Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Tearful return to school

DS7 has the same issue and he is now being sent to special ed for math to work on Khan Academy on the computer and do above-level workbooks. It's basically all independent work but since he is out of the classroom the teacher can't force him to do the "baby math". I'm not really clear on how long he is being sent out. The district very reluctantly agreed to this, at first saying that he had to stay in the "least restrictive environment" (the classroom...hahaha). DS has an IEP for being "physically impaired", I'm not sure if this plan of him going to special ed would work otherwise, but I guess my point is that he is being sent out of class to do independent work elsewhere in the building so maybe that is a possibility in your situation as well. The school offered to accelerate 1 grade for math but I said no because it would still be the completely wrong level. We are looking at other schools.

DS has tried to advocate for himself but the teacher got mad at him because he kept calling the math "baby math"...so that kind of backfired. The teacher is convinced that she is differentiating because she was giving him "logic sheets" maybe 1 time per week.

Is it possible that some of the sadness is just from being seven and not wanting to go back to school after a fun winter break? One of my seven year old twins was also very sad, in fact he had trouble sleeping the night before school started and kept crying. It was awful, really- I felt so bad for him. But for him it was about wanting to stay home and play. He doesn't like school either, anytime, because he wants to be in charge of his time.