Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Can coasting be just fine?

First, I'm glad someone already referenced the "What a Child Doesn't Learn" article, 'cause I hate sounding like a broken record.

Addressing the initial question, "Can coasting be just fine?" I'd say absolutely -- I'm sure that the potential exists for a student to coast through all of K-12 and then magically readjust everything necessary to succeed in college. I just don't think it is worth the risk to wait that long to find out the answer.

It'd certainly be a lot easier for the first dozen years... just letting the kid roll out of bed everyday knowing all the answers... easily bringing home the straight-A report cards... almost always being the smartest kid in every class -- without having to crack open a textbook.

But if you go this route, you'd better be ready to help during those first crazy days of college... when zero effort will most likely result in zero credit.

As you might have guessed, this was my personal experience. Except that I had no idea that I was coasting all the way through school. I knew I was goofing off a bit more than most kids throughout high school, and maybe not going to class as often as others -- but I truly did not recognize how easy everything was for me.

And then off I went to college: Going to every class? Seriously? Note-taking? What's that about? Studying? How do you do that? I crashed into the proverbial wall so bloody hard. I dropped calculus and chemistry within the first month thinking that someone was playing a practical joke on me - this stuff was way too hard, even for a genius like me.

I dropped out completely shortly after finals.

-- -- --

I didn't realize what happened to me until I was researching GT-Ed in relation to our son, when his school recommended we put him into 1st grade at age 4. I stumbled across the report, "A Nation Deceived," and spent hours reading through the gory details and then was nearly brought to tears by the personal stories shared by students and parents. I was seeing my life described in dozens & dozens of the anecdotes; it was very powerful stuff. And a big smack in the head, albeit some 20+ years after the fact.

By the time our son was in third grade, and despite starting school a year early, I began to see the signs that things were still too easy for him. He knew all the answers, he was whipping through his books, he was getting top scores in everything... only he wasn't exerting any effort to accomplish any of this. But unlike some of the gifties out there -- and very much like his father at that age -- he wasn't bothered by this a bit.

I did notice, however, that he was greatly bothered by anything that presented even the slightest challenge. He was already addicted to the easy A.

Thankfully, through a fluke speech screening, he was given a test that lead to formal IQ and achievement tests. His scores caught the attention of some district-level people and with their help at the beginning of 4th grade, he was skipped into 5th and was working on 6th grade math.

This second full skip, along with the extra acceleration in math, was finally making our son work a bit more for his grades. He slowly became accustomed to the idea of exerting effort to achieve and as the year progressed, was no longer frightened by every little challenge that stood in his way.

-- -- --

So, no, I guess I'm not a big fan of coasting.

I think 2giftgirls put it well with her example of guitar lessons. I have posted similar stories about piano and DD7. She just had a recital on 2 pieces she was not found of, a slow Tchaikovshy was one. And her teacher has a very high bar of how she wants pieces played. I worked with DD and pushed her to do it as the teacher wanted, saying that if she didn't do it now, the teacher would delay the recital until it was right. And she got it done and she played amazingly and after she said she felt proud that she had done the work and did so well.

Coasting allows you to do OK. Even if you get A+, a lot of time you don't really learn it. You learn it to regurgitate it.

It is how you use your mind. Einstein worked in a patent office. Instead of just sitting there approving patents, (talk about outliers and opportunities) he used his position to look at all these time synchronizers and apply it to space and time, to create a new physical way of thinking.

So what does coasting give you? A "C", for cheating yourself out of opportunity.

I coasted until 9th grade when GPA began to gain monetary value.

Before that, you can't really cash in your IQ for $$$.

This is fine, as long as you avoid the violent outburst outliers:

"n October 23, 1990, David Pologruto, a high school physics teacher, was stabbed by his smart student Jason Haffizulla. Jason was not a teenager you think would try to kill someone. He got straight A�s and was determined to study medicine at Harvard, yet this was his downfall. His physics teacher gave Jason a B, a mark Jason believed would undermine his entrance to Harvard. After receiving his B, Jason took a butcher knife to school and stabbed his physics teacher before being reprimanded in a struggle.

Two years following the incident in a New York Times article covering this story, it was reported that Jason raised his grade average to 4.614, which exceeds the perfect average of 4, by taking advanced courses. He graduated with highest honors."

http://www.towerofpower.com.au/why-...unication-skills-and-what-to-do-about-it

There is a side of just plain parenting. I think too many parents are just too dismissive of bad behavior, because of the kid being so smart. Bad behavior is bad behavior.

As a parent that was brought in the Bill Cosby age of spanking. If you remember listening to his records, you get this.

Too many parents are too permissive and allow for hitting, tantrums and whatnot. A kid is not allowed to act this way. And any kid will if allowed.

And then they stab the teacher...

No, I do not spank but I am strict with bad behavior.

Unless Harvard Boy was fine until he suffered a near nervous breakdown because of the pressure, and, instead of decompensating inwward, he decompensated outward.

In other news, I turned away a client with Intermittent Explosive Disorder yesterday. Who needs to deal with that?

I consider myself strict, but in our case, what we were doing for 3 years was obviously just not working. Near the end of last year, I vowed to stop yelling and try to keep myself really calm and that really worked at home and with homework, but I have NEVER been able to MAKE Butter do something at school that she didn't want to. She certainly was disciplined for both not completing work as well as poor behavior choices/actions at home, but I often wondering what the heck the school was doing? If THEY are not happy with her behavior, I think THEY need to address it. I did what I could at home, but nothing seemed to help.

Now we are homeschooling and I let it be Butter's choice. The guitar, they actually suggest 4th grade (9yo), but they let 3rds try this year and the ones doing it are fairly mature and interested. I let it be her choice in the beginning and I warned her that paying me back if she quit was going to be the consequence. Honestly, this is a HUGE step in the right direction, as far as I am concerned. And I can SEE that, while I need to at least make her THINK it's her choice (and it can be a lot of the time), I also need to pressure her some. That pressuring her, just a little, says "I think you can do more, I believe in you." In fact, someone else here suggested that to me, that Butter was underperforming BECAUSE I had never put pressure on her.

Is this good for every kid? Probably not. But...if your kid is bringing home straight A's on everything with minimal effort, I say you owe it to them to provide *some* sort of challenge. It doesn't have to be academically...it can be creatively or physically, even better actually...but diamonds are made from pressure on coal

+1

I had a similar experience, and although my parents did their best within the framework they had (I got 2 grade skips by 6th grade) I never actually worked until after high school. By the time I had reached 6th grade I was fine bringing home B+ and not being the best student in my class -- as long as I could keep reading under my desk without anybody bugging me.

The competitive engineering prep program I landed in out of high school was a rude awakening, but by the time I was there there was no time to 1) learn how to work and 2) actually do the work. Some of my bad childhood habits are still having an impact on my work, twenty years later.

Of course I was very resistant to any pressure put on me to perform from early on (refused to learn how to read or count past 20 until I started "real" school...), so not sure things would have been much better if my parents had tried to correct the coasting

I manged to hold off on "actually working" until after law school. It was a shock to go from zero productivity to 100% productivity.

I never did get a handle on basic organization or basic time management skills. Someday, perhaps.

Speaking of that, does anyone know why legal assistants never, ever have time to file paperwork?