More Ongoing Issues for Exceptionally & Profoundly Gifted Children in the Early Grades -3

Problems for the Exceptionally or Profoundly Gifted Child in School

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They’ll Help My Child — Parents Hope and Assume

Most parents find that schools promise at least some changes, but those changes are usually either insufficient or short lived. Lack of funding is a common excuse, but flexibility and creativity, more than money, are what are important in meeting the needs of gifted students. For example, gifted students might have single-subject acceleration in an area of strength, independent study in a topic of interest, and work on a learning contract with one teacher as a supervisor. The stories from families like the ones in this past are familiar to those who work with gifted children and their families.

Examples of issues during the early school years as reported by their parents.

All of these subjects were followed by me for more than 20 years and are part of the longitudinal study that started in the early 2000s and came to its final conclusions in 2020 (5 Levels of Gifted: School Issues and Educational Options (2005, 2009) Previously titled Losing Our Minds: Gifted Children Left Behind followed by The 5 Levels of Gifted Children Grown Up: What They Tell Us​ (2023). This particular post addresses what the parents discovered as they tried to find a good educational fit for their exceptionally and profoundly gifted children. I used pseudonyms.

The Subjects — Exceptionally to Profoundly Gifted

Jacob Jones — When Jacob first started school after we had him tested, we expected him to have access to high quality curriculum, instructors, and facilities and that his needs would be analyzed and met. Instead, he was put in a room with other children who were bright but nowhere near the level where he was. What we found out was that, for the most part, the school was quite comfortable teaching the way they always had.

There were so many things we didn’t know; we felt so alone in making big decisions. Frankly, the thought of resorting to home schooling was overwhelming, but we were running out of other options. When Jacob turned 12, we thought that maybe he should take high school courses the next year, but we were unsure of how to facilitate that. We wondered if, like handicapped young children who needed special consideration, the school could provide a paraprofessional for Jacob to accompany him if he attended high school classes. The ILP and occasional contact with a high school teacher hadn’t worked well the year before because the weekly time for Jacob to be with the teacher hadn’t worked for her, so Jacob went weeks without any contact and spent most of the time working on his own. He could attend community college classes, but we didn’t know if he could go straight there without fulfilling high school requirements first.

Rick Arnesen — When Rick started kindergarten, we talked with the Assistant Superintendent for Instruction, and I told him that both of my children already read very well, but the curriculum didn’t allow for them to do any independent reading until at least second grade. I expressed concern that my children had to memorize poems for each alphabet letter when they were already reading chapter books with excellent comprehension and interest. He said soothingly, “Oh, I wouldn’t worry Mrs. Arnesen. We find that by fourth grade, you can’t even tell who the early readers were.”