I have two teacher friends who have gifted children and one of them believes in holding kids back, even gifted kids, to give them an extra year of childhood. This is common practice here, especially kids with spring or summer birthdays like my son. My other teacher friend told me that this is the real reason the Kindergarten teacher recommended holding back my son for "not coloring in the lines" when he started Kindergarten at age 5 already reading at about a 5th grade level. He read his first book at age 2 1/2 and on the first day of Kindergarten, when the teacher handed me a note with instructions on what to do with the school supplies we had brought, I handed it to my son and had him read it out loud and follow the instructions, proving that he could read and comprehend something that he had not read before. I didn't think I needed test scores before he started school because his vocabulary and reading ability were obviously at a high level. It didn't make any difference.
I can't understand why some teachers feel that it is right to hold kids back from learning. It seems very wrong to me.
Another teacher at our public school, who thought my son was probably highly gifted, recommended that I homeschool when I asked for her advice, so that it what I have been doing since he finished Kindergarten and he just turned 10.
At our small town public school they don't allow gifted kids to learn above grade level and then they assign a lot of homework so that kids don't have time to really learn much outside of school, so if I had kept my son in public school it might have looked like the other kids caught up with him academically, but then again, maybe not. My husband's older highly gifted son from a previous marriage was similar in some ways to our son and he was academically advanced even though he was kept at grade level. He just refused to do the busy work the school assigned and spent a lot of time reading things he was interested in and also a lot of time on the computer. Even though he could make the highest scores on tests, he got bad grades, and eventually dropped out of school. He never learned to work hard and dropped out of college.
I am sure there are teachers who have talked about me. I have had to learn to not worry about what other people think and focus on what is best for my child.
