Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy DS MUST go on field trip

My child in many ways is gifted beyond her years.(She has Geometry in 7th grade next year for example). Just because their gifted doesn't mean though they have common sense (more than non gifted) and know what's best for themselves.

But the first two lines of the original statement was he didn't want to go so I didn't sign the slip. It sounded pretty obvious to me who made the decision.

Why would you make a kid go on a trip when they don't want to? We're talking about a field trip and far too many times these have very little to do with actual education so unless I thought that there was a real need for the child to go, I'd not make them.

This is a part time homeschooled child. He's probably used to making a lot of decisions regarding his education.

I'd have been extremely foolhardy to try to do that to my particular 7yo, speaking frankly.

No, she doesn't "make all her own decision" even now, at 14. But she makes more of them than she did at 7, and even then she made more of them than she had at 3.

I figured that there had been discussion about the field trip, which the OP was not sharing the specific details of, and which I'm not really entitled to anyway. Having lived through this age with a PG child, and the seven years past it, as well... I'll say this much: I think it's a wise parent that rewards logical and rational argumentation in such children at seven. That was always our condition for having one's voice heard-- provide me with REASONS, not whining, and be prepared to back your opinion just as I'd ask another adult to. Do that, and your opinion counts for a lot more.

Just because the school thinks a field trip is a good idea doesn't mean that they are more RIGHT about that than the child who thinks that it is not.

This x2. Any adult that shows this kind of inordinate interest in having access to a child unaccompanied by a parent is a huge red flag.

Because,and this story isn't a good example, in life you don't always get what you want.

You might find the research on outcomes of authoritative vs. authoritarian parenting interesting.

http://www.parentingscience.com/authoritative-parenting-style.html

And that's a good thing?

Enh...I don't think it's a red flag, really. I think schools are just bureaucratic and odd. I also think it's possible that it's something like what 22B proposed--they get a discount for X number of kids, etc. Maybe they received money from a donor to take X kids. There are odd things like that operating behind the scenes at schools. I tend to be the kind of parent that teachers disclose things to (or so it seems--not all teachers, btw) so I've had teachers tell me things of this sort. ("I'm supposed to make her do that phonics program every day because we're required to by XYZ mandate, but she doesn't need to, so I fill out the form and let her read." "We need to meet numbers for that, so I just say he's here even though he's across the hall getting enrichment." --These are not totally accurate examples, but this kind of thing.)