I do worry that the educational therapist isn't as familiar with HG+ kids as she portrays. Everyone always says that, yes, I've worked with lots of HG kids, but most people, I've found, haven't worked with kids at the LOG of mine. Wow, that sounds arrogant! I didn't mean it that way, but we have run into problems with various assessors and counselors who really didn't have much experience working with more than high achievers or mildly gifted kids yet who assured us they did.
In my estimation, that is an entirely valid concern. We've run into this again and again over the years. Many people
say that they know what "highly gifted" looks like, and most people probably have some notion of "prodigy" = "profoundly gifted" and envision really extraordinary prodigies featured in the media... but few people have direct experience with kids just below that prodigy level.
She did very well on that test, but her notes using my formatting were not as good later on I suspect. She refused to let me see them or to see what she had done poorly on. She is rather secretive, which makes this harder.
Honestly? I impose punishments for refusals like that. My JOB as DD's parent is to be just intrusive enough to set her back on the trail when she wanders. She's prone to wandering-- so it's MY job to check in on her progress whether she wants me to or not.
DH and I establish "this is unacceptable" and we
are judge and jury there. The school's demands are almost irrelevant, because they are generally so mediocre/low. We do NOT want our DD 'sliding' into that kind of thinking about her own behavior and performance. She also has this weird disconnect between her effort and the results, in part because of that school-based rubric which often finds mediocre work "just fine," and allows multiple revisions/retakes of things. We only permit that when we feel that she has put forth
some effort to do well... the first time around.
That said, when we tell her "this is unacceptable" for some reason, we DO seek her input into what to DO about the problem, and frequently into "what happened here to cause this outcome?"
That part of things is where buy-in has to happen, we've found. She will refuse to implement MY plan or her dad's.
For example-- I showed her how to use the Cornell method for notetaking, showed her a few other ways to take notes, and then told her that she could CHOOSE any method that seemed to work for her-- or use a variety of methods in different subjects, whatever. But-- that she HAD to be taking written notes in her class notebooks, and that I would spot check them. If she refuses to show me her notes, I make her take new ones. No muss, no fuss... but I'm not going to allow her to
decide whether or not she can "self-regulate" there without making her prove it to me. This is the second step in our scaffolding for that behavior. Certain kinds of free time/leisure activities are dependent upon compliance with my directives re: study skills training.
I also nag her to
enter events/activities into her calendar. I don't do it for her-- but I
do insist that SHE do it.
