I'm hoping some of you good folks might have some thoughts about my 6yo son in Gr 1 who is facing similar problems as many of you have written about. He has a longstanding hate of writing that began before Kindergarten when we stared working on printing his name (only 5 letters!). I was concerned about this, so had him assessed by an OT. He came back with moderate fine motor troubles. On trying to get his K teacher to provide any supports, she promptly whipped out a sample of his name he had done, and stated "this is perfectly normal printing for a 5yo boy". Needless to say, the balance of the year did not go well, and the teacher and I did not see eye-to-eye. She also flat out refused to support his then obviously advanced reading skills and told us just to let him read more things at home.
The summer before gr 1(different school) we had DS assessed by the Psychologist, mostly looking for more 'official' documentation for the printing problems so we could ensure supports in a more formal way. Results from the assessment gave us more than we were looking for! - now we have a LD + gifted identification (not a huge surprise to us as our son has been reading well since before Kindergarten, started talking very young and was using sentences before 1 year of age.)
He is currently in a private school setting, that provides general education in an inclusive setting. His classroom is small (13)and his teacher is this year is fantastic. That said, we finally received an individual program plan, and there is not a single goal about his giftedness at all, except for additional info around classroom assessments which place his reading at a gr 4-5 level. His report card is really outstanding in most everything unless it involves printing, which he doesn't get a grade for now that he has an individual plan. His printing is still hard work.
His teacher has concern that his attention and concentration is poor, but the psychologist indicated it was her impression that this is largely related to the fact that he is bored at school and that the printing (when he is most inattentive) is really very hard for him, exhausting him long before the other kids.
So after that long-winded explanation, my questions for the more experienced parents are this:
1) I am not the 'crazy' parent this year, compared to last - or at least I don't think so! - but I feel a bit worried that will change quickly if I push the desire to have goals in place for my son's giftedness. How hard do you push - do you take the good where you can get it and simply try to limit the less good parts?
2)I already tried talking to his teacher about him telling us he's bored - his very good teacher flatly denied this is true - so I feel a bit stuck trying to suggest he needs more - though when I asked him why he keeps telling me he hates school because he loves to learn stuff he clearly stated "Mom, we don't learn anything at school except in science - I already know all the stuff we talk about". In her defense, once he is at school he does seem pretty happy there.
3)he is getting really quite good accommodations and remediation for his printing, and has made good progress - is this enough for now? My worry is that if he looses interest in school (already says he hates it, fights going some mornings, but seems happy once he is there) it will be hard to recover.
As an aside, there is no room in the gifted school (a semiprivate school), and none of the public school divisions offer anything until grade 4. We feel we can't keep changing schools every year, but we don't know what action to take.
It is my thought to go to the principal and ask what the school's overall plan is in terms of supporting gifted students, while being very clear how much I appreciate how much support his current teacher is providing. The school mandate states they support students with LD's, and they seem well prepared in this regard, but I do not know of any teachers providing supports for gifted kids (small private school). I do know another family that is leaving from a different grade because they have not been able to get any acceleration or enrichment in their gifted son's educational plan.
Sorry for the long post - Any wisdom would be much appreciated!
