Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy how much to push?

Hi, everyone!

This is my first post on this forum. Please be gentle.

This is pretty similar to the recent �how do you know?� post. My son is currently in kindergarten and has been assessed at a second grade level across the board (reading and math). I realize that he may not be considered "profoundly gifted" by Davidson Institute standards, but he is the most academically advanced child in his class. My question to other parents of gifted children is how hard do you push (and you can use any other word you may find more acceptable - "encourage," "motivate," etc.) your children to "reach their full potential"?

I was a gifted child myself, and this idea that I had to �reach my full potential� caused me quite a lot of misery as I was growing up. I recall one confrontation with my mother where I screamed that I wished I had been born stupid because of all the pressure they put on me. Nothing less than an A+ in every subject would do. I would get in serious trouble for even an A-minus. As a consequence, I felt that it bred in me a fear and laziness. In high school especially, I would only choose electives in which I knew I would earn an A, because anything less would land me in a lot of trouble. I felt that I wasn�t free to explore things that might interest me, because I wasn�t free to fail � or at least not immediately excel.

Given all that background, I�m trying very hard to strike a balance with my son. He goes to a language immersion school, which has been such a blessing. He is so happy to be learning a different language, and his teachers have been wonderful about differentiating the work for him. He is pulled out three times a week to go to the first grade class for reading. He receives first grade math homework, as well as more challenging homework for reading and writing. The major feature of the language immersion model is that all subjects other than reading and writing are taught in the new language. I may otherwise have requested that he be pulled out to a higher grade for math, but he won�t understand the language in the upper grades.

The challenge of the new language is keeping him pretty engaged in school, but otherwise, he is starting to recognize how easy the math in particular is for him. Even the first grade homework is pretty much busywork, and a whole week�s worth of homework takes him about 10 minutes to do. However, I hesitate to ask for even more challenging homework for a few reasons. First and foremost, almost all his academic knowledge has been self-taught. He�s had a fascination with numbers since he was two, and he has somehow learned how to add and multiply multi-digit numbers on his own with very little assistance from me. So I don�t know how complete is math training has been up to now. I would hate to ask that he be further advanced just in case there are concepts he never bothered to learn.

Secondly, there is a part of me that wonders, why shouldn�t I give him a break? Why shouldn�t his giftedness be, well, a gift? If someone is taller than average, we don�t artificially move shelves higher so they constantly have to reach. Why should I make things tougher for him (and me) than they need to be, especially while he�s so little? I don�t think my son is ever going to enjoy having to stop what he�s doing to do homework, but at least right now it�s easy. If it becomes more difficult, I think I�d have a bigger battle on my hands. I�m up for it if it becomes necessary, but should I do it while it�s not? On the other hand, there is the whole concept of, �With greater gifts come greater responsibilities� that I think my parents in particular believed.

How do other parents find that balance? At this age, he has enough and varied interests to keep him engaged in the world around him. I don�t think he�s feeling like he�s missing out on anything at this point by having easier academic work, so he�s not exactly clamoring for more challenging material. I just want to make sure I�m doing what I should to nurture every aspect of this wonderful child.

Thanks so much!

Hi Jaytee,

(Typing on a mobile device, apologies in advance for any resulting odd wording!)

I struggle with this myself with dd7, who is hg+ but not passionately academic. I often wonder much I should push given she's just not into it. The conclusion I have reached as someone who had no expectations placed on them school work wise, and who managed to meet that level of expectation head on by achieving the bear minimum, is that what is lost when you are left to your own devices (unless you are personally driven to do otherwise) is that you don't really learn the skills to be an effective adult. You don't learn the value of effort, you find you haven't got the grades to get into the courses and jobs that will help you find the social equals you have craved through school, you look at the 'normal' people around you and feel like either you or they must be defective (and are never quite sure which) because you're always talking about slightly different things. This was certainly my experience and the experience of my husband and a handful of other friends. All of whom have had to do a lot of work as adults to rectify these situations, and missed years - in some case decades - of possibly more fulfilling friendships, marriages, jobs.

In dd's case I am not interested in her grades. She hit As all round in her most recent report but I know it didn't involve any effort, so there's no value in them. If she were getting Bs and I knew she'd had to really think and apply herself I'd be over the moon. That your son is having to learn a new language provides at least a required challenge. I'm personally skeptical about any but the most extraordinary school's capacity to provide more than one or two real challenges to kids working more than a grade ahead (and schools that can adequately do that are extraordinary enough in themselves!) Anything you can get is great (though as I mention below, more will likelybbe needed over time)

In terms of your son's age and how much to push - I felt similarly to you about is it really necessary to push, especially when they are so young and I (personally) am not a believer in greater gifts = greater responsibilities - though I do think one has a responsibility to treat everyone, ones self included, with respect. That, to a certain extent requires that you make choices that will bring you health, fulfilment and happiness - choices which will undoubtedly require effort. Despite my comments above, we haven't pushed dd hard but we have talked a lot about effort. Now, at 7, I feel she's ready to take a bit more pressure and some higher expectations and has the capacity to understand why we are asking it of her. The thing to remember is that 'normal' children have been having to apply themselves from a very young age. I have sat with kindergarteners while they learn to read and their effort - even for the bright ones - is immense. A level of effort I am still yet to see dd emulate. They try things, they fail at things - discover it is ok and that the world doesn't fall in when you can't do something first time. While dd's reading abilities might be at high school level - her a ability to apply herself to genuinely challenging things, fail and get up again is, I would argue, below age level.

My thoughts would be to encourage his self directed learning as it is evident you are doing, think about what you value in terms out comes for your ds and work towards that. I would be concerned about the fact that the work itself is become too easy - the language aspect is great, as I said, but eventually that will no longer present a challenge. Don't worry too much about knowledge gaps - they can be filled and any acceleration (unless they are prepared to compact the curriculum) will involve some gaps that need to be filled. Dd has found they fill quickly because of how quickly she learns . Further, at least with maths, at that level the difference between grade 1 - grade 2 work is not significant concept wise from our experience.

Good luck and, among all the advice you get and push back from teachers, remember to trust your gut.

I think you took a long way around to answer your own question.


Sounds good to me. Watch for this to change, though, and be ready to react. There's little else anyone else can say to you than that, because there are no hard and fast rules, what works for one kid may be a disaster for another, and you know your kid best.

And obviously, with all the achievement stuff, don't be like your mom, which I think you're already implying. Sometimes "good enough" really is good enough. My mom took the opposite approach... she was so happy to have a kid bringing home mostly A's that B's were something to joke about, and even the one C I brought home barely generated comment. And she still told people I was a "straight-A student." It took letters coming home the last semester of my senior year about excessive truancies for my mom to actually become concerned about my school work... one of the few semesters I brought home all A's, interestingly enough.

And yet, here I am, posting this when I should be working, so I question the link between parental pressure and work ethic. I think the more likely explanation is we're both lazy because we spent most of our developmental years in an educational environment that was way too easy.

That parental pressure may be at least partly to blame for the risk-avoidance, though.

My DS8 is in 8th grade and my DS6 is in 4/5th grade. When it comes to "pushing", I have found that some pushing is needed so that boredom does not creep in and then the emotional and social issues start croppoing up [ An idle mind is the plaything for the devil ... so to speak )

i had both boys accelerated to the point when both of my boys say schoolwork is no longer boring, then I feel I have got them at a level that is challenging but not overly so.

Also intorducve them to non-academic but mental stimulating challenges like the language yiu are doing and maybe music as well.

Also try to aquire acedemic material that may be just a bit ahead of where they are and leave it in their room to discover and work with on their own timetable. Encourage and praise them when they are doing that sort of work but do not set goals, let them "freeform" on their own.

Optimal learning and inflexion points.

There's a level of challenge where the most learning takes place. Not only is learning maximized but self-satisfaction/pride is also high. Staying near that level is a goal.

Sometimes you get stuck or fallback, i.e. hit an inflexion point; at that point you need to learn meta-skills beyond the material to keep moving. Not developing those meta-skills can lead to brick walls later like in college (study? what's that mean?)

No matter how little or much they learn, by nature they will always continue to learn. But with no push and no challenge (or the converses) they can degrade skills/abilities like creativity, curiosity, excitement, perseverance, self-motivation, drive...

So, for me, I want to be a guide to help my DS move at his ideal pace and to coach and support him past the inflexion points because just on the other side is more of what he really wants despite whatever temporary barrier is keeping him back.

Of course that is just my idealistic philosophical perspective and when the wheel meets the road, MMAV (my mileage always varies.)

Hi jaytee, welcome to the forum!

I'm sorry that you had such a crummy experience in your childhood. We started looking for answers about our son for similar reasons - both DH and I were bored out of our skulls in school and wanted to avoid the same for our kiddo. The main concern I had was that if our son already knew everything that was being taught, he would never learn how to learn. I didn't want him to have his first educational challenge in college, like I did, and then think he was really not all that smart after all.

I think we didn't really look at the situation as pushing our child, but rather pushing the school to teach our kid at the appropriate level. All the other kids have a chance to learn perseverance, so why doesn't my kid?

I'm glad the language immersion school is working for now. If you do a search of this site, you can find several threads on how GT kids do in language immersion schools. Some do fine, some do great for a year or two until they figure out the language and realize everything is too easy. It sounds like your son's school is pretty flexible, so maybe they will be willing to do some differentiation or further subject acceleration as necessary. It may also be a good idea to take stock of the GT programs in your area or within driving distance. A lot of times GT kids, even when accelerated, find the pace too slow. Many fulltime GT programs will have a faster pace and also more intellectual peers (plus less need to skip grades).

For us, we found that our kid liked to hide in the classroom. He did not want to stand out, so he didn't often show his abilities. In kindergarten, our DS was testing at least a couple years ahead in math and reading, like your son. The most helpful test was the NWEA MAP test, so the school could see how our kindergartner compared with the 2nd graders, e.g. If your school uses that test, I'd recommend asking for it early (sometimes schools won't give it until 2nd grade). We also had our son privately tested (IQ) before kinder, so we had those reports to back us up too.

Because our kiddo would complain at home about things being boring, but was happy to do the easiest stuff while at school without complaint, we probably seemed like we were pushing when asking for 2nd grade math in kindy and then a skip of 1st grade. It turned out the skip wasn't enough, but the pieces finally fell in place when we transferred to a school for HG kids with an accelerated program (meaning the base level of all subjects was one year ahead, plus they worked faster, so had more time to get into additional units). Since we moved him to this school, we have not had to advocate or push in any way, because we see that he is challenged with the accelerated program along with the grade skip. We put very little emphasis on his grades, as we know he is being challenged (and he's in 4th grade -- grades don't matter anyway). We will revisit your question again when the program ends after 5th grade!

I really don't think it's pushing to advocate for your kid to get the same benefits out of school as most the other kids - learn something new every day; learn to try something, fail, then persevere.

It is a hard balance and I liked your analogy about not artificially moving shelves higher for taller kids. However, when I thought about it, I found myself thinking that, while we don't move things to places where tall children need to reach, we also don't force them to use a step stool in the bathroom to reach the sink if they don't need it nor do we place the shelves so low that they need to bend down to reach them.

I totally agree with you about not focusing on the grades. That's been a challenge for me b/c one of my girls is grade accelerated which has her being compared to grade mates who are, on average, 18 months older than she is (late bd coupled with the skip). I know that she'd be a straight A+ student by simply showing up if she was in 8th or 9th grade this year rather than 10th, but our main purpose of "pushing" her so to speak was so she would learn how to work.

I find work ethic to be something vital that I want my kids to develop. I will temper this by saying that we didn't really "push" dd or her school into skipping her. The school approached us and dd was on board. My other child is more of an academic slacker so it has been harder when it isn't as self led by the student.

I'd say that it is fine if he isn't reaching his full potential as long as he is engaged and learning something, whether that be another language, or something else. When it gets to the point where the child is developing poor work ethic b/c the only requirement is that s/he grace the teacher with his/her presence on test days to get As, then perhaps a little pushing for more challenge is necessary. Neither of my kids is being fully challenged in all subjects. My oldest will probably never be challenged in her strongest subject and pretty much never has, but there are some areas where she has to work and that seems to be enough to learn how to work.

I think that your son is in a very good place and the fact that you are agonizing over this probably means that you will strike a good balance. I am probably in the minority, but leaving things well enough alone was pretty much my motto for K and 1st grade. I don't think that it has harm either DS9 or DD9, who are now 4th graders, and who have moved further and further ahead of their peers as time passes. Of course, my approach may not be ideal for everyone - particularly if there is an issue of pschological harm as reported by some parents here and on other forums. However, in our case, psychological problems were not a concern. Both DS and DD were relatively happy and very well adjusted in school.

Of course, there were instances when the educational mismatch came up in conversation. DS was a bit sad in K when he came home and told me that he won't get to study math until 1st grade. I am not sure who told him that, but I told him that there was no hurry and he has the power to learn anything he wanted on his own and he can ask me questions anytime. That seemed to sastify him and in fact by second grade (when he was accelerated to compacted 3rd/4th grade math), he had somehow acquired most of the math concepts through at least 4th grade level almost by osmosis with occasional questions directed at me.

Both DS and DD were very far ahead in reading by the middle of K, but it really wasn't a big issue. They were free to read whatever they wanted at home. We purchased books and made extensive use of the public library. It helped that there were so much fun and games in K and there was so much room for growth in writing since that was completely open-ended.

Writing ability (including handwriting) was a major reason why I didn't bother to accelerate DS in math until 2nd grade. Even as early as 2nd grade, math involved a lot of writing and proving how you solved word problems and that writing component increases substantially for 3rd and 4th grade math. Furthermore, accelerating him one grade from K to 1st or from 1st to 2nd would not have solved the mismatch for a kid who intuitively multiplied/divided and combined bills/coins well before K.

I think being with age peers can work on a lot of levels when they are in K, depending on birthday and such. I think a lot of social learning goes on. But by grade 1, I had enrolled DD in online math to accelerate her. I probably could have done it in K, but she was also very pushed in piano so there was something that was seriously challenging going on and she was a young K.

DD8 is now in 3rd grade and her school is pretty good, she has Spanish and computer lab. But I continue to accelerate her math through CTY (johns hopkins) and she takes Chinese. We decided to slow down the piano. She was expected to compete this year where she could of performed at Carnegie Hall, but she didn't love it and it was serious piano. She still takes piano, but like other kids. She focuses on dance. She has 4 dance classes a week, 2 are preprofessional ballet. I tell her that she has to do something that pushes her and develop good habits.

Between the accelerated online math, 2 languages she has a good program for now. And I am finding that her social learning is pretty intense so I am sort of glad to have her with age mates.

Good luck. Each child here is different. Take what works and leave behind what doesn't. You have to find a path for your child.

I don't think that you are in the minority. I was blissfully unaware that all of the differences in my dd14 were due to giftedness in K and didn't figure it out until someone suggested it to me when she was in 1st. We had issues in K, but they were more related to her intensity than anything else. One that comes to mind was a writing project that the K teacher gave the kids where she passed out prompts and had the kids each write a few sentences about the topic. The quality of this writing, of course, varied. The problem dd ran into was her being convinced that the teacher intentionally gave her a prompt that involved something like a hunting situation. Dd is vegan (she was vegetarian at the time and vegan now). She wouldn't let go of the idea that the teacher was intentionally antagonizing her and wrote something that involved an animal rescue organization rescuing the animals.

Academic challenge wasn't a big concern of mine, though, early in elementary. I started to get concerned around 2nd-3rd grade when it became clear that she was learning nothing and work ethic was suffering. Her 2nd grade teacher was awesome, but without a really motivated teacher, we were in trouble.

That was the point where we really started to make an effort to do something different: GT pull outs, subject acceleration, and then a grade skip at the end of elementary.

eta: I should mention that none of the stuff that we did later was even available before 2nd grade anyway. Dd was one of the few kids who was formally ided as gifted in 2nd grade b/c the school didn't test usually until 3rd (we had private IQ and achievement testing done in 2nd).

The only thing we would have been able to get in terms of additional challenge in K or 1st would have been skipping a grade sooner than she did and I don't think that I would have done that so early in elementary for a few reasons. One was that she was very young for grade anyway and the other issue was that I was more comfortable seeing that she was continuing to pull further and further ahead academically to the point that there was really no way for her to learn in any subject in the grade she was in. I would have worried earlier in elementary about her long term trajectory, but I'm sure that there are kids out there for whom it is obvious that a skip is needed sooner.

As you mention, with the foreign language issue, I can't see skipping right now in your situation, but perhaps it will be a good choice later once your dc is more fluent in the 2nd language. Perhaps there will be alternate means of challenge, though, as well that don't involve skipping a grade or subject acceleration.