I'm jumping on and off line now b/c of my baby. But I wanted to ask, just how much would you tell the school? I'm having a hard time deciding how to present this, where to start. The person evaluating him wants us to say nothing if we possibly can until she's done. This is very hard. B/c to begin with, we thought he was probably having trouble b/c bright rather than other causes. And now we have the WISC-IV and WIAT-III scores. So I understand wanting to wait for full results and coming up with a plan, but honestly, I feel like it's beyond awkward to go in to the school and say, we just want this classroom eval b/c we're worried and say nothing about all the other concerns (which we've brought to the school last year and in September to no avail, but never had scores to back us up before). But that's what the psych. is advising.

I'm so tired of trying to make the school feel listened to and respected and deferred to, of taking months to try to ease a teacher along to asking US if maybe, just maybe, the work is too easy. I don't feel up to doing it again this year.

And I worry that my perspective is warped. I started school in a K-8 trailer house. It was terrific. There were 3 in my class, but I could listen to all the other lessons and just work as fast as I wanted to- I was in 4th grade math and 6th grade reading by the start of 2nd grade, when we moved, and no one ever said there was the slightest thing weird about that. Then after I moved, it was to a school that had about a class and a half worth of kids/grade, so they had mixed-age classrooms up til junior high, when they started subject accelerating me as schedules worked. It just made a lot of flexibility built-in easy. So these are my public school associations. I keep feeling like, if they could do it in rural MT 30 years ago, just what on earth is your problem, wealthy CT school district?? But I'm pretty out of my depth, understanding how schools work now, out here. I'm not sure what's reasonable. Is my experience giving me a warped idea of what public schools can and will do?

ACS, I cautiously mentioned a skip to my son, just in the abstract, and he wanted to be skipped to 6th! lol. or, panic, or something! But I don't think he can figure out all these issues about friends/puberty etc for himself at this age. It sounds wrong to say I'm glad someone else felt the same way, but I'm glad to hear it's not just us. Even with my subject skips...when I was two years ahead in math, and walked over to the high school in 7th grade...I felt very out of place and the teacher was hostile. When he had to send my grade back, he rolled out 20 feet of paper towel and scrawled the grade across it, so I had to roll this enormous thing up and carry it back to the secretary at my school. The next year, they had me do it again with a girl whose family that teacher was friendly with, in the class one year ahead, and that was easier. I just found some nice, quiet girls to sit with and stayed with them through HS, until we ran out senior year and a different math teacher was willing to run a higher level class before school started for us. Strangely, when I was in language classes with kids 2 years ahead, just b/c the language classes were inherently mixed age, I didn't feel out of place. It's when I was skipped somewhere I 'shouldn't' be that I felt bad.

So these experiences, in a small town, too, I should probably add...as we're in now, by CT standards...made me just worry inside when I read things that suggest that a kid with DS's scores should skip 3 years (though not all at once). I've wanted the sort of friendly flexibility my school came up with, which had mixed age classrooms, subject skipping, internships, pull-out program, teams and competitions. I'm just not sure how to get there, or how to judge if it's the least bit possible. I know my mom had to do her share of principal-talking and school-board agitating. So probably from her perspective, it wasn't the simple friendly experience it seemed to me. Well...except for the algebra I teacher!

And Grinity, I never had stats, nor tried to figure them out. Frankly I'm not sure what a standard deviation is supposed to mean, though I'll ask dh tonight-- I've avoided for too long! But where IS 3 deviations above the mean, score-wise?

And I may go buy Genius Denied, or consider sucking up my embarrassment with ordering it at the library. I didn't get it b/c it seemed more anecdotal and I was looking for research and prescriptions.

And my son seems to have an attitude like you describe...he does seem, I think, to feel the need to prove himself smart MORE b/c of this skepticism...it makes him more focused on being smart, and less generous to others, too. He told me he doesn't like to teach others b/c then they know the secrets. Sadness. He didn't use to be that way.

And I have definitely not been sure my son(s) is/are gifted. Sometimes they seem so absolutely average to me. And they never were the prodigies I'd see when I occasionally went over to the Babycenter gifted board. But then they'd do something that seemed so scary smart we'd be stunned. But then they'd fall back into being their usual selves...kind of as if a fish jumped out of dark waters and you just see the flash for a minute and are left saying, did I really see that? Are those ripples, or am I imagining things? The doubt has made me really susceptible to believing what people say about wait and let the schools figure it out. I'm really as glad to have finally decided to go for testing just to remove the wondering what we're dealing with as for any other reason.

ok, crying baby boy so jumping off, but twomoose, thanks for the head's up on EPGY. that's too bad...I'd thought it would give better instruction than it looks as though ALEKS does on the free trial.

Mom of Short Boys