Originally Posted by ERM
Hello,
I live in a rural, somewhat isolated area. My 9 year old twins were both diagnosed as gifted in a private psych-ed assessment. We finally have the documentation we need to push for support from the school. For some reason there are an exceptionally low number of identified gifted students in our board (the Superintendent of Special Education told me 12 out of 10,000 students). This means that there are also very few resources and programs available. My boys will not have access to a school for gifted students or even very much attention from a resource teacher. I think the school staff will do what they can to be supportive level devil, but they don't seem to know what to offer. Our meeting is coming up and they have kind of put it on me to ask for what I want. I am not sure what I need to push for. Any advice?
A little bit of background, my boys are highly creative and very sensitive, have some social struggles and are under achieving at school.

Also, my daughter is in grade 2 and is also very bright. We can't under-go any testing until she is 9 but she too is advanced in several areas. She doesn't have the all same struggles as her brothers so it is easy to overlook her needs, but I want to advocate for her earlier if I can. I think she is around the age her brothers were when they figured out that they could avoid doing their best at the things they didn't like at school. If anyone has any advise about things to ask for from the school or to provide from home, I would greatly appreciate it!



For your second grade daughter, create a folder with all of her advanced work. If her work is flawless, ask the teacher for tests/assignments that are a grade or two higher to gauge the real gap. Introduce her to activities that don’t guarantee success initially, e.g., knitting, coding, playing a musical instrument. Praise her for her persistence and problem-solving, not just her ability to understand quickly.