Hi, I wonder if anyone has had direct experience with detoxing a young gifted child from a negative school experience. Despite testing privately then doing three years of advocacy with two different schools in our public board, no accommodations were made and now our dd7 refuses not only to attend her current school but also acts out when we attend private school open houses or, frankly, any other classroom-based activity, even if it's the type of academic enrichment she enjoys at home. You can just see her shut down as she enters any school-like situation, and her verbal attitude towards teacher figures is becoming horrendous. Just total defense mode.

Ideally we'd like to try one more time to see if we can find a school fit before we make the decision to home school full time, but she has some serious emotional damage at this point. Any advice on how to detox? We currently have an expressive arts therapist on board but other suggestions are welcome, especially from those who have been in our shoes. Thanks.

She's close to my DS's age (he's just turned 8) and I know that 'talking things up' really helps him. We've been talking for a couple of months now about how his dad and I were trying to either find a better school for him, or make his current school better. Now that we are going to visit a charter school, I've been talking to him about it for the past few days. He's excited to go see it.

If that doesn't help her at all, I would see about doing some 'unschooling' for a while. Don't even discuss school for a while. Just let her unwind from it.

We had to detox our DD7 from an awful K experience, and in our case the medicine was homeschooling.