Then the principal had the nerve to say that with his intelligence level she would have expected him to be reading already and her kids were reading at 4th grade level before kindergarten.
I'm surprised to hear this from someone in education - sure many gifted kids are early readers, but some are not because of learning disabilities. Then there's exposure - not all gifted kids teach themselves how to read in lieu of parental help.
They said he wasn't writing his name as well as the other kids (it looked fine for 5) when really I was surprised he could write his name at all.
My kids both have awful printing/writing. DS8 still mixes his letter cases and writes some of them in reverse and DD9 is so sloppy... no spaces between words, etc.
Funny story: DD9 had copied math questions down from the board at school for homework. Of course she made a horrible mess and crammed them all together at the bottom of the sheet. She decided to erase them to write them more neatly, but neglected to write them down somewhere else first, so she forgot what they were. (Ha! So there. I've harped SO MANY TIMES about the importance of neat penmanship... maybe this time she'll learn).
Now I have been working on flash cards with him so he will know all his letters and sounds before he goes next year and he knows 20/26 but its a chore to get him to work. Some days he spouts off all 26 other days he just refuses to participate and shrugs his shoulders like he has no clue what he is looking at. All he does is cry and say I just want to go play. According to the psychologist his "cognitive abilities are significantly advanced for his age" but he doesn't want to work!
Hmmm. LD, or behavioural? It can be so hard to tell. When testing and performance don't match, there's often something else going on, but what? When he doesn't want to participate, could it be due to boredom? Have you tried raising the difficulty level a bit to engage him? What about simple phonetic words?
Gifted kids can shut down when they're bored. It's one of the reason that inclusive, non-differentiated education can be problematic.
I am really new to this gifted thing and I need advice on how to side step this emotionality its driving me nuts!!!! I feel like I'm trying to do what a specialist should be doing and I suck at it.
Aw, you just haven't learned how yet, that's all. Even the specialists had to start from zero at one point. Asking for opinions and advice from those who've been there is a good place to start
