Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Perfect at school, nightmare at home

My experience with DD6 is very similar, and its source is close to what DeHe describes. DD6 is bored and unchallenged through too much of the school day (only two hours a day in gifted, the rest with 1st grade), and deals with immature classmates, and the end result is she does all she can to maintain her composure all day at school, to the point where she has zero disciplinary issues there... and then she just explodes at home, over the slightest setbacks. She says she's stupid, she can't do it, she hates her life, etc. She's so worn out from maintaining her composure at school, and she feels safe venting it all at home... so she does. Spectacularly.

Recently we were told that the gifted teacher is often telling DD to smile in class, which shows what a huge problem the school is for her. Nobody has to tell her to smile at home, or at any of her extracurricular activities. If anything, the coaches have to occasionally ask her to tone down the silliness and remain on task. When she's doing what she enjoys, she's giddy to a fault. And this is a kid who recently said her favorite thing to do is learn.

We've got DD talking to a counselor at school, plus we've enlisted the help of a professional psychologist. We know that the overriding issue is lack of an educational fit, and the hope is that once we address that, the rest of the issues go away.

Have any parenting books ever been useful when trying to manage her? How did things go with 'Transforming the Difficult Child Workbook?'

I would definitely find out from the teacher how much time she expects the homework to take.

How much of the hour is timed math facts and reading and how much is actual homework? You may find it better to separate the timed stuff into smaller more frequent chunks, or perhaps to do it all on the weekend. Can she skip rope while she is practicing the Math facts or do flash cards on the computer with quizlet.com Quizlet?


Best wishes,
Grinity

Ultramarina
Seems like the gifted schools give a lot of homework, DS 5 is in a gifted K, he doesn't mind when it's interesting then it doesn't "seem" like work. I cant tell if it moves them foward in the wrork or not, but i assume it helps them accelerate. On the positive side, it's great that dd's school is a good fit.

My niece has always been "challenging" like that, it's very draining. She is in the it's never enough category - never enough attention, never enough fun, never enough dessert, whatever, she always wants more of something and it's your fault she can't have it. Yet with us, her aunt and uncle, she's delightful. With her parents, it's the desire for attention - even the negative attention.

So do you think something changed lately making her more the crankypants than usual? Or are you just more tired of it and sensitive to it since you know it turns off at school?

DeHe

Ah, you caught me! I haven't started it yet! I really need to.

The math facts are the easiest part for us, honestly. It's the writing, mostly, that's causing us the most issues.

I should have mentioned that she is healing from a fairly major injury and is still not fully mobile. This is a really obvious stressor, so I can't believe I haven't been thinking about it!--but on the surface she's appeared to handle it so well, and with virtually no complaints. Still, she has not been able to really exercise or run for about 6 weeks now, which has to have taken a toll. It's funny what we forget to "see."

Sounds like my DS7, except he's not recovering from any serious injury. (I hope your DD is better soon.) But I am feeling pretty lucky that my DS's GT school does not give very much homework - just 30 minutes a day reading (which he does on the ride home, and no requirement that he read aloud, which I'm sure would stress him out), studying for spelling, plus on rare occasions he has to finish homework he didn't complete in class.

Even without much homework, he is a perfect angel at school and lately a real beast at home. He recently got all 4s (highest grade) on his report card for all things related to classroom behavior. I told him he should spread the love and get a few 2s in school so he doesn't save all the bad behavior for us at home. When it got out of hand recently, we started shaving 15 minutes off his bedtime as a consequence. The extra sleep did seem to help (or maybe the threat of losing more time in the future).

Like others have said, I'd talk with the teacher to see how long she expects 7yos to be doing homework.

Wev'e had similar issues. I didn't read all the comments, so I might be repeating.

When DD was in 1st, I would let her skip her Math drills at home, unless the drills were on paper, because she was an A student in Math.

Try to ask her why she doesn't want to do the drills. It might help for her to unload her feelings about her school day. I would try to just ask and listen without given advice, unless she askes.

At 9yrs. old, we still have some issues with drills. Sometimes, it helps to go on spelling city.com for spelling words, so she doesn't have to get them wrong infront of me. We also use an indoor trampoline to do drills. My husband had her do spelling words upside down on her bed, they laughed the blood flow made the information stick. Creativity can help, when you have the option.

I think they use up lots of patients, just dealing with their school day.

Hope this helps. Best of luck.

We have had some success with Transforming the Difficult Child - it requires commitment and is not easy but when I am successful with it, I noticed that my DS is too. The Yale Mag article and related research seems to really supports the NHA. Also, I would suggest making some sort of chart with input from your DD about going about homework or have an after school routine. We have one with a magnetic list of all that has to be done after school and we break homework up work 15, break 5, work 15, break 5 - it's still a struggle to get HM done before dinner as my DS is not home from school until 4:15 or so.

She does okay with the math drills. Actually, the rote work is easy for her to tackle (she is very good at that kind of stuff). We have the most issues with writing (she is good at this but it really stretches her) and her "challenge" math work, which is not at all rote and requires thinking outside the box. I did ask her for input recently, which is why we started having the half-hour of free time before homework. I wish I could give her more, but it's pushing it.

I have talked to the teacher about DD taking too long with her writing work. She spoke to her about it, and I think it was good for DD to hear that she was doing more than enough, but I don't know how much it's changed things.

This is how I feel, too! I suspect DD is a little addicted to the praise she gets at school for being a "leader" (they push this) and a good student. They get prizes and so on. Meh.

DD6 had an emotional night last night over the end of what had been a very rocky 4-year friendship. She begged off attending school this morning because she wasn't going to be able to sleep, because she was going to have too many bad thoughts, and not sleeping was going to make it too tough to be good in school all day. I said, "Being good in school is very important to you, isn't it?", and she agreed, and detailed her reasons for it, which touched on some external rewards but culminated in "being one of the best students."

I'm not sure when being "the best student" changed from being the smartest to being the most compliant. I'm halfway tempted to start encouraging her rebellious side. <sigh>

Anyway, in her case, I'd say the external rewards (prizes, etc.) aren't as important to her as the internal ones (praise, self-esteem, etc.).

FWIW, she didn't go to school this morning. We did a weekday version of family camp out in the living room and watched Beezus and Ramona (NOT Ramona and Beezus!) instead of bedtime. Today she'll go Christmas shopping for her cousins.