Just now I'm sitting here staring at the Davidson YS application, wondering if it's presumptuous to apply,
Hi ILMom24,
Humor Alert - go ahead and apply - anyone who can use presumptuous comfortably in a sentence if fairly likely to have a kid who qualifies for the Young Scholars program.
More seriously - do you have achievement testing? If that supports the IQ numbers, then the YS program will be a perfect match. There are many kids there with very similar numbers, and similar gaps between VCI and PRI, the 'intellectual ability' subscores, and WM and PSI the 'handmaiden' subscores.
My son, also PG and ADHD-I is one of them, but he at least has WM around 120. Being without those 'handmaiden' abilities really makes elementary school very difficult. Once the other kids are old enough for the teachers to work on trying to develop abstract thought your son will possibly fit in better.
It doesn't surprise me at at all that the school system (not all, of course, and especially not Becky!) sees your child as 'stupid' - it's sort of like asking flatlanders to appreciate the difference between a mountain and a stage set of a mountain. As a group, they keep expecting the quick, talkative, compliant kid who is a dream to have in class to be the gifted one.
Happy, healthy and making friends is a wonderful combination, and unless the homeschooling is very hard on the family, keep going. At a certain point he'll be ready to audit college level classes (community college, local college or university - depending on what is available)and then you'll 'dual enroll' him as a high school student taking college classes. Some kids do well with online classes, others not so much.
I think you are doing everything right (except procrastinating on that YS application - you can get letters of recommendation from any of the teachers of enrichment classes - don't worry about what they'll say, or how long they have know your child, even little old ladies who strike up a conversation with your child at the park are fair game. If any of the new friends' parents seems to understand what gifted is, just ask them. Send a private message to FrannieandEJsmom and see if she can meet your child and ask her to write a letter! Yeah, carry copies of the letter with SASEs in your pocketbook.) Keep hammering at the touch typing - it'll come one day and change everything.
Your child isn't stupid, but your child is facing some large bottlenecks that will take time and training to overcome. Your child is gifted enough that even without the challenges of his WM and PSI the school would probably look at him funny and wonder what is wrong with him. Kids like him are rare, once or twice in a lifetime experiences for schools, so they aren't to be blamed for what they couldn't possibly be expected to know, but they aren't to be trusted either.
Keep an eye open for these programs:
Illinois and the Midwest
Splash! Chicago runs the midwest's biggest Splash, and also runs Cascade. Chicago's next event will be a winter-term Cascade, meeting weekly for five weeks.
Northwestern University also runs a Splash in the Chicago area; its most recent Splash ran April 2, 2011.
http://learningu.org/current-programs#and join your local gifted association to try and meet some other families who are facing what you are facing.
Get that application completed and keep posting here - we want to be your peer group. It isn't easy raising a kid in isolation.
Love and More Love,
Grinity
