When we met with the public school superintendant several years ago to try to early entrance our DS10 who just missed the cut-off;

"If you early entrance him he won't be able to drive when his friends start and he will be at a disadvantage with sports."

-I thought we were discussing his education.

I think we all (meaning educators and parents) need to accept that highly gifted kids rarely have true social peers. Each highly gifted kid is so different in interests, asynchronies and OEs that to find true peers would be very rare.

So what does it matter if they are with peers their age who tease them because they are different or with intellectual peers who tease them for whatever other reason??

Cran-my question about 2e and grade acceleration still remains. It got lost in the thread traffic, but I'm still curious about how you would handle that and how you would advise us to handle it.

Can I add one - even though my son is just 12 months!

Talked with the Superintendents Office today about early admittance to kindergarden (not now, when he is 4 since he will miss the cut off by 5 weeks), answer "No, state law says they have to be 5 - it doesn't matter how much they know"

Hi Willa Gayle,

Sorry I haven't responded to your 2e question--I've been running around the past couple of days.

First, I have to say that I am by no means an expert or Super Teacher or anything like that. I can only respond from personal experience and this may (probably) not reflect what other teachers do.

Also, as you know, kids like ours are rare, and that's why most teachers don't know what to do with them. They don't have to face situations like this often.

All that out of the way, I did have a similar student to Mite, though not as advanced. He was a middle school student, quite smart, but with no organizational skills at all. He also had attention difficulties. He would rotate between not doing his homework, doing it but forgetting it at home, and doing it but forgetting it was sitting in his backpack. He would also quit in the middle of a project, complete only half his class assignments, etc. I had the advantage of a small class size and a great deal of contact with my students' parents.

We worked on systems for homework--I would put everything in an envelope so his parents could at least find it. I would have all the kids check their backpacks at homework collection time (so as not to single him out). I would explain the directions for the homework to the class, then call on students to explain it back to me, most of the time calling on this student in addition to several others (again not to single anyone out).

He did get better at organizing, but the problem still remained that he didn't see things through to completion. I think that there are certain things that students need to learn and if I felt like this student hadn't mastered it and would need it in the future, I would insist on it being completed, though maybe through a series of steps. Such an example could be a written essay because being able to write well is something he would need in high school and beyond. Breaking it into steps may be assigning just coming up with a topic one night, then starting to outline ideas, etc. until he could eventually complete it. I was not a stickler on timelines. On the other hand, if he was not completing a math assignment, of say 10 algebra problems, but I could see he understood it from his answers to the 4 he completed, I would grade him on what he did, not what he was assigned.

Some parents or students may not find this fair, but accommodations need to be made for certain students, and the accommodations were never broadcasted to the other parents, and I didn't have a problem with it (no complaints from other parents or students).

So, as I said before, this is only my personal experience. I did not have any specific special education training, but this is what I came up with to deal with one specific situation. Hope it helps.

Hopefully you will find some good teachers someday. There are some out there....

Oh I wish someone other than me was putting that effort into Mite's organization and attention!

I'm curious, Cran, would you recommend grade acceleration for a 2E if the LDs were attentional and organizational.

Willa Gayle,

I know the question wasn’t addressed to me, but I wanted to share our experience with my daughter. When she was in 1st-2nd at the public school, I suspected ADHD or CAPD. The teachers and school psych thought I was crazy!!!! Then I told them that I also wanted her grade advanced and they felt sorry for my daughter having to live with a paranoid mother!

Fast forward many years and a few different experts including private ed psyche, a developmental ped, and the ed psyche dept of a large university have all confirmed that she definitely has some 2e issues in the realm of my first instincts which at least one expert considers significant. We haven’t gone to the final referrals because she is still an A student.

Anyways, the negative side effects of the 2E stuff were minimized immediately when we switched schools and she was grade advanced at 8 years old. Leaving a school without wall didn’t hurt either, I’m sure.

Delbows, I think some of our Admins think the same of me (crazy, deranged mother!) When I suggested LD testing for DD, who was an ideal student, they thought I'd lost my mind. But compared to her two gifted siblings.....something was definitely up. So now she's one of the very few identified LD students with no scores below average (SS100).

But that aside, fresh off the presses, I just learned today that......

Gifted children are usually tall. They are also usually from families that aren't divorced, but I was so busy trying to process "tall" that I almost missed the divorced stat. So there you have it, short kids need not apply. This from a psych by the way, who had an INCREBILE amount of stereotypical expectations for The Gifted Child. Too many for me to correct in one sitting,

'Course if they are tall AND advanced, maybe we should just solve everything and let them drive earlier????

This brings me to a question about Rite (15). I had the schools tested given that when he was lttle he had a lot of the same difficulties (though not as severe) Mite had and that both Mite and I had recently found out we had dyspraxia and ADHD...etc.

We have found out that he does have very similar WISC discrepancies and has dyspraxia and ADHD, too.

So now what? He's a fantastic student now, but he's in age grouped grade level with advancement in math and in honors cluster. Frankly, his straight As don't impress me because he's not working hard at it. I'm glad he has As, but I wish he were being challenged. ALL of his teachers recognize his giftedness, too. When I spoke to them at conferences they couldn't say enough positive about him. I wonder if they would say that in front of their peers or bosses?

Anyhow, do we push for special ed? The one place it does seem to effect him is in standardized tests where he lands in 99th percentile on verbals and within mean for analytical. Clearly it is giong to effect his performance on the ACT or SAT if there aren't accomodations. He says he hates timed tests. He's actually skipped math levels in school and his math teachers marvel at him, but it just doesn't show on the tests.

What to do?

My son (5 in K with a 99.8% across the board) and I visited a local toy store to pick up some cool items. Of course, he was not interested in their toys but in their educational section. The nice sales clerk saw that he was choosing items intended for 8-10 year-olds. She told us 3 times that he would be happier "playing with the toys" in the younger kids section. He replied, " No. I am interested in these circuit boards and want to make a voice recorder". I pointed out that he was quite capable of this goal. Well she huffed off but when we checked out she wrote on our receipt that "none of the items are to be returned because I specifically told the mother that these items are well above her son's age level!" Needless to say, they lost a customer. LOL.

Insanity at its best...SpongeBob, I would encourage you to write a letter to the store explaining that experience. Maybe they won't be so quick to write off the next wee customer!