How can posters ask questions about their academically advanced kids without being criticized?

[Anonymous]

Probably most children do not do well in a traditional classroom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I am not that poster you are asking, but I'll answer for me anyway: they both should have funding. If that is not possible, then both should be trimmed. It is wrong to eliminate gifted programming just so as not to have make any cuts at all to LD programs. In some districts, the LD budget is way out of proportion--LD programming is not a sacred cow that should never be cut.

Nobody is talking about "eliminating gifted programming." We're talking about what's an appropriate balance for dividing available funds between the two groups, i.e. the percent distribution of funds between the gifted and LD kids. Taking into account the earlier statements that gifted funding is probably cheaper, on a per capita basis, than LD funding. So we can talk about the division of funds in terms of (1) absolute dollar amounts, (2) the number of kids reached, or (3) the percent of both populations (gifted and LD) that are reached.

But we simply can't provide "full funding" to both programs, in any way that is going to meet the full expectations of all the families involved. Sure, I'd pay higher property taxes to see this happen, and some of the rest of you probably would too. But the rest of the county apparently disagrees with us, and they bring in economic growth and other arguments. So we have to face reality: the schools budget is what it is.

So we're back to the question of "what the proper division of funds should be," on whatever terms we choose, of the fixed budget that we actually have. You state that "the LD budget is way out of proportion." I disagree.

Signed, another gifted mom of highly gifted kids who can't believe this discussion.

[Anonymous]

I'm the poster who said this: "But if push comes to shove, and the county budget situation gets (even more) dire, I'm with the poster who said services to the learning disabled should be cut last. "

Let me be clear. I never said that we should eliminate magnet programs. Ever. The hypothetical situation I raised concerned the *order* of eliminating programs in a situation where the budget is so dire that all special programs are being eliminated. Obviously not a real scenario, just a drastic illustration of my position.

I'm also 11:39, above. The question concerns how we divide the existing school funds. Not which programs to eliminate.

[Anonymous]

Remember this is the private school section, so we really aren't talking about a school district's limited resources. At many private schools there is competition for admission and testing (which we can argue about the accuracy of, but there it is) and most of the kids at these schools are varying levels of gifted. Yeah, everyone can come up with examples of a kid who isn't, but most are, as I said, in varying degrees. It is not at all unusual for these schools to have kids who show up in K or even pre-k able to read and do some math. This is standard fare for these schools. Just have a private conversation with the teacher at the beginning of the year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"
As far as I know, there are really only two options. Public school or private school. Is there some super secret third option - I don't know about.

Yes, it's called homeschooling and for a many parents of profoundly gifted kids, it's the way to go.

OMG. My kid is profoundly gifted, and if I had to homeschool her, it would be the end of us each individually and the death of our relationship with one another. My child might be PG, but I can not be her entire education (in fact, I am not bright enough in all fields to be her entire education) and I can not be her entire world. I pay taxes, and I want her to be educated at school with other kids her age (and there are some other PG kids there). She not only needs schooling, she needs exposure to other kids and ideas and grown-ups. She needs academic classes and music and art and computers and athletics.... And, although I am her parent, it is not appropriate (or effective) to make me give up my entire life to educate her.

For those who make the homeschooling choice, I say, that's terrific -- but please don't force it upon the rest of us as the magic solution. It is not; at least not for everyone.

[Anonymous]

@21:43 Definitely agree. Not for forcing anyone. Was just responding to the poster who could only see two options. HSing *is* an option...just not one for everyone. And I also agree that *every* child has a right to be educated, to learn new things every day. Sadly, many schools, both public and private, do all they can to throw roadblocks in the way or come up with reasons for why they can't do x, y, z.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Probably most children do not do well in a traditional classroom.

Ding ding ding!

The more I read this thread, the more grateful I am that my kid is in a progressive school. The idea that it's somehow terrible that kids should educate themselves strikes me as really wrong-headed. We should be aiming to create kids/people who are continually self-educating.

[Anonymous]

This topic made me smile. I'm guessing most of the parents on this thread are parents of young children. You'll gain perspective on giftedness as you go through school. I remember thinking my son was really gifted. He's always been a 99%+ tester, he read at three years old, and had worked his way through books like Harry Potter by six or seven. He was way ahead in math too.

He may well be "gifted" on some level, but so are a lot of other kids -- and I've come to believe that it is a silly way to identify or even think of your child. There's so much more to aptitude and education.

My son attends a Big 3, and he's happy and well-served there, but he has equally gifted friends in public school. They all have their struggles too -- some with school, others with arts, some with sports, some with girls -- and I'm confident they'll all push through those struggles.

My bottom line is to try to avoid over-analyzing your kids. If you put them in a school where they are happy and reasonably challenged, they'll do just fine in school and in life. Focus on the happiness quotient and relax.

[Anonymous]

If you put them in a school where they are happy and reasonably challenged, they'll do just fine in school and in life. Focus on the happiness quotient and relax.

The irony here is about to kill me. Don't you think the OP of that post was trying to do exactly that? Especially with your first child, you have NO idea what the schools are really like, you have NO idea how they can work with you. There are so many choices and options. If you are in the same place in life as all your friends, then they can't help you, because they have never been through the process either. So what do you do to get info? How about ask a question on a local parenting board about what schools might work for a child like yours? But rather than taking the time to post a thoughtful response, apparently it's a lot more fun for many people to disparage them and their "special snowflake".

In answer to SAM2, I really don't know that it's possible for someone to ask a question about the needs of an academically advanced child on a message board without getting trounced. I've seen it over and over, on other boards besides this one, so it isn't just because this board is anonymous. The only place I have found that is safe is a forum that is for parents of gifted children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

If you put them in a school where they are happy and reasonably challenged, they'll do just fine in school and in life. Focus on the happiness quotient and relax.

The irony here is about to kill me. Don't you think the OP of that post was trying to do exactly that? Especially with your first child, you have NO idea what the schools are really like, you have NO idea how they can work with you. There are so many choices and options. If you are in the same place in life as all your friends, then they can't help you, because they have never been through the process either. So what do you do to get info? How about ask a question on a local parenting board about what schools might work for a child like yours? But rather than taking the time to post a thoughtful response, apparently it's a lot more fun for many people to disparage them and their "special snowflake".

In answer to SAM2, I really don't know that it's possible for someone to ask a question about the needs of an academically advanced child on a message board without getting trounced. I've seen it over and over, on other boards besides this one, so it isn't just because this board is anonymous. The only place I have found that is safe is a forum that is for parents of gifted children.

I certainly was not intending to disparage the poster. This thread made me smile just because it took me back to an earlier time in my own life. My point was simply to say that there are a lot of gifted kids out there and there are many schools that can accommodate them. Sorry if I offended anyone.

[Anonymous]

What qualifies as gifted? I have one kid with a 148 IQ and another with 133 or so. They are different kids with different strengths, but they do equally well in school. On some scale, they are both considered gifted, but they don't stand out in a crowd in DC. I'm just thankful they can fit into the mix of a traditional school, albeit a top private.

[Anonymous]

SAM2 wrote:I've read many threads on DCUM where OP asks a question that refers to her academically advanced child, and immediately gets pounded for asking the question. Here's an example from today: http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/118253.page . I think people in that situation are in a tough spot -- it seems almost impossible to ask a question about your academically gifted child without getting everyone upset. Yes, many times people on DCUM will brag obnoxiously, but I think some of them are really just trying to ask for advice. I actually thought OP on that linked thread asked in a low-key way, so I was surprised that she got attacked. So I'm looking for examples of how to do it right ....

Pretend you're the OP in the thread linked above, and you want to ask which schools/curricula will serve your child. How do you ask the question without coming across as a braggart?

People are of course free to do whatever they want with this thread, but I'm not really looking for a discussion about whether some questions are good/bad, or whether its fair or not that questions get attacked. I just would like to see some examples of what people think is the "right way" to ask a question like that. Thanks in advance. Maybe this will help the next person who has a question.

Here's my best shot: "I've got a four-year-old who seems fairly advanced academically (adding, subtracting, reading a lot), and I'm wondering whether private schools will have a challenging curriculum at younger grades to keep him from being bored. Can anyone offer some advice?"

Now let's see your best examples.

The elementary schools of the Top 3 institutions are not the best for younger kids. Sidwell is terrific for older kids who are smart, but the lower school is not designed for acceleration. I've heard parents of bright children complain about this. Same at Beauvoir. I'd look for a smaller school that is focused on early childhood education.. That way your child will get more individualized attention.

[Anonymous]

I wonder how much of this is about parental expectations vs. kids' needs. Of course, one of the "big 3" is focussed exclusively on ECE. And all have class sizes small enough for individualized attention.

What none of them will do is "acceleration" and, with selective admissions, small class sizes, well-trained teachers (who have routinely taught gifted kids), and educational philosophies that are oriented toward exploration/discovery, it wouldn't make sense to.

http://www.dukegiftedletter.com/articles/vol4no4_feature.html is interesting on this topic -- what you'll see if you read it (among other things) is that boredom is both a response to an overly-constrained environment and is also related to personality/attitudes/coping mechanism. It's not an attribute (or function) of giftedness per se.

And just to bring this full circle -- parent expectation are often for highly/recognizably structured educational environments -- they expect very teacher-driven learning and want to see teachers filling their kids with knowledge just as fast as the kids can consume it. And, if that's what kids get at home, some may be at a loss when they don't see the same model at school (or, god forbid, some may choose to use this freedom to work on some project other than the acquisition of more math facts).

From a longer-term perspective, I've seen the more open-ended lower school environment at my DC's big 3 lay impressive groundwork for the more conventionally rigorous middle/upper school curriculum. From comfort with (more like love of) writing, to a problem-solving orientation toward math, to an internalization of scientific method, I've seen my DC develop habits of mind that are likely to produce continued academic success as well as keep boredom permanently at bay. When it come to education, I'd much rather see DC seduced by the process than pushed through it as fast as possible.

YMMV -- and it clearly does in lots of cases, which is part of the reason my DC is in private school.

[Anonymous]

Some gifted kids will do fine in school without a lot of intervention but this is not the case for many of them. It don't think it's fair to say to these parents that they just need to relax and everything will be fine. These kids have real differences and need accomodation.

This is x-posted in Special Needs because there is a discussion going on there about this thread as well....


Gifted kids are at serious risk in our nations schools and need help. Did you know that most states don't fund gifted programs at all...Maryland included. I don't know if it's a disorder or not to be gifted but that is besides the point. These children need support because after all, they are just children. The parents of these children need allies and friends.

This is a very telling poem written by a gifted teen in Alton, IL about 2 weeks before he committed suicide. I got this from Hoagies Gifted Education page.

On Education

He always wanted to explain things,
But no one cared.
So he drew.
Sometimes he would draw,
and it wasn't anything.
He wanted to carve it in stone
or write it in the sky,
and it would be only him and the sky and
the things inside him that needed saying.
It was after that he drew the picture.
He kept it under his pillow,
and would let no one see it.
He would look at it every night
and think about it.
When he started school,
he brought it with him,
not to show anyone,
just to have along as a friend.
It was funny about school.
He sat in a square, brown desk,
like all the other square, brown desks.
He thought it should be red.
And his room was a square, brown room,
like all the other square, brown rooms.
It was tight and close and stiff.
He hated to hold the pencil and chalk,
his arms, stiff, his feet flat on the floor, stiff,
the teacher watching and watching.
The teacher came and spoke to him.
She told him to wear a tie
like all the other boys.
He said he didn't like them.
She said it didn't matter.
After that, they drew.
He drew all yellow.
It was the way he felt about morning,
and it was beautiful.
The teacher came and smiled at him.
"What's this?" she said. "Why don't you
draw something like Ken's drawing?
Isn't that beautiful?"
After that, his mother bought him a tie,
and he always drew airplanes and rocketships
like everyone else.
And he threw the old picture away.
And when he lay alone looking at the sky,
it was big and blue and all of everything,
but he wasn't anymore.
He was square inside and brown,
and his hands were stiff.
He was like everything else.
The things inside that needed saying
didn't need it anymore.
It had stopped pushing.
It was crushed.
STIFF.
Like everything else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Gifted does not equal self-motivated. And while they can "stimulate themselves" at home, that doesn't make up for sitting for hours in a classroom where the work is something they already know. Put yourself in that position -- how bored and miserable would you be? And would you, even as an adult, have the self-discipline to remain polite, attentive and appropriately behaved?

Gifted kids have the right to access curricula that are appropriate to their needs and through which they can learn.

No, it's not the same as being learning disabled, although many kids who are GT are also LD.

I have one child who's a GT kid and was close to suicidal in his regular elementary school -- mercilessly teased and pathalogically bored. He moved to a MoCo GT center and I honestly believe that saved his life. (And yes, we did seek professional help when he began to talk about killing himself, as a third grader.)

I have another kid who's smart but struggles with dyslexia and attention issues. He certainly has a learning disability, one proven by outside testing (as is his IQ which is in the 99th percentile). I think he could be appropriately challenged outside of a magnet with the proper supports, but MoCo isn't set up to help him overcome his disability. He makes good grades and works at or above grade level, so they refuse to help him. As a result he's constantly frustrated, bored and distracted, and is becoming someone who hates school. His LD is not severe enough to qualify for one of the GTLD magnets.

I think that both of my children have "special needs." Neither one does well in a traditional classroom.

Amen. My wife teaches in the MCPS Center for the Highly Gifted, and year after year receives notes from parents about how the program saved their kids' lives - and they are not exaggerating.

A profoundly gifted child in a regular classroom is at high risk for major problems - just as a learning-disabled child is.