I always love the posts by moms who are so concerned about being
sensitive to those with kids not as "advanced" [neurotic] as theirs...oh, I feel so bad for them in their dilemma! Poor moos!
(excerpts)
"Dd1 is in first grade. I've not pushed for testing or requested anything extra at this point. She is advanced, but I don't know if she is gifted...I gather that largely do to what I hear other dc on this board are doing/saying.
"If generally speaking, dd has some specific strengths, particularly that she masters her spelling quite easily at this point (getting 100 percent of the words plus two extra credit words), and reads at a third grade level, does it mean she's not really gifted if she gets an occasional answer wrong...She was just exposed to "angles" this year and while she understood them during homework time, she didn't retain that for quiz time and thought they were referring to "sides" of the shape in question. Quite honestly, I was so used to her having perfect papers, it really shocked me a bit to see a 95%, and then I was shocked that I got shocked about it (that's when I realized, I needed to RELAX about grades).
"while she can read at a third grade level
[thanks for repeating that; I got it the first time],
and had gotten 100 percent on 2 of her 10 question AR test, it wasn't without reading the chapter book 3-4 times with me asking questions. I'm pretty sure if she read the book once, then took the test the very next day, she might not do as well. In fact, when that exact thing happened, she got one wrong.
"Because dd is advanced, she has more complex homework than another very close friend of hers who lives on the same block as she. So when every day he comes over, he asks, "can dd play", and I have to tell him no, because she has a bit more homework to do, and she definitely has a lot more reading to do (it takes a lot longer to read chapter books than it does the non-chapter ones).
The boy will come over 2-3 times knocking on the door [tell the brat to GO HOME] seeing if she can play, but she's not done with her work (not always because it's a lot, but because she wants to unwind first, then do it). I keep telling the mom that dd has more homework to do, but then she has begun to notice that there are a few differences between dd and her ds and it's getting uncomfortable.
[aw, it's so hard to have a "gifted" child! One does want to be Sensitive to those with less fortunate children!]
"I just am torn what to tell this mom/this boy...To boot, the boy is an only child, there's not a lot of friends on his side of the block, and the parents of the friends he did have can only take so much of him so they often go through phases where he is not welcome for a while. Which means he's always ringing on my door.
"I even have trouble talking with parents of her classmates, when they ask me specific questions regarding homework assignments. At some point, it becomes clear to me that dd is just different enough to make it hard to talk about things. She's one of 4 kids in her class of 21 in the enriched reading pull-out group (though there are kids in the other first grades getting pulled out too and they all meet in the lunchroom to work on these other assignments).
"I'm wondering when it's going to be clear to my friends that dd is different too. I try to be hush-hush about her abilities, her performance, her assigments, but it's very hard.
[Cue the waaahmbulance]
"I'm almost wanting to find out if I should have a conference with dd's teacher to talk about these things. If she could, at the very least, let me know what her instinct about dd is (though it's very early), or if they have done any kinds of assessments about her. If possibly, she could help me prepare for what might lie ahead (either giftedness, or just above average). Her K teacher said that the gifted program was a definite possibility for dd, but nothing else was ever said.
[she said that likely to shut you up, you stupid cow]
"What do you think? My anxieties are high on the matter because I feel so all alone. I don't have anyone in real life to ask or get support from at this point."
[Perhaps they're all sick and tired of hearing you go on and on and on about this topic...]