Apparently, I posted here like nine years ago about my son. You can read the post I guess. He was hyperlexic at age 2. I was only just cracking the book on this parenting thing, so it's weird to read it. He went off the charts a couple years after that. The school says they have never seen anything like him. He struggles a lot too, socially, but he's pretty extraordinarily gifted at language and math.
However, I'm back with a second kid and lessons learned. The public school did not push my son academically because they haven't the resources. When they finally did, he improved in all domains, but that wasn't until 5th grade.
My daughter, who is in second grade, learned almost nothing this year from her teacher and is so catastrophically aggravated. She hates school. Her lexile score is 1050 (which is shockingly high) and her iReady reading sits at 608, well higher than her brother's at that age, despite not having been hyperlexic. She learned to read with everyone else around 5 and 6. She lags behind him slightly in math, but when I say the school hasn't taught her a goddamn thing all year, I mean it. Her lexile scores are pure home-reading and having me for a mom.
I'm looking for two things. First, how reliable is that lexile score anyway? It can't be right, right? She's practically into high school with that score. Is it possible to just be really good at guessing? Her math score is only a grade or two ahead, but it seems like that's a function of math really needing a teacher while literacy is something I can handle with her. Second, what can I do to squeeze some enrichment out of these people at the school? They ignored my son until it was no longer possible to pretend he didn't need acceleration and I want to rectify this issue with the smaller one before she comes to hate school even more. She hides under her desk and sticks her fingers in her ears because she hates "fundations" and now I have every reason to believe she is not just being difficult. It's baby talk to her and she no longer cares to be a baby.
I'm broke as a joke and can't afford much on my own, so I need the public schools to pony up. What strategies have you used to get them to cater to the gifted?
