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I don't know if it was a good thing or not, but my parents never interfered with my school work. My father was basically out of the scene, and my mother always treated me like a little adult. If I told her I didn't have any homework to do, that was the end of the conversation. I was in charge of myself from the time I was in kindergarten. Still, I usually had a sense of responsibility about it all.
Parents who go by the mantra "at their age I wasn't having X and Y so neither should they" will just manage to ensure a crappy life for their children.
At the end of the day, every parent is free to give as much or as little support as they wish, beyond absolute basics.
The questions is do they really want a crappy life for their children?
If they can convince themselves in all honesty that kids will be just alright...so they can sleep well at night, then I guess they are OK. The parents - not the children.
Lets bear in mind that my kid will not be in the US school system with its ridiculous amounts of homework and testing.
With the system she will be in I am pretty sure setting the expectation from the get-go that her education is her responsibility will work out just fine so long as she cares about her education herself. I reserve the right to change my plan if it doesn't fit with her personality.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Oldhag1
OMG - you have totally, totally nailed it. One is about teaching a child they are owed success, the other is about teaching the child they can and will earn success.
I still don't understand why so many teachers complain that parents aren't involved enough in their kids education? What do they mean by that?
As I have already asked: what is the cut-off grade for that complaining/sentiment?
Or is this complaint/sentiment only coming from teachers who teach in inner-city districts where you can't get blood from a stone? So the mantra of "parents aren't involved enough" is just a way to excuse the poor performance of their students?
My mother-in-law who was an elementary/middle school teacher in a Chicago suburb up until she retired this year gave me this answer:
"42 states and Washington DC all have policies that use student growth and achievement in teacher evaluations. Which is a complicated issue for sure. However, if I take a few kids with parents who religiously go over homework every night, who challenge their kids to THINK beyond what is taught in the classroom, and compare to parents who merely ASK "did you do your homework?" or don't even care to even ASK if they did their homework, where do you think the scores are going to lie? OR how about students who have been identified as being low in something and parents refuse or don't follow through to get the kids extra help? Teachers don't just have 1 or 2 kids in a classroom...many times you have 30 with several who could use one on one instruction - but of course that is the teacher's fault if they don't learn. I do agree that there are "bad" teachers but that is what classroom evaluations are for! Many times teachers are NOT let go because they are the Board members kid, they schmooze the principal, or the principal doesn't want to have to interview yet again for the job. Don't give tenure to BAD teachers and yes use scores BUT don't make it the only reason you fire a teacher. "
So what I gather is that teachers are complaining that parents aren't involved enough in their kids education because teachers are being blamed for having kids in their class who do badly because neither the kids nor their parents give a crap.
Parenting labels and ..."responsibility" back in the day
Quote:
Originally Posted by John7777
I don't know if it was a good thing or not, but my parents never interfered with my school work. My father was basically out of the scene, and my mother always treated me like a little adult. If I told her I didn't have any homework to do, that was the end of the conversation. I was in charge of myself from the time I was in kindergarten. Still, I usually had a sense of responsibility about it all.
Would this work today, with all children? What would be the consequences of "not interfering" and just preaching responsibility?
What does it mean for a child today go go through school acquiring only a veil of skills and an overall mediocre education? What would this have meant only a couple of generations ago?
The reality is that some children are more studious, conscientious, and willing to please than others.
Most children do not understand the long-term repercussions of not taking education seriously. At younger ages...(and this can apply all the way through high-school), they want to play, to have fun, and to be careless. Never mind that most human beings, including adults, are naturally averse to effort, grit and struggle. If they could help it, they would do without.
If a parent doesn't "tiger", "helicopter", a combination of the two, or label it whatever you want...most of the less-than-conscientious children would fall.
If left at their own carefree devices, learning will become superficial, notions will be lost over time, performance will be minimal or mediocre - and I can assure you, the market your child will face won't exactly favor these traits.
Last time I checked, it only wanted excellence + MARKERS of excellence, including high GPA-s which lead to better degrees, from better institutions, which lead to better mentors, better networking, better jobs, better life.
In sum, the market expects elite workers from schools who barely offer a prole education.
So who's going to fill the gap for the kid? Himself - with us just preaching "responsibility"?
Imagine what will be demanded of him by the time current elementary school children enter the labor market.
Falling behind and mediocrity can happen even with some of the most responsible and conscientious kids left to handle education on their own; this is because, more often than not, children don't know what materials must be studied more in-depth, how to study to excel, what to do extra to receive a distinction, how to organize all the messy materials (and be assured public schools are champions of education based on messy, disjointed materials). They will do their little assigned homework per docile disposition, and that's that.
Never mind those who forget to turn in classwork or homework, simply because at this age there are more fun things to worry about. Those will need tigers or helicopters or both to steer them back on the academic track.
Society can moralize all they wish against both tigering and helicoptering - but these behaviors are here to stay given the economic pressures young people today face. The reason why the 50's-70's moms didn't helicopter or tiger was not because they were an inherently superior or saner kind of mom;
but because they knew their kid would end up just "alright" even if they didn't acquire THAT MUCH education. There was a need and a place for all kinds of people - learned, high-skilled and less so.
Not anymore.
Of course it should be pretty obvious that a parent who "helicopters" by doing the work for the kid just to get it out of the way, who negotiates higher grades with the teacher without expecting the child to master the material (and THEN SOME!), who teaches the child to blame others all while allowing him to grow up without any solid knowledge or skill...is an imbecile parent who probably spawned an imbecile child anyway - so little can be done to save either. This is not brain surgery.
But I think many people are too quick to throw the "helicopter" label at parents who simply CARE and want to help the child navigate the education path and to maintain dignity over the long term in an unbearably competitive world. Sue us, "helicopters", for that.
Moreover, this whole business of labeling... "tigers" vs. "helicopters" vs. "the unconditionally accepting" vs. "preachers of responsibility" is nothing but a sub-intelligent way of subscribing to an identity and then feeling assured that one has picked the "right team".
Reality is not black and white and it doesn't happen in labels; and any parent who fails to see that they must do A VARIETY of things to help their child in life, yes - much more than their parents or grandparents did for them! - ...are just plain not-so-bright individuals who don't understand how the world has changed. Neither do they understand the consequences of these changes. (They could just start by looking at the sheer number of humans compared to what their mothers and grandmothers looked at...ann that would be a good start).
As a result their children will pay simply because they didn't come from terribly bright parents.
An intelligent and compassionate parent knows that most of the times they will have to tiger;
(unless, of course, they are wealthy and then they will only need to "expose" the child, but no need to go gang-ho on performance and grades); then there are times when you have to be nothing but a helicopter to help your child straighten a meaningless and harmful grade of 0 that he received simply because he forgot to turn in a worksheet; yet other times when you just have to let it go and relax so you won't end up putting a bullet in your brain.
More often than not, people moralize against these labels because the behaviors involved are cumbersome, inconvenient to the parent, annoying to the teachers, and difficult to maintain over the long term - not because they bring a disservice to the child himself.
Yet many parents still believe they could get away with just telling the kid to "take responsibility for his own learning" just like he was told back in the day...and then go do their thing.
WRONG.
Or perfectly RIGHT ...if they don't care that much about how good or bad their children's life will be when they reach adulthood.
When I was in school I was very responsible and always did my homework on my own, all my parents did was give me a space and time, and ask if I got it done. However, I was gifted, and although I went to a good school and we had a "gifted program", elementary and middle school was still insanely easy. Which means for me, doing homework was akin to washing my hands or writing my name - it was so easy that there was no thought process involved, no need to study or learn how to study. I could get my homework done in 10 minutes and then go play. I was happy with this, and my parents were happy with this. I never got "bored" or acted out because that's just not my personality.
Now, education was very important to my parents, and they were very interested in my doing well, so they did they only thing they knew how to do, and moved to a district with top notch schools. They trusted the schools and took a hands-off approach. But they didn't realize that their hands-off approach crippled me. In high school I was placed into all of the honors classes. At first I did very well, but the second something started getting difficult, I completely floundered. I had NO IDEA how to study, how to learn something that took any mental effort, that didn't come to me immediately or seem obvious. I started to teach myself study skills and time management skills around my Junior year, and somehow scraped through 9 AP classes between my Junior and Senior year. But with horrible grades.
I got accepted to a relatively prestigious college based on my excellent ACT/SAT test scores. I had so much AP credit that I skipped all of the college freshman classes. Big mistake. By my second semester of college, I was in really hard engineering junior level classes at a difficult engineering college, and I had, what, 3rd grade level study skills? I could learn the material, but not nearly fast enough. I failed out big time. Of course, I immediately enrolled at the local state university where I was able to get straight A's easily without much thought again. I finally learned to study decently well by the end of my master's degree. But now I'm older, I have a pretty good job, I have little kids. Sure, I could theoretically go to that prestigious college now and do okay, but the time for that is over. I am happy, I like my life, and I did well, but I know for a fact I could have done more. I wanted to do more. I didn't reach my full potential. My parents did what they THOUGHT was best at the time, but it wasn't what I needed.
Now with my kids, I am trying to not make that same mistake. I am trying to teach them how to handle hard material, how to study, how to organize work and manage time, how to struggle. And I am involved, as involved as I possibly can be in preschool and 1st grade. And I'm going to stay involved. Why?
Well, remember I went to that really good high school? My graduating class had multiple kids who went to Ivy Leagues, Harvard, MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Princeton, etc. I was in all of their classes for 4 years. They are now doctors, lawyers, think tankers, entrepreneurs, and basically really impressive people who certainly fulfilled their potentials. (My Facebook is a bit depressing lol). Looking back, I try to remember what they did differently from me. I didn't realize it at the time, but I can see it now, looking back. Their parents were INVOLVED. When I was in calculus, I was struggling. My classmates would all pull out all of these other math books from their book bags. "What are those?" I would ask. And they would tell me that this book is the book their dad used to teach them calculus 2 years ago. This other one is the book they did last year at summer camp. School was a REVIEW. The hard stuff, they did that at home with their parents. 2 years ago. And it was like that for almost everything. English Lit? Their parents read the assigned books alongside them, and quizzed them to make sure they read them, and discussed them with their kids, BEFORE they did it in class. Research papers? Their parents made them finish early, and then brought it to work and had the tech writer bleed on it with a red pen and brought it home to their kid to fix. Junior and Senior year? Their parents enrolled them in not-for-credit classes at the local university so that they could learn the material now, and then review it for a grade when they got to MIT.
Basically, the parents of these kids did not accept the school or the test as the standard by which their child should be measured. If they get an A, everything is good right? No. These parents used their own child's POTENTIAL as the standard. None of them forced their tone-deaf child to be a violin master for fun, or to look good or satisfy some urge of the parent. But each one of my uber-successful classmates was pushed to their potential, by their parents, wherever their potential happened to be in whatever area they had potential in.
My parents didn't know what they needed to do. They were awesome parents, but for very good reasons, they just didn't know. I know. They gave me that at least. So now I can use that knowledge with my own kids. There will be no "hands-off" in this house. We will be involved in the education of our children. It is our responsibility to do the best we can do in this regard.
Now, I agree that it is very important to teach your kids responsibility and how to fail. Very important. But I don't believe school grades is the best method for teaching those items. Responsibility and failure can be taught by things like chores, part-time jobs, gymnastics/dance/karate, music lessons and competitions, and being depended on by others in team sports. My goal is to teach these things while still expecting straight A's in school. My old classmates who went to Ivy Leagues? Yep, they were black belts, eagle scouts, concert pianists, one was even quarterback on the football team. And they all had summer jobs in between their math team trips and band camps.
Of course my kids are still little, so perhaps I'll eat my words when they get to middle school. We'll see.
We had very similar upbringings and childhood schooling experiences. My parents loved me very much and they valued education. But, they were not educationally savvy. My mom checked my homework every night up until middle school. After that they made sure I was in gifted classes in "good" schools and made sure I did my homework, but that was it. When I got to my gifted high school I had no study skills since everything up to that point had been easy. Most of my classes in high school were still pretty easy for me, save a few science classes. In those few I'd bring home B- type grades and my parents didn't know enough to know that wasn't good enough. There were a good number of classes where I earned a B or B+ when I could have easily gotten an A if I was more disciplined. But, again, my parents didn't know the difference. I was handing in my homework on time and passing classes in a top school, so as far as they were concerned that meant I was going to college. I graduated with a B+ average, no extracurriculars, and my study skills were no better than when I started. Looking back I should have been an A student with solid extracurriculars because the potential was there. So I agree leaving a kid completely on their own is not always the best idea.
That said, I think your solutions as listed here are more focused of process than product. I think the end goal of producing a child who has been intellectually challenged and knows how to respond to that challenge is the correct goal to have in mind. But that does NOT mean the best way to accomplish that is to come up with your own lesson plans and teach kids calculus 2 years before the teacher does. I mean it's one way, but it is not the only or even necessarily the best way, in my opinion.
I have worked at elite colleges for years now, and trust me when I say that most of these kids did not have parents who taught them the high school curriculum outside of school. What they did have were parents who made sure they had access to a good education (including supplements to that education in the form of tutors and afterschool/summer programs where needed) and pursued the kind of non-academic activities that would get them into a good college. The ones who did not have parents with that kind of savvy mainly participated in college-prep orgs like Upward Bound, etc that stepped in where parents' knowledge ended. A few had a caring teacher or other knowledgeable adult step in and guide them towards what needed to be done.
If your kid if bringing home straight As but you never see them studying, of course you should find out if the curriculum is too easy and work to get them into a more challenging environment. In the end, you want a kid who is earning high grades that they actually have to work for, while simultaneously doing (hopefully) fun activities outside the classroom. That is the best of all possible worlds in my opinion. But you don't necessarily need to make up that challenging curriculum yourself.
When I was in school I was very responsible and always did my homework on my own, all my parents did was give me a space and time, and ask if I got it done. However, I was gifted, and although I went to a good school and we had a "gifted program", elementary and middle school was still insanely easy. Which means for me, doing homework was akin to washing my hands or writing my name - it was so easy that there was no thought process involved, no need to study or learn how to study. I could get my homework done in 10 minutes and then go play. I was happy with this, and my parents were happy with this. I never got "bored" or acted out because that's just not my personality.
Now, education was very important to my parents, and they were very interested in my doing well, so they did they only thing they knew how to do, and moved to a district with top notch schools. They trusted the schools and took a hands-off approach. But they didn't realize that their hands-off approach crippled me. In high school I was placed into all of the honors classes. At first I did very well, but the second something started getting difficult, I completely floundered. I had NO IDEA how to study, how to learn something that took any mental effort, that didn't come to me immediately or seem obvious. I started to teach myself study skills and time management skills around my Junior year, and somehow scraped through 9 AP classes between my Junior and Senior year. But with horrible grades.
I got accepted to a relatively prestigious college based on my excellent ACT/SAT test scores. I had so much AP credit that I skipped all of the college freshman classes. Big mistake. By my second semester of college, I was in really hard engineering junior level classes at a difficult engineering college, and I had, what, 3rd grade level study skills? I could learn the material, but not nearly fast enough. I failed out big time. Of course, I immediately enrolled at the local state university where I was able to get straight A's easily without much thought again. I finally learned to study decently well by the end of my master's degree. But now I'm older, I have a pretty good job, I have little kids. Sure, I could theoretically go to that prestigious college now and do okay, but the time for that is over. I am happy, I like my life, and I did well, but I know for a fact I could have done more. I wanted to do more. I didn't reach my full potential. My parents did what they THOUGHT was best at the time, but it wasn't what I needed.
Now with my kids, I am trying to not make that same mistake. I am trying to teach them how to handle hard material, how to study, how to organize work and manage time, how to struggle. And I am involved, as involved as I possibly can be in preschool and 1st grade. And I'm going to stay involved. Why?
Well, remember I went to that really good high school? My graduating class had multiple kids who went to Ivy Leagues, Harvard, MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Princeton, etc. I was in all of their classes for 4 years. They are now doctors, lawyers, think tankers, entrepreneurs, and basically really impressive people who certainly fulfilled their potentials. (My Facebook is a bit depressing lol). Looking back, I try to remember what they did differently from me. I didn't realize it at the time, but I can see it now, looking back. Their parents were INVOLVED. When I was in calculus, I was struggling. My classmates would all pull out all of these other math books from their book bags. "What are those?" I would ask. And they would tell me that this book is the book their dad used to teach them calculus 2 years ago. This other one is the book they did last year at summer camp. School was a REVIEW. The hard stuff, they did that at home with their parents. 2 years ago. And it was like that for almost everything. English Lit? Their parents read the assigned books alongside them, and quizzed them to make sure they read them, and discussed them with their kids, BEFORE they did it in class. Research papers? Their parents made them finish early, and then brought it to work and had the tech writer bleed on it with a red pen and brought it home to their kid to fix. Junior and Senior year? Their parents enrolled them in not-for-credit classes at the local university so that they could learn the material now, and then review it for a grade when they got to MIT.
Basically, the parents of these kids did not accept the school or the test as the standard by which their child should be measured. If they get an A, everything is good right? No. These parents used their own child's POTENTIAL as the standard. None of them forced their tone-deaf child to be a violin master for fun, or to look good or satisfy some urge of the parent. But each one of my uber-successful classmates was pushed to their potential, by their parents, wherever their potential happened to be in whatever area they had potential in.
My parents didn't know what they needed to do. They were awesome parents, but for very good reasons, they just didn't know. I know. They gave me that at least. So now I can use that knowledge with my own kids. There will be no "hands-off" in this house. We will be involved in the education of our children. It is our responsibility to do the best we can do in this regard.
Now, I agree that it is very important to teach your kids responsibility and how to fail. Very important. But I don't believe school grades is the best method for teaching those items. Responsibility and failure can be taught by things like chores, part-time jobs, gymnastics/dance/karate, music lessons and competitions, and being depended on by others in team sports. My goal is to teach these things while still expecting straight A's in school. My old classmates who went to Ivy Leagues? Yep, they were black belts, eagle scouts, concert pianists, one was even quarterback on the football team. And they all had summer jobs in between their math team trips and band camps.
Of course my kids are still little, so perhaps I'll eat my words when they get to middle school. We'll see.
This is the typical story that sets apart the "chosen" from the "not-so-chosen" from the "no-chancers".
It's the parents.
The topics has been discussed to death both in layman's world and in expert journals.
Barring a few exceptionally gifted risers who smell how the world works since they are in the womb...everyone else will need endowed parents to make it in life via the academic path.
The more endowed the better. Money will certainly help, if the moneyed parents know what to buy, educationally speaking. But money will often not be enough. It takes a highly educated parent to "heli-tiger" the child towards the "academically-chosen" group.
Even the most wonderful, loving and dedicated of parents cannot help much unless they themselves hold enough knowledge to know what the academic establishment will be looking for when they will separate "the chosen" from the rest.
So it all goes back to the family background inequalities that left wingers rile up against and the right-wingers shrug about.
Wherever you stand, be aware that this junk WILL affect the life of your child.
We had very similar upbringings and childhood schooling experiences. My parents loved me very much and they valued education. But, they were not educationally savvy. My mom checked my homework every night up until middle school. After that they made sure I was in gifted classes in "good" schools and made sure I did my homework, but that was it. When I got to my gifted high school I had no study skills since everything up to that point had been easy. Most of my classes in high school were still pretty easy for me, save a few science classes. In those few I'd bring home B- type grades and my parents didn't know enough to know that wasn't good enough. There were a good number of classes where I earned a B or B+ when I could have easily gotten an A if I was more disciplined. But, again, my parents didn't know the difference. I was handing in my homework on time and passing classes in a top school, so as far as they were concerned that meant I was going to college. I graduated with a B+ average, no extracurriculars, and my study skills were no better than when I started. Looking back I should have been an A student with solid extracurriculars because the potential was there. So I agree leaving a kid completely on their own is not always the best idea.
That said, I think your solutions as listed here are more focused of process than product. I think the end goal of producing a child who has been intellectually challenged and knows how to respond to that challenge is the correct goal to have in mind. But that does NOT mean the best way to accomplish that is to come up with your own lesson plans and teach kids calculus 2 years before the teacher does. I mean it's one way, but it is not the only or even necessarily the best way, in my opinion.
I have worked at elite colleges for years now, and trust me when I say that most of these kids did not have parents who taught them the high school curriculum outside of school. What they did have were parents who made sure they had access to a good education (including supplements to that education in the form of tutors and afterschool/summer programs where needed) and pursued the kind of non-academic activities that would get them into a good college. The ones who did not have parents with that kind of savvy mainly participated in college-prep orgs like Upward Bound, etc that stepped in where parents' knowledge ended. A few had a caring teacher or other knowledgeable adult step in and guide them towards what needed to be done.
If your kid if bringing home straight As but you never see them studying, of course you should find out if the curriculum is too easy and work to get them into a more challenging environment. In the end, you want a kid who is earning high grades that they actually have to work for, while simultaneously doing (hopefully) fun activities outside the classroom. That is the best of all possible worlds in my opinion. But you don't necessarily need to make up that challenging curriculum yourself.
I actually completely agree with everything you said. Thank you.
I fully realize that teaching my child calculus 2 years ahead of time is not the only way, and may not be the best way. Certainly not for every child. It just stood out as an example in my memory of what the "involved" parents did because it looks like what is going to happen with my daughter.
She has been ahead in math her whole life, and in school they do Every Day Math, which she enjoys, but doesn't consider to be "real" math. She begged me to teach her "real" math so we started Singapore Math Primary Mathematics full curriculum, 2 grade levels ahead, at home after school. It is seriously the very first thing she wants to do when she gets home. I've also showed her samples of Miqon and Beast Academy online, for both of which she showed the same amount of enthusiasm as she does for candy and unicorns (her two favorite things in the world). So it looks like I'll be buying even more math curriculum for Christmas. She does also take piano lessons, tumbling, jazz dance, harp lessons, kiddie cheerleading, kiddie flag team, and Lego club. The only thing I "make" her do is piano, the rest she asked to do herself. She is my crazy mathy overachieving 6 year old.
Her curriculum at school is definitely too easy for her, but it is the highest academic school in the region, and we are paying out the nose for it. The only way to get her into a more challenging situation is to send her to boarding school or homeschool. They don't do "gifted" here, it's turned into some sort of bad word. *sigh*
Coming from someone who works at elite colleges, you don't really think I should stop teaching her accelerated math, when she has the passion, do you? It would really break her heart. I am completely comfortable teaching it to her (engineer parents for the win!), and it is soooo much cheaper to teach her myself than pawn it off to Kumon or Sylvan. I mean, if it gets to the point where she *wants* to go to Kumon, okay we can do that, but right now she just wants "mommy math".
I actually completely agree with everything you said. Thank you.
I fully realize that teaching my child calculus 2 years ahead of time is not the only way, and may not be the best way. Certainly not for every child. It just stood out as an example in my memory of what the "involved" parents did because it looks like what is going to happen with my daughter.
She has been ahead in math her whole life, and in school they do Every Day Math, which she enjoys, but doesn't consider to be "real" math. She begged me to teach her "real" math so we started Singapore Math Primary Mathematics full curriculum, 2 grade levels ahead, at home after school. It is seriously the very first thing she wants to do when she gets home. I've also showed her samples of Miqon and Beast Academy online, for both of which she showed the same amount of enthusiasm as she does for candy and unicorns (her two favorite things in the world). So it looks like I'll be buying even more math curriculum for Christmas. She does also take piano lessons, tumbling, jazz dance, harp lessons, kiddie cheerleading, kiddie flag team, and Lego club. The only thing I "make" her do is piano, the rest she asked to do herself. She is my crazy mathy overachieving 6 year old.
Her curriculum at school is definitely too easy for her, but it is the highest academic school in the region, and we are paying out the nose for it. The only way to get her into a more challenging situation is to send her to boarding school or homeschool. They don't do "gifted" here, it's turned into some sort of bad word. *sigh*
Coming from someone who works at elite colleges, you don't really think I should stop teaching her accelerated math, when she has the passion, do you? It would really break her heart. I am completely comfortable teaching it to her (engineer parents for the win!), and it is soooo much cheaper to teach her myself than pawn it off to Kumon or Sylvan. I mean, if it gets to the point where she *wants* to go to Kumon, okay we can do that, but right now she just wants "mommy math".
No, of course not (to the bolded). Your approach here seems fine to me... the child has both the aptitude and enthusiasm to pursue advanced math, so you found a way for her to do that. To me, that's exactly what should be done.
I suspect as she gets older it will become less difficult to find a school that has a math curriculum that keeps her happy. Most decent school districts have advanced STEM options that start in middle school or definitely by high school. Also, there are some kids out there who are very smart and will catch up quickly later on when they begin to get exposed to the same material, so she won't find herself isolated from her peers with the math love either.
It's hard to find true gifted programs at the elementary level because it is actually difficult to tell who is actually gifted until starting after about the 4th grade. Many kids start out way ahead but it turns out parts of their brains had simply developed faster than their peers. When the other kids catch up the advantage disappears. It's not so much a PC thing as it is an "advances in educational psychology research" thing. LOL
Your daughter sounds like mine. When she was in 1st grade she started coming home asking us to make up math problems to solve for fun. By 2nd grade we started buying her math workbooks for the grades ahead to keep her occupied. I would just teach her the concepts and she'd go off happily doing the workbooks. She's in middle school now and still loves math. We taught her how to approach the teacher herself when she finds the material too easy. She's already done it twice this year, so the teacher gave up and is now switching her to the advanced math class she should have been in all along. The funny part is we knew from the beginning that would happen (new school, they don't know my kid but I tried to tell them) but we let it happen anyway so we could teach her a lesson on how to self-advocate.
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Parenting labels and ..."responsibility" back in the day
