My husband's family...believes that the "social stimulation" of school is of utmost importance. I've always been defensive about this topic, because I believe that's a bunch of hooey, basically.
My point is, if Jonathan is surrounded by other children he doesn't talk to anyway, how can this be socially stimulating? He's probalby the most socially developed child in his class! It explains why he gets along so beautifully, and interacts so imaginatively, with children two or three years older than him.
You're so right! A gifted kid's true peers aren't likely to be found in a same-age classroom. And the more gifted the kid, the older the true peers are likely to be.
I read something at the start of our educational crisis this year that really reassured me that gifted kids don't HAVE to have the social "stimulation" (if you can even call it that!) of public school (Hoagies, maybe? Sorry, but I can't recall the source!). The gist was that the school years--and the primary school years in particular--are the only time in a person's whole life where people are grouped strictly by age. Imagine being refused service at the store for 40-year-olds because you aren't old enough yet. Or imagine selecting who to invite to a dinner party solely because of how old they are. Ridiculous, right? But we assume that because it's convenient for schools to group kids by age, it's somehow better for the kids. But the welfare of the kids isn't a factor in that grouping, and grouping by age certainly isn't in the best interest of gifted kids any more than grouping them by some other arbitrary method that has nothing to do with education...like height!
People also intimate that this age-based grouping is somehow natural and "how it's always been." That's not true either. Once upon a time, not so long ago, we had one-room schoolhouses. When a child finished one primer, s/he went on to the next. If said child finished the whole curriculum early, said child read independently or went back to work on the farm or in the family business. (Unschooling, anyone?)
These points really reassured me when we decided to pull our DS6 out of his public school 1st grade a mere 6 weeks into the school year. Making the choice to pull him out was scary! I never thought we'd home school. But, like you, I kept drifting back to it. And it was the absolute right thing for this year. DS got happy again immediately. He has also had significantly MORE time and energy to devote to friendships since he isn't frustrated and bored all day long.
Homeschooling certainly isn't the only option for an extremely gifted kid, but in my experience, it's a good option...assuming you have the patience and the interest to do it. And I think it's actually less time-consuming for me than public school and all the busy-work I was having to force DS to do. At least now the time I spend on DS's education is a lot more fun!
Basically, I agree with Texas Summer: weigh your child's needs in total and recognize that there's probably no perfect solution. Don't let that discourage you. Do the best you can at any given moment and adjust as necessary. You can homeschool one year and do something else the next; you don't have to commit to a specific philiosophy and follow it to the bitter end. This is practice, not theory! (Getting that advice from a friend and mentor was VERY freeing!) Take it one day at a time if you have to. Adapt.
Finally, realize that for gifted kids, positive social interactions usually come out of a positive intellectual situation. A child who is unhappy and frustrated is rarely viewed by other kids as a good person to befriend. But a child who is happy and confident is going to attract friendships.
How to decide what is best in your case?:
1) Do your research: talk to other parents, gather whatever info you can find on the attitudes toward GT accomodations of the principal and teachers in the school, find out what testing the school will accept (and the answer may be none but their own!),
2) Weigh how hard the fight will be for things like early entrance to K and other accomodations. Consider possible future effects: for example, someone on this forum was talking about her kids being considered ineligible for an advanced program later on in the school career if they were home schooled anytime along the way. If that's a valuable program, then you'd have to factor that into your choice,
3) Then decide if the rewards will be worth the fight.
In our case, we could have escalated our advocacy to the principal and asked to grade- or subject-advance DS or to switch teachers...but the school system is VERY down on grade-advancement or even subject-advancement, and changing first grade teachers wouldn't have guaranteed a better situation. The fact is that all the first grade classes were going to be learning letters and DS would have been bored in any of them. Plus, if we were refused accomodation (as we very probably would have been!), then we would have had to go back to the original insecure and defensive teacher after having gone over her head--not ideal! In the meantime, DS's behavior was getting worse. All the pain and suffering we'd have had to go through to make relatively small changes to the situation just didn't seem worthwhile, so we just removed him from the school.
Now that our educational emergency has passed, we're really enjoying home schooling. The freedom is liberating! My husband compares DS to a race car that had been gathering dust in our garage. Now that we're taking him out for a spin on a regular basis, it's amazing what he can do! Great fun!
None of this helps much with your pre-K situation. I will say that a kind and caring teacher is sometimes enough, since the kind and caring teachers usually want the kids to be happy and to learn. But if she just can't see how bright he is, then you probably have to do something. At least stronger advocacy. Sometimes you have to decide if you want to be "that mom" or if you want to let your child be "that kid."
One of my biggest regrets for my son's education before this year was that I didn't push his teachers at his Montessori preschool harder. He mostly languished there because he refused to jump through their hoops. They didn't recognize his abilities, and it wasn't until my husband pushed them at our Jan. conference--saying exactly what I had been saying for 4 months!--that they tried some new things with him and realized,
Oh! Wow! This kid is really smart! The second half of the year, he blossomed. I should have just embraced my "that mom"-ness in that situation! Live and learn...
That's enough outta me! I hope my ramblings help you somehow!
