Are there any success stories or pearls of wisdom from parents on educational options that worked for their PG 2e children? Did most of you eventually homeschool, and what option worked best in the K-5 years?

I know that there are many factors weighing in on the success of the various options and that all of our circumstances are different, but it would greatly help to know a little about the potential road ahead from parents with children similar to DS3.

Some of the factors weighing in for my DS are that he does a tremendous amount of incidental learning, appears gifted in multiple areas, has intense passions, and has high OE’s across the board and delays in motor skills, especially fine, that we’re currently working on with an OT. DS also can be very focused, but he notices everything in his environment thus appearing distractible at times.

I know some people advocate early entrance to K at 4, but I don’t see that as viable option for us next year due to issues related to the 2nd e.

There isn’t any hurry on our part to enter school, and we’re using DS’s desire as our guideline.

I’m thankful for this forum, and I look forward to hearing about your own experiences.

What are you suspecting the second E is? i can tell you that I have homeschooled both of mine all the way through, and every time I read this board, I am so glad we homeschooled. We've never had to fight, or deal with traumatic school situations. My son has dyslexia, and I am certain that school would have been very frustrating for him.

Gabalyn, sorry for omitting that info. The 2nd e is SPD over-responsive along with motor skill deficits especially fine motor. I'm happy to hear that homeschooling has worked out so well for your family.

Not necessarily... my PG 2E daughter was not homeschooled, and is a happy college freshman this year (admittedly at a school that feeds her PG'ness, and she is possibly happier than I have ever seen her!). But she attended an independent private K-12 school from K-12. We supplemented like crazy outside of school, but she did not skip (partly due to the 2E-ness). It was not ideal -- there were times where the slow pace of a classroom made her very frustrated. And her friendship circle was small (non-existent until 4th grade, then gradually growing until she had a nice core of 5-6 good friends by senior year). But it worked out in the end for her without homeschooling.

I don't know the true level of my older son because I don't think he had a great test (RIAS instead of WISC) and I think his anxiety and Asperger's interfered with the test...but whatever his level he is 2e and we had to homeschool 1st-3rd. School was just too much for him. He received services for delays in the home at age 2, ESE preschool age 3 and 4 for delays. Regular K and dismissed from everything but speech therapy in K. He did fine in K but it was just too much for him. He held it together during the day and was a mess at home for the next 5 hours. The three years at home was just the thing he needed and now he is doing fine in middle school.

My ds8 pg 2e was born with severe SPD and other stuff. We're now homeschooling him but we also live in a state that doesn't offer any g/t services. He's already tried two different gifted schools (one traditionally structured; the other Montessori-ish, more unstructured) for part of pre-k and kindy, but neither worked out for the gifted part.

It really depends on the child and the school, the curriculum, the other kids, and their needs. There's a lot of variables with school and these kids - many of which are out of your and child's control. Some schools or teachers are flexible; others are not.

I pulled my son as a special needs pre-k student in a public school since they were going to keep in special needs for kindergarten with cognitively delayed children for attentional reasons, though he doesn't have ADHD. Obviously, that was a less than tolerable situation and we had no idea how gifted ds was at the time. The first private gifted school claimed that they were able to accommodate him until they said 2 1/2 months later that he was pg and it would be impossible for them to keep him! The second gifted school warned me that they might be able to keep him either due to his pgness, not his special needs interestingly (though neither school helped with this part).

I completely agree with what Master of None has said. If you've got a real academically inclined child who is whizzing through material, then homeschooling may be your best option. It might be also your best option if the school refuses or is unable to accommodate your child in terms of special needs or giftedness. At three, it's very hard to say, but I can see why you think he might be pg. My ds8 had major fine motor delays at 3 yrs old and was barely scribbling at 4 (or any jigsaw puzzles then). But he's had vision therapy since then and things have changed.

For my DS preschool was horrible because the teachers didn't realize how different he was but he and the other kids did. He had a terrible time socially because he was on a different plane than the other kids. Fast forward to 2nd grade where he is in an accelerated gifted school and he has friends and is happy. He could move faster but it moves fast enough and they have been awesome in dealing with both his e's, Wes re in the minority here in that we have found effective accommodations and the school works with us. We have been warned that it gets tougher around 4th where the pace might not be okie as many have said on this board, do what works for now, you can't predict to far into the future. Focus on the now, particularly the decision for preschool - you can change course at any time. There is no single path with our kids.

DeHe

There is not one choice for the entire schooling path for any one child - you can always change as you need to.

For us, homeschooling is the best solution and I am so glad to be done with fighting the school and becoming "that mom" in order to try get my kids what they need - and that was just in pre school and K level!

Now I have happy kids who get to play loads, who get customised work to each of their learning styles and strengths and they get intellectual level work for which ever topic they are currently exploring. It's so freeing and amazing! It also means that social situations are calmer because they don't have to try prove anything anymore - they are both totally accepting of themselves and others now. so for us it's 100% a win-win situation.

On the 2e side, we suspected dyslexia with Aiden for a while - I am still not convinced 100% that it's NOT, but as the woman said to me, with a giftie who is still operating way above grade/age level it will always be harder to tell, esp because if left to his own devices he will figure out his own methodology for coping with it and we may never fully figure out the real issue and it's true severity.

Do you by any chance have any alternative schools where you are? My kid attends a free school (that is, he's in the preschool group, but there's an elementary group, too) that I find very helpful for him. The teachers support academic drive in the children but there's zero top-down enforcement. (It's basically unschooling within a school, I guess.) For my kid, this effectively works out to a system where he goes a playgroup where the adults scaffold his social and emotional skills, and he then uses his parents to acquire whatever academic information he's currently interested in. I know there are older gifted kids at the school who do something similar, except they also use their teachers and some of the older kids to learn what they want to learn, so it's not all on the parents.

It can feel kind of alarming to step way out of the mainstream like this, but looking at my own kid, I just find it really hard to fathom that he could make a more normal school work for him. It feels to me, right now, that our choices will be either "weird alternative school+afterschooling" or homeschooling, but I'm open to other options. I do find it hard to believe that a conventional school with a top-down, large-group lecture model will work for him. But who knows, everything could change in the next five minutes!

The most stable of sea legs are required for these kids.

Thanks for sharing your experience about the alternative schools.

Unschooling school a few hours in the morning (9-12 then lunch) and doing academics at home in the afternoon before extra curricular is exactly what I wish we could do for DD. Unfortunately, there is no "alternative" schools where we live.

My DD isn't exactly PG or 2e but her intense personality and drive to learn on her own terms make traditional schooling including traditional GT schools rather unappealing. The other major problem I have with selective posh "GT" prep schools is that from what I have seen and heard, social scenes get rather ugly later on.

Yet, I can't imagine DD being happy staying at home. She really is social and wants nothing to do with me these days if she has other other adults or children to hang around. So yeah, I envy those of you who have a Sudbury style school near by.

When we started homeschooling, I helped to found an alternative education center that is a little bit like a free school, except there is the option to go just one or two days per week. My kids have been going there all along, and it has been a tremendous social experience. Academics are done at home. The kids at the center skew heavily towards PG. The interesting thing is that we are not the only center like this. I am discovering that there are many, many of these. I think most of them are listed with AERO, the alternative education resource organization, or something like that.

Mana, similar to you, a very flexible arrangement seems like the best solution for now.

Gabalyn, thanks so much for the AERO referral! I've already found more schools in my area to explore, and your post gives me hope.