Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy DD8 wants out of school. HELP!

Ok, we cross posted. What aculady wants are the scores for the subtexts. Things with names like Block Design, Vocabulary, Coding...

Yes, this! Please, all the detail you have, so we can look at the whole picture and see what is behind the index scores. For example, a child who got two 14s and a 15 on the verbal subtests might have a very different experience of being in school and in life than a child who scored two 18s and a 7 on the same subtests, even though they would both have the same VC index score.

Well she tells me that she is bored, she says that she falls to sleep in class. I asked her if it is happening in the morning before lunch or after. She tells me that it happens both before and after. I know she is getting ample sleep. So I find it odd that she would just fall out at school like that. Which makes me feel that there is truth to her statement.

She has also mentioned that the other girls in class want to talk about "dumb kiddy" stuff. She doesn't seem to know how to associate with them. She has older cousins and friends thereof which she does just fine with. She also attends a theater group that has ages 8-18 in it. She loves that. The older kids are really receptive to her, and she them.

Other than that. Nothing. She also sees a therapist once a month, we just met with her last week. Her report to me was that my DD is doing great. She is much more focused then when they first met. She told me that she seems happier. She then asked me if I ever thought about asking the school to advance her in math. (Which makes me wonder now if that was brought about by my DD asking me for more work).

Some of us are assessment geeks. We want to see the subtest scores before we know whether we can trust the FSIQ. Some school psychs don't use the FSIQ as a summary of the student's cognitive ability if there is a big disparity among the subtests. You're lucky we didn't ask for confidence intervals! I think you may also be mixing in the scores of an academic assessment with the WISC there.

The focus and processing speed may improve as she gets older. Does she often have trouble with focus? You wouldn't necessarily see that kind of frustration with the slow pace of school with an IQ of 120. Personality would play a role, though, in her expressing this to you. I'm going to go ahead and predict that she is a "Feeling-Perceiver" on the Myers-Briggs.
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From http://www.educationaloptions.com/resources/resources_rufs_tips.php

"If they are Feelers (FP), they will feel morally violated when asked to do what they sense is wrong, unnecessary, or demeaning for them. When they are threatened with punishment or bad grades, for example, it not only doesn�t work, it builds resentment and anger in the FP student. One way I suggest for parents to know if their gifted child is an FP is to ask them if these words have ever come out of their mouths: �In the amount of time you�ve argued with me, you could have finished this.� One last word on Perceiver children: the gifted children who are brought to specialists such as me are a parent-selected skewed sample. Although estimates of the percent of the US population who are Perceivers is 48%, a consistent 92% of the children who are brought to me for help are P-Perceivers."
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A couple of possibilities are that this testing is not very accurate for some reason, and that there's a lot more to the story than she is telling you. That the testing isn't terribly accurate is a distinct possibility given her age and state of mind. The WISC report is one piece of data, one snapshot from one moment in time. It should be considered in the context of everything that you know about your child.

You might look for the book "5 Levels of Gifted" by Deborah Ruf. There are a bunch of milestones in that book, and quite a bit of discussion of the different degrees of educational needs of gifted students.

Okay subtests:
BD 10
Sim 14
DS 14
PC 14
Coding 9
Vocab 13
L-Numb Seq 14
MR 11
comp 12
Symb Search 10

Hope this helps!

As far as her falling asleep in class, I wonder if she's been up late reading secretly. Boredom rarely makes students fall asleep unless there are other issues going on. When they do fall asleep, you often find that they've been playing video games until 4 AM, or the TV is in the bedroom, and their family has been watching it late, or there's some kind of health issue going on.

Do you have Verbal Comprehension (VCI), Perceptual Reasoning (PRI), Working Memory (WMI), and Processing Speed (PSI)?

Reading has happened before. We have had those conversations before. But I have been checking on her every night. She is gone about 20 minutes after bed time. So I don't think she is doing that at bed time. She reads for about an hour before she heads off to bed, she doesn't like video games, no interest in them at all. I bought a Wii for her and her brother. If it wasnt for him it would sit and collects dust. She doesn't watch TV in bed because she doesn't have TV in her room. But even when she is in the livingroom, she is eyebrows deep in a book.

Her lowest subtest scores are the ones that have a significant motor component: Block Design, Coding, and Symbol Search. Motor output (the physical act of writing) might be something of a bottleneck causing some frustration if her hands can't keep up with her head. Her working memory is excellent, and this could easily lead to boredom or frustration with things like being asked to show her work on math that is too easy.

I second checking to make sure she isn't reading in the bathroom or by the light coming under the bedroom door...I was always bored in school, but the only times I actually fell asleep in class came after nights when I had stayed up reading or when I was actually experiencing an illness or auto-immune flare.

Again this morning, the same thing again, she said "I can't wait to get this day over with". I think I need to speak to the teacher and the guidance counselor. I believe there is something she isn�t telling me. You all are right about the abrupt change. It has been over the last several weeks. She has done a complete 180. We have always been told, by every teacher she has had since Kindergarten that she should be moved forward/advanced. She used to bound out of bed and be around in a matter of minutes. She would come home and do her homework at the table. But this year, she has most of her homework done by the time she gets home from school. She does the final touches without ever having to be told. I have to force her to let me see it. It is always correct. I asked her why she doesn�t just bring it to me instead of me having to go look. She tells me that she knows what she is doing and feels that she doesn�t need help so what is the purpose in having me look at it.