Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school not playing with peers?

Well, DeHe and MumOfThree, you've hit the nail on the head with my son. When the fit is bad, my son often acts up too - to remove him from the scene. Thanks for letting me know I'm not the only one with a child "who doesn't want to engage in group time, follow instructions, or do anything that interrupts his exploration of what he finds interesting" (exactly true for us!).

My son wasn't interested in other kids either when he was 3/4 years old or even part of last year either.

My son had a speech delays as well as other delays and was in a special needs program until last Nov when we put him in a private gifted school since we live in MA where there's hardly any gifted programs or accommodations made in public schools for gifted kids, especially PG kids.

We noticed a huge difference when we put him in the private gifted/creative school which is an open-room type school with 28 kids from pre-k to 8th grade. The older kids act as mentors or peers to the younger tykes and coax them to do work, which seems to work considerably better than the drill-and-kill approach or the teacher-driven method to instruction that my son totally resists.

Our son was sociable and interactive (at times) at the playground, but not in the classroom or other certain settings like with the recent Legos event at the public library. So our son selects when he is sociable and interacts with others, which often made previous teachers think he was on the autistic spectrum even though autistic people don't have a sociability switch that they can turn on at recess on the playground and switch off once they enter a classroom.

Of course, the problem now is that school is out and we don't have the money to pay for camp, so I'm kind of stumbling around to occupy my son - which is why I took him to the Legos event at the public library!

I'd be interested to hear any suggestions or ideas on what other parents find what works.

That's how my parenting has been, holding on tight to those little moments when I can see flashes of happiness in my son and believing that things can be so much better than the behavior that shows when the fit isn't good. I use those moments to motivate myself to keep trying to find a good fit, even when it's emotionally exhausting.

As my son has gotten older, there are more and more 'back to back' months of happiness: 8th grade at public school with a gradeskip was excellent from September to March, Summers at CTY camp have been great, and this year, 9th grade deceleration at boarding school has been excellent. What a difference from elementary school (One amazingly good year plus 1 terrible year and 2 'quite bad' years!)

As far as peers, DS went to daycare at age 7 weeks. His stratagy was to choose a single child to be his main focus, and all was well as long as that other child was in school and willing to play. The teachers were also concerned that he seemed to want so much of their attention. In retrospect I think he craved adult attention because the Adults could talk, unlike his classmates.

Love and More Love,
Grinity