Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
We work remotely and can live anywhere. Currently my child is a second grader in NC (Lincoln county, NW of Charlotte) and we are having a terrible experience with the local public schools. Daughter has a 504 plan and is incurring in school suspensions. She has diagnoses of mild autism, ADHD, and anxiety. She is extremely argumentative/oppositional with the teacher and will kick other students. However, she is far above grade level academically. I understand this disparity between intellectual and social/emotional function is not uncommon in gifted kids (she has a 135 IQ).
School district is at a loss. Traditional methods of discipline are what they use.
ISO a better school district that will be of better help to my daughter. I read that NJ schools are excellent. Any recommendations for specific districts there that could help someone like her?
I looked heavily in TX, AZ, CO, MO where we have family or other interests but concerned that things wouldn’t go well there either.
Thank you for any lessons learned/words of wisdom!!
We work remotely and can live anywhere. Currently my child is a second grader in NC (Lincoln county, NW of Charlotte) and we are having a terrible experience with the local public schools. Daughter has a 504 plan and is incurring in school suspensions. She has diagnoses of mild autism, ADHD, and anxiety. She is extremely argumentative/oppositional with the teacher and will kick other students. However, she is far above grade level academically. I understand this disparity between intellectual and social/emotional function is not uncommon in gifted kids (she has a 135 IQ).
School district is at a loss. Traditional methods of discipline are what they use.
ISO a better school district that will be of better help to my daughter. I read that NJ schools are excellent. Any recommendations for specific districts there that could help someone like her?
I looked heavily in TX, AZ, CO, MO where we have family or other interests but concerned that things wouldn’t go well there either.
Thank you for any lessons learned/words of wisdom!!
Sorry no specific help but just a thought. FE in Texas some districts have good reputations with 504 kids. Some terrible. IOW you'd have to burrow beyond state and even county level resolution to find useful info.
Thank you! I also wondered about montessori schools in TX - post oak and school of the woods in Houston or the Alcuin school or Westwood in Dallas. My daughter responded better to montessori preschools than traditional preschools. Anyone have experiences with these schools?
She is extremely argumentative/oppositional with the teacher and will kick other students. However, she is far above grade level academically.
I understand this disparity between intellectual and social/emotional function is not uncommon in gifted kids (she has a 135 IQ).
School district is at a loss. Traditional methods of discipline are what they use.
ISO a better school district that will be of better help to my daughter. I read that NJ schools are excellent. Any recommendations for specific districts there that could help someone like her?
I looked heavily in TX, AZ, CO, MO where we have family or other interests but concerned that things wouldn’t go well there either.
Thank you for any lessons learned/words of wisdom!!
I'm thinking aloud while I type.
Your daughter sounds like she lacks impulse control.
My autistic nephew lacked impulse control. At age 10, when he was hyper, he hit my older children. Once, when my daughter was quietly, he walked into her room and punched her. I was not pleased and I imagine your daughter's classmates and their parents aren't pleased too.
My nephew lived in Bridgewater NJ in a great school district. I know there was a lot of invention. He had occupational therapy for autism at age 3 onward. He was shunned in class and after school events like peers' birthday parties. Still, it was very painful for my sister to know his classmates avoided him. Sadly, schools can not solve this type of social problems.
Your daughter also seems to have an oppositional disorder.
Quote:
But oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) includes a frequent and ongoing pattern of anger, irritability, arguing and defiance toward parents and other authority figures. ODD also includes being spiteful and seeking revenge, a behavior called vindictiveness.
These emotional and behavioral issues cause serious problems with family life, social activities, school and work. But as a parent, you don't have to try to manage a child with ODD alone. Your health care provider, a mental health professional and a child development expert can help.
Treatment of ODD involves learning skills to help build positive family interactions and to manage problem behaviors. Other therapy, and possibly medicines, may be needed to treat related mental health conditions.
Your issue is too big for a school to handle. Have you tried private mental health professionals?
Your child's high IQ give you something positive to hold to, like a rainbow at the end of the storm. Unfortunately, for your daughter's high IQ is a hinderance.
The word “gifted” is a misnomer. It’s not a gift so much as it is a difference, a biological variation from the norm. Brain scans of gifted individuals have revealed startling information: neural pathways (or “hubs” as scientists refer to them) tend to be denser in individuals with higher IQ levels. The denser the neural hub, the more efficient the processing of information: such scans are physical evidence of a gifted person’s increased processing speed.
But the brain is a complex organ, and even one small deviation can have a cascading effect. I often try to explain it in terms of planting a vegetable garden: if I’ve only got so much acreage, I’m going to watch my spacing, right?
What happens, though, if I’ve got a whole bunch of carrots, and I’ve put them among broccoli seedlings? When my plants start growing, one of those two is going to crowd the other. I might end up with a beautiful crop of carrots amidst struggling shoots of broccoli.
Now in this particular garden of mine, I know the broccoli will grow.
But it will be slower, more deliberate than its bold orange counterpart. This is how I look at my gifted children’s brain development.
They’ve got a whole heck of a lot of carrots growing like gangbusters. The broccoli? It’s in there, but there are signs it’s not doing as much – yet.
I realize it’s an unscientific analogy, but I’m a writer, so really, what do you expect? The point I’m trying to make here is that a gifted child’s brain grows differently. This is going to have lasting developmental effects.
It starts with Asynchronous Development, and yes, this really is a thing.
While a gifted child’s brain erupts in leaps and bounds in some areas, other areas follow an average or below average progression. You might have an 11 year old ready for high school level academics, but socially and emotionally, she’s roughly two to three years below grade.
Then we take into consideration the likelihood of sensitivities.
Gifted children think, feel, and react more deeply to every sense and situation: sounds are louder, smells are stronger, and emotional reactions can be off the charts.
Together, asynchronous development and overexcitabilities have a major impact on emotional regulation. It is difficult for a child to navigate big feelings under the best of circumstances. Imagine trying to do so while under direct sensory and emotional assault.
Enter the anger.
WANT TO HAVE YOUR HEART BROKEN? TAKE A CLOSE LOOK AT AN ANGRY GIFTED KID
Angry kids don’t want to be angry. They don’t want to lash out, hurt feelings, or be rude. In my children’s experience, it’s a symptom of a larger problem. They aren’t hateful, spiteful, or the least bit vindictive. They’re actually caught in the throes of an emotional trigger and unable to manage the feelings they’re experiencing.
COMMON EMOTIONAL TRIGGERS FOR ANGRY GIFTED KIDS
Anxiety
Anxiety and anger are strange bedfellows because one would assume they exist in opposition. I know I did, which meant getting to the bottom of my daughter’s struggles took much longer. We’d had a host of broken toys and all-out screaming matches before I finally got it.
The connection between anger and anxiety lies in the fight or flight response. Most people tend to freeze in the face of great anxiety. In gifted kids, the emotion is frequently stifled until the child finally erupts.
We bring her to psychiatry regularly. We have done a full course of parent child interaction therapy. We have been bringing her to individual therapists since she was 2 years old. We did a stint of OT but closest OT is 1 hour away so could not continue. We are in an under resourced area so even the above is a stretch. We just need more from the school than what they are giving
That said, it’s nice to hear about Bridgewater, NJ. My family of origin lives not far away in basking ridge and I know the schools are good in NJ. Glad that school district was helpful
That said, it’s nice to hear about Bridgewater, NJ. My family of origin lives not far away in Basking Ridge and I know the schools are good in NJ. Glad that school district was helpful
I will say my sister's neighbor changed when the Hindi Temple was finished. Her neighborhood became all Indian. I'm not sure how the social experience would be now.
We work remotely and can live anywhere. Currently my child is a second grader in NC (Lincoln county, NW of Charlotte) and we are having a terrible experience with the local public schools. Daughter has a 504 plan and is incurring in school suspensions. She has diagnoses of mild autism, ADHD, and anxiety. She is extremely argumentative/oppositional with the teacher and will kick other students. However, she is far above grade level academically. I understand this disparity between intellectual and social/emotional function is not uncommon in gifted kids (she has a 135 IQ).
School district is at a loss. Traditional methods of discipline are what they use.
ISO a better school district that will be of better help to my daughter. I read that NJ schools are excellent. Any recommendations for specific districts there that could help someone like her?
I looked heavily in TX, AZ, CO, MO where we have family or other interests but concerned that things wouldn’t go well there either.
Thank you for any lessons learned/words of wisdom!!
Sad to say, the sunbelt does not have the best services, when it comes to special ed. Actually, public education in general.
You are right about NJ. It is one of the best states for special education - including gifted students. So are New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland, and Washington.
The approach that this teacher is taking with your daughter is all wrong.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
