I'm not sure if you need to deal with it. My older child is 13 now. So we have long stopped trying to let school teachers see what our children are capable of. We are one of the families who have lost faith in "the system". When my kids were little, I did have thoughts similar to yours, that they needed to show what they are capable of, so that the teachers/the schools will give them what they needed. But I've give up, a lot of the teachers don't recognize how truly capable some kids are, and even if they do, they don't necessarily have the will or the means to support them. In some cases, the teachers may actually act in negative ways toward these kids. Now my philosophy is simply that my kids should have a great time at school with friends and we will make sure they learn what they need to learn at home.
Now if you are not worried about academics but about things like leadership skills or going against his best judgment in order to fit in, I think you can keep watch. I'd worry if "blending in" is painful to him, if it's something that he doesn't want to do but he feels that he has to do it in order to have friends. If it's just natural to him, I'd just keep an eye and see how it goes. Things got really bad for my DS13 in middle school, he felt miserable trying to be someone he was not in order to fit in. This, plus issues in academics, made us finally put him in a private, gifted school. The social situation improved a lot, but academics is still very bad.
Last edited by playandlearn; 01/17/14 10:39 AM.
