Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion I think I will just laugh at this one...

I was talking to the school psychologist to see if the school would do achievement testing for us to submit to DYS. Our application is in limbo, the portfolio was not quite enough. She said they would not do the testing. My explanation to her as to why we were looking into the program was that we are interested in finding families with similar children (trying to avoid seeming like we were about to become "pushy parents" with the school). So she started going on about his social needs and that they are very important, but can certainly be fulfilled with the various children in his school.

Also, she talked a lot about letting him just be a kid. She even mentioned that her daughter goes to high school with a twelve year old, who in her daughters estimation, really isn't socially ready for high school (isn't it a shame he was not allowed to remain in sixth or seventh grade with his age mates to learn how to get along seemed to be the point of that story.)

She agreed that he will never find a friend at school who will be close to him intellectually, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. She asked if I ever saw Doogie Howser, the 80's sit-com about a 15 year old doctor. I said yes, I saw an episode or two. Then she asked if I remembered his best friend, who was obviously not his intellectual equal, but wasn't it great how much he got Doogie to just be a kid, and maybe that is what we should be looking for for our son.

Just smile and wave, boys, smile and wave. (from the Penguins of Madagascar)

Haha...so base your life on a TV show?

Yeah, I guess you couldn't very well say to her that you want DYS's support for dealing with people like her, could you?

Wow. I thought Doogie was pretty darned well adjusted for an accelerated kid. I guess I took the wrong message from her story :-)

Ummm yeah, wasn't he DONE with school so his FRIEND was not in his class. DUH. People say the strangest things sometimes.

Kec,
That is so strange!
Are there any universities around that will test 'for cheap?' - better than nothing.

DS13 came home with this joke today:
If a crust of bread is better than nothing,
And nothing is better than Love,
Doesn't the Transitive Property say that a crust of bread is better than Love?

Smiles,
Grinity

Don't you wish we could say things like: "I know, kids see things so superficially sometimes! Well you can't really expect your daughter to appreciate all the difficult choices we parents have to make, now, can you? She'll understand when she has kids of her own, I'm sure."

No wonder DS13 says I'm a meanie!
Grinity

I met with the public school GT coordinator long ago when my daughter attended 1st grade at public school. We were advocating for a grade skip for dd and felt panicked about what to do with her younger (now YS) brother.

This teacher first relayed how her own grown daughter had always been perfectly positioned as the youngest in her grade due to an August birthday. (Each of our kids missed the September 1 cut-off by 6 weeks or less so, we were asking for approximately the same placement as her daughter + we had a FSIQ over 140 for our daughter as evidence.) The GT teacher proceeded to relay an anecdote illustrating the folly of early entrance or grade acceleration (even if only by half a year). Her story was of a boy who had been allowed slightly early entrance once upon at time. She stated that although he had an IQ of almost 150, he just did not seem to fit in with the �older� kids, even in the gifted pullout class. She attributed his lack of fit exclusively to being 6 months younger than his average classmate. Lastly, she made the point that it was not necessary to be gifted in order to instruct gifted children.

'With Friends like that who needs enemies?'

anyway that's what my mom would have said!

So she is using a TV Show as the basis for rational decision making? This person has a PHD?

Did she cite school district policy, state law and policy, and any published research? What is her decision making framework and how did she apply it in your child's case?

For a PG kid, sports may be the best way to connect to age/ND peers, but older geeky kids or other PG kids will be the true peers. It was not until I transferred into a HS with children of parents who worked mostly at a local corporate lab and university that my age peers mostly caught up with me - and almost all my classmates later got PHDs or became MDs.