Reply to Who thinks it is ridiculous when someone says his/her child is bored in school?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

The bigger concern, for parents of gifted children, is that they will grow into unsuccessful and dysfunctional adults because they will be stymied from a young age by a system and culture that prevents them from advocating for themselves ("excellent students are never troublemakers" "only boring people get bored" "truly smart kids can find ways to amuse themselves in class") and jumps on their parents ("you're just bragging!" "You're over-invested in your kids performance!" ) for raising the issues. How is a smart child supposed to interpret these messages? You have to go to X school and you have to be in Y grade, but if you are different from the rest of the kids in class you need to keep that to yourself and keep yourself occupied without drawing any attention to yourself lest the teacher become annoyed or the other kids notice and pick on you. That is a lot for a kid to deal with!

God forbid the adults in this situation (parents, teachers) intervene to make sure that a child who has mastered the material is still given the opportunity to learn something. I can't believe the posters who disparage the concept of providing additional material to children who learn quickly as "entertaining" kids. I would call it "teaching" or "doing their jobs." And if a child requires so much differentiation that a teacher can't provide it (which is reasonable in some cases--most would agree that we shouldn't expect teachers to be able to provide sufficient differentiation to children far on the other end of the spectrum), he or she may say that school is "boring." Parents and teachers should be able to figure out if a kid says school is boring because they don't like doing something necessary but tedious (in which case, suck it up kid, that's life), or if its because they aren't being challenged, and other parents should MTOB and not take it as a personal insult.

http://www.stephanietolan.com/is_it_a_cheetah.htm[/quote]

Way to attack a straw man, PP!

Where did anyone on this thread say that gifted children should "keep their giftedness to themselves"? Or that the adults in their lives should "never" intervene to give them the opportunity to go above and beyond? Or that we all "disparage" providing additional material to gifted kids? Or that we are annoyed by *all* parents of *all* gifted kids?  Nobody here said [b]any [/b]of these things. You are simply making these things up, putting words into our mouths, and this doesn't reflect well on you.

You seem unable to grasp the root cause of our frustration. That, or you don't want to understand because it doesn't paint a flattering picture of you. Another PP said you might have comprehension issues and spelled it out carefully for you. Let me try.
1. We don't hate giftedness, all gifted kids and all of their parents. Stop already. We'd be hating ourselves, because I'm willing to bet that most people here are the parents of highly (at least) gifted kids.
2. [b]We are frustrated with certain parents of gifted kids and their self-serving but ultimately damaging attitudes.[/b] This, a million times over. What are these self-serving attitudes? Where do I start. A kid who hasn't started school is not a future misunderstood genius. You just can't bring yourself to admit that a little boredom is part of life, and learning to deal with it is an essential skill. You need to stop with the black-and-white picture of total joy vs. total boredom and start seeing that a broad continuum exists, which is obvious to those of us with older gifted kids, a continuum that involves differentiation and magnet programs. 
3. None of us opposes giving additional materials to gifted kids. Stop already. In fact, WTF, because you can't document that anyone said this in the past 8-9 pages. Several of us, myself included, have openly urged parents to work cooperatively with teachers to find ways to challenge gifted kids. This means, very obviously, providing the extra materials that you claim we don't support.

Like PP, I also give you props for claiming both superiority and victimhood.[/quote]

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