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I need advice. Our child is in 4th grade, and is reading well above her grade. By all accounts she is very bright and tested as "gifted" when she was around five yrs old.
She has struggled with math last year and this year, but she seems to be getting it with lots of practice. My concern is that she just had an assessment in math and did poorly on things she knows. She has the upcoming state tests that are very important in our city. She had to do reading comprehension assignment for homework and she got 4 out of 10 wrong when the answers were clearly in the story she read.
I wonder if there is a learning disability, but she is so quick at math when she seems focused. She has amazing focus when she does something she is interested in. My dh thinks she might have anxiety when it comes to the testing. Her school makes a huge deal about this upcoming test, because middle school placements are based in part on how the children do on these tests. The kids obviously feel the pressure.
Sometimes I think she is lazy, sometimes anxious, sometimes tired or distracted. What can we do? She is doing so much better lately, but today took us by surprise when we saw her math assessment and her responses to the reading comp. assignment. Help? I forgot to add that she makes careless mistakes in math, and she never, ever checks her work. She rushes and hardly ever really takes the time to think about a problem. How can one help with this kind of style?
She probably gets panicky and anxious since it's something that didn't come as easily to her as reading/comprehension-related skills. Children who are very accustomed to excelling can become very easily defeated if they come up against something they DON'T excel at right away. Labeling a kid as "gifted" from an early age can set the bar pretty high.
We never referred to her as gifted, but she did take the Stanford-Binet test that many kids in our city take the year before starting K. She was in the 96th percentile, but she went to a general-ed school where it just so happens that the majority of the kids are very bright. How did she go from testing so well to being below average in some areas?
I agree with what you said. There was a time when she was saying she was "stupid" because of all of her math mistakes. I used to think she panicked and checked out in some way.
A) read my "comments from a Math(s) Tutor."
B) get out the flash cards.
C) encourage her to check her work.
It always has struck me odd at how such a high percentage of kids in upper middle class neighborhoods are labeled as gifted--most of them are just regular kids.
It always has struck me odd at how such a high percentage of kids in upper middle class neighborhoods are labeled as gifted--most of them are just regular kids.
Really...how in the world does this even happen? Who initiates the labeling? What are the criteria?
I am really fascinated by this American phenomenon - the dime a dozen "gifted-labeled" children. Could this be part of the other phenomenon? The... "We're not # 1! We are # 1 at thinking we're # 1"?
Growing up I only heard of one single gifted child in the entire country (happened to be a cousin of mine). He ended up with a Gold Medal (First Place) in International Math Olympics in Helsinky and is now a big wig on Wall Street.
I did know about tons of intelligent and gently pushed children - and they all did very well. But it never crossed anyone's mind to label them as "gifted".
Isn't that supposed to be a "larger-than-life" word? Are all these "gifted" children running around in middle- to upper-middle class neighborhood future Einsteins?
Why does it feel like they aren't?
Future doctors and lawyers and whatever coveted? Sure.
But Einsteins? Not.
Does anyone think that maybe sometimes extremely bright kids just get burn-out quicker?
I think that kids who bloom early can "level out" later on, in some regards. I read at a very young age. But at some point, others catch up.
Also, don't forget that a bright child who is has a special talent for [fill in the blank with skill set of your choice - writing, spelling flawlessly, memorizing sonatas and replaying them note for note, deciphering complex statistics, whatever] may simply be of average ability (or even - gasp - below average) in other areas. Does that make the child stupid? No. It makes them great at some things and not great at others. Kind of like most people. Not everyone can be the best at everything. To make kids feel like that's necessary can be putting unnecessary pressure on them. It's okay to be just okay at something. It's okay to struggle at something. The earlier some kids learn this and realize that it's life, the better, in some regards. It's not great to give the message, explicitly or implicitly, that you have to be amazing at everything to be smart or valuable.
Not saying that the OP is doing that. Just food for thought.
Really...how in the world does this even happen? Who initiates the labeling? What are the criteria?
I am really fascinated by this American phenomenon - the dime a dozen "gifted-labeled" children. Could this be part of the other phenomenon? The... "We're not # 1! We are # 1 at thinking we're # 1"?
Growing up I only heard of one single gifted child in the entire country (happened to be a cousin of mine). He ended up with a Gold Medal (First Place) in International Math Olympics in Helsinky and is now a big wig on Wall Street.
I did know about tons of intelligent and gently pushed children - and they all did very well. But it never crossed anyone's mind to label them as "gifted".
Isn't that supposed to be a "larger-than-life" word? Are all these "gifted" children running around in middle- to upper-middle class neighborhood future Einsteins?
Why does it feel like they aren't?
Future doctors and lawyers and whatever coveted? Sure.
But Einsteins? Not.
Same with my neighborhood in the highly coveted Fairfax County School System. We had ONE gifted kid, and everybody talked about it. He took a different bus to a different school, and later got his Ph.D in Physics. The kid on our right went to VMI and became an MD, the kid on our left became Harbormaster for the Port of SF, and the girl two blocks away won three Golds at Munich '72. They were all just regular kids.
It's kind of like the ADHD phenomenon. I read in Australia during a 15 year period, ADHD diagnosis increased 2500%. Did the human body really evolve that quickly? Or perhaps it has something to do with government funding. More labels=more money.
Last edited by khuntrevor; 04-12-2011 at 10:16 PM..
I just want to make it clear that we don't walk around thinking our child is gifted. It's just that many people in my city have their kids tested in order to get them into an amazing public school. We opted for our neighborhood school which has been great. I like the poster who said that some kids just level off. I am just baffled how someone who seems as bright as my daughter can be screwing up so badly in math, even with all the extra practice, encouragement, support, etc. She seems to do so well in so many areas, but in areas that require her to check her work, take her time and stop and think she is making mistakes. Did I mention that her spelling is pretty bad too?? She writes lovely, imaginative stories, but can't be bothered to spell correctly. She still sometimes uses "inventive spelling". Thanks for letting me vent. I do appreciate your feedback. I wil read the math tutoring thread.
NYC is a classic example where parents are spending 500 bucks for test prep, so their 7 yo can get into the magnet school. Kind of overkill. I took on an extra assignment, when I drove the school bus. It involved picking up the GATE kids from the five elementary schools and bringing them to one school for two hours every week. A neighbor kid was one of them. They were nice kids, but they were pretty much run of the mill average kids. I think about 1 in 30 of them will actually be accepted into a school like U.VA. The activities the GATE kids were doing were kind of silly as well. Lots of popsicle stick gluing, etc.. My hypothesis was that they were appeasing the parents of the normal kids by bestowing these great labels on them. The resources of the school were being severely drained by the needs of the ESL students, and the school didn't want to lose (any more) regular ed kids to the private schools.
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