>Gifted, Dammit!
>Okay. I am so over unschooling. I can’t believe I’ve spent so much time discussing something I still think is bizarre. Because. Unschooling! The very word is hilarious! And in fairness, so is blogger. See? I can make fun of myself, too.
I didn’t write about unschooling to make anyone’s head explode and I think that those whose heads did explode not only created a needless mess for themselves, but also really need to reprioritize. Because seriously, there are lots of more important things to get upset about than whether some stranger agrees or disagrees with an educational concept. What’s surprised me most, though, is that the unschooling/homeschooling crowd who came here to view the carnage keeps coming back. And I find that odd, particularly the ones who are quick to put me down when unschooling comes up, but then think nothing of posting a nice comment on some of the non-unschooling stuff. But anyway.
The reason I bring all this up is that I’m sure that what I’m about to write will give my new homeschooling fan base all kinds of fodder to mock and deride me. Perhaps a smarter woman would keep this information to herself. But I’m a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of gal (or not really, but I really like saying that as often as I can fit it in. Ask anyone), and this is what’s on my mind, so this is what you get.
My public school system has a gifted program for children ages three and up. If Baby tests in, she’ll go one day a week to the program, completely free of charge. Both her sisters went and loved it and I’m determined that Baby’s going, too. Because we all know she’s completely brilliant (and yes, I’m aware that every mom feels that way about her own child).
Once Baby turned two, I grilled my husband on what the testing involved.
“We’ll take Baby down there,” he said, “and she’ll go in a room alone with two teachers. The testing takes about an hour and a half. And I don’t know what they ask, because parents aren’t allowed inside.”
Ever since that time, I’ve been trying to prepare Baby for her upcoming exam, teaching her everything and anything that might be asked of a two-year-old. I think she’s doing very well (of course! I’m her mother!) and I swear I’m not forcing her to learn anything(and if you knew her, you’d know that she can’t be forced to do anything). I just look for creative ways to work learning into playtime.
At first, she responded beautifully, learning songs and rhymes, colors and numbers, stacking blocks and using the Spanish words she’d learned on Dora. (See? Television is good for something). But now, she’s two-and-a-half and so over it. To the point that she goes to extraordinary lengths to do the opposite of what she’s asked.
So, when I put white tights on her this morning for a Christmas children’s matinee, she said, “Oh, look. Black tights!”
“No, these are white tights,” I said.
“No,” she replied impishly. “They’re black tights.”
Ask for a circle and she’ll point out a square with a wicked gleam in her eye. Ask her to count to ten and she’ll mix all the numbers up, just for fun. Apparently, she’s been doing it all the right way for so long that she’s now bored by all that now and trying to stir things up. Which is fine, except that I’m now imagining her in a room with two women who’ve never laid eyes on her.
“Baby,” one will say, “Stack each of these blocks one on top of the other.”
Baby will put them side by side in a neat row.
“Okay. Now say your alphabet.”
“A, B, C, M, P, Z, X, Q…” Baby will recite gleefully.
“All right then,” the teacher will say kindly, writing MORON across her clipboard. And with that, Baby’s gifted program dreams will be dashed and she’ll probably grow up to stash cocaine in the children’s aisle at Wal-Mart. Or something.
You see my dilemma. I’m not quite sure how to proceed here, but this has been going on for a good four months now and shows no signs of letting up.
What to do, what to do, what to do…
>You know what worked with my son? Doing things wrong (e.g., leaving out letters when saying the alphabet) and letting him correct me. Of course, he continues to correct me even when I do things right; I think he might be thirteen or something. ;^)
>You crack me up! You’re totally normal..as is your baby! LOL Although no one else wants to admit it, we ALL want our kids to be gifted…seriously.I am a teacher, have a master’s degree in it actually, and think Unschooling is a load of crap. (Uh-oh, ya think they’ll come after me now???). I’ve seen it in action…and if the wrong person is “leading” it can be a VERY bad thing.Good luck Baby!
>This is good practice for later — the war over gettting in the gifted program is apparently VERY HEATED in elementary school!
>I had to just give up with my daughter. I am a teacher by trade and thought she would be reading by 3 and all that. But she won’t learn from me. At all. The same thing happens. “What’s this letter?” “I don’t know.”So I just gave up. Gave it over to other teachers, and we read stories and cuddle and that’s about it.
>Hehe :)Just wanted to say I really enjoyed reading this post. I used to babysit a two-year-old who had been perfectly capable of matching animal noises with their owners…but right before he hit 3 suddenly started gleefully saying “I don’t knowwwwww” in response to any query in the realm of “What sound does a cow make?”–and occasionally inserting his own-completely incorrect-sound with a rather sneaky look in his eye (usually accompanied by a giggle).(And that’s why I babysit. It’s rarely boring ;D)
>Wow, you are lucky. they don’t do any kind of gifted program at our school until 3rd grade. She’s only doing it to piss you off, and hopefully she won’t have any interest in pissing off those ladies at the school.My four year old picks up really easily when I want her to do something correctly. She’ll start off by identifying all letters as “B” or “X” or she’ll play dumb a lot. I try to ignore it because I don’t want school to become a battle. My 9 year old son, who is gifted, would still be in kindergarten if I home-schooled him. He has NO interest in learning anything from me.
>A gifted program for three-year-olds? How very odd.Okay, I’ve been reading your blog off and on for a while now and have not yet posted. (Favorites: Flylady, Mom’s group) But now I have to, because I just wrote about giftedness (or whatever you call it) on MY blog. Today.By the way, most gifted programs suck.
>The key words here are not so much “gifted” as “free.” I would LOVE to put her in preschool a couple days a week at three, but I think the costs are outrageous, considering we’re living (mostly) on one income. My school district offers other preschools for three-year-olds, but they all cost (based on income) until kindergarten.
>LOL My now 3 year old did that too. He still likes to do it sometimes and his favorite is mixing up left and right or putting his shoes on the wrong feet. He KNOWS where they go and his left from his right, but those who don’t know him wouldn’t know that! LOL
>LOLOL! My son likes to do that too. Oddly, he mostly plays the game with me being me… But sometimes if I’m making one of his toys do the talking, he’ll cooperate. Go figure! That’s how I sometimes trick him into behaving for a diaper change too! A gifted program for 3-year olds… WOW! I’ve never heard of such a thing. I hope it works out! Go Baby Go!
>why are you handing her education over to the government when you’ve already done all their work for them?
>My son does the exact same thing and he’s the same age. Yes, the person who said to do things wrong works (e.g. leaving out letters when saying the alphabet). But when he’s with other people, he does things perfectly. So I wouldn’t worry about it. She’ll probably ace the test!
>She knows you care, and she’s doing it to mess with you. You are what makes it funny for her. Okay, maybe I’m talking about my daughter who’s almost three now and does the same thing.
>You’ve been preparing Baby for her upcoming exam? Sounds like you’re a homeschooling mom after all! 🙂
>When my little girl was getting potty trained, I was very On-Top of things…constantly asking her and instructing her and she Just. Didn’t. Get It. One day I said “I just can’t do this anymore!” I laid off and the next day she was perfectly potty trained. Honest. Now she is in Kindergarten and learning letter sounds. Usually, she does really well, but when she gets frustrated, she shuts down and “doesn’t know” anything. They like to push our buttons and test their limits. I’m sure Baby will do fine and I think that’s great that your school district offers that. (My girl got a preschool education solely because I had to use daycare and chose a center with a program.) I would just not push is as much or not react emotionally (okay, that’s dramatic, but do you get what I mean?) when she answers incorrectly.
>Maybe she’s bored with what she knows, so doing it wrong is more interesting. Try some new things. Opposites and synonyms were my son’s new favorites once he became bored with letters, numbers and animal sounds. We played all sorts of word games in the car every time we went anywhere.
>have you tried agreeing with her? When she insists her white tights are black, say wow – you are right! Now that I look more closely, I totally see that. Do that with everything. Do it yourself. Point to blue tights and say “I love these polkadot pink tights sooo much”. Things like that. She’ll think you are crazy/funny and/or get tired of her game because it’s not getting a rise out of you. Obviously if she didn’t really know her colors this would just confuse her, but since she is just playing, play along. BTW, “The Child With Special Needs” by Stanley Greenspan is a WONDERFUL book. I think a lot of his techniques for special needs kids can be applied to normal children. Same for a book called The Out-of-Sync Child: Recognizing and Coping with Sensory Integration Dysfunction by Carol Stock Kranowitz.So yeah. Your kid sounds totally normal, but I highly recommend the above books just for good reading with great tips.
>I’ve been meaning to comment every time you post about Baby. I have a 2 year old girl who sounds EXACTLY like her. She knows her colors and how to count to 10, but every time you ask her what color something is she always answers “blue” and then looks at you with that look…I know you know the one. She also loves to mix up all the numbers after 4 on the way to 10.You posted a while back about Baby having a huge vocabulary but not being as good as a friend’s kid at running or something like that. My girl started talking before she was one AND HAS NOT STOPPED. She didn’t walk until she was 17 months, though, & is still crawling up steps on all fours and, well, isn’t the most graceful child. She spends a lot of time saying “I OK” and picking herself up off of the floor.
>My youngest just turned 3 and completly went through a simular phase. It drove me nuts because he knew the right answer, he was just being a stinker. Luckily, he stopped doing it shortly before turning 3. I am sure she will do fine when tested. Jessica
>My middle guy is “gifted”, in K they wanted to move him up to 1st, but I decided to leave him where he was. He really is super smart, but it wasn’t from anything I did, he just is a quick learn. Leave baby be, don’t force it. I don’t think she will unlearn what she already knows, she will do just fine come test time.
>I know baby is gifted! She just likes to get you rilled up.lol Im sure she will go into the interview and knock their socks off! YOu know woman you could call all the preschools and say if they let baby go there for free you will blog about their preschool ( free publicity) 🙂
>Hello, I’m new here. My one piece of hard-earned advice: If they offer to break up the testing to let her rest, take them up on it. My now-13 y/o has a November birthday, so there was some question about whether to let her start kindergarten early or late. The city we lived in (before moving to Bellevue 5 years ago) tested her the summer she was 4. For some reason, she thought they’d want to see every gymnastics trick she knew how to do (actually, a lot of her gifts ARE in the athletic realm). After a few hours of that plus testing, they gave her a restroom break and offered to let us come back the next day if it was “our naptime.” Knowing she never napped anyway, I said, “Oh, we’ll go ahead and finish.” In another 30 minutes, they brought her out. Done. When they got to the item that says “write first name,” which she had been doing for almost a year – no lie – she put her pencil down and just stopped. She was so over writing her name. Come to think of it, that little encounter foreshadowed her whole relationship to the school system – in it for the athletics. So maybe drop it for a while and it’ll be interesting again when testing day comes. And if that doesn’t work out, join the gym where I work in the nursery weekday mornings and let her play for two hours (ulterior motive: so this fan of your column and blog can meet you). Lots of writing material there, I assure you.
>Don’t sweat the small stuff. If she gets in, great. If she doesn’t, she spends time with you. It’s really a win – win situation. Except you get no rest…My kids are both bright. They weren’t in this system at the beginning so they aren’t classified as gifted. You know – it’s okay with me. They don’t have twice the homework. They don’t have to take college level classes in 9th grade. They get to be kids…Life is good.xoLBC
>I’ve just had two friends talk to me about their ‘gifted’ preschoolers. I’ve had other friends talk about their ‘gifted’ status. The moms in my mom’s club had all sorts of gifted toddlers.Because what does it mean? Shoot, my ‘gifted’ friends dont’ do anything particularly extraordinary. And of all the preschoolers I know, who are ‘gifted,’ well, it’s not like they are playing the piano or violin, or reading Shakespeare or reading War and Peace in the original Russian…Sorry, it’s just I’m surrounded by so many gifted toddlers and preschoolers that, whenever I hear the word gifted, I get grumpy.I think my kids are brilliant. We all should think our kids are brilliant. I may just start saying they are gifted too….
>Again, the key word here, in all honesty, is not gifted. It’s FREE. 🙂
>Okay.I give you ‘free.’Free is good.
>OH! My son did this too! But, I thought for the longest time he was color blind. When he was a toddler he always said green was red (and red was red too.) Except, he slipped one day and said green was green. I looked at him and he just cracked up! What a little snot! He currently is in the gifted program (they put him in a K-1 class instead of just a Kindergarten class, next year will be a 1-2 class). Unfortunately, it’s a private school – and it’s not free. But, it’s a heck of an education. When the teachers tested him he was totally cool – I think he just likes to mess with me and his dad. Whatever. I think if kids can purposely screw up to be onery – and keep it straight it shows that they are smart.
>Wow, one of the easiest questions you’ve ever posed. The answer is simple. Simply un-unschool her. She’ll grow up knowing what’s what!My son,almost three, does the same thing, actually. “Where do you do your wees?” I ask. “Oh, on the floor,” he says. It took me a while to realise that he was kidding. Apparently having a sense of humour is a key indicator of intelligence. So never fear, Baby will get in, by a mile.
>I took the test when I was little. True, the parents don’t know any of the questions. When I took it, though, they did share one question with my parents when it was over, because they thought the answer was cute. The asked me, “what’s a puddle?” and I answered, “It’s a piece of water on the ground”. And I got in – Gifted! Haha
>My almost four year old son has been saying "1-2-6-7-8" and the more we try to teach him the right way, he defys us. He knows the number three but he often defies direction of any sort! I was on him about potty training, and when I just acted as if I didn't care, he got it.