I am new to this forum, but I am hoping to find some advice that can ease my frustration with my child. My 5-year-old daughter goes out of her way to pretend she can't do things. This has become a reoccurring theme for several years. She has always been extremely bright, a leader among peers, has spoken beyond her years, has an amazing imagination, and a stubbornness that is very difficult to break through. I have been thinking more and more that some of her abilities and actions go beyond just being bright, but I have been reluctant to push the issue of testing. When she was 3 she went to preschool 9 hours per week. During a second semester teacher conference I was told that she had refused to identify the number 10 all year long whenever asked...she would insist that she didn't know what it was but that she thought it looked like a 19. Finally after prodding from the teacher she admitted that she knew some people liked to call it a 10, but she really preferred to call it 19. The teachers and I agreed that she was bored with the testing and went out of her way to make it more intersting. When she was 4 she attended preschool 5 days per week for 3 hours per day. She tested very poorly during the initial evaluation at the beginning of the year and I addressed the possibility of her pretending to not know the answers with the teacher. She was receptive to my suspicions and had thought that might be the case. By the second semester my daughter was still not always willing to demonstrate her knowledge during evaluations and would go out of her way to complicate her answers. For example she insisted that she could not identify the letter "q", but would instead say she couldn't be sure, but it looked like an upside down backwards b. (That takes some serious thought!) This teacher also recognized that she was bored and was just trying to make the testing more interesting. The teacher believed that my daughter saw other children getting more attention when they struggled with answers thus prompting her to pretend to also be struggling. Her behavior in class was always wonderful when they were learning something new, but would go astray whenever they were reviewing previous topics. Thankfully this teacher did not dismiss her as a misbehaving child but instead admitted that it was hard to teach my daughter only because she had 17 other kids in the class that were not at the same level. Towards the end of the year she started having my daughter help friends that were struggling in class by reviewing lessons with them. My daughter loved this and came home announcing that she got to be almost an assistant teacher and how good it felt to help her friends. After careful consideration we opted to send her to a highly rated private school for Kindergarten in the hopes that she will receive more individualized attention. She really seems to be enjoying the social aspect of school but she is already very bored with the work. Getting her to finish the nightly homework is a battle because it consists of mostly circling letters and coloring pictures. When we try to have her read to us she starts out well but as soon as we praise her, she will then repeatedly pretend to be struggling to sound out words with all kinds of dramatic confusion and frustration. She will do this whole act with words that she just read two pages prior. My husband and I have both tried to reason with her and/or threaten her with consequences regarding pretending to not know the answers, but it just seems to intensify the issue. I've tried the argument that she has to demonstrate her knowledge on the easy "stuff" to earn the right to do the more interesting "stuff" and she asked me "why?" and you know, I struggled to find an answer for her. Friends with children the same age look at me like I'm crazy if I mention that my daughter pretends to not know things and they probably think I'm just trying to brag about my smart kid. I don't want to be so frustrated with my daughter, I don't want her to be bored, I don't want her to feel like she has to hide her intelligence to fit in, I want to be sure that I'm nurturing her gifts and not pushing her too hard. Should I have her tested? Should I wait to see if the school recognizes it? Should I request a conference with her teacher? I don't want to come off as an overbearing mom who just expects too much of their child. I truly believe she is hiding her abilities and I just don't understand why she feels the need to do so. I don't think we would have similar issues over several years with multiple teachers if there wasn't a root reason for it.
