A Gifted Child in a Regular School--Making it Work?

Can it work? We had sacrificed higher academics for hopes of a better social life for our oldest, but was it worth it?

Yes, for once our child was happy and had friends, but now we were back to the happy socially, but bored academically. Could we never have the best of both worlds?

We were in a regular elementary school with no gifted program to speak of. Because of budget cuts, the pull out gifted program that was once there had been all discontinued. Unless in the magnet program at another school (which we had just given up), there was nothing out there for gifted students.

Or was there?

After the school psychologist completed all these tests and had basically told us he was far above his peers, they had proposed a plan to challenge him more. It all sounded good, but was it really going to happen? They said they would allow him to go into the next grade math, and as far as the other subjects, he would have extra activities, research projects, and his own computer to use. So, did this happen, and what did he think of it?

For a while it may have been working. He was loving math where he would go to a 5th grade class and do math there. That was his favorite part of the day because he was actually learning something new.

The other parts of the day he would finish his reading or work before the others and so he would just start creating power point presentations going more in detail on whatever subject his 4th grade class was learning. This was OK for a while, but often he would mess up on the saving in the computer part and all his work would be lost, or his teacher would forget to remind him things, or he would just plain forget he could do that and so usually it was still boredom.

Soon he began coming home in tears because schedules were not matching up. 4th grade was doing one thing, but he needed to be in 5th grade when they did math, but sometimes they changed things around, and then he'd miss something and it would cause major drama.

The school's plans were to continue placing him in one grade but having him do math in a higher grade, so eventually they would have him walk to the junior high school when he enters 6th grade to take 7th grade math. That seemed a little complicated. How was that going to work out schedule wise? And was that safe?

Letting him use his own little laptop seemed great and nice and all, but was he really being challenged, or was he just being given busy work or fillers so he would have something else to do besides read when he finished ahead of the others? He was still telling me that he already knew the stuff they were teaching most of the time.

It was great that this school was actually making an effort and trying to make things work for a gifted child, but I don't know if this was the answer just yet. We waited and observed, but things weren't looking good. By the end of the school year he had no friendships to speak of, and again he was bored academically. Once again we began looking for other options.