Parents of children with super high IQ scores - where are your children in school?

[Anonymous]

Humorless again? wrote:

Reactionary wrote:

I wrote:

Humorless wrote:

Sense of Humor wrote:

Joker wrote:i have mine take some courses at georgetown university. She's four but very advanced. It's not Ivy League but the best the area has to offer.

LMAO! Best posting on here in a while!

Yes, it's incredibly witty and so very, very original. It's always a good time to have fun at the expense of parents who are looking for information about how best to meet their children's educational needs when those needs differ significantly from the vast majority of other children. Perhaps you both should take your gift for humor over to the Special Needs board and see how it flies? Oh, but wait. It won't. And you won't. Precisely because doing so is in incredibly poor taste and lacking in empathy. As it is here as well.

Oh lighten up.

Yes, we're all heartbroken for the parents of "special needs" high IQ children. Reminds me of the poster living in 20016 whose household income was $800,000 was crying all day that her child didn't get into the big three. I cried for her-- trying to raise a child with only Horace Mann and only $800,000 for enrichment. It's like freaking Darfur. My kid tested at 155. She's in DCPS. And she's not "special needs." She's just good at the brainy part of school. And there is much, much more to elementary school.

Just because there is more to school than "the brainy part" doesn't mean that the highly gifted (or whatever one calls them) don't also have special needs. They are just as many standard deviations away from the norm as the population that we typically call "special needs." It works both ways. If you are satisfied with DCPS for your child, great. But there is no need to sneer at people who also want to pursue the most appropriate education for their children, and who have decided that DCPS is not it. And the attempted analogy to the wealthy person really isn't even close to being similar, BTW. Totally different situations.

Relax. No one's sneering at you or showing any lack of empathy. Quit being so defensive. There have been seven or eight pages of good discussion about where people have high-IQ children in school, how they're treated, and what personal experiences people have had as high-IQ students. So what if someone made a joke about sending her four-year-old to G'town? Does that really need to get you so defensive? I think it was your defensive response, which portrays you and your high-IQ child as victims and special-needs cases, that drew the reactionary response from the "Darfur" poster. If you'd just laughed off the initial joke, which wasn't even directed at you personally, there would be no issue. Just take a breath.

[Anonymous]

Umm, hello? There are probably many of us who resent being patronized and told to "lighten up" or relax," because I am the poster who said you should not sneer, but I am NOT the poster who had been offended by the Georgetown comment. (Although I happen to agree with her--and BTW, super-gifted kids are special needs just as much as any other special needs-children. No one said they were victims, or at least I didn't.)

[Anonymous]

I agree, the "lighten up" comment was patronizing (and I haven't posted at all here recently). Let's get back to the thread topic. If she doesn't like it, she should leave instead of trying to derail.

[Anonymous]

It's the game of "gotcha" -- I insult you, and then when you react I accuse you of being hyper-sensitive. You can't win, and I can't lose. Very childish.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's the game of "gotcha" -- I insult you, and then when you react I accuse you of being hyper-sensitive. You can't win, and I can't lose. Very childish.

You're off-base here. I did not insult anyone. I did not post the joke about G'town, and I did not post the "LMAO" comment. I only chimed in for the first time when the extra-sensitive poster took great offense at that joke and compared her high-IQ child to special-needs kids. I understand that we all care deeply about our high-IQ kids and want to make sure they are in the right environment. But I've got little sympathy for a parent who think her high-IQ child's lot in life is as comparable to kids dealing with special-needs issues. Are you really trying to compare your "difficulties" to such issues as dyspraxia and autism? No one's "sneering" at you -- you just need to keep your child's "special needs" in perspective.

[Anonymous]

St. Anselm's Abbey School.

[Anonymous]

MoCo magnets. And Johns Hopkins CTY.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's the game of "gotcha" -- I insult you, and then when you react I accuse you of being hyper-sensitive. You can't win, and I can't lose. Very childish.

You're off-base here. I did not insult anyone. I did not post the joke about G'town, and I did not post the "LMAO" comment. I only chimed in for the first time when the extra-sensitive poster took great offense at that joke and compared her high-IQ child to special-needs kids. I understand that we all care deeply about our high-IQ kids and want to make sure they are in the right environment. But I've got little sympathy for a parent who think her high-IQ child's lot in life is as comparable to kids dealing with special-needs issues. Are you really trying to compare your "difficulties" to such issues as dyspraxia and autism? No one's "sneering" at you -- you just need to keep your child's "special needs" in perspective.

Then you should say that. Don't just say patronizing things to people and expect them to read the deeper thoughts in your mind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MoCo magnets. And Johns Hopkins CTY.

What's your experience with CTY? Summer (day camp vs. away camp), online, what ages, positive or negative? How/do you integrate it with regular school -- i.e. are you outsourcing math or using it to connect DC with like-minded peers? Do you conceptualize CTY as filling holes/solving problems associated with regular school or just enriching/supplementing/sustaining work done at school?

[Anonymous]

I want to answer this, but I'm a bit hesitant because your post appears a bit academic and I'm wondering if you're just another mom.

So I'll say just a few things. We see it as a combination of filling holes and enrichment. At the moment DC is too young to do something like the summer camp on Nietsche and Heidigger, because I can't see a 13-year-old having the psychological maturity to make a meaningful contribution to this type of discussion. But in a few years I'm hoping it will be just thing thing for DC.

[Anonymous]

OP, does your DC get plenty of sunshine and exercise?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I want to answer this, but I'm a bit hesitant because your post appears a bit academic and I'm wondering if you're just another mom.

Not the pp, here. While I understand your concerns, I was also a bit amused. I AM an academic, as well as "just another mom." Guess on the parenting boards I'll have to make sure my questions don't betray my academic inclinations.

[Anonymous]

I am the PP (another academic/mom, LOL!). My interest was as a mom. DC is starting one of their summer programs next week and I'm wondering where CTY fits for most kids and how what their parents want out of CTY shapes choice of format. Basically I'm curious about who DC's cohort will be and what they are there for. Is it just another summer camp experience (or a cult)? Do the day camps attract kids who are hoping, in part, to make local friends? Do kids who take the online classes do that instead of vs. on top of their ordinary school workload? That sort of thing.

[Anonymous]

If you go to the Older Kids forum at DCUM there is a thread on CTY. That forum seems to get a lot less traffic than this one, for some reason.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, I saw that thread but it wasn't the kind of discussion I was hoping for. This particular thread has been so substantive and thoughtful that when someone mentioned CTY, I thought I'd ask here and see where it went.