Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy advocacy vs sheltering & dealing w Dragon parents

I probably wouldn't have pushed it either to go on to the county fair. It would have been a big leap for me to assume why certain projects were chosen and others weren't. Since he really wanted to go on, you had another avenue and took it. I'm surprised the other lady didn't leave it alone as well.

Most of the projects at my DD6s fair at a small private school were demos vs actually attempting to answer a question. Some judges like to see things hand-written vs electronic and assume powerpoint help was given by parents whether that was the case or not. There were many interesting projects and it had to be tough to judge. Last year DD6 (then 5) continued on, this year she didn't.

At DD11 district science fair, I saw such a variety of projects I had no idea how they judged. At her school fair, where she got interviewed she won 1st in her category. At the district with no interviews, she got honorable mention (ie 5th place? maybe). The boy she beat at her school got 1st. So it's really just a crap shoot.

I've tried to just tell them any time something is "judged" subjectively you just never know and just to deal with it.

FWIW I learned this lesson via roller skating at an early age, maybe 5-7. And yes I was in tears at one point because of the fairness but I came back and made sure there were no questions the next time. I'm not sure with a bright kid that 7 is too young to talk about it. Also FWIW, I'm a scientist and this is why I HATE science fair even though I love doing experiments. The dog and pony show never appealed to me.....

I really feel for you and your son - it's never fun to be in a situation where there is a downside to any path you choose. But if your son benefitted from the experience, then you likely made the right decision to push forward.

The only thing I might suggest considering is that children, especially highly intelligent children, are often quite perceptive and understand when things are wrong. And when they don't have enough facts, the information they conjure to fill the void of understanding can often be more damaging than a simplified version of the truth.

I remember being in a similar situation with my daughter, and I think I told her something like, "You know, it's really kind of sad, but sometimes grownups haven't learned all the lessons they should have learned in elementary school about being polite and kind and considerate of others. And that's what you witnessed. It doesn't look very good on a grown up, does it? And, you know, whenever I get after you for maybe being mean or impatient with a friend, now you know why. I want you to be able to be the kind of grownup that isn't unkind to other people."

Your son doesn't need to know the source of the mother's bad behavior, or that his being there had anything to do with it. But he did witness bad behavior, and having that not only acknowledged but put into perspective may actually help him feel more secure, not less.

Again, just a thought - take it or leave it as it fits your own style and knowledge of your own child.

If your son likes to read about science you could also start to guide him towards books/stories about science that incorporates history and people. My DD first got the hint about badly behaving adults and science with a book or two about the drama of paleontology over history and the tweaking of the truth and stealing each other's work etc. I don't remember any of the names of the books, this was from a couple of years ago. Also some children's biographies of scientists include their dealings with other people or living in a particular country that made it difficult to do their work, or others stealing their work and using it for evil instead of good, and how it upset the original scientist or the teams. Alot of gifted kids seem to like the good versus evil concept (my DD never tires of it) and how big, important people and young kids alike all have to deal with it maybe every day.

Back when they were doing multiplication in class, parents had to write down on a form how many minutes your child spent studying that day's x , sign the form and send it in the next morning. Well, the first x was 1...so I put 5 minutes just so it wouldn't be blank. We all had a good chuckle. The next day DD reported that the teacher gave money to the child that had 30 minutes, because it was the most time of everyone, and each day the child who had the most minutes got money.

Well, don't you know...the minutes reported by classmates, they started increasing by leaps and bounds. We just kept the course though, however long it took it took (not very long, I believe in manybe 5-10 minutes a few times per day and maybe concentrating on the ones she might be getting stuck on). Anyway, she said one day that a fellow student got the money that day because she had 120 minutes. DD was lamenting she still hadn't gotten the money. I asked, "how long is 120 minutes?" and she said, "2 hours" and I said, "do you really think she spent 2 hours on the 4x table last night? She has swim team and dance on that day too, and regular homework." DD just strugged. I said if she REALLY wanted to, she could try and "beat" that time to see if she could win the money tomorrow, but she REALLY had to spend that amount of time on the x that night (now over two hours as a minimun, to beat that 120 minutes....) because I wasn't going to lie on the form. Anyway, DD opted to play with legos instead over and above homework and time for x, and I haven't heard about it since!

At first, second, and third read of your original post, I agreed that you handled this in the best way -- you are your DS's advocate and you knew he deserved to have his work put forward. Especially since your DS was not a student at the school, I think contacting the proper people for the county contest was appropriate. However, after reading some of the comments, I would caution you to avoid saying that certain projects only went forward because of who there parents are. My DD has been on the receiving end of middle school bullying with comments like these. After winning a school speech contest which sent her on to the district, she intercepted a note between two of her classmates saying "________ only won because they didn't want to have to listen to her Mom." My DD was the clear winner as selected by more than a majority vote of all of her classmates and by disinterested adults selected by her GT teacher. This was very hurtful to a child who put her best effort forward, did wonderful work, and ended up placing 2nd in the district on the same speech.

I became a teacher within the year after 9/11/01, resolved to tell my students The Truth. In general, that policy has been pretty useful, but it's not that simple.

At some point in my first two years of teaching, though, I found myself in a moment where I was not going to tell my 5th graders what was going on. The intercom announced that the school was on lockdown, as it had been for three weeks while the Beltway Snipers were at large. I kept teaching, but stepped out into the hallway when another adult came by to find out what was going on.

It seemed a call to district headquarters had threatened to detonate bombs in 12 unnamed schools at noon. The district leadership had chosen to respond to this threat by locking all the children in all the schools until after noon. FWIW, they had also send cops around to search classrooms and ask teachers if they had noticed anything unusual. But as soon as I heard this, I said, "I'm not going to tell the students that."

Perhaps I find incompetent leadership more terrifying than terrorists. Well, that leadership has been replaced a couple of times since then. That job was always a hot potato.

I am sorry your ds had to hear the person from the other school get upset - and I'd probably have explained it to him from the perspective of letting him know that when the other school decided who would go to the county fair they chose to only send kids who attended their school. If he heard her saying things that were obvious that she was upset that he was at the fair with his project, I'd just honestly say "I don't know why she's upset" (because honestly, there could be a number of reasons - unless someone definitively told me that yes, the judging committee at the school purposely played favorites in giving the top spots to their children, I just wouldn't leap to that conclusion).

I'd also like to add a perspective coming from the point of view of someone who's been a judge at our state science fair - I'm a scientist and was a judge for a number of years. It may *look* like some projects are clearly "more worthy" of awards based on how they look in the presentation setup, and some projects are just inherently more interesting and in-depth looking up front. A large part of how we judged projects hinged on our interviews with the kids, as well as whether or not they were following the guidelines we had in place. I was never able to walk into a room full of projects and at casual glance see that project x was clearly more deserving than project y until I'd had a chance to talk with the students who put the projects together. Another science fair phenomena is that projects are basically unlimited in nature - anything that qualifies as science is usually accepted as a topic (as long as it doesn't involve torturing living animals). At our state fairs we always have multiple categories for awards sponsored by groups who have some type of science affiliation with an interest in specific areas. A project that received the highest award from one group might not get recognition at all from a different group - there were always many many great projects. Whether or not a project deserved to have an award is absolutely somewhat subjective, and going to depend on what the person judging is looking for - that doesn't mean one project is inherently better than another, and I think that's something I might want to emphasize with my own child. You mentioned that he could see his project was more worthy than others - I would take that as an opportunity to talk to him about how the other projects have merit too.

I'd also just like to put out there - science fairs can become so political in some parents' eyes but the primary reason there are science fairs is because people who love science want to encourage kids who love science to study science. Science fairs aren't the only place in life where kids are going to run into pushy parents or people who think they deserve more of an award than someone else or where they may feel slighted when an award is given out to someone else. I think it's helpful to put that into perspective - all of that is "noise" - what I'd really want my kids to take away is that they came up with an idea, they worked the project through, they learned something, they participated. Whether or not they one an award isn't the point, and whether or not they were chosen to go on isn't the point. When you focus on that, and then run into a parent who's gone over the cliff for whatever reason, I'd just be up front with my child and point out, that parent seems to be over-reacting.

polarbear

Oh, what a sad/unfortunate incident! Right off the bat, I'll agree it was bizarre and horrible for this woman to approach you so nastily in front of your small child. Yikes! Completely inappropriate!

As to opinions on how it could have been handled, I admit that I personally probably wouldn't have pushed to go on to the county fair. It sure sounds wrong that the judges are primarily comprised of competitors' parents (why not teachers? or other disinterested parties?), but I still think it is unfair to leap to the accusation that they were biased in selecting the winners. Just by the very definition of "judging" a science fair, there is subjectivity involved, and we can always have our doubts as to the purity of someone's motives, but we can't know for sure.

This is a common complaint in my town ("Susie should clearly have made varsity soccer over Joanie,", etc), but it can just be so hard to say sometimes. But, given that you were at the competition, when she snidely said she was surprised to see you, I think I would have leaned towards smiling back extra-graciously, and saying, "Oh, it's nice to see you, too."

As for what to let your child in on, it sounds like he overheard enough to understand the gist. Since he heard you say to the woman, "It was a little disconcerting when all of the committee's kids got sent on to county.", he knows what you are implying. So rather than tell him that you'll explain in 3 years, maybe I'd give a simplified, toned-down version to him now. But it is a great opportunity to talk about subjectivity, and how some books win Pulitzer Prizes, while some incredibly talented, brilliant literary critics think they are awful, etc. Things aren't always black & white. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, etc.

Good luck, and I'm sorry you had to go through that!!

Thank you everyone for your input.

To be clear, the idea that his project was in the top 15% of the ones at the school fair was based on the science fair's judging criteria and thoroughly reading all the projects, not just based on how the boards looked or even what the projects were. I wasn't there for the interviews though obviously. If it had even been a close issue, I wouldn't have pushed it, but it honestly wasn't even close. It wasn't an, "Oh, you have a decent chance" type thing, it was more of an "It will rain frogs from the sky in December in Northern Canada if you don't go on" type thing. Anything less than that and I would have just let it slide. I hate confrontation and I believe is learning through failure. Trust me, I didn't do this because I wanted him to win anything. It's K-3, there isn't anything to win except maybe a ribbon and Wolf has tons of those.

Also it wasn't just some of the committee's kids, to my knowledge is was every single one that went on. Yes, it is possible that they all earned their spots with merit, but that was not the feel that I got from the situation (or viewing the projects) or the woman's reaction at all. I also got the very distinct feel from talking to some people at the school after the fair that they did not feel that Wolf had done the project mostly on his own (which he did). I don't think they have ever dealt with a kid like him before and I'm afraid him being himself and doing his personal best might have ... colored the results some.

After reading all your responses I think I probably should talk to Wolf about how the woman reacted at the fair. He does know that he went to the county fair representing his program and not the school, he just doesn't know the details of it. I think that not clarifying the details is probably still the best idea though. He gets anxious about adult "issues" and I don't feel he's emotionally ready to handle that judging isn't always fair. He'd good at dealing with disappointment, but is still a very black and white, right and wrong thinker when it comes to the concept of "fair." He's happy he got to go, happy he won an award, and he enjoyed the whole process. Adding more negativity onto it at this point might dim that and I want to avoid that. As it is, the whole thing has sort of turned me off urging him to participate next year even though we won't be going through the school.

We entered it to do the project, to learn, to have fun, NOT to have a lesson in human misbehavior.

Totally OT, but wouldn't it have been wiser to clear the schools BEFORE noon rather than locking everyone into a potentially bombed school until AFTER noon?

Wyldkat, I can't offer much but sympathy. I do think I would have given him a very watered-down explanation of what happened, as in, "Oh, she was just asking about x, but I told her y, and we don't need to worry about it because it's been taken care of." You still can if (IF) he brings it up again.

It seems to me that there was an obvious conflict of interest in the judging at the school level before the county level!

Wyldkat, I too could not have let something like that pass if I genuinely felt that what you believe occurred, occurred. What I perhaps I would have done differently is that I would have explained to him that he hadn't gotten through via the school process, and that you were surprised given the quality of his project. I would have said that you really felt that his project was deserving and had spoken to the his teacher from his independent learning program, who agreed and that it had been determined he could enter through the program rather than the school. I probably would have explained that these things can be subjective, but that quality work is worth standing up for (which I strongly believe) and that if you know something you've done is worthwhile it is worth investigating all the angles.

Re the woman, I would like to think that I would have been ultra gracious and let her know Wolf had been entered through the ILP, and wished her children luck - but in reality I probably would have ended up saying something along the lines of what you did.

In terms of the lesson about injustice, I'd probably couch it instead in terms of a discussion about the implications of subjectivity and its existence being the reason you need to stand up for work you believe in (including the importance of feedback from others to make sure you're really on track). Rarely (if ever?) are things ever genuinely chosen 100% on merit.