I agree with the talented/not gifted students starting out ahead because they were brighter to begin with. Good point.

I address the pacing problem by being an unabashed hothouser. My eldest works on mathemathics with me for ~2-3 hours per week. We got halfway through grade 5 math a while back and skipped ahead to algebra. We fill in the gaps as we go. I do reading lessons with my kindergartner (plus paleontology) and my three year old.

It's amazing how far you can get with a little bit of focused instruction --- and they stay challenged.

Val

I think we've commiserated before about the current education fad of "equal but not fair," Val. I'll spare everyone my getting on that same soapbox since you detailed the problem so eloquently. But suffice it to say, I am 100% in agreement with you. And I think that educational policy stinks!

I like that you're speaking up about what your kids can do. Standing up to the pressure from schools and other parents to keep quiet and not make waves is not easy. You are a brave woman, and I think you're doing one of the only things we parents really can do to try to change the status quo: refuse to be quiet.

I'm still whispering. Lately I've been rethinking that policy. I like your way better.

I believe the best advocacy is having a clear picture about what you'd like the end result to be. Sometimes we have problems with this because we're not trained educators so we look to them for advice, but I think when it comes down to it, educators or not, we know what's best for our kids. Whining and complaining is ineffective. Having documentation, solutions in hand, etc. helps. Some things take time to change.

I read that Colorado's governor signed a bill allowing high ability 4 yrs olds to go to K and high ability 5 yrs olds to go to 1st grade. That's so wonderful! It makes me wonder how many cases had to come up to make it happen.

I think the other tactic I'm beginning to embrace is--just do it (thanks, Nike). I want DS 11 and DS 9 to take Alg 2 next year. The school has really put time & energy into trying to get this going, but I doubt it's going to happen. So I plan to just do it, whether it's at the college, online, whatever.

Hi, my kids are 6 and 8 now but I remember sitting in groups of parents outside preschool activities, listening to them talk about their kids. Every single 3 year old was reading it seemed. They'd look at their kid holding a book and roll their eyes and say "I wonder what they'll do in kindergarten", as if the child was already past K work. Meanwhile, I had a 3 year old that was actually reading the words of books, and I didn't want to upset these women so I avoided having dd look at any books, lest she read the words out loud. Then, when dd was 4, I overheard a friend of a women who tests for early K entrance. She was talking about how the women had been testing kids for 2 weeks and hadn't found anybody appropriate. They never do. They just go through the motions for the parents. And the person doing it HATED that part of her job. It made me wonder if she was really looking or just looking for reasons to say no. It all made me too scared to have dd tested.

There are some things that aren't talked about in polite company. That your child is too smart for school seems to be OK to say, unless it's actually true...

I wish that there would be a real dialogue on this. The parents who believe their children are ahead actually believe it. It's because it isn't talked about enough for them to know how their child falls in the mix. Same with me as a parent of a very bright little girl. At 3, I didn't know where she fell in the mix, and most teachers don't see enough kids to know this either. If they gave out a developmental pamphlet like they do for screening for delays, it would probably make everyone's jobs easier.

We could make one.

See new message, about to be posted.

Val

Ooooh! I have a feeling I'm going to like this...

Oh I had to laugh at the "unless it's actually true." Yep.

I remember hearing some say "oh my child's reading has really taken off" etc. Then come to find out, the child is reading the family members' names or a picture book which has been read nightly to him for the past 4years. When I hear comments like that, I just nod. Now I also ask "So what is your child reading" just to gauge where the child is at. The other is "My child knows all her ABCs at 2yrs old." Well then the child starts singing the ABC song. I didn't mention that my 19month old didn't know the ABC song but knows all the sounds the letters make and that C says both /s/ and /c/.

It really is difficult to have an open dialogue about this. I had a very frank discussion about this with a friend. I failed to de-gift the living room of my gifted books (currently reading "Re-forming Gifted Education" when she came over. She very shyly asked if I had DS tested and what clued me in to get him tested in the first place. We talked for the 2hrs lol. Her DS is entering K. She was told by the preK teacher that in all her 30yrs of teaching, she had never seen a child as advanced as he and is really pushing her NOT to send him to our public school. I have another friend who is very open about her son's ability so very quickly I knew she was someone i could talk to. My other best friend in town - not so much - I don't say a whole lot.

I hate the line "let's wait until 3rd grade b/c they all even out." I think that is partly as to not miss the late-bloomers. But why make the very high ability kids wait for instruction at their level so you don't miss the late bloomers? Why sacrifice one for the other? Why not assess yearly and give each child what he/she needs?

I have a good friend, a kindergarten teacher, who gave me the same advice. I tried following her advice and found it wasted too much time. It can take a teacher a whole semester to realize that a child is advanced, especially if there is nothing in the curriculum or in the classroom to allow the child to demonstrate his/her ability. If you have an HG+ child, it is important to realize that most teachers have never had a child at that level of giftedness so they have little or no experience from which to work. At this point, I try to get a teacher conference as early as possible in the year to talk to my dd's teacher and regularly offer suggestions for differentiation.

I can't thank you all enough for your perspectives on this. I have taken away so much food for thought from your responses...

Val, I admire your unabashed advocacy of your child. And you are so right. I need to give myself a free pass to do the math (yesterday he wanted me to write out 1 billion on the chalkboard so he could see what 1 and 9 zeros looked like) and reading stuff with Graham at home because he LOVES it, and as long as he does, I'll keep doing enrichment stuff at home. I have a feeling he's going to need it!

Cym, your comment on knowing what you want the end result to be is so dead on. Right now I feel like I am in the "gathering" stage. Gathering as much information, anecdotal evidence, etc. before Graham hits school. I have no idea what the end result for him should look like and I suppose that will become much clearer the older he gets. But I am looking to friends/relatives who are teachers for advice right now, and opinions are varied.

And Master of None's comments about the polite conversations are soooo true. I feel awkward talking about the full extent of Graham's abilities and so I tend not to. I have found just a couple of mothers in my circle of acquaintances who get it either because of their own children or their work roles, and it always feels like such a relief to talk openly about him.

Dottie, maybe Graham is one of those kids...bright but not truly GT. I suspect not, but testing in a couple of years will probably help clarify things. I hear what you are saying and I have absolutely no doubt that my 2 friends were not exaggerating their experience or their frustration at dealing with these types of parents.

But as gratified and so many of you wrote...a lot of teachers rarely if ever encounter a truly HG kid. So my friends' experience is the norm. I do believe that they can be right about students/parents in general and we (my husband and I) can be right about Graham. That helped.

Thanks.

The way I've put it before is that I can't blame others if they think I'm nuts, since I so often think it myself. HG is really really "out there" and even though we've got these kids around all the time, making them look pretty normal to us, no one else has that. It's not surprising that ours come across as somewhat unbelievable -- they really are tremendously unlikely!

I wanted to add one other thing about the polite conversation... maybe two... lol.... I generally don't talk about DS locally because I don't want him to be "open for discussion". Once you've raised the topic, it sort of becomes public property, and I don't want that. Gossip, however, gets the word around. I happen to be best friends with the one of the best gossipers in town, so I can "feed" the mill with what I want out there, without having to do the talking myself. It's a subtle difference, but it means that I can be perfectly civil to people that I know would be more than happy to argue about our schooling choices if I gave them an opening, and they don't bring it up because it would be admitting to knowing something they heard "under the table". But at the same time anyone who really needs a sympathetic ear knows where to find me. Yay for small towns....