Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments "I wish there was no school in the whole world!"

So it's become apparent that my kindergartner is unable to manage staying in school. This winter, I was really thinking she wouldn't make it through to the end of the year and things didn't improve until we promised her we could homeschool next year. Every morning was becoming a battle of dragging her out of bed & dressing her myself while she screamed things like, "I wish there was no school in the whole world!" She missed quite a few days but thankfully we've had nobody giving us any trouble about that. (And yes I thought about pulling her out but once she realized the year was coming to a close, she was more agreeable to going.)

So... I guess we're taking the plunge into homeschooling! I'm a little nervous about possibly feeling isolated but I'm very glad not to have to send my kid somewhere every day that makes her so miserable. She was accepted to DYS this month but obviously we won't need help advocating for her at school anymore.


And how has this school year gone for the rest of you?

I wish we weren't all so spread apart. We could start a disgruntled kindergartener play group.

At one point this year DS5 said he wished bad guys would break into the school and steal all the workbooks and worksheets and leave the cool stuff like the Legos and microscope.

Overall he is having a good year due in large part to having a kind teacher and a sweet best friend. His frustrations are likely related to the friction between his two (or 3) e's.

Good luck with the new adventure.

we've been only doing 3hrs/day public preschool since November with DS4.5 and he loved it as long as he was sick all the time and missing out half the days but now that the winter's ending and he's not as sick anymore (only missed 2 days in the last 3 weeks) he's been acting out, getting bored, telling the teacher he doesn't need to be there because he knows the stuff. Really, the only reason why he goes to school is to "see his friends". We keep homeschooling as a back up but for now we are ready to sign him up for K and see how things go. It's only 3hrs/day K so he might do fine. But if things get tough, we will pull him out.

My ds in k is miserable. Things have gotten worse and worse as the year has gone on. So, we got a private neuropsychologist involved. Now, we're waiting for our results meeting with recommendations for school. We'll see.

DD has had a reasonably good year academically speaking. A pair of AP classes is within spitting distance of the kind of pacing she actually needs, and she loves both courses. She has actually been learning and challenged a few times this year, so probably a 50% improvement over last year.

On the personal/social front, it has been very rocky... but that has nothing to do with DD or her LOG, necessarily. Just bad luck, really, coupled with her hunger for true peers/deeper friendship led her into a situation with a really scary/disturbed peer.

On the extracurricular front, it's also been a little rough. We've completed the transition to a third full acceleration, and it has been pushing the envelope pretty hard in terms of DD13's other maturity to expect late high school behavior from her. She's still a little off-balance/almost out of control there some of the time, but learning to manage from an EF standpoint. It's been challenging.

Mostly good this year. Only one major teacher issue.

We yanked DD8 out of public school in 2nd grade and homeschooled her for 3rd. From our perspective, it was a rousing success. We'll have some objective data to support that soon... she took the state's standardized achievement earlier this month, and we're giving her another next month.

Unfortunately, DD is still so social that she wants to give public school another shot next year, when we'll be making them accept our grade skip as a fait accompli. So we may end up going round the same path yet again.

we would be there in a heartbeat.

We're here with you, except my DS is in 2nd year primary Montessori (preschool, but he'd stay in the same class for kindergarten). I told the school Wednesday that he wouldn't be returning, and DS was super happy when I told him this.

Granted, we've been on vacation since then, but I've had very few behavior problems since telling him he wouldn't go back to school next year....

The most memorable quote after my daughter's (now 9) first week of Kindergarten: "We don't do any reading or any math, we just talk about our feelings." She was right -- when the teacher's note came home, it mentioned "affective education" but neither math nor reading.

Congrats! You'll be okay. Just be SURE to take your vitamins and get plenty of rest every night. A nap in the afternoon is also advisable. Oh, and go ahead and purchase some extra bookshelves right away. You might even skip the shelves and go straight to the bedroom-to-library remodel.


I think you'll be surprised at just how many groups are available to homeschoolers these days. Libraries, museums, botanical gardens, science centers, local artisans, and many others often regularly have programs for homeschoolers. Homeschool co-ops and tutorials are popping up all over the place, too, as well as drama groups, nature clubs, and sports teams. You'll meet all kinds of parents and children --which is an education in itself. And if at first you don't succeed in connecting, try and try again. If you don't care to 'connect' with others so much, you'll still find plenty of activities you can do on your own that will get you out of the house.

One more thing, you might want to search the Yahoo and Google Groups for homeschool groups in your area. Signing up for a daily digest from these groups is a good way to find out what's going on all around your area. It saves a lot of leg work. Just a plain Internet search will work , too. GHF has people from all over, even quite a few of the PG folk.

Have fun!

Sign us up for the disgruntled playgroup. We are treading water on 2e issues trying to figure out testing ahead (already a bit under our belts) and hoping for school to be open to what's never been done to make next year survivable. One day at a time. Slowly we learn more what we need and try to find ways to get it.

Now that's funny.

Sounds very much like the things that I wished for as a faculty member, actually.

Agreed - Luckily I have begun teaching middle school engineering and it is really close to playing and building all the time - I love teaching it and the kids love learning that way. I even had 22 8th graders completely on task for 100 minutes Friday afternoon last period of the day! This was after having 22 7th graders on task first thing in the morning for 100 minutes! A colleague came in during my 8th grade class to ask a question and as she ended up staying for about 1/2 an hour because she couldn't believe that the same kids she had just taught and had been out of control were all actively and cooperatively building a testbed of sensors to learn how to program them on Monday.
I am all for throwing out the worksheets!

DS5 is just barely hanging in there in K. He entered early and I cringe thinking about that he was actually supposed to be in PreK this year...thankfully they accepted him early. Still, he says "I don't want to go to school. I don't learn anything there, I learn at home. School is not for learning"