Ds is in a gifted 4th grade class. He is currently failing in math and language arts while excelling in social studies and science. He hates math because they are doing common core multiplication and division. If he doesn't show his work its marked wrong even if he got the answer right but if he shows his work he takes too long and either doesn't finish or he becomes late on other homework. The teacher doesn't have time to watch him or help as its a large class so she sends him into the hallway where he refuses to do anything. At home he is having anxiety attacks over this and although I got him signed up with khan academy he is now determined never to do math again so its become a full out battle. If he thinks he did well on a test we find out later he failed and he gets discouraged. How can a child be at 100% for science and history yet 49% at math? Math has always been his strong suit until this year. We have tried to set up appointments and meetings with the physciatrist and occupational therapist but they are "too busy". I'm about to lose my shit and go crazy on these people. I really don't want to pull my kids from this school as both are adapting socially very well...and that's a first for my dd. What would you do?
I've been there. 6th grade my DS totally melted down. His problem wasn't math but anything involving writing, or group projects and he had a lot in his gifted class. He was also very slow to get him homework done. He had full on anxiety attacks in class, and at home when it was homework time.
What did I do? I found him a psychologist outside of school, he saw the school social worker. We decided that as he was already well above grade level, we would work on his anxiety rather than information content for most of the rest of the school year. Part of the problem was a bad teacher fit. As this only started in Feb. of his 6th grade year (last in that school) we talked about how junior high would be different.
Things improved in junior high and then took a turn for the worse again last year as a H.S. freshman. Last summer I finally got him a full neropscyc evaluation, and I'm glad I did. I understand a bit better what is going on. Wish I'd done it earlier. One issue is that although my son is gifted he has low processing & working speed. Therefore although he understands how to do a high level of material he has never been fast about it.
Is this a public school? If so I would demand a student study team (SST) meeting to discuss these issues and see how you are going to proceed. It seems as if your DS's teacher is really not trying to figure out what is going on.
