Ofen we say here - if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck - it's a duck!
But what if that duck throws up from eating grass roots that all the other ducks eat? Will that duck feel like a duck? Probably not.
Gifties are supposed to 'eat' learning, and your younger dd probably does 'eat' some kinds of learning, but reacts poorly to other kinds of learning food. It's enought to make a duck feel 'unduckly.'
The main reason we didn't go with the rx version first was b/c dd also has anxiety and they can increase that and b/c she is extremely small and doesn't have the best appetite and stimulants can reduce appetite.
It's my understanding that a 'tiny' amount of stimulents will - in general - cause less anxiety than enough caffeene to get the job done. Of course 'in general' doesn't say anything about any individual person.
That's a challenge b/c she probably doesn't feel like she's working harder than the avg person but she does feel like she's working harder than the average gifted person. It is coupled with having a HG+ older sister who is grade accelerated and simply doesn't have to work hard at all at the things that dd10 struggles with.
She, like you mentioned, seems to be chalking it up to being not gifted b/c she isn't like the gifted people she knows -- me, dd12, other family members, a few other kids from school. What I worry, and see somewhat, is that she'll come to the same conclusion her dad has: that she is stupid. Dh constantly says things like, "why am I so *#%*#@! stupid?!" His self image sucks, he's terribly pessimistic and generally unpleasant to be around not infrequently.
As you can see, self-image can take a real beating from
a) not feeling like her brain is working right (it isn't) and
b) not finding a 'life's purpose' that can take advantage of this challenge.
Those two together can be very hard on people.
It's hard to know how agressively to persue chemical help, but if the teachers are happy and she still doesn't feel 'whole' inside, I would say that the current combination isn't working.
When I listen to folks who really like their stimulent medications, it reminds me of people talking about gender reassignment surgery - that without their medication they feel trapped in a body that is foreign.
I hate to be saying all this, because I hope that in 20 years there are better medications and techniques that make the current ones look 'barbaric' and we'll all sit around wondering how we could have done that. But for now - even with the misery of the medication merry-go-round - I think it's time to give serious consideration to medication.
Is DH fully diagnosed and medicated? If not, I think that whatever steps he takes to help himself will also help his family. Not your job to tell him, but you have my permission to drag him over the the computer monitor and let me tell him. ((wink))
Part of the problem is that the school isn't supporting your view that DDyounger is gifted. So the more other adults that you can get around your DD who do see her as gifted, the easier it will be. If your DH can be part of that team, so much the better. I'm hoping that next year's teacher get's 2E in her bones and will be a great help.
I used to ask for subject accelerations for DS from the point of view of 'well, he makes stupid mistakes with age-level material and isn't learning, why not let him make the same number of mistakes at plus-age-level and learn something?' The school never bought that argument, but I tried.
One of the great frustrations of ADHD is that even though the afflicted person might 'know what to do' they may not be able to apply that knowledge at the right time in a workable way. ADHD is a problem of output. This tends to make the person with ADHD insecure about their intelligence: "Why does eveyone always try and teach me what I already know? They must think I'm stupid, because they are always explaining the easy to understand stuff of life." Some kids think that if they have ADHD it means that they are like the intellectually challenged kids, or that if people know that they have ADHD that people will assume that they are like the intellecutally challenged kids.
Hope this helps - wish I could organize it better.
((hugs))
Grinity
