Visit to private school for gifted children.

I don’t think you are crazy. I send my GT/LD/ADHD son to a private school for gifted kids and he LOVES it. Small classes, challenging work and interested caring teachers make it an excellent place for him.

Andrea

well you know how I feel:-) My two are in a private school for gifted lder’s. There are probably three who are AS kids,two I know are PDD,I don’t think your crazy at all.

It sounds like a good place to me—much better than the public school. A program that focuses on gifted kids is almost by definition more used to variation from the norm.

I always thought it was interesting that in K my LD child was best friends with the smartest kid in class. Only they cared about all the different kinds of sharks!!

Beth

If it works, why worry? Why not try a visit for a day or two and see how it goes.

The problem with sped in public schools is that it is ALL about the disability, without being about getting rid of the disability. It is the worst case scenario.

The child is constantly reminded that he has a disability but offered little help to rid himself of it, at the same time his strengths are ignored.

I would think it would be an excellent place for your son. One of the better school psychs said to me, “Gifted kids are usually a mess.”
I doubt your child will be the only one with social issues.

I think it is interesting that it is not a place for those with visual LD. My experience has been this subset of lders are misunderstood and seriously underserved.
Luckily or oddly I think this subset of LDers are easier to remediate.

The school has not said that they would not talke my son with visual processing issues. He fits the gifted profile and tests well. I think I just happen to observe at a time when they were working on things that are hard for him. I’m not sure how his self image would fare there. In public school, I can probably keep his academic skills grade appropriate by continuing to remediate at home. He started a year late so we’ve had an extra year to work on things at home. He knows the work is harder for him than the other kids but all of the kids in his class say that he is the smartest kid there. So, for now, he sees himself as smart. My worry about putting him in with gifted kids is that his strengths would not shine as brightly and his weaknesses would be glaringly obvious so his self image may suffer. My autistic child, on the other hand… the more I think about it, I wonder if the fact that he is so academicly advanced will add to his social and behavior problems. I wish there was a way he could have both, the normal kindergarten experience for language and social skills development and still get the academic challenges that would meet his abilities. The gifted program has the social advantage of small classes but the teachers are so verbose that I’m afraid that they may lose my little guys attention. There are so many ways of looking at the situation, it’s hard to know what is right.

Bottom line is for many of our kids there is no perfect place!!

Beth

As parent, your instincts are probably the best guidance. That said, even if this particular school is not right for your older child, don’t rule out gifted classes altogether. The research on gt/ld children shows that they learn better in gifted classes with support than in the less-challenging regular ed environment. Also, research on gifted children generally supports that they crave interaction with gifted peers and often fit in better in that setting than with average-ability peers.

Andrea

Reminds me of a little friend of mine (dx is Asperger’s) whose Mom said in frustration in his Gr. 1 year: NO WONDER he has no friends — they all want to talk about Pokemon, and he wants to discuss possible solutions to end world hunger! (and yes, he has extremely mature ideas on this topic — if the world were run by people like him, we’d have ended world hunger long ago, and be asking ‘what IS war, anyway???’)

It is VERY hard to be misunderstood — especially by people who are not your equals intellectually!

Andrea, can you give me the name(s) of some of those books and/or research on the gifted/LD student doing better with gifted peers, etc., as you stated. I’d like to have it in my 3 ring notebook to pull out at my next IEP meeting.

A lot may depend upon how the population of gifted is defined at this school. Are these kids with tested IQ of 130 and above and very fast learners in visual and auditory modes, or are these kids who are bright, creative and flexible thinkers in different directions? How much homework is given and what are the academic expectations?

Leah,

if you get this info, please share or e-mail to me.

Thanks, Ewa