Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Parent having Goldilocks issue?

It occurred to me this morning that perhaps I was suffering a bit from the same dynamic that we have been discussing in another thread re: work being too easy or too hard and that too hard sometimes had the child feeling like maybe they are not as smart as they thought.
In beginning EPGY a few weeks ago my DS8 has come upon some math he had never seen before. And even though he still scored in the 90's and understood the work within a minute or two of an explanation he still felt it was hard and maybe he should stop asking for harder math.
This morning as I contemplated the other thread and this experience with my son I realized that at that moment I too wondered about how accurate the test results were etc. I wondered if I was making a big issue of a child who was maybe only a bit above ND and didn't need all the educational changes I am trying to make. I also realized that I felt the same way as I got older. When I finally hit upon really challenging work in college I questioned my abilities - and here I am questioning his.
I wanted to run out and find some ND kids and try and teach them the same math to see what that difference looked like. I also felt guilty for thinking about this and for minimizing DS's potential.
Anyone else have this experience as you finally got some accomodations made and saw your child not "instantly" know the material?

Yes. We felt this way with the grade skip at the beginning of the year. When DS felt he was really struggling (because he wasn't getting 100s on everything), I had a fleeting moment of thinking "Oh no, what did we do?" I thought maybe we had made too big a jump, even though all indications were that it was for the best overall. It passed though, and things seem to be going OK now.

Yes!!! Thankfully, I was reassured this weekend regarding DS. Now if I can just stop making excuses for MYSELF!

Your DS SHOULD be challenged, so it's a-ok if he doesn't get it right off the bat!

We homeschool... so theoretically at least, I should be able to tweak DS's work in infinitely small increments and get it "just right" at all times, which sounds great, but in real life? Well... If I'm aiming to make sure that he's always working (never too easy), it's hard to remember that it means he's always working. Give me a few weeks of that and I start wondering why nothing seems to be coming easy to him. AND I have to remember that always working can get to be discouraging.

But I can't have it both ways -- if I want him to work, he's going to need to have something meaty to work on. And if I want to see how easily he sails through, I can't do that with the same thing that makes him slow down and work. So we kind of ebb and flow on that -- work hard for a few weeks, and then circle back around to something lighter for a bit. Push a little in one area while letting go a little in another.

It really does help to have some ND kids around -- or really any kids at all. I've got two math teams to coach, and they're all very bright kids, but it's good for me to see that other people's bright kids still make silly mistakes, and find things confusing or difficult, and don't always have the right answer in two seconds. When it's my own kid (and especially when I have the added responsibility of being in charge of his education!) it's harder to take a step back and say it's all okay.

Also, it does get better. If this is the first time he's being challenged it could be scary. After he's risen to a challenge and conquered it, and he knows (and you know) that he's up for the work, it does get easier to push through without panicking.