Yet Another difficult child?? LOL

Hound dog

Nana's are Beautiful
I personally don't think so.............but time may tell.

Aubrey, who will be 8 in 3 days, is very smart. Maybe too smart for her own good. Time will tell on that one too. lol

Aubrey does very well in school without much effort. She's reading about 2 grade levels above her peers. This is reading AND comprehension. So it's not just the words. Know what I mean?? Well, Aubrey catching on to things easily is causing issues in the classroom. Especially as far as reading. Nichole was getting emailed, noted, and called to death from her teacher over Aubrey's inability to stop talking in class. Nichole did explain to Aubrey time and again that her talking can make it hard for the other kids to learn. Other than that.......she told her teacher it is a school issue and needs to be dealt with at school. She won't be punishing her at home. Nichole also tried to tell the teacher that it might be that Aubrey was bored to death as it took her less than 5 minutes to finish her work and then there was nothing left to do.

Aubrey is a carbon copy of her Mommy, who is a carbon copy of me. Although it seems Aubrey might have gotten a wee bit more of her Nana's personality tossed into the mix. As I hear Nichole talk about her, as I watch her myself.......it's like I'm seeing myself when I was a child. Aubrey is sweet, considerate to a fault, kind hearted, creative as all get out, big on thinking outside the box, smart as a whip, I suspect inherited my photographic memory, ect ect. The flip side? The child give new meaning to the word stubborn, willful. If she sets her mind to something it is nearly impossible to get her to change it. Negative discipline does not work with Aubrey 99.9 percent of the time. Positive reinforcement along with explanations as to why she should do such and such works much better. Aubrey views rules the way I do, unfortunately as it is going to cause her issues from time to time. Rules are fine and good when they make sense, otherwise.......they will be ignored.

Turns out Nichole had to out stubborn the teacher on the whole what happens at school stays at school thing, while stressing repeatedly that the child was bored out of her mind. Finally realizing that Nichole wasn't going to give in, the teacher decided to compromise. Once Aubrey completed her assigned reading, she could read something from the library or brought from home. Aubrey has been reading chapter books for months now. The teacher was a bit surprised. When they did their reading assessment for the end of the year..........teacher was stunned Aubrey was so darn far ahead of her peers. Well, duh. Letting her read her chapter books solved much of the classroom issues as the teacher would praise her for not talking in class. Together they found compromises for other subjects.

All was going well until Nichole gets a phone call from the teacher. Nichole is not quite sure of the details. But it seems Aubrey freaked some kids out on the playground by biting herself pretty hard on her arm and telling them she wanted to drink blood. There was a boy she was playing with that bit himself as well. Teacher was concerned it might be an "issue". Nichole talked to Aubrey and Aubrey did not want to talk about it, said she was just playing. Nichole knows Aubrey well enough to know if she doesn't want to talk about it......well, then that is that. Teacher didn't want to let it drop. Nichole told her if she was that concerned then to let Aubrey speak to the counselor at school but she herself was not that concerned about it. Aubrey likes vampires. It could be that is what she and the little boy were playing. Or heck, this is Aubrey.......she could've just wanted to freak the kids out. lol (little does she know the things her Nana used to do to gross out teachers and students alike......her Mommy as well........we have an odd sense of humor in this family) Doubtful she actually wanted to hurt herself. Her bite mark wasn't even enough to leave a mark on her skin any length of time. And c'mon.......Aubrey is a wuss when it comes to things hurting, not gonna happen.

This teacher has been trying to tell Nichole all year she thought Aubrey was ADHD.......while Nichole said it didn't matter as she would not treat her for it. Now because the child bit herself on the arm she seems to think she might be "disturbed". omg So Aubrey is going to have a chat with the counselor. (oh to be a fly on that wall lmao)

Nichole is not worried. I am not worried. Even IF Aubrey is ADHD I see no reason for treatment. She does just fine. You just have to keep her occupied which is really not that difficult if you use some common sense. I think the teachers intentions are good.......but to be honest this is her first year teaching and I don't think she has the experience to really know what she's doing. Given some of the experiences I've had with school counselors........this might get interesting before the year is up. I just hope the counselor is a good one. Aubrey is enough like her grandmother to just mess with her mind for the fun of it. :hypnotized::runcirclsmiley2::imok:

Like I told Nichole, Aubrey is very definately an independent thinker. Nichole may be shifting roles from easy child/difficult child to warrior mom.
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
Uhhhh...Nana...you have magically added a year to your granddaughters life...lol. Aubrey will be 7...lol. Our granddaughters are the same age just a month difference. They were both born in 06. Remember the baby boom...lol.

I am glad Aubrey is doing so well in school. I wish I had more of an idea just what is going on with mine.
 
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AnnieO

Shooting from the Hip
Lisa, when I was that age I read ahead in our books. Made the teachers crazy. Talked, acted out... They started having me go 2 grades up for reading. Wanted me to move up a grade. But - Mom and Dad said NO - I was already younger than everyone in my class. (I turned 17 my senior year of HS - most turn 18.) I also did biting, etc. for shock value... I was bullied, too, which may or may not be an issue for Aubrey. And stubborn - ! Still am.

She is very smart. Having stuff to do helps. I think the new teacher is in a bit over her head though...
 

donna723

Well-Known Member
Nichole has my sympathy because when you have a gifted child the schools can be very difficult to deal with. They usually don't know what to do with them! They have all kinds of programs and interventions for the kids with problems but not many for the little smarty-pants kids! They keep trying to fit them in to that "box" - it just doesn't work and their efforts become counter-productive, frustrating for both the kids and the teachers.

I went through exactly the same thing when my son started school. He was both reading and writing well when he was about four, long before he started kindergarten. It didn't help that with his October birthday, he was almost six when he started and one of the oldest in his class. They started with the very simple basics and he kept telling the teacher that he already knew that! She didn't believe him when he told her that he could read ...until she saw him reading aloud all the names of the other kids in the class from a chart she had on the wall! She admitted to me that she didn't know what to do with him because academically he already knew everything they are supposed to learn in kindergarten. He was frustrated and bored and for the rest of the school year the teacher used him as a miniature classroom aide. In first grade it got worse when they seriously got in to reading. At home he was reading (VERY carefully selected) Stephen King short stories and in school they were doing the modern version of "See Spot Run"! He was never a disciplinary problem but he got so insulted, frustrated and mad at the teacher that he blew up at her, letting her know that this was a "baby book" and he was NOT reading it! When everybody else was in their reading groups, he was in a group that consisted of just him. It didn't help at all that the school librarian was very rigid in her thinking. She had all the books shelved by grade level and refused to let any child check out books that were above their grade level, no matter how well they could read. We solved that one by talking the public library in to letting him have his own card. We'd take him every Saturday morning and turn him loose in there and he'd pick out books on whatever interested him ... it might be Ancient Egypt or outer space or dinosaurs, whatever he wanted and he was a happy kid! He's 32 now and the librarian who just recently retired still remembers him as that skinny little blond boy who came in every Saturday and left with an armload of books and a big smile on his face!

Nichole may want to check in to this too but I never knew that programs for "special education" also include provisions for gifted kids! Our program here doesn't start until second grade and he was tested and accepted in to the program. He actually qualified for an IEP because "the standard school curriculum did not meet his individual educational needs". The school loved it because the more "Special Education"kids they had, the more State funding they received. Not that the program at his school was that great. It was one "enrichment" class a day, with a small group of kids, most of them a lot older than he was, and it was conducted during recess time when the other kids got to go out and play. He was a normal, healthy, active little boy who needed to go out and blow off steam with his friends. He hated it, begged to drop out of the program, and since he was getting nothing out of it, I let him.

And I honestly think the stubborness goes along with it. "Stubborn" should have been his middle name! Despite his high IQ, he never was the slightest little bit academically inclined. If he was interested in a subject he would just jump in with both feet and really get in to it. But he had no patience at all for things that bored him or things he thought he'd never use, like higher math or some things in English. And if he didn't like the teacher, you might as well forget it! That stubborness would come out, he'd dig in his heels, and that would be it! Nichole is in for an interesting but very worthwhile ride!
 
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Mattsmom277

Active Member
I was reading post secondary level by fifth or sixth grade. Reading and comprehension were always my strongest suit. Which meant I did well in all subjects because I understood all of the materials easily. Also because I loved reading so much, I would often on my own pick up books from the library on things I was learning in school that fascinated me but that school only taught to a lesser degree. I am a talker, was then and am now. So you can imagine in school when I'd be done work in no time and had nothing to do. Any class work, not just specified reading periods, I'd be done fast. I got so much flak until around 5th grade a great teacher realized myself and another student in my class were both the same, not challenged and bored stiff. Back then there was no gifted programming. This teacher designed what he called "Enrichment Class" just for myself and the other student (who was the cutest boy in the world to my young self and my best friend, we just noticed each other because other kids would tease us for being "smarty pants"). We would leave class each day for a stretch to do things with this teacher. Our most fun school year was a book drive we developed. Ended up sending a entire cargo plane full of books to a school in Madagascar. I loved going to this enriched program. The deal was we could work on things from that program if we completed our work in class before other kids. I went from boredom and hating school to hating getting sick to have to miss a day.

*I hope if Aubrey keeps up this way, that it clicks with the school that she needs something more. Being unchallenged is terrible for a kid at school.
 

trinityroyal

Well-Known Member
Goodness! Reading all this makes me realize how fortunate I was with the primary school I went to.

It was a very small experimental school, intended for children who didn't really fit well in the mainstream school system. We had a lot of dyslexic children, a lot of gifted ones, and a few aspies too (I'm sure now, although none of us had heard of Aspergers back then.) It was based on the Montessori method, and run by two education profs who'd moved from the U.S. to Canada in the 1950s.

The basic principle was to let the children guide their own education. Yes, we had to meet the minimum provincial requirements for each subject, but after that it was really up to us what we wanted to do. My English teacher used to write the day's requirements on the blackboard at the beginning of the school day, and then just let us have at it. As long as we got through whatever was on the blackboard, and anything else we tackled was English-related, we had free rein. This is how I ended up reading Romeo and Juliet in Gr 3. The school librarian found a dusty old Complete Works of Shakespeare for me and let me loose.

Our science teacher bought me a dissecting kit when I was about 7 or 8, and used to bring me specimens to work on: squid, sundry fish, a calf's heart, and one day she brought a placenta in a bucket. Spread it right out on the lab table and let me pick at it. I don't think schools would be able to do such things nowadays, but I thrived in that environment.
 

susiestar

Roll With It
Sounds like she is raising me, lol. I had a grand time messing wth the heads of my peers and teachers alike. we didn't have a counsellor when I was in elem school. It was a Catholic school because gma would have had a hissy if we went to public school and the public school was teaching sight reading which my mom thought was a crock of bs. Given that I learned to read when my bro did, as he came home from school and taught me what he learned that day, and it was the ONLY way to keep me on the potty long enough to actually potty, i was reading from before I was potty trained. My mom still swears that teh only reason I learned to use the bathroom is because she kept books in there. She is right, of course. Same worked iwth my kids, lol.

The biting is because vampires are everywhere now. Duh. I knew from what you first said that it was a first year or very new teacher. Or else an older, hide bound teacher with no real desire to think outside the box for a very smart child. We saw a LOT of those with Wiz. He was reading chapter books in under two-three hours when he went INTO kdg and we had teachers who begged us to NOT send him to their schools because they knew they could NOT meet his needs.

I doubt she is adhd. Sadly, a lot of teachers use that to mean kids who get bored easily because they are smart and learn things the first time around. One thing that really helped Jess was to have her help a student who had a hard time learning. Going over the material with a slower student helped because as you teach it reinforces the info in your own mind. It also occupied her time and elt her really SEE that some students just don't learn things as fast as she did. She has a real gift for teaching esp the students with learning disabilities. In fifth grade she befriended a girl with the biggest heart but fetal alcohol effects who could not remember things. With some tips from me, she was able to tie new info to things that T (the girl) was interested in. T made HUGE strides and is still a friend. In fact, T and her little brother both protected thank you on the bus when he was getting bullied because of how much T liked J and I. I had no idea until recently that J was the first student who ever didn't make fun of T's learning problems and that I was the first adult outside of her gma and a couple of teachers who ever treated T like a person who was valuable and interesting. I think Aubrey could probably see others T as just people and not as less than or different, and she could make some friends that way. T may not have been as traditionally smart, but she is loyal and loving and a good friend. Aubrey doesn't seem like the type to see anyone as 'less than' and this could be a way to make her life easier at school. It makes the teacher's life easier and helps a student and Aubrey. It can take some time for the teacher to understand that allowing Aubrey to talk quietly as she explains thgns to the other student is different htan just talking during class.

Smart kids get a bum rap in schools, in my opinion. Most people assume smart kids will figure things out and don't need extra help or to be allowed to do other thngs when they are done with their work. Truly smart kids don't sit quietly and wait until the next assignment is given. They figure out things to do and often end up in trouble because of this. Sadly, teachers are one oft he least reliable predictors of true gifted intelligence. other kids are the most reliable, parents next and teachers are right way less than half of the time. There are studies that back this up, one of them said other kids are right 80% of the time, parents 60-70%, and teachers 20-40%. Mostly it is because teachers identify the students who do the work correctly and sit quietly until the next assignment as gifted but see the child who does the work or does part of it and stops due to boredom and then finds something else to do (that often is NOT something the teacher wants them to do) as a trouble maker or problem child rather than as a gifted child who needs more challenging work. Of course some teachers don't fit this, but many do.

We had to fight for protections for Wiz due to this stigma, as he DID find other things to do and often they were exasperating at best for the teacher. Nichole is TOTALLY right in how she is handling this.

I hope Aubrey never loses her love for learning and she never stops thinking out of the box. NEVER.

Programs for gifted students, sometimes called GATE (gifted and talented education) or extended studies, are sometimes helpful. In his first elem school, Wiz was the youngest child in the program. It was a full day pull out program and the ONLY day of the week he learned anything. After several months of his idiot reg teacher harping on what a problem and 'bad' kid he was (I hit the ROOF over her telling him he was "bad" and she is the one who drove him to try suicide because she would not leave him alone even after he was out of her class), I asked her and the principal why I had to send him to school on days he did not have the GATE class, after all he was not learning anything but how awful he was those 4 days of the week. Boy did that cause a ruckus. By the time I was done the principal was begging me to homeschool, lololol.

Be watchful of gifted classes. Sometimes the teacher has a specific idea what gifted is, and those that don't fit that narrow definition are often worse off after being put intot hat class.

They cannot, by law, take away recess or free time or give homework to make us what is missed in the reg class while the child is in a gifted program. It is not optional or something they have a choice over. It is federal law. Don't let them do that to her.

She is a great kid. She will educate her teachers at least as much as they will educate her. An tehy are LUCKY and BLESSED by this, even if they don't think so.

You might tell her not to color the dog or cat's tummy with a marker. Or to use a food color marker if she does. We never thought to tell J this, and somehow she got one of our cats who was the squirreliest wiggliest thing to let her use a crayola marker to color his tummy green. No one told her not to, after all. How she got that particular cat to allow this I will NEVER know. Food color markers ARE safe to use on animals.
 

HaoZi

CD Hall of Fame
If her school has a good gifted program that would be a great thing for her. The ones I've seen here don't impress me, but the one I grew up with was great. We were pulled out of our regular classes 2x week for in-school gifted stuff and once a week we went to another school for a whole day for gifted classes - we picked what classes we wanted, one in the morning, another in the afternoon. It was great, and that program started in the 3rd grade and went to 8th grade. Testing (gifted was done by IQ tests) was generally done in 2nd grade at the earliest, and before that we had advanced reading groups, math groups, etc., in class.
 

Hound dog

Nana's are Beautiful
Some of you may remember that Aubrey was far behind her age group in EVERY developmental milestone EXCEPT fine motor skills.......and I do mean far behind. It had me worried for quite a long time. I wasn't sure if it was something serious going on or if it was because she paid so MUCH attention to minute detail that she was missing the big picture in some areas. Turned out to be the latter. (same problem I had at times as a child) I am intelligent, I habitually think outside the box, I'm practical to a fault, and before the Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) I had a photographic memory that enormously enhanced those first three things. Yet until I reached HS I grew up thinking I was stupid. Not grade wise, necessarily, as I didn't put in much effort at all, flat out refused to do homework assignments, flat out refused to work in "groups" (that is when that became popular)........I still managed very good grades despite those things much to the frustration of all my teachers. And I talked almost non stop all through grade school. lol I learned math prior to kindergarden by shopping..........I was doing percentages in my head (sales tax) at age 3. I still have to do it in my head.....if I do that sort of math on paper it only confuses me. It's not a process I think consciously about and if I try I get "lost". I only had ONE teacher figure this out.......my 7th/8th grade Math teacher. I couldn't do fractions/long division until she found a way for me to think about it in terms of money. All my math is done in "money mode", even now. I was horrifically bored in school. Reading took a long time for me to catch on to; I had trouble figuring out that letters made words. Once that concept hit home (teacher was too busy calling me stupid to actually TELL me that little critical fact) I was reading many grade levels above my peers almost immediately. History and Science were my weak areas only because most of the time I simply was NOT interested. If a teacher could make me interested I took off like a shot. That didn't happen really until HS. Nichole is too much like me to let the school break Aubrey's spirit or her desire to learn. Teachers/school staff will discover quickly Nichole is a force unto herself to be reckoned with. LOL I will suggest to her to see if there are any gifted classes or schools that she can sign Aubrey up for. I hated school until HS simply because I was bored out of my mind. Darrin is also starting to get bored in school, but so far it's not causing trouble. I've suspected for a few years he may also have inherited the photographic memory. easy child is already strongly considering home schooling him. I know we don't have either gifted classes or a program for him. He can't even try a gifted class until HS. Since this probably came out as one long paragraph..........I'll respond more later when I figure out why every response I make today comes out one long paragraph. LOL omg
 
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