I had an interesting experience over the weekend while at breakfast with two friends. Both are teachers who stopped teaching full time when they had children, just in the last couple of years. One has her Masters degree and worked with Special Ed students and the other was a regular classroom teacher in a very affluent school district. Neither one of them knows much about Graham or, more specifically, what he�s doing these days intellectually. I tend not to talk much about it among my friends with school age children. The discussion they were having is the reason why.
Talk turned to obnoxious parents they have encountered over the years and both agreed that the worst were parents who �insisted that their children were brilliant�. Apparently, both had frequently run into the �hot housing� parents we previously debated and both my friends described parents who absolutely insisted that their children were �special�. Both teachers described withholding opinion, but seeing testing results that proved that these kids were bright but not GT. Both friends described a process where those kids were ahead due to involved parents but usually by 3rd grade, were merely considered �bright� as their classmates had caught up to them academically.
I was very interested in this discussion. Was this my kid? Am I over-involved? Is his early reading and aptitude at numbers just an advancement that will level out in elementary school? The public district we currently live in does nothing in the way of gifted ID until 3rd grade. I was really thinking that we may need to find a district that looks at things a bit differently as I have a 2.9 year old kid who is reading. What the heck am I supposed to do with him in the next 2 years?
But both my friends, who I do respect a lot, were pretty insistent that parents shouldn�t attempt to tell a teacher, especially at the beginning of the school year, about their child, but should let the teacher draw their own conclusions.
Overall, I was really disturbed by the conversation. They both thought grade skip was a really bad idea and both very much thought that boys (especially those with summer birthdays like my son) should be held until age 6 before starting Kindergarten.
I am perfectly willing to be an advocate for my child. But this conversation brought home the need, I think, to have Graham independently tested before school, at age 5. Otherwise, I really get the impression that sort of blowing off parents who ask about issues related to their kid and GT is the norm. I really think until I have numbers in my hand, I run the risk of being mocked as one of �those� parents behind my back. It was really very uncomfortable for me.
