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I was a little relieved that DS7 was acting out, for that very reason, Jen. He's such a rule-abiding kid that I feared he'd suffer in silence. While I did not want him to get into trouble, of course, I was glad that he didn't "go gently into that good night" when it came to school challenge.

I agree with Grinity (on another thread maybe--I'm sorry if I'm confusing threads!) that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and a kid acting out at least gets some kind of attention from the school. In some ways, in some cases, that acting out can be useful for getting a kid what he or she needs!

Ugh. We're dealing with this now with DS5 (early entry into first grade). We're having behavioral/compliance issues which may or may not be GT related. Plus, we're getting a little bit of nonsense from the school that the burden is on DS to "show what he knows."

With about half the school year over, we're starting to think that we went in the wrong direction. Of course you make the best decisions you can at the time.

Unfortunately no real advice except for condolences that we've been there.

JB

Lack of challenge definitely encourages perfectionism in the teacher-pleasers, and not in a good way! I say that from personal experience...

Hi Jen74, Welcome!
So glad that you are here!



I agree with Dottie that it's a little early to say 'how gifted' your DD is, but she is certianly gifted by anyone's definition, and I quoted the numbers above to mention what Davidson considers 'too high to measure accurately.' Notice that they aren't looking for 'across the board high scores' so don't worry about the PIQ unless you see it while she is doing her homework. To me, her numbers suggest that she may well be highly gifted.

I think that personality plays a role. You can help out by afterschooling her, to be sure that she accepts 'as a matter of course' that Mom or Dad will be supplying challenging homework, no matter what goes on at school. My DS12 says that looking back he was 'bored out of his mind' in kindy, but he didn't have the awareness to report that at the time. He is definitly a 'make the best of things' kind of kid. Even with your FSIQ of 99.5, your district may not have more than 1 in 100 kids like your DD. Even if they have 1 in 50, them may be too 'full of themselves' to recognise her unique needs.

I would request that they test her, to see where her 'readiness to learn' level is. They may be able to 'patchwork' together a school day that teaches her to learn how to learn, and that smart doesn't equal 'effortless results.'

Generally, we hope to see the 'perfectionist behavior' decrease as the classroom fit get closer to her readiness level. Since she isn't going to raise a fuss, use her level of 'perfectionist behavior' to judge how good a fit she is getting in her school work, and the effect it is having on her.

Many girls have good enough social skill to fly under the radar. Not all though. You have a much harder job than the parents of a kid who is acting out convinsing yourself that you have to keep an eye on things. Spend some time observing possible kindy classes for next year. Remember that 139 is two third of a standard deviation higher than the gifted cutoff, and given the tail-shape of the bell curve, you would expect many, many more kids right around the cut off than you would two thirds of a SD out.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

These types of discussions are why I like following this group... Following with interest...

Oh, sure. Sorry to seem vague!

When you have nothing constructive to focus on, you obsess about the details. A 99% isn't good enough for you if you knew the whole lesson before it began. Dumb mistakes mean to you that you're dumb. And when you hit something that is actually a challenge for you, you feel like a complete idiot because you have never learned to overcome challenge.

In my case, I got to advanced math my junior year of high school, got my first B+ on my report card EVER, and considered suicide. (And I am not otherwise a depressed, suicidal person.)

Not being perfect shook my definition of who I was. If I wasn't a straight-A student who didn't make mistakes, then who was I? Did I have any worth as a person?

Obviously not healthy!

It wasn't until I was in my late 30s that I really began to overcome this problem. (Though grad school helped...) I'm still much more of a perfectionist than I would like to be, but I am now more willing to take risks, to make mistakes, to let go of the little things and not feel like my mistakes mean that I lack value as a human being.

I wish I had had the opportunity to fight this fear earlier in my life...

I hope it is helpful. Heaven knows, I owe you a few...

DS12 says that when stuff is too easy, he gets all nervous - looking for tricky details. He just plain couldn't accept that this stuff he was given was easy and leave it at that.

I am so grateful that nowadays he studies a bit, gets lots of scores in the high 90%s and does almost all his homework during study hall. With his gradeskip and early birthday, he is facing the same challenges as a MG kid - Yippee! He will be getting a report card soon where I expect him to have a 94 average across all his subjects! Wow! I expect that with challenging summer programs and weekend enrichment, he'll be fine until next year when the 'honors classes' start.

If there is a continum from shamingly easy to easy to interesting and occasionally challenging to a definitle challenge to just plain too much, then DS is in the happy part of the road. And I see that he is excited by the feedback of his grades, but still has a 'clunker' now and again that he has to 'make up for' later. I'm going into all this detail as a contrast to the 'shamingly easy' work that sends the unintended message that 'you are drifting in outerspace - without any guidance.'

I don't know if kids are competitive by nature, but I was amazed at the level of detail and interest that DS and his friends put into classifing the various relative strengths of all the kids at school. Almost like the early biologist discovering and classifing the natural world. I think that what Gifties of all ages most lack is 'Reference.' The best I could do growing up was to compare myself to characters in books - and guess what? I never seemed as good/strong/ smart as those girls. Trying was glorious, but also confusing. The work we are given at school is like a probe into our unknown selves. If the work is way below readiness level, it doesn't give very good information.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

Excellent news about his fingers, kcab!

peace
minnie

Well, I'll just share my own story of perfectionism - I entered kindergarten already reading, and I breezed through the primary grades. When my family moved at the end of my 2nd grade year, the principal told my mother he was sorry to see us go, because I was the smartest kid he had in the school (my mother loves telling that story). However, about halfway through 4th grade, I hit a wall with fractions - I just couldn't understand them! In those days, mathemathics was taught as a memorized process - not a conceptual understanding. So I freaked out.

One day, while staring at a blank worksheet with all the other kids working steadily away, the teacher approached and noticed I hadn't done any problems. In a cold sweat, I jumped up from my desk and told her I was going to be sick. After I cleverly waited until the end of math time to come back from the bathroom, the teacher came to me and said, "Jennifer, I know you must not be feeling well if YOU aren't doing the work - you're the smartest kid here, and you understand EVERYTHING!" At that point, I realized I actually wasn't very smart - that no matter how sophisticated my language, fluent my reading, or detailed my writing, I couldn't get fractions and therefore must be dumb. I've had a math complex ever since, and have only recently realized that it probably kept me from attempting medical school.

So all in all, I am worried about how my daughter will handle challenges, as I already see her shy away from anything she perceives might be difficult - and I don't want her K experience to be so easy that her first real challenge ends in disaster.