Ah, tears really do help sometimes. Especially the kind that don't stop for an hour.
4th Grade: Our school made a big turn-around when I broke down and cried in the principle's office. (20 minutes? But it was very intense. And not angry or blaming, just plain misery) That's when they stopped blaming me for DS's troubles, and got serious about putting together a package of in-class enrichment and decreeing that it was ok to pair him with 'bright kids' for group projects. They put together a wonderful reading project where all the various reading groups read books from a single author, and DS and his 'rival' got to work on putting together a 'one man show' with DS playing the author. DS got to read all the books, plus biographys, and they did an interview with each reading group generating questions for the author.
If my son's personality was a little bit different, if he hadn't been 'already cooked' by bad agemate experiences starting at daycare by age 3, if he had a different combination of gifts and LOG and bottlenecks, then that might have been enough. If they had been able to subject acc. in Math, maybe then. It was a huge improvement, and still not enough in our particular situation.
Montana, for the future, if the grouping inside of a single grade isn't enough, consider pushing for grouping across two grades, and make sure that the 'linked grades' swap every year so that he's always the youngest. I think that if you can give your child what he needs without a gradeskip, that's wonderful!
Love and More Love,
Grinity
