Re: recession: not really, but thank you.
It's not that I feel bad about myself. I just don't feel I can honestly say to my kid, "Work hard, work smart, take risks, and you'll get ahead." It's simply not true. Life is, in part, a gamble.
Re: bullying:
They are addressing it, but the problem is, once the idea is out there, it doesn't matter if the school points out that the kid in particular is behaving inappropriately. "Stop saying she's ugly" is not the going to convince a girl who has just lost a beauty contest in which half her peers got a prize, that she's beautiful, you know?
It is not that my stepson can't stand up for himself. It's that in a school where half the kids are working a grade level or two ahead, and he does not have that opportunity (because he's not profoundly gifted even if he's highly capable), he is becoming aware that he's not been selected for services by the school system.
There is no changing that. Ultimately, to the school system, the gifted kids are worth the effort, and he is not. He's not gifted but he can figure out what that means.
I hope to see if there is something I can do to make sure that general education kids in my own daughter's class have more enrichment and working-ahead opportunities so that they know they have the opportunity to work a grade level ahead IF they finish their work on time. I will have to ask my partner if he can go in earlier so I can work at the school some to make it happen.
Ultimately, nothing makes you feel good about being left behind half your peers in the school. This is of course compounded for my stepson by the fact that like most of the gifted children, he hasn't been learning anything for the past four years and has NO IDEA how to learn a new math concept. He believes math homework should be completed in under 30 seconds. They are doing pre-algebra now, and he's finally having to read his math book, but refuses. So for the first time in his life, he's getting problems wrong.
I do not want that scenario for my bio kid, and it won't happen, because I am more aware than his mom and dad. Believe me I am trying to work with his dad on 'how to teach a child concepts when he's been taught he is in the bottom half of his class and simultaneously has not learned any new math concepts for four years (more like six), as well as believing that nobody with any intelligence should ever have to read the book, and not doing it perfectly the first time is not good enough'. Because not only gifted kids are perfectionists... sometimes normal kids are too. But on top of that I want to make sure my own daughter gets different messages: that she, too, is highly capable, though she doesn't need the special learning environment of the conceptual learners.
I'm thinking of explaining it in terms of conceptual/intuitive learners vs. absorption/sensory learners, and seeing if I can help the school in providing enrichment for general education in those terms. I fully understand about intuitive learners' needing different curricula. I was in such a program myself. I just wish there were a way to differentiate without my kid hearing that she's in the bottom half... which she is, actually, in her own school.
