Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Parenting arms race article

This isn't an entirely selfish argument on my part-- truly.

I am genuinely concerned for DD's peers who are NT or MG, but whose parents (and clearly, local administration and teachers, if parents are "slackers") insist that they need to DO all of the stuff that HG+ kids are known for when things are going well.

THAT is where you hear stories of overwrought, overworked, sleep-deprived kids who are sleeping 3hr a night to fit in one more AP class, etc.

Those kids are real. They are desperately trying to keep their heads above water, and my DD just keeps her mouth shut about how easy she finds it, and offers a shoulder to cry on when they can't measure up to those impossibly high expectations. One of my daughter's friends (again-- MG from what I've seen of her) was told in no uncertain terms that an "acceptable" PSAT score was 99th percentile. Period. Make it happen. These are real children that I really know. They are good kids, they are bright kids, and they are (mostly) hard-working kids. But they aren't what their parents apparently want them to be, which is HG+. (Apparently-- since that seems to be the underlying message about human worth here.)

I think that this is toxic and I think that it is wrong.

Just because those opportunities EXIST shouldn't mean that parents HAVE to push their kids into (ALL of) them, but that does seem to be the current model of thinking. The vast majority of parents locally want their kids in "the top" group. Period. Whatever it is, that's what they want.

It's hyper-competitive, and it is very definitely fueled by the gone-crazy, jumped-the-shark College Sweepstakes.

Yes, it'd be nice if my own child could have some true peers to learn with, but I understand that statistics are not on her side there, and so does she. She does NOT resent her classmates (and if she did, I'd have some pretty stern things to point out to her about human worth). She is frustrated that the LEVEL of some classes is so clearly watered down or slowed down, though.

It'd be even nicer if the kids actually in her classes were not looking shell-shocked and traumatized or harried.

Everyone DOES deserve appropriate education. And it's not the same thing for everyone.

I think that the parents who read a little bitterness from some HG kids parents are right. I have stood by while parents (and occasionally children) have made snide comments about DD many times,and over time I have developed some resentment. For instance DD read a book to teach herself how to play chess (she is in 1st grade and I don't play)and we went to a local play group. DD won the little round robin tournament that they had and she had been playing for a week. Parent after parent had to tell me that their child was in our local tag program (like I care) and wanted to know if DD was. Another parent told me that DD got lucky when she beat her child because she had been playing for several years. Honestly, it was intermediate (at best) chess. Bobby Fischer was not in the room;). There is something about HG children that brings out the claws in tiger moms (and the kids as well) and as a parent it can be easy to become resentful because it gets old.

Has anyone here watched the documentary American Promise? It made me so overwhelmingly sad for those kids. Has it always been this bad? If not, when did it start?

Psychland, how would it feel if your child wasn't HG and you were socialising with these parents? Probably still pretty bad, I think. Someone who is constantly comparing childrens achievements is going to be competing on a lot of other factors, too. Would you really enjoy their company if they were crowing that their car cost more than yours? Or smug when their child beat yours at chess? Did you see this article?
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2014/03/25/mean-moms-suburbs/

When I've had to chat to that sort of competitive person I keep my cards very close to my chest and get away ASAP. But that's not very often. I have been very lucky to surround myself with friends and a whole community where we all commiserate over stuff and share joy in stuff (I know not everyone is so lucky). My friend might tell me her child can do a waltz jump, I'll tell her mine has nits, then I'll tell her mine started algebra and she'll tell me hers made their room unprompted. You know what I mean? Life's too short for Queen bees.


Flexible ability based grouping, based on level and pace. Group size would depend on the population, you might need to combine with other nearby districts to get the numbers in one school.

So, do you mean a magnet? In every district? Busing from nearby districts? (In my area, that would be miles and miles due to the rural nature of the outlying areas...many hours on buses.)

I mean, I generally throw my lot in with eliminating age-based grades, but that's a pipe dream.

In my 1970s elementary school, there were five grades placed in four "teams" of three classrooms each. As a second grader, you could stay in Team 1 or move up to Team 2. Placements were determined flexibly within the team, as well, with kids moving among the classrooms in their team for different reading or math groups. While everyone was moving around for those, some kids were pulled for remedial whatever or accelerated whatever. There were aides around to facilitate and skilled teachers to differentiate.

The whole school was organized this way, and it worked. I doubt they still do it there, but I wonder why it's not done now. It made SO MUCH SENSE.

tallulah this is certainly not referring to our friends or inner circle just people that we meet at DD activities. I think maybe living in a more affluent suburb it is par for the course. I do not discuss DD with other parents and it just seems rude to me when people I don't know ask personal questions about my child.

Dee Dee, I have no idea either-- because I remember that kind of grouping, too. I spent the last three years of elementary school trotting off to another wing for language arts with a handful of other students from five different classrooms.

I saw something very like what HK describes when I went to school in a blue-collar city without a university, where between studies, extracurricular activities, volunteering, and after-school jobs, several kids I knew well were getting 3-4 hours of sleep a night. Some of them were the ones who would yell at me when we got our grades in, because, "You didn't even study!"

Back then, a bachelor's degree wouldn't necessarily cost you 7 years of indentured servitude. And my competition pool for #1 wouldn't have been as deep, due to the demographic differences between my school and HK's (I probably would not have made the top 0.5% of my graduating class in HK's school without doing some math homework). So for these reasons, I would expect HK to see more and worse cases than the ones I saw.

It could be done if the population density is high enough. If a kid is, say, 1 in 10,000 frequency then the odds of having another child in that range in that grade in that school are miniscule. And if everyone knew that Kennedy Elementary and King Middle in Jonesville were the regional magnets then you could take that into account when looking for a house.

Don't be so hard on yourself!

You may have still been able to avoid math homework entirely and make the top 0.5%.