At a recent parent-teacher conference, my kid's teacher expressed some concern over her behavioral quirks. She sometimes focuses too intently on her work, especially when doing something creative or artistic, and loses awareness of her surroundings. She's often the last to realize her group was called or the bell rang and to get in line. She lacks time management skills, mostly because she gets absorbed in an assignment and loses track of time completely. She takes longer than other students to "switch gears" during transition periods. She once became obsessed with making an assignment "perfect" right down to the slant of the letters in her name.
This teacher had nothing but praise for my child, saying she participates well in discussions, is well behaved and social, and is doing "A" work, until I asked about giving her more challenging Math assignments. Then she brought up these "quirks" and told me challenging my daughter academically might stress her and make her worse. She used words like OCD and Autism.
Our daughter is very social, loves adventure and change in routine, and has no consistent ritualistic behaviors or tics to indicate OCD.
I believe what she has is a common symptom of gifted children -an overdelevoped ability to focus which can be exacerbated and misused when a child is bored or underchallenged. My mother and grandmother both claim these behaviors are common in the children of our family, showing up in more than half the kids to varying degrees. They call it "Absentminded Professor Syndrome".
Am I right? Are there any articles or studies that confirm my case? This teacher is using this to hold my daughter back academically, so any resources I could get to help inform her would be great.
