Posted by
Aunt Marie on Monday, October 26, 2009 6:23:47 PM
So my 6 year old has started 1st grade this year, and with that has come a host of problems. He can't sit still. He humms or sings while working in groups distracting the others. He doesn't listen to the instructions. My first thought, he's bored. The school's first thought, he's ADD. From what I gather, I'm not the first parent to experience this. But after countless conversations with his teacher in which she declared she was at a loss as to what to try next, it was now my turn.
First I researched ADD. Please note here, my search was initially limited to ADD. However, what I kept coming across was the commonalities in what were the signs of a "gifted" child and the symptoms of a child with ADD. The most common distinguishing feature struck a huge chord with me. With an ADD/ADHD child, they will have difficulties in every situation, with every teacher. Whereas a gifted child will thrive in some instances and founder in others. Throughout our pre-school/daycare experiences everytime we found ourselves in a situation in which my son did not seem to thrive, I was quick to pull him and find the "right" environment for him. I had seen him succeed with too many teachers to believe it was ADD.
So my next step was to pick up the phone and call the gifted services coordinator at his school. It was not a warm greeting. I was told abruptly that they did not provided "enrichment". The services offerered were only around "acceleration". But she promised to discuss with his teacher and get back to me. I suddenly realized that I could enrich his learning and life outside of school all I wanted, but I was powerless to do anything to impact the 6 hours he spent at school.
Unswayed by how easily I was dismissed by the school, I scheduled my son for testing; both for ADD and giftedness. His demeanor alone for the days immediately following the testing was proof enough. His excitement for books, flash cards and all things learning went through the roof. A fire had been ignited in him. A day before the test results came in, I recieved the fateful call from the coordinator at the school explaining that they felt that my son was not a candidate for gifted services. That call made the test results all the more bittersweet as the psychologist described my son as "a gifted child with perfectionist tendencies and impulse control issues." The fact that he tested gifted and met the entry requirements for the private gifted schools in the area did not change the fact that as far as his school was concerned, he was not gifted.
My next step is unclear. I can wait it out and see if he matures enough to be "accepted" into the gifted culture at school. More than likely private school will become the best option. But as a child who navigated the public school system successfully, I am less than willing to simply accept the private school option. The question is how different is the public school of today than the public school of my child hood? In a Nation where the average IQ is 100, our children are now taught to succeed in standardized based tests that are geared to an IQ of 85. And we wonder why we rank so low versus the rest of the world in terms of education.