Gifted Children

the thing that i have found is each end of the IQ level Is each one can beocome Unchallenged and bored very fast....
My son who I have said tests low on paper IQ but high when given it verbally..
can become very bored very easy

The one thing I can say i never would have homeschooled him as he needed to be with other kids
He does go to a school with lower class sizes
which is a huge plus
muffy

There is a trade off with gifted children that's for sure. My niece has always been in the TAG program and graduated with a 4.0. Course work comes easy for her and requires very little on her part. (Oddly reading is difficult for her, when the last Harry Potter book came out, my twins finished it before she was finished with the first chapter and they are 6 years her junior. She surprised me by saying she has difficulty with retention.) She is very book smart. Her classmates were angry that she upset the grading curve in HS and college.

However, even though she is quite beautiful, athletic (colleges paid in full by both acedemic and althetic scholarships), charming, funny, and sweet; if there is a loser in the room that is the man she's in love with. Her self-esteem is in the gutter.

AAAAA
I think you are right ...with high IQ gifted and Ld kids the one thing they do have in common is low self esteem

I know with my having delexic in school At times I have had a hard time with that...
knowing that I mattered

I agree with most of the posts on this thread. I strongly agree that all children are important and have been endowed with special gifts and talents. I also believe that No Child should be left behind-ALL should be given the opportunity and attention they need to move from one skill level to the next.

Unfortunately I still believe that in American school's today, the kids who are good students are the ones who are being ignored. If your child is considered "above proficient" but not "gifted" the school system ignores their needs. In fact it is these students who are placed in classes below what they can handle-- not because of their educational needs but because school district needs them as mentors, role models, and mean adjusters. They can't do this with the student's identified as gifted because the IEP requires that they get at least something meaningful during the school day.

It is my contention that the school system, at least in my state is investing major resources in tutoring/remediation programs, test taking skills, weekend & summer classes, after school programs, etc. These programs all target only a small group of students (students just below proficiency). If a child is somewhere above the proficiency cut they are not permitted to participate in these activities. The rationale for focusing all the resources on these students is that they are ones who (if they drilled and practiced enough) can get a few more answers correct on the standardized test and become proficient data points. The schools can then say, "see we are meeting the AYP." Meanwhile what you don't see in the newspaper is the gradual lowering of SAT scores, fewer (REAL) AP and Honors courses, or that fewer graduates are getting accepted to quality 4-year institutions without going first to community college.

Chaotic13 – I agree with you, this is exactly the reason that one of my sons attends a virtual HS. The class choices are infinite. I do believe that this will be the wave of the future. Most of my son’s “classmates” attend these virtual classes through their neighborhood brick and mortar school. This is still considered a public school and he still has to go through the testing every two years that he had to in “regular” school. If there is a teacher that he doesn’t jive with, all it takes is a request for a different instructor. Every class has a 30 day trial period, if the class is below his abilities, he can withdraw with no penalty and select a different one. There really isn’t a down side. Jetsons here we come!