Nope. No leeway, really, most of the time. It's not as though the teachers who know her well don't see this problem-- she lets just enough of her actual brilliance show through the cracks that they KNOW as well as we do that she's capable of knocking their socks off every time she opens her mouth or puts words to paper.
Honestly, we didn't push them flexing things for her, either. Because it's not exactly a disability or anything like that, and it's going to be a lifelong thing that won't be eligible for accommodations going forward, so...
well, no way were we going to be "those parents" pressuring teachers to make things more entertaining for DD's benefit so that she could show them what she could actually do.
I mean, I'd love it if DD actually demonstrated her true potential more often. I would. But then again, she has to learn to 'just do it' as well, and that lesson is pretty important. I also made it a habit starting in about 7th grade or so to hand back a rough draft to her and tell her "this is garbage. Rewrite this and do it while paying attention to what you're doing."
She gets very lazy with things that she doesn't want to do. Please understand that I am in no way advocating this approach for a child who has an underlying or probable disability causing difficulty with written expression. Only with kids who are failing to be self-motivated enough to do even a half-hearted effort. While that might be good enough for a B on an assignement from most cream-puff teachers these days, no way does that kind of EFFORT make the grade for me personally.
We have used this to explain to DD that others will only treat her appropriately relative to their PERCEPTIONS of her intellect, however. In other words, if she wants to be treated as more intelligent, she'd better act like it, too. That means not blowing off things that she finds uninteresting.
