"He's Smarter than I am"

We met with the principal to discuss our concerns about our oldest's boredom in school. We told him the teachers were probably doing just fine, but the curriculum was below everything that he had already done in the old school. I know, I know, the other school was a full time gifted program, and we had chosen to bring him over to the regular school for a chance to have a social life, but really, it was way behind what he was doing.

It's nobody's fault. I didn't want to go in their blaming anyone for his boredom or anything. I did feel extremely guilty and kept complimenting the principal on the school and the teachers. The principal was nice and set up another meeting for us to meet with him and the school psychologist to discuss possible excellerated learning options or even possible grade "promotion" as they call it.

When we met with them I wasn't sure what I should be saying. How did I know if our son was really that smart, and how did I know where he should be in school? We had tried so many different things and he still wasn't fitting in right. He was either going to be completely bored with friends, or challenged but no friends. Which should come first? Social or academic? I felt like we have been on a teeter totter for the last 4 years. There is no real balance.

The school psychologist began looking at some of these old test scores from 1st grade and his performance results from last years state testing. Yes, he had scored in the top 10 percent of the nation in every single subject except for language, but was it really that great? This psychologist looks at us and starts saying well, if we skip him to the next grade, what's to say we won't need to skip him again 3 months from now, and then again, and again. I am looking at her in shock. What did she mean? Why and how could she be saying this when all she was looking at were a couple of testing results?

And then my husband looks at me and says, "He's a smart kid. He's smarter than I am."

What? "What!?" I ask him. What is that supposed to mean? How can our 9 year old son be smarter than a 33 year old computer programmer. I'm pretty sure my husband is pretty intelligent.

But he says to me, "He doesn't know as much as I do, but he is smarter than me."

What? How can this be, and how can he know this, and how can this principal and school psychologist think any of this by looking at a few papers? Can I not interpret these papers the same way they can?

They asked us to sign some papers to have him go through some testing and then they would get back to us within the next 2 weeks. We signed and so now we wait.

Of course I am worried.

What if they do all these tests and the results are that he's really not that smart and we're just a bunch of stupid ego boasting parents?

Or, what if he is somewhat smart and they want to skip him to 5th grade, but then he gets there and he fails?

Oh, why does this seem all so weird? I guess we will wait and see. Our son just keeps saying how he thinks he would have so much more fun in 5th grade where he could be learning new things everyday. I laugh and think, gee, why not just take the easy road? I'd be thinking, "Woohoo! This is going to be a piece of cake! I can just do whatever in class!" (OK, so I guess I was the slacker student.) But, no, our son insists on having new material everyday. Good kid. I just wonder what will come of this and worry for what we may do if it doesn't work either. We have tried so many things. What will happen next?

Troubles Arise in 4th Grade - School is Too Easy

We had felt good about our decision to take both our boys out of the full time gifted program and back into their neighborhood school. Our younger boy had already skipped a grade anyway. I'm sure he would be fine. Our older boy had such few friends, if any, and we really wanted a larger social circle for him. He was really smart, but so what if you're the smart kid in class. It might be kind of nice. So we thought.

School started things seemed really great. For the first time, our oldest son was coming home and talking of friends and interactions with them at school. He had friends! 2 or 3 friends! He was socializing with others! Now this was a great thing, especially considering his Asperger's, and the other kids didn't seem to think anything different. He finally belonged!

Our second son was loving school. They had already asked him to play the piano twice during lunch time for all the kids and teachers there. He was loving that attention and loved that he got to play outside with such a large group of kids as opposed to the small 22 kid group that he played with at the gifted school.

So we were happy. This could work out! But then we started noticing the homework that was coming home, and we began getting comments from our oldest.

Our oldest, a 4th grader had already done most of 4th grade math last year in the gifted program, and we figured it would be easy this year, but we were surprised by what we saw. He was bringing home assignments in basic basic addition and subtraction and when comparing it to his 2nd grade brother's homework, his brother's homework was actually harder!

Maybe it was just a review, I thought. But when he brought home a test on Chapter 2 Math and the questions were 4-0=? and 9+3=? and measure this picture with the already drawn ruler, I was shocked. This couldn't be 4th grade math, could it? Our oldest had done this work in 1st grade.

Now I want to state right out that his teacher has seemed great and she is probably a completely fine decent teacher, but the curriculum just didn't seem right. I began questioning other moms and even looking into what the kids in 5th grade were doing, and it seemed all mismatched.

I emailed the teacher and asked her about the curriculum. She agreed it seemed easy, but she said that was what they had as 4th grade math. She said she would bump it up a little to make it harder, but really, how much more can you bump up 4-0=? It would have to be bumped up a lot!

It was super easy, but what had me worried more was the fact that our oldest was coming to us and asking why it was so easy. He was telling us that he didn't understand why it was so simple and asking us why it wasn't harder. He said he thought he should be doing harder stuff.

So, what to do? It's not just the math, but the spelling words are all very basic, and grammar he's already done. He says he is pretty bored and wishes he could learn something new.

It is frustrating trying to figure out what to do. We tried regular school first. It didn't work. We went to the gifted full time program at another school. It was alright, but just so small socially, and not as conveniently located, and sometimes seemed like a little too much busy work and homework when it wasn't needed. He excelled there academically, but socially he was losing. So back we go to the regular school where he is excelling socially but losing with boredom academically. Where can we go now? We decided to set up a meeting with the principal to see what our options could be.