"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.

A Six Year Old's Writing

Yeah, he looks pretty little and cute, and along with his piano skills, our 2nd son is also a pretty good writer. For the last 2 years he has been making little "books" stapling papers together and writing stories. Now tell me, what 6 year old is writing stories with narratives and creating their own books?

I came across yet another "book" he was making. This one was a work in progress but as I read it I was surprised at how a 6 year old could actually put words into a story and be more than "My name is Joe. I like cars. The end."

"What Happened When I Woke Up" this work is titled. This is what he wrote so far:

Chapter 1 More Arms

When I woke up something weird happened. Every second I got more arms! It was so weird that I fell to the ground. In two minutes I had 120 arms! My mother fell to the ground when she saw it. She said "Oh my gosh!"

Chapter 2 Start the Search for the Cure

"What happened?" She shouted in a very very very loud voice.
"I don't know" I said.
"Then we must search for a cure right away." My mother said.

Chapter 3 Is There A Cure?

"But....oh yeah is there a cure? We are going to go around the world everywhere until we find it." I said.
"That's what I thought." My mother said.
"That's what I was going to say and we will never know there's a cure until we just look."
"OK, you're right."

Chapter 4 The Last Place to Look

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OK, so this is all he had so far and I guess it isn't the most fancy story out there, but it was pretty good for a 6 year old. I don't remember writing any stories when I was 6. We will have to see how his story ends.

The Big Decision

If you read the last post, then you see we have been having some mixed feelings about the full time gifted program that we put our kids into. Why can't schools have the resources for kids that are a little more advanced? It's not like they don't have the material. There are grades 1-6 in an elementary school, and so why can't a more advanced kid just do the material from that of an older grade?

I recently read an article weighing out the pros and cons of skipping grades. A couple of comments raised my attention. Someone asked why we have grades at all? Why do we have to trap students into grade levels by age or by birthday? Why can't we just group students in levels based on abilities? This would work especially for those that may be gifted in one subject, but struggling in another.

It makes perfect sense to me, but why don't we do that? You are never going to have a class of all 6 year olds who have the same abilities and knowledge. I know they passed this whole "No Child Left Behind Act" several years ago aimed at helping kids that were falling behind in the classroom, but it seems as if no one has ever figured out how to help kids that are ahead.

Sure, they have these gifted programs, but in our case there is one full time program that is at a school not close by and that does not offer bus transportation. So if you're going to go then you must figure out the driving.

Budget cuts forced all if any in school gifted pull out programs in our district to be ended and discontinued. That is sad isn't it? It's sad that there are hardly any music or art programs continuing in public schools today. It's interesting that in other countries, many schools focus highly in the arts.

So where does that leave us?

Well, after all our struggling over the past years with trying to figure out what is best, we made the decision to pull both our kids out of the full time gifted program at an away school and put them back into regular old public school in our neighborhood.

With this comes many feelings of guilt and worry. Is this the right thing? Did we mess things up? I don't think there will ever be a right place for our kids while they are young as far as schooling. I want them to be emotionally and socially happy as well as academically challenged enough to keep them happy, but these seem impossible to go together.

Before we were more concerned on the academics and letting our kids live up to all they can do and learn. Let them learn at their pace and not have to wait and be bored. But all the things it entails with driving to another school, not having friends, not knowing anyone, and then tons of homework just doesn't seem worth it to me.

Plus, why can't our kids just be kids? They will have a time for intense study, for intense stress and worry. Why give that to a 2nd and 4th grader?

Now our kids are in regular classes probably doing math they completed a year ago or maybe doing a lot easier things, but what can we do? We're not going to skip our 6 year old any more grades. We want him to be a kid! I suppose we could skip our 9 almost 10 year old a grade, but we don't have plans of that unless we are approached, and then we can make the decision.

So here we are on a different road. It will be interesting to see what happens. Our 2 boys started school this past Monday, and so far I am waiting to hear.