school is so easy for her. I have not attempted to cut back; most parents cut back when their kid's grades suffer- this is not likely to happen. Oh, and sometimes there are conventions or competitions that start Friday afternoon and continue from 8 AM -9PM on Saturday and from 9 AM - 4 PM on Sunday. This is a lot of commitment for a Mom who would like to be a homebody.

I can identify with the extracurricular time drain for the parent! Thankfully most of my kid�s activities are included with the tuition, so we only pay out a couple additional thousands in gas and fees. My primary occupation, in addition to getting them to and from school, has become to coordinate and drive them between their separate schools to various locations around the city.

Our life is crazy right now with my daughter�s activities which include practices and competitions for mock trial, swimming, music (both solo and ensemble). She also leads a photography club that she started. She has one or two after school activities every day during the winter. Additionally, I just signed her up for an evening driver�s education class. Oh, she is also plugging along with an online programming class in addition to her eight high school courses (no PE this semester).

Currently, my son has practice and competitions for swimming and water polo, attends an afterschool math program one day per week and math circle sporadically. He is also preparing for his Confirmation at church and will have completed over 60 hours between volunteer service hours and school work study by end of year.

For example, today�s schedule; dd has mock trial practice and a swim meet. She will go to mock trial for approx 45 minutes (the team teacher allows her to be among the first for questioning), then I will drive her to the swim meet (she had asked her coach to put her in the last half events so she can warm up after the diving). I won�t be able to watch her swim today. I will just drop her off so I can drive out to pick up her brother (after his swim practice) and then drive back to the meet site hopefully before it ends. Then we face the hour long commute home through the tail end of rush hour traffic.

Next year ds will be in high school, so it will be saner at least in terms of school athletics. Ds will swim in the fall, dd will swim in the winter and ds will play water polo in the spring. DS will probably be adding school clubs too then.

My son is also becoming more social at school and has become less interested in being identified as a super smart geek. He wants to give up the after school math program beginning next year despite doing so well and learning so much. �.. I don�t know how I�m going to break it to him.

Interesting thread. We went back and forth on schooling before DS5 started school this year. Everyone had told us that public school would never work for him since he is a PG kid (and add to that an extroverted PG kid who acts out when he is not challenged). So...we didn't want him to get a label in Public school and weren't sure if they could meet his needs etc. Financially we didn't feel that private was an option, and even if it were we felt that they still wouldn't be able to accomodate him as our state doesn't have gifted mandates or anything. Sooo...we decided to enroll him in public school with much trepidation. The school allowed him to skip K and start first (actually they recommended it). They are differentiating for him for most everything and it is going pretty well and he enjoys school. We decided to put some extra money into things to have at home that are more enriching and also extracurricular activities. We would have had no money for things like that if he was in a private school. We go to museums often, he will be starting piano lessons soon as he really enjoys the piano, Tee ball, and does some other academic based activities and classes when they are available in the community. I figured for less than half the tuition of private school I could get him things for home that would be able to challenge him. So far so good. We may have to change things up in the future. Sometimes I joke about packing up and moving to Reno or another place with HG schools, but it really wouldn't work well for us at this point.

We enrolled our DS6 in one the "best" private schools for Kindergarten. I say "best" because I realize that was my perception, and now know that just because a school may get the highest test scores, it may not be the best fit for every child. Our DS had a terrible year. He had daily time outs or lost play time for being too loud, talkative and disruptive, and by the end of the year the wind seemed to have been taken out of his sails. DH and I understood that he needed to follow rules and directions, but when we read his end of the year report, it confirmed that it was just a bad fit. After some sleepless nights we realized that the financial sacrifice we were making wasn't worth it. We just enrolled him in our local public school for first grade. He's only been there for a few weeks but my DH and I just have a good feeling about it. The teacher seems very much on the same page with us, and has made herself very available. The biggest benefit is that I was able to cut my hours to part time so I can pick our DS up from school every day instead of him having to go to afterschool care. Now we can plan activities that we wouldn't have time for otherwise. We are also considering enrolling him in guitar lesson twice a week, instead of once a week. Time and lack of funds wouldn't have allowed this previously. We're considering home schooling at some point, and we'll have to re evaluate at that time since that will be a huge financial commitment. Although money is tight, we would have kept him at the private school if we had been happy. Like most families I think our sacrifices will vary depending on what DS needs are at that particular time, having to balance time versus money.

DD11 was in a wonderful private school pre-k to 1st grade. They recommended early entrance to K and kept her challenged. A job transfer forced a school change that was a painful experience for DD and us. So with 6 weeks left of 4th grade, we decided to sell our home only to move 15 miles to a GT friendly school district. We also downsized our home in case we ended up homeschooling and I would stay home with DD. Turned out that this public school really lived up to their reputation and DD is thriving.

Now we are figuring out what DS5 might need next year. I hope our schools can provide a good environment for him as well, since we are staying here for DD.

Jen

I missed this thread so I feel I'm coming in a little late and probably shouldn't post since we are in the preschool phase. But, I see our future already and I don't think we will even attempt public school. We tried a social preschool and it was definitely not a good fit, which led us to scramble and place DD in a Spanish Immersion program which is academic since they are two years ahead of the public schools. My DD is in the 3 yr old class but is already doing kindergarten work. We knew when we went this direction that the prospects of putting her in the public school program would not be advisable since she would already be taught 2nd grade work by then. The nice thing is the school will go through 5th grade and as long as DD is thriving we will plan to keep her there and then look to move her to another academic program. The funny/sad thing is we moved to our neighborhood for the public school and its reputation so we pay the price for this area. We will probably reevaluate this in the future and consider moving to a less pricey neighborhood since our extra money will be going to the private sector.

Sounds like a good plan if she continues to enjoy and like where she is at. Just wanted to say though, that you never know with public school. It varies greatly on the school. I say this because we put our DS5 in a social/play-based preschool at 4 and it was a complete failure as well. We thought we were doing good because we knew no preschool could meet his academic needs. Then when that failed we put him in another play-based/slightly academic preschool (which did notice his needs and abilities) and he did much better there..but still wasn't learning anything. After that a Montessori school opened up and we put him there for the last 6 months of school and he did great! So after our failures at the play-based setting we weren't sure about public school, but with a full-grade skip and differentiation it really isn't at all the same as his social playbased setting. It is much more academic since they are giving him work that is over 4 years above his grade level...and his school only goes up to 2nd grade so they are definitely adjusting things for him. We were pleasantly surprised. Just wanted to say, that sometimes it can be done. And like the oposite of your story, ironically before having DS we moved to a neighborhood we liked that was in an average district. It wasn't in one of the upperclass areas all around us with better schools and more gifted kids. We debated, but I figured we would have an average kid and he doesn't need to be in the best of the best schools (there were other reasons too). But then we ended up with a child like ours. Kind of funny how things work. But I am still glad we aren't in one of the other districts because I doubt they would make the accomodations that our school district is. They would most likely just give him a little enrichment.

I think this has worked in our situation as well. If we were in an upperclass district with many kids who were very bright to moderately gifted I think we would have gotten a lot of people telling us they were well-versed in dealing with smart kids and would have, at most, gotten some enrichment. As it is, in our small more average district, they are very open to trying different educational approaches since my kids are less typical.

Irony is part of my life. One of the mothers on this board works in the school district we live in and her daughter goes to the school our child would go to if we chose that route. I think you hit it on the nose with the school districts that are praised districts thinking they have seen it all and not really bending beyond what they have already established. After talking with the other mother I am more certain that the school will not do much for my DD. If you have a child in the MG+ bracket than the school seems to be a great fit but any child over that bracket is not really getting the attention they need. I suspect if we lived in Austin ISD or a smaller town in the surrounding areas they would be more willing to work with the parents and children. I really don't know if I want to take a chance at this point especially since DD is happy and thriving at her school. And who is to say that will continue. I suspect that right now her challenge is the foreign language but she is quickly picking it up. If and when she is at a point that the material is too easy we will talk to the school about moving her up which they are willing to do ... another sign that we found a great school. But through discovering this term gifted and reading the posts here I am the first to admit that what works today might be the worst thing in the future so I certainly will never say never. I will say that right now we seem to have found a great fit for DD and am crossing my fingers that we will be able to keep her in that school through 5th grade since research shows kids learning a foreign language retain it and their fluency if they are active in it through 5th grade.