Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion New and confused.. What do I do?

Hello Everyone!
I am here because I need some guidance on the best path to take for my 6yo son's education.
A little background....
He attended the Head Start program for pre-school and is now in grade K at public school in La. All during his time in pre-K and for the first half of the kindergarten school year he was considered a "problem child".. disrupting class, loud out bursts, trouble transitioning from one center to another, aggressive behavior towards other kids and adults, refusal to do assignments.... the list goes on and on. He was taken out of his regular ed. classes and put into a smaller special ed. class setting with inclusion in reg ed class for things like lunch, group activities nap time and centers. His behavior has improved considerably but he does still have slip ups.
During the course of testing done for his IEP he was given an IQ test and scored 142.My son still cannot correctly identify all of his upper case and lower case letters and cannot read even 3 letter words. He tells me "that stuff is boring" and refuses to pay attention. He identifies the capitol letter"A"but analyzes the capitol"V" "it looks like the "A" but it's upside down and doesn't have the little line... I don't know what it's called"When it comes to asking him what words he recognizes he completely shuts down and will no longer co-operate with the teacher. Unfortunately the smaller special ed class cannot help him academically, so now they want to send him to another school entirely, one that has what they are calling a "May Class" that deals with behavioral issues and working on academics at the same time. But there has been no mention of addressing his gifted education.
What do I do? Do we address behavior first or proper class room setting? Is he bored and in need of a challenge? Is it possible that he also has ADD/ADHD or other learning disabilities? How much trust do I put into the school system?

How he shows his smarts: Loves the computer, video games,(only thing holding him back in those 2 areas is not being able to read) awesome problem solver and loves to "invent" things, he can find a loophole in any argument and always wants to debate every point. I believe him to be a visual-spatial learner. He can come home and tell me all about the life cycle of a butterfly or amazing things about the solar system. His imagination and story telling is so vivid I myself can actually "see" what he is telling me. He does not have an imaginary "friend", instead he has a "nemesis" named Invisible that is always taunting him and trying to make trouble for him (Strange? Unusual? Unhealthy? Any help and advice on that is welcome!)

I am sure a lot of this makes no sense and that's mostly because I am so confused on what to do. I want my son to excel and rise to his potential.

Hello, tied2tots, and welcome! Glad you found us--I'm sure there are some people here who will be able to help you out.

I can't help you much with your school questions, because we've never been in school (I have three boys, 8, almost 6 and almost 4, all homeschooling). I'm sorry your little guy is unhappy--I'm sure it's really hard on both of you. He does indeed sound bored to this complete stranger, but I'm not sure how you deal with that with the school (I'm sure someone with experience in this area will chime in here). My only real suggestion--and I'm sure it's something you're doing already--is to make sure he feels really loved and accepted just the way he is at home, since it's no fun to spend the whole school day feeling like you're a bad kid and always in trouble. Everybody needs that safe harbour at home, you know what I mean?

My kids have imaginary enemies too, which freaked me out a little at first, I must admit. But theirs are not so much "trying to make trouble for [them]" as they are characters in an ongoing good guys-bad guys saga, in which none of the three of them wanted to play the bad guy! (That this was the purpose of their imaginary enemies was not clear to me at first.) Does he ever triumph over Invisible, or is he always Invisible's victim? If he gets to win at least sometimes, I'd say not to worry, but if Invisible always wins and he is its constant hapless victim, then I'd say you need to worry a bit about addressing his feelings of powerlessness (in my very amateurish, completely unqualified opinion--I'm a cultural historian/part-time musician, so this is all mom-gut speaking, not expertise!).

Welcome again--

peace
minnie

Hi Tied2 - Welcome!

With a score like your son's - ANYthing is possible. It will sure take a while to figure things out.

Is this your district? http://sfpc.lausd.k12.ca.us/GATE/intro.html

I would totally suggest that you try to talk to some local folks who understand gifted kids. When they go the route of acting out - like mine, now 12, did - they can really take off the roof!

My son was also 'beyond regular gifted' and didn't learn to read until 1st grade. Have you had your son's vision checked? that's one place to start...

Can you get a copy of the IQ test, see which one it was, and what the raw scores or subtest were? You can post or private message Dottie for help understanding the actual scores and how they work together to make life tough for him.

Basically, I would make a written request (not email) to the principle that you would like a meeting with the Gifted Coordinator to discuss your son's needs as a gifted learner. Some gifted programing is great for kids who are like your son, and sometimes they really, really only want the cooperative, gifted by not overly gifted, ones.

I'm with Minnie on the 'loved and accepted at home' suggestion, and would go further to set up a weekly 'date' with him - no interruptions, no matter what, to do whatever he wants as long as it's legal and within your budget, and try to enjoy him on his own terms.


Also don't forget humor, if you can pull it off without humiliating him. If he is talking about that upside-down A, how would he react if you said, "Eh, I don't remember what it's called either, let's just call it 'triangle-man.' You may want to work on a book together and rename all the letters, while you are at it. If you son is like mine, he revels in being the one to make the rules and have a chance to laugh at me when I get confused and call in 'trifangle-man.' The sillier the better, as I'm sure he's not getting that at school.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

Thank you both for the support!

Minni-- It make's me feel so much better that my DS is not the only child to have an imaginary enemy. Sometimes he goes tearing through the house throwing punches and kicking the air( sound effects as well) in a full blown knock-down drag-out brawl with Invisible that ends with me finally saying "Enough!" Other times he calls me in to save him but no matter what I do , he always gives Invisible better, stronger powers than me so I can't win which makes me give up. Last week I had to go pick him up from school because he had a complete melt down in the cafeteria. No one knew why. When I asked him what happened he told me that Invisible had put whoopie cushions all over the place causing my DS to make farting sounds so he got really mad at Invisible and blew up. That's when I told him "No more Invisible!" I'm not sure if that was a good thing for me to do or not.... (DS did not take it very well)

Grinity-- I am actually in Louisiana. After reading all the posts about the children who started reading so early I was really starting to worry. Thank you for sharing about your son's difficulty learning to read.

I will be calling the school psychologist that gave him the test tomorrow to see about getting a copy and will post here to see who can help me make sense of it. I will also ask her about how his gifted education is going to be addressed. Right now it seems that all they are concerned about is his behavior. They are not talking about mainstreaming him in even a regular ed class intill 2nd grade. My DH and I are very concerned on how this may not be in his best interest if he is truly as intelligent as they are telling us. After reading over some of the information on gifted children we are starting to think that his acting out maybe a result of him not being challenged enough. Even at home, if he's bored, he's bad.

Thanks again!

Well, it sounds as though he has something he really needs to get out of his system; I wonder if there's another way you could find to help him express what's going on inside? I have often found reading books with kids can be a great opening to meaningful conversation--sometimes they need help getting to a place where it feels safe to talk about what is bothering them. Maybe look at some of these?

Lynd Ward, The Silver Pony
Donald Hall, The Man Who Lived Alone
William Steig, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble
Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are
Judith Viorst, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Or, if he likes listening to chapter books, you could try Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, or perhaps some books where the kids triumph heroically over evil, such as CS Lewis's Narnia books or Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles (my boys love these, Groucho [my middle one] in particular--he's the one of my three who is most easily overwhelmed by emotion, frustration especially, and he finds this kind of book deeply satisfying on a very primal kind of level; he's also the one who is most involved in tale-telling about their imaginary enemies). Fantasy books in general I think are important for children's emotional growth. Mythology has also been well-loved at our house, especially the d'Aulaires' books of Norse and Greek myths and Christie Harris's wonderful Mouse Woman books, which are retellings of Haida myths (the Haida are a Pacific Northwest First Nation).

I think you are quite right to be asking the psychologist about his gifted education; it seems to me that the behaviour is a symptom and that they need to be getting at the causes as well.

Do keep us posted; we'll be thinking of you.

peace
minnie

The first question I would ponder is what IQ test did they give him... In some schools they sometimes give very flaky tests that are cheap to administer yet are also prone to have score that are shall we say less than accurate.

I'm not saying that your son isn't really 142... but with the margin of error in some test he could easily be 15 to 20 points higher or lower...

I think you might first consider finding someone outside the school that could test him and look for any problems. Dyslexia could be the reason he doesn't read and is disturbed by people trying to push him to. If he has some problem like that he needs to get that address before you worry about the education, as that problem ignored is going to make it all but impossible for him to achieve much in school, gift or not.

Hi, Tied2knots and welcome. I'm sure you will find your son here. This forum is great and everyone has great ideas, suggestions, and recommendations for reading/research.

My DS6 adamently refuses to read. We have found ways around this. I have started bowling for words. We recycled bowling pins (empty bottles of water, milk, G2, etc) and taped words with a point value on them. He then has to add up all the pins he knocks down and says correctly. Surprisingly he has not missed one word yet. He is a visual spatial learner to a T and loves to learn through games. We discovered that his sensory defenses were actually causing so much distraction while sitting that he prefers to be in constant motion. This would cause reading very difficult as reading is a "sitting" activity which he avoids at all costs. I have also found the more tactile activities I can incorporate into learning, the less resisting he is (i.e. form letters with whip cream, sand, clay, legos, etc). My son learned his letters this way.

I wonder if your son's imaginary nemesis is actually his conscience battling his guilt. I was told that my son has no control over certain behaviors that are triggered by his sensory overload, yet he knows these behaviors are unacceptable so he feels horrible about them yet cannot do anything to stop his body from reacting certain ways (flight/fright/fight).

Good luck and welcome....

One day you will look back at this and LAUGH!

i also have kids that have been reluctant to read at one point or another even though their HG ability suggested they were capable. The best think we did was load our IPOD with audio books from audible.com. For example, my son has listened to "James and the Giant Peach" and "charlottes web" several times. They are exact readings of the books so they are getting all the benefits of hearing a "read aloud" that would be hard for parents to constantl do. We have it on almost all the time when they are playing. After we did this a while they did start picking up more books.
irene