Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion New to board, frustrated and need suggestion

My son has been identified as gifted by our school district, past that they have done very little if anything to meet his needs as a gifted student. However, that is a whole different ball of wax! He is currently a 4th grader and has complained to me for the last three days that his teacher gave the class an assignment involving drawing and color 20 spelling words and that he can't manage to finish. I have questioned why and he can't pinpoint anything. I e-mailed his teacher and she states that he has had plenty of time to finish, but refuses to send it home or let him work on it in free time, instead he is missing P.E. and recess to complete it. I explored with her maybe he was including too much detail, but she seemed to negate that fact. He loves to draw, but my gut is that he thinks the assignment lacks validity and is a waste of time, which I tend to agree with and believe 20 words is a little overboard. I am at a loss and need direction in understanding what is going through his head. The other time I can remember this happening was when he was asked to summarize chapters in a book he was reading and he tended to include too much information. In addition, I received his GT report today and his teacher commented that he tended to overanalyze problems, indicating that it was some sort of flaw. Needless to say I wanted to have some insight before parent teacher conference on Monday. Like mother, like son on the overanalyzing part!

Thanks for the help.

Is there a possibility that he wants to miss PE and recess? Maybe it's a matter of finding the right thing to motivate him.

Hi EB's Mom,
Wow - my son missed a lot of gym, but I can't imagine them letting him miss P.E.

DS12 definitly was percieved as 'aiming too high' by certian teachers in elementary. In fact, looking back, I remember him as a 3 year old, insisting on sitting on my lab and making me draw a picture because his little hands couldn't create the image in his mind. I had no idea what was going on, and wouldn't have believed it if someone had told me - oh yes - DS did tell me, but I brushed it off. I figured that he wanted my 'attention' so I indulged him a bit, and then tried to encourage him to do it himself for a while - Oh the Screams that brought.

Anyway - some will call this perfectionism, but I imagine it more as an 'awareness' of what is possible way beyond what is expected for one's years. I think one of the key miseries of growing up gifted without accomidations is missing a big group of similar peers who one can usefully compare oneself to. Sometimes I call it 'Champagne Taste; Beer Budget' because he can 'imagine' so much more than he can has the means to produce. I call it 'Referencelessness' when I think of us grownups, worrying over stuff that people think we are crazy to even notice.

So - if this is what's up - come up with about 3 examples to share with the teacher from his earlier life and try to help her see that it's natural for him to think deeply about things. A friend of mine when through 'Teacher Training' and they convinsed her that 'Children are Concrete, not Abstract Thinkers.' You may need to bring in a copy of Blooms taxonomy and ask her to come up with more tasks from the 'Abstract' side of the chart.

Perhaps you can negotiate some 'extra credit' or a substitute assignment for this coloring thing.

Meanwhile, Does your school have a Gifted Coordinator? If you can get access to the tests that got him into the program, bring the info here - it would be good for you to have an idea of LOG (Level of Giftedness)

If school isn't doing much, we can brainstorm lots of ideas for you to try at home, or try to negotiate for school.

Eventually this assignment will end - his grades don't 'count' - usually - in this grade, so I would encourage you to not let all your worries about the whole school situation funnel into this weird little moment. I'm not worried that one episode will harm him - I am concerned with his overall experience in the world of learning.

It's ok to shrug and say to DS or to the teacher - 'I really have no idea why this is so weird, sometimes life just is weird.'

Good Luck,
Grinity

Interesting, my first thought was perfectionism. But I definately have a personal bias here! I think it is a good skill to be able to know when to give it your top effort and really scrutinize the work, and when to figure out what the teacher wants and give it the minimum effort to please her, just to get it done. I think the younger the better, but the teacher's approach seems pretty extreme!

He may also be confused as what the teacher wants and is spinning his wheels because of this. Could you send the teacher an e-mail, asking her to take a minute to explain her expectations in case a misunderstanding on his part could be the issue.

Yes, I have told my children, yes that IS totally stupid and pointless, so the faster you get it done, the faster you can move on....

However, if a child's assignments are consistently at a mismatch with his intellect, then you have a whole different sort of problem.

I have encouraged him to rush through it, as has my husband. My husband keeps telling him she can't grade him on coloring since it isn't art class. Don't know about that, but whatever it takes to get him to get it done. I know how he feels to want something to be good and be told to rush. It seems impossible to allow yourself to turn in something that is not your best, especially when it is an area that you take pride in and enjoy, which is drawing for him. He doesn't always behave that way with other things, for example I don't see him checking and double checking his homework before turning it in. I think my questions to the board were more to try to get a better understanding of how he thinks (as a gifted individual) and what underlying issue could be causing his actions. I have begun reading about the Gregorc learning styles and that seems to help. Am also in a school myself (nurse) so I have asked to borrow some gifted info. to read. I just need to know best how to deal with him in these type of situations both at school and at home. Overall he is a high achieving people pleasing, no trouble student. All A's on his report card yesterday. Great kid, but we hit things like this occasionally and if I understood better, I wouldn't get so frustrated. One thing I have done this year is to problem solve with him. Actually get out paper, write our problem and discuss what we can do to solve it and then work to implement it. Thanks for listening to my rambling. I will do some additional reading here to.

Some kids are willing/able to rush through easy work, and some just aren't. My DS is an "aren't," and it is VERY challenging to deal with.

If my DS is bored with the work, if it's too easy, he just won't do it. Period.

Before we pulled him out of public school for homeschooling, he used to take HOURS (no exaggeration!) to complete an assignment that all the other kids had finished in class. It wasn't even supposed to be homework! But what he was really doing was refusing to do work that was insulting to his intelligence. He drew a line in the sand about what he wanted/needed from school, and no amount of insisting/pleading/arguing/etc. would get him to do work that he had mastered long ago.

I wonder if something like this is going on. Maybe this assignment is your son's line in the sand?

On the bright side, when my DS is given challenging work, he dives right in and works at a reasonable, cheerful pace. His mantra is "Hard is good," and he takes much less time to complete a hard assignment than he does an easy one.

Just another thought...

Oh, and it can be hard to persude a teacher that an "aren't" child is really GT. We had the test scores and school ID from the previous year for our son, and his 1st grade teacher *still* made noises to hint that she didn't think much of his abilities since "he didn't even finish his work." *sigh* <eye roll>

Many teachers think that a GT child is always an eager, compliant child. The "aren't" kids don't fit this mold, and are consequently much less likely to be served. But compliance is a personality trait, not a GT trait, and many GT kids don't have it.

Furthermore, if an "aren't" kid and a teacher get into a shoving match over an assignment--which may be what's happening here--it usually doesn't end the way the teacher thinks it will. "Aren't" kids are usually GT in stubbornness as much as anything else! Even if the teacher wins the battle, she's ultimately losing the war because the child loses respect for her. At the extreme end of things, a GT kid can do a lot to undermine a teacher if s/he chooses to. It can get ugly. And what it does to a child's sense of self and feelings toward authority are not good.

I guess what I'm saying is that if this is what's going on (and I freely admit that it may not be), it's best to nip it in the bud as fast as possible. It probably won't end well for anyone.