Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy should we accelerate @ school or continue @ home?

I tend to agree with Kai.

I'd make a list of what you WANT your child to get out of: a) school in general, b) math class (at school) in particular.

Then look at placement options available, and list the pro's and con's of each.

I'm guessing that there are relatively few things about this placement that make it superior to the non-accelerated version.

Kai has done a great job pointing out some of those issues-- that the instructional pace WON'T be suitable for a PG learner anyway, even if it is more challenging material, that the EDM curriculum is likely to be frustrating for all, etc.

I'd also like to point out something that we've found to be more damaging than the more obvious social issues that teachers/administrators tend to think about and caution parents about. My DD found that being with academic "peers" who were 3-7 years older than herself, in a non-differentiated setting, actually made her feel LONELY and ALIEN. MORE lonely and alien than a non-differentiated setting with agemates did. Of course, it wound up (for us, anyway) still being a matter of least-worst placement, but we did shift things into the higher "honors" track as often as we could... which helped, but didn't entirely eliminate the problem.

Why? Well, I don't know for sure, but the explanations that DD has given indicate that she was able to process her differences from agemates as "I'm older in my brain development." Until she encountered those older peers, and then it became painfully obvious that THEY aren't her peers either. Not really. She still has to hide a great deal of her ability on a daily basis for social reasons. Ergo, she is a singularity, belonging nowhere.

This is a powerful reason, IMO, to not place a child into a non-differentiated and multiply accelerated environment. It's neither intellectually nurturing nor socially so, all too often. The only thing that my DD has gotten out of it (again, generalizing) is being treated like everyone's favorite sideshow or a weird kid sister. She puts up with that rather well, but only a fool confuses being treated like a kid sister with genuine friendship. HG+ kids are nobody's fools, generally speaking. This is most painful in early adolescence.

HTH.

This has been our experience as well. My son is now accelerated two whole grades and it's still not enough. I am currently trying to figure out if he has any real friends in this placement or if they're just politely tolerating him.

Social/emotional things that have affected our DS (placed 2 grades ahead in math, which is not enough):

--Expectations for organizational skills are much higher for the older kids; DS is truly expected to have those skills in place, even though he cannot possibly meet that expectation. That he does not have the note-taking skills and is still working on the skill of showing work for problems he does successfully in his head does affect his grade; this mystifies him.

--We have had several bouts of "circus kid"-- older kids coming up to him and asking him to show off by giving him some hard (to them) math problem to solve in his head. IMO this is not socially good for DS (or for the older kids). The math teacher is perhaps unaware that this kind of treatment is an issue.

--DS also finds it appealing to think about how "smart" he is (not something we emphasize at home). I do not really want his sense of his human value tied to his math skills. That the 8th graders are struggling when he is kind of bored is not helpful in this regard; but there are good reasons not to accelerate him further (to the point where the work would actually be difficult, assuming there is such a point). It would be much nicer if there were a gifted math section, but the school does not offer this.

All that said, it is still the least-worst placement we can find, and I'm not sorry we did it-- it just requires continued attention to the details. (No matter where he was, he would require this.)

DeeDee

You guys are scaring me. I can't wrap my head around accelerating my ds another grade. Hoping that one and done is enough for him.

I get scared every time I read one of these threads. The reality for my son is that he will probably get zero skips and precious little else unless I can come up with a way to home school. His teacher this year says he needs extension but the bit of paper saying he is gifted doesn't mean anything. He gets to do the harder stuff with one girl after the easy stuff and is getting quite big headed about his maths ability (although he does admit he is not the best always - he will say y did this better or x got more right in this test). I have got him into the private one day a week differentiation programme (with a big subsidy) and the teacher says as will enjoy it but he is not convinced it is worthwhile.

Eta. I got Sidetracked. As a previous poster said the teacher might be a "think of all the problems and then get on with it" kind of person - I am and it can really annoy people. Just keep an eye on things and have a plan B.

I would keep my DD with age-mates too if it is for social purposes. It's one thing to be the youngest in a multiple-age setting but another thing to be a Doogie Howser among 5th graders. If I had to do it because I cannot homeschool or cannot find an appropriate 1-6 open Montessori classroom setting, then I might consider it but it won't be my favorite solution.

To give you another perspective, our DS is also a (young) second grader and is now in fourth grade for math only. It's working well. The teacher was supportive but a bit concerned about how he would fare given the maturity differences, etc. She's fully supportive after about a month of this acceleration. He enjoys the class, although he still gets frustrated with some of the methods (lots of drawing out diagrams to show how the numbers work, etc.) when he knows the answers in his head or through traditional steps. According to the teacher (confirmed by DS, though not in as much detail), one of the girls watches out for him and he gets along very well with the other students. He's helped some of them with some concepts and they think that's cool.

On the other hand, at the start of the year, he was in third grade math with a less supportive teacher and wasn't nearly as happy about being in that class. (Liked the kids, complained a lot about the work/homework.)

The two teachers my son was grade skipped to were given no heads up at all about the move...he just suddenly was placed in their room(s) one day. He had to prove himself and he has. The teachers didn't have time to tell me the possible negatives and thankfully he hasn't given them any reason to be negative about the skip after the fact.

Writing is hard for him but all the kids in the class have an area that they need to work on...if not what would be the point?

Here are my two cents:

We went through something similar with DS last spring, when he was in 2nd grade. We had been asking for math acceleration since the spring of 1st grade, and a year later (after the school tested him) we finally got it. He was placed in a 4th grade "gifted" class for math.

It did not work, for many reasons:

-The change didn't happen until the end of March, so he was essentially walking into the end of a class, and had numerous gaps.

-All the kids in the class were 2 years older. His new classmates apparently doted on him (he's so cute! he's so smart!) But this set up expectations for DS that he would instantly understand and excel at what was being taught. He didn't.

-Because he had never been in a math class (or probably any other class) where he didn't already know the material, he was highly embarrassed and freaked out.

The end result was that he was asked to leave the 4th grade class (he started goofing off a lot), and he was placed in a 3rd grade math class. This wasn't much better, but this time because he already knew all of the material, so was bored.

End result: we wound up pulling him out of school completely. (Not just because of math, it was for a variety of reasons. But the math class experiment showed us that school was not going to work out.)

I feel that it's okay for kids to fail; it's a natural and healthy process. But in this case I think DS was almost set up to fail, since the circumstances were far from ideal. I'm still happy that we tried, since it could have worked out really well.

I appreciate everyone's input. DH and I have thought about it. We are going to let DS try it for a few weeks - he really wants to give it a shot. We've been up front with him about some of the things that may be difficult for him but he still wants to give it a shot. He knows that if it's doesn't work, we will try something else. As a parent, this makes it easier - that he wants to experiment with an unknown situation in a (relatively) safe place.

I will keep a very sharp eye on things and see how it goes. My gut says that it will be ok but he will be bored rather quickly (he has already done the homework for the class and he said, "THIS is what they are doing in 5th grade? When does it get hard?") We have an out for the situation (actually more than 1), so knowing that DS won't be DAMAGED even if he fails, makes this much easier to try. Thanks again for all the input! I couldn't do this advocacy alone!