More ideas about getting together with DH:
Sometimes a parent will have more of a sense of 'I know what's right' for a child of the same gender. It seems like you are much more sure of yourself regarding your older DD, and your DH is more sure of himself regarding your son? That might or might not be ok, depending on your world view and family perspective, but if that is operating, it is good to get it into the open.
I would certianly ask around the family about the family history of both giftedness and learning disabilities. A polite, interested listener can dig up quite a bit. One way to get the conversations started is to ask if anyone was gradeskipped or stayed back, or in a special program. We live in a society that is very suspicious of individual variation and there is lots of pressure to 'be regular.' So anyone who sticks out their neck and says: 'The standard program is good for most people, but my child has different needs at this moment' is going to collect comment and negative attention.
I think that school teachers have their own particular slant on 'skepticism of gifted' - part of which maybe I can help explain:
Think about the shape of the bell curve - at the far right end, it is slopping down from 'a lot' to 'a few' at a pretty fast rate. So just by looking at the curve, you can see that if you draw a line at the top 5%, 3% or 1% there are going to be about twice as many kids who 'just missed' the cut off. So I can easily imagine a teacher seeing the 'whole thing' as 'just crazy' in a situation where there is only one program option for gifted kids and a single cut off. To a human eye, there are twice as many kids who nearly made the cut of as who just made the cut off - and - the kids who 'just made' the cut off make up 2/3s of the program to start with.
I'll bet I would roll my eyes if I had to live with a system like that. That's why I have so much respect for school systems that have lable the programs instead of the kids, and have multiple programs so that we can actually meet the needs of individual children.
There are be other reasons that teachers are socialized to be 'skeptical of gifted,' but just that look at the bell curve made me feel better.
Another thing that I dislike about 'gifted education' is when kids get told 'you kids over here in this room are our hope for the future!' This was very common during the big wave of Post-Sputnick era. It turns out that the field of Gifted has 2 very different tracks. One track studies people who have become eminent in their fields and looks back at their childhoods to see if anyone can figure out what made them succeed later, and if that can be generalized so that we have 'more eminent people.' The other track looks at kids who score high on IQ test during their school years - either are part of a group screening or because the child is acting out at school, and try to figure out how to met the social, emotional, and educational needs of those children at that exact moment in time. Not in hopes that they will cure cancer, but because meeting a child's needs is the decent thing to do.
My basic assumption is that when I use the word 'gifted' during a conversation that even if the other person is smiling and nodding, there is a pretty good chance that we aren't really communicating that well, because each of us has a very personal set of images when we think of the word gifted.
Going slow and leaving options open sounds like the best plan. It's interesting that your DH feels like the local school is a known quantity - I bet that if he actually spent 45 minutes in a classroom similar to what your son is in, it would make an impression on him different from what he thinks he 'knows' - particualy if he has direct experience with your son's 'gifted side.'
Love and More Love,
Grinity
