Living in a bubble with my children?

[Spring Flower]

First off, we live in a very well educated community with decent pubic schools. We have full day Kindergarten and red shirting is expected for young 5 year olds.

 

I was recently in a conversation with a bunch of moms during DD's dance class. One mom pulls her DD out half day for kindergarten and does math (which is usually taught in the afternoon) at home with her. Another mom is a volunteer in the afternoons during math time in the same class. The volunteer mom was telling everyone about how she was asked by the teacher to do an informal assessment of each of the children. The children were supposed to count as high as possible. 

 

At this point in the conversation I thought, "Wow! That would take forever to assess 26 children." DS5 once counted all the days on a calendar (365) and I'm sure he could go higher if he had the motivation. I realize he is very advanced at math but even my 1 year old can count to 20. 

 

Apparently, according to the mom who did the assessment, most children in the class were able to count to 29. One child only made it to 13, a few only made it to 20, and one made it to 39. I about died when she told us that! I did what I could to disguise my shock. The mom who pulls her daughter out half day said, "Good! DD can count to 29 so I know we are right on track." 

 

I realized I that I am living in a bubble with my children. Obviously I have NO CLUE what is normal academic development for young children. Anyone else feel this way sometimes?

[quark]

Not only were we living in said bubble, I also had no idea when schools were on holiday or that kiddos were not reading certain books at certain ages. One mom proudly told me her 8th grader was reading The Crucible and A Midsummer Night's Dream and I know she was disappointed when I just stupidly smiled at her.

 

Nowadays I just shrug it off as different strokes for different folks and move on. You do find yourself slowly sharing less and less about what your kids are doing though and that to me makes forums like these all the more precious.

[wapiti]

Yes.  Until now, when my sixth child who is in K can't get past 12 without making a mistake  :tongue_smilie:.  She messes up the teens, but then does ok after 20.  And "thirty" and "forty" sound the same coming out of her mouth, but that's more of a speech thing.  Kids have their own timetable...

 

Really, though, I can't recall whether counting to one hundred is a K or 1st grade skill - it's one or the other.

[quark]

Kids have their own timetable...

 

So true. :P My 12-year-old still can't climb monkey bars.

[sunnyday]

Really, though, I can't recall whether counting to one hundred is a K or 1st grade skill.

 

It's been an end-of-K skill since my kids have been in school, anyway.

 

My DS entered kindergarten not able to count past the teens. He left kindergarten understanding place value and counting above a thousand and doing three-digit addition. Advanced kids are often advanced from the start, but kindergarten is a time of developmental growth as well as foundational skills acquisition. Give the kiddos a break. There was a time that kindergarten meant coming in with a blank slate, and amazingly, most adults still managed to achieve that lauded counting-above-40 skill by the time they needed it to pay the mortgage. ;)

 

We're on-schedule in the kindergarten math workbook and currently working on "less than" and "greater than" concepts with groups of 3-8 objects, as well as counting with one-to-one correspondence for groups of 5-10 objects. The teacher really likes making the children write numbers to 40 for some reason, even though only about half of them are counting above 20, and some are struggling mightily with fine motor skills. (I was the parent who did the assessments this month, and also ran the math small groups this week.)

[amsunshine]

Yes.  Until now, when my sixth child who is in K can't get past 12 without making a mistake  :tongue_smilie:.  She messes up the teens, but then does ok after 20.  And "thirty" and "forty" sound the same coming out of her mouth, but that's more of a speech thing.  Kids have their own timetable...

 

Really, though, I can't recall whether counting to one hundred is a K or 1st grade skill - it's one or the other.

In our area schools, it's a first grade skill.

[Arcadia]

Really, though, I can't recall whether counting to one hundred is a K or 1st grade skill - it's one or the other.

Counting and writing to 100 is kindergarten. Counting and writing to 1000 by skip counting in 2s and 5s is 1st grade here. No one is retain though.

[Mike in SA]

I'm actually stunned.  That doesn't happen all that often.  :)

 

I was counting to one centillion (ok, not by ones).  Ds8, when he was in K, was given a 100th day of schooltask, to put 100 objects on a poster.  All the kids did it.  He did the first 100 digits of pi, in ancient Greek.  We're obviously still in our bubble.

[madteaparty]

only if you mean a reverse bubble, in that my little kid is behind the kids that are behind your kids ;)

 

[shawthorne44]

Yeah, I totally understand that.  I think even DD doesn't understand what other kids her age can do.  She is 4.5 and I know she is frustrated that she can't read as well as mommy and daddy.  

[Gil]

I don't think its so much as living in a bubble as it is just marching to the beat of your families own drum. Home life plays a huge role in child development. Parenting style plays a huge role, the personalities of the parents and the children play a huge role. Some kids are naturally curious about the world, others are more open to instruction but wouldn't seek it out unless they knew to do so. Others are naturally interested in only one or two things and thats fine too. There isn't anything wrong with not being able to count to 100 in the 1st half of K (or 1st) really. Some kids will start out knowing nothing and graduate at the top of the class, its not unheard of. Some people subscribe strongly to the idea of a slow start, others to a moderate pace, others to 10 minutes of academics a day, etc. Thats fine. Its all good.

 

 

[desertflower]

I'm actually stunned. That doesn't happen all that often. :)

 

I was counting to one centillion (ok, not by ones). Ds8, when he was in K, was given a 100th day of schooltask, to put 100 objects on a poster. All the kids did it. He did the first 100 digits of pi, in anciewownt Greek. We're obviously still in our bubble.

Wow. Your kids are really smart!

[desertflower]

Yes. I agree OP.

[SKL]

Doesn't surprise me.  Funny thing, my eldest's report card said she could count to something like 39 in the 1st quarter and then it said something like 7 or 17 in the second quarter.  I didn't really need a report card to tell me how high my kids can count, but I have learned not to put too much stock in those quick checks.

 

The goal for end of KG was 50.

 

When my kids were in KG, toward the end of the year, I visited what would be their 1st grade.  I mentioned that my youngest had been able to count to 100 (+)  for some time [since before KG started].  The 1st grade teacher said, maybe my kid could come and teach her first graders to do that.

 

When my kid sister was in KG, they only expected kids to go up to 10.  (I'm sure there were many who counted higher, but they didn't have to in order to pass KG.)

 

But because I have a kid who has challenges and tests about average, I am aware that my bright kid's achievements can't be used as any kind of benchmark for other kids.

[SKL]

Oh, I remember that I did ask about how my eldest's counting ability could have gone down so much from Q1 to Q2.  The teacher explained that they would use counters and count on (up to the # of counters) and the checker would write down the last correct number before which there was no pause, hesitation, etc.  So maybe in Q2 my kid got distracted, or paused to wonder whether the red counters should be included as well as the yellow or something.  Who knows.... :P

[1053]

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[Dmmetler]

I think it's more a case of "it's normal for you". 

 

I've found myself doing that. Having long involved conversations in full paragraphs with a 2 yr old at home, and then going into my classroom and lecturing on normal language development between 24-36 months and activities teachers/caregivers in this age group may use to support developing vocabulary and communications skills-and somehow, managing to keep two completely contrary views of "normal" in my head at one time. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[boscopup]

Yeah, this is why I had to consult online milestone charts and read what was expected in schools at various grades to see what was normal. If you'd asked any of my kids in K to count as high as they could, you'd be sitting there a LONG time. Both parents are mathy, so it's normal to us.

 

Likewise, when my oldest entered K reading at a mid 2nd grade level and they were still learning letters at the beginning of the year, I had to realize that most kids aren't reading upon entering K. In fact, several didn't start reading cvc words until mid-2nd semester. One of those kids ended up in the highest reading group in first grade, reading above grade level at that point.

 

The end of year K requirements at DS1's school were to count to 100, read cvc words, and read the K level Dolch sight words. They didn't hold kids back either. 3 of the 17 kids were not reading upon entering first grade.

[Mike in SA]

Wow. Your kids are really smart!

 

Maybe, but I never quite accept that.  DW and I both have mathematics degrees, so I don't expect mathematical normalcy with our kids -- they are forced to live with math nerds.

[kiana]

Maybe, but I never quite accept that.  DW and I both have mathematics degrees, so I don't expect mathematical normalcy with our kids -- they are forced to live with math nerds.

 

Nature and nurture go hand in hand. 

[eternalsummer]

I don't think its so much as living in a bubble as it is just marching to the beat of your families own drum. Home life plays a huge role in child development. Parenting style plays a huge role, the personalities of the parents and the children play a huge role. Some kids are naturally curious about the world, others are more open to instruction but wouldn't seek it out unless they knew to do so. Others are naturally interested in only one or two things and thats fine too. There isn't anything wrong with not being able to count to 100 in the 1st half of K (or 1st) really. Some kids will start out knowing nothing and graduate at the top of the class, its not unheard of. Some people subscribe strongly to the idea of a slow start, others to a moderate pace, others to 10 minutes of academics a day, etc. Thats fine. Its all good.

 

Yes, I think part of it is family culture/interests.  Many relatively bright kids (say IQ 120+, assuming you can measure it that early) could probably learn to count to 300 by age 4 if they were inspired to do so, or exposed to numbers early, or whatever.  Others may memorize/identify all the different makes and models of cars by the headlights at night (that's the kind I have), or know all the words to a very long beloved family song, or something. DD3 could say the greek alphabet at an early age 2 because her older sister was learning it, but once older sister stopped singing it DD3's interest waned; she is now 3 and prefers nursery rhymes, which she's memorized instead of greek.  I find nursery rhymes more pleasant to listen to anyway :)

 

Identifying a dodecagon as such vs identifying a 1994 Ford Taurus as such is, imo, more or less the same thing.  

[MotherGoose]

Isn't counting really just memorizing? It certainly is at first. The toddler learns to recite the numbers but can't put one object with the number 1, two with 2, etc. It's a developmental thing for most children. And the way we say the teens is confusing for many (most) children. Both of mine have written 21 for 12. I am pleased though, that my Ker can tell me how many tens are in the numbers and is getting an understanding of place value. Isn't that more important than memorizing how to say the numbers? IDK, I guess the OP's point was that some children really DO get all of this at a young age. And that's fine. It irritates me that it was once okay for 5 year olds to be able to count to 10 or 20 and now they have to count to 100 (or whatever). For many children, all that time spent memorizing rote counting sequences could have been better spent actually understanding what 21 means.

[IsabelC]

Yeah, I wouldn't put too much stock in counting. It's simply a matter of how much practice a kid has had. If a kid can't (or doesn't choose to on that day) count to x, it probably just means that the kid isn't particularly interested in counting, or the parents haven't particularly pushed it. (Or possibly they are well read parents who have decided to encourage subitizing instead of counting.)

 

What really struck me was firstly that the teacher asked a volunteer parent to assess the kids (even 'informally'), and secondly that the parent in question saw fit to gossip about the kids' performances during the assessment. That is inappropriate.

[raptor_dad]

Yes.  Until now, when my sixth child who is in K can't get past 12 without making a mistake  :tongue_smilie:.  She messes up the teens, but then does ok after 20.  And "thirty" and "forty" sound the same coming out of her mouth, but that's more of a speech thing.  Kids have their own timetable...

 

Really, though, I can't recall whether counting to one hundred is a K or 1st grade skill - it's one or the other.

 

DS8 who is doing 5th grade math has only recently resolved this... firtteen with either a 3 or 4...or... firty with a 3 or 4 was a common element of our math for a couple of years... he clearly didn't hear a difference so specified as needed... it has now resolved :)... Well before the 9yo threshold for more PS speech therapy...

[madteaparty]

What really struck me was firstly that the teacher asked a volunteer parent to assess the kids (even 'informally'), and secondly that the parent in question saw fit to gossip about the kids' performances during the assessment. That is inappropriate.

No kidding. I'm trying to picture the adult conversation on how far the kids can count and just... Can't.

Also, I can't say I've ever counted past 20 with my DD3. I mean it never came up.

[shawthorne44]

Maybe, but I never quite accept that.  DW and I both have mathematics degrees, so I don't expect mathematical normalcy with our kids -- they are forced to live with math nerds.

 

I don't remember where I heard this.  It was a story told by someone on a plane listening to another passenger quiz his small child on the name of certain colors.  For one the kid answered "Green", the father said, "No, that is chartreuse."  The father was an artist and chartreuse was not green for the same reason it was blue.  It just wasn't.  

 

I don't know why but our DD has always wanted to know how many things there were.  I remember many times going down the library steps with her when she was so small I had to stoop to hold her hand, and she'd count the steps as she went down.  For a long time she could count to 26 or 27 and no more, because that was how many steps there were.  

[Tsuga]

The PBS development tracker gives clear, accurate norms of understanding for early childhood. Common Core standards give clear, specific expectations for normal areas of knowledge for school-aged children.

 

You're going to be stuck in your bubble anyway, but you might as well know what is actually statistically normal so you won't pooh-pooh legitimate brags.

[Tanikit]

I don't know - maybe everyone is in a bubble - even those who are supposedly average may not know what average is? I have spoken to numerous parents of grade 1 children and what I have realised is that even though some of them go to the same type of schools (or even the same school) their abilities vary. And when it comes to non-academic skills they vary even more wildly - watching at our gym class and having seen the list of the children's ages in each level there is great discrepancy there and not only from starting at different ages - some just take longer to get the same skills. We have public school, private school and homeschooled kids sitting at late gym classes doing homework and it is very interesting to see what they are all doing and also how the parents react to how their child is managing. 

 

Personally though - if a parent is saying their child did something "great" we probably should say: "That sounds great" - maybe the child really struggled and even though they are behind the average, the hard work put in is worth praising. What is it that is important to praise or brag about - I would imagine that a certain amount of wise decision making and also some perseverance from my child would come high on my list (I'll probably need reminding that I said this some day).

[quark]

DD3 has been picking things up by osmosis (we don't teach anything) and recently made this counting effort that was wrong but logical

...

twenty eight

twenty nine

twenty ten

twenty eleven

twenty twelve... :)

 

When DS8 was about two he said

one hundred and two

one hundred and one

one hundred

fifty nine

fifty eight

fifty seven

...

It turns out he was "learning" to count backwards by watching the microwave. :)

Oh my, your children are so adorable. :001_wub:

[Arcadia]

At this point in the conversation I thought, "Wow! That would take forever to assess 26 children." DS5 once counted all the days on a calendar (365) and I'm sure he could go higher if he had the motivation.

In public school, these "tests" are usually 2-3 mins per kid. Most kids would stop before the time is up. If the child is still counting, the teacher might just out of interest see when the child would stop, or just write down that the child reach whatever number before time ran out.

His kindergarten teacher was given a week to do and finish testing which was done at the start of school year.

 

My kid's kindergarten teacher went through all his testing results at the first teacher conference which was 30-45 mins long and can go into overtime.

 

I'm living in a bilingual bubble, kids will happily count in their native languages as well :lol:

A mother was helping her child with public shool math homework at the library and she explained everything in Korean :)

 

I think everyone has the right to brag if they want to. What is easy for one person might be hard for another. You can always walk away.

 

ETA:

My district hires substitute teachers for three of the testing days so the main teacher can concentrate on one to one testing. They test three times a year for K-5 (trimester system), two times a year for 6-8th (semester system).  I don't know about high school as my older went to a K-8 public school.  Its a basic aid district (funded by property tax).

[IsabelC]

I think everyone has the right to brag if they want to. What is easy for one person might be hard for another. You can always walk away.

 

Yes, absolutely! And anyway, it's not always so much bragging as simply taking pleasure in our children's achievements, whatever these may be. (I for one am very proud of my son because he is now 'only' half a year behind in his math!)

 

But yes, developmental tracker is useful for those of use who don't always even know what city the ballpark is in, so to speak.

[IsabelC]

I don't remember where I heard this.  It was a story told by someone on a plane listening to another passenger quiz his small child on the name of certain colors.  For one the kid answered "Green", the father said, "No, that is chartreuse."  The father was an artist and chartreuse was not green for the same reason it was blue.  It just wasn't.  

 

 

Love this story! And I have to confess that I do try to encourage the kids to use color terms like cerulean, lime and mauve sometimes instead of ones like blue, green and purple. Although sometimes you end up in weird debates such as what, precisely, is the difference between terracotta and burnt sienna.

[Crimson Wife]

I remember being shocked at reading a statistic when my oldest was little that only 3% of entering K students can decode and only 1% can read fluently. Where I was living at the time, it was about half entering K reading and the other half not. I knew that my DD reading chapter books entering K was ahead of the curve, but I didn't realize that even being able to read a BOB book put a kid very much in the minority in this country.

 

My little one was not yet decoding when she started K (she can now do it S-L-O-W-L-Y) and the teacher was just happy that she knew all her letters and their sounds.

[Dmmetler]

In my case, it's never been considering other kids to be behind when they were average. I know what "Average" looks like, and I know what the tail end of "average" looks like. I'll happily applaud a cute little 6 yr old who brings a BOB book to read to me, or praise a 5 yr old who counts to 20 and substitutes eleventeen for seventeen.

 

But it has kind of been a "Dragging me kicking and screaming" to accept that DD really is substantially above average.  Boards like this are great for supporting that minor delusion, because she IS behind some of the other kids her age here in various areas (9 yr old doing AOPS algebra doesn't seem a big deal when there are kids doing it at 7). So, for me, it wasn't a big deal that my preschooler was demanding to go to the college library for more books on paleontology, because, after all, all kids like dinosaurs, right? It wasn't until I had test data in my face that my 4 yr old was reading and comprehending post-high school level content that it hit me that, yeah, I suppose she is reading at a different level than most kindergartners and that maybe a grade skip and going up to a higher grade level for reading might not be enough to keep her from being totally miserable.

 

 

[sunnyday]

What really struck me was firstly that the teacher asked a volunteer parent to assess the kids (even 'informally'), and secondly that the parent in question saw fit to gossip about the kids' performances during the assessment. That is inappropriate.

 

IMO this, too, is a kind of bubble. :) In my kids' reality, a single teacher with 15-25 kids and no aides who has about 12 hours per week most weeks to get the children ready for first grade, isn't going to get everything she needs done if she doesn't delegate some stuff to classroom volunteers.

[Spring Flower]

 

But it has kind of been a "Dragging me kicking and screaming" to accept that DD really is substantially above average.  

 

I think this has been my problem.

[kiwik]

An assessment for counting seems ok for volunteers but not a readimg test or maths strategies test.

[LaughingCat]

I don't think you can compare an 'informal test' by a relative stranger to your DS counting high on a calendar at home.   The whole choice thing matters, the DC being tested isn't doing it because they want to just then and there's plenty going on to distract them  too.  Plus, the fact that she is a part time volunteer vs. full time teacher will affect some kids.  And assessments are generally looking for mistakes, not looking for success -- so one little bobble/distraction and you're done even if you could have done the rest of the numbers quite high.     

 

And that's completely ignoring that kids that age are pretty wide spread developmentally - some kids are just going to be earlier and some kids later.

 

[SKL]

Were the kids just blabbing out the numbers, or were they actually counting objects (one to one correspondence)?  Big difference.

 

If they were just counting objects, the # they reached would obviously be limited to the number of objects provided to count.  If the goal was 39, they might have only put out 39 counters, so kids who could count up to "googleplex squared" (as my kids were fond of saying at 5/6) would score 39 max.  (And so what?  Is this a problem?)

[Kerileanne99]

I do not think that what a random volunteer assesses in a few minutes accurately conveys what a child knows in the least--it is just a screening tool.

In her 3-yr-old preschool last year dd was asked to count as high as she could, to which she apparently responded "by what?" The teacher asked her what she could count by and dd proceeded to loudly demonstrate...even by cubes until teacher got smart and cut her off.

 

On the other hand, when asked to point to her shoulders dd sort of slapped in the general vicinity of her upper arm. When the teacher handed me her 'report card' with this apparent deficiency, I sort of internally rolled my eyes...until I asked Alex to show me and she did the same thing. I couldn't understand it! We had been playing the Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes game in 4 languages! Huh?

Apparently in my zest to entertain her by going faster and faster, *I* was clearly not very precise with where I was pointing!☺

[Nart]

I don't think you can compare an 'informal test' by a relative stranger to your DS counting high on a calendar at home. The whole choice thing matters, the DC being tested isn't doing it because they want to just then and there's plenty going on to distract them too. Plus, the fact that she is a part time volunteer vs. full time teacher will affect some kids. And assessments are generally looking for mistakes, not looking for success -- so one little bobble/distraction and you're done even if you could have done the rest of the numbers quite high.

 

And that's completely ignoring that kids that age are pretty wide spread developmentally - some kids are just going to be earlier and some kids later.

When my oldest was in kindergarten the teacher said he could only count to 41. It turns out that they had to put one cube in a bucket for each number they said. The day he was tested he came home annoyed the teacher didn't let him group cubes by 10's. he said it was silly to count by 1's when you could group them. So he might have picked up 2 blocks or gotten distracted because orally he could count to well into the 100's.

[Arcadia]

All of us indirectly live in a bubble because of area and regional differences. Here taking algebra at 6th grade in a public school is a possibility. In another area of California, that would be unthinkable without a gifted IEP.

 

Same for all the foreign languages offering in PS that I have in my area due to a demand for them. Elsewhere I heard only Spanish is offered.

 

It's hard to define normal or a baseline anymore.

The one thing I do like about my kids pediatrician even though we do argue is that he charts improvements instead of just ticking off milestones.

 

For the OP regarding testing, my older refuse to talk in kindergarten. His tests from the first day of kindergarten was mainly written. He reluctantly did the reading tests only for teachers :lol: He is also "fantastic" at flying under the radar (acting dumb). Testing results say nothing unless done properly and the tester has rapport with the child.

[Tsuga]

In my diverse district, its readily apparent that average depends on demographic. We have very very few kids that are '2's'...its a bimodal distribution of 'high 3s and 4s' mixed with '1s'.

 

Common Core does define average for children coming in as 1s. It does not define average for children of educated parents...its goals are lower and later than they need. CC is pushing families out of this area, because the district does not want to offer academics at their level of instructional need. They are quite blunt, telling parents to put their children in private school.  And the parents do.  Who needs to hear their Kinder lost recess again because he couldn't twiddle his thumbs all morning, waiting for the class to do something new to him? Or to hear he's been attacked because he was quietly sitting back reading his book, and didn't notice his frustrated classmate approaching, angered because he didn't win the race he views reading to be.

 

Have you looked at the Common Core curriculum? It describes a minimum, not a ceiling. If your school administrators can't comprehend that I seriously doubt your area is as educated as you think. Floor vs. ceiling. How hard is that to understand for them?

 

This is actually bringing home what you pointed out--that it's a bimodal distribution. What we have right now teaches to the ones in some areas, but the 3-4s in others, and often to the non-existent 2s. Common Core is taking the global standards for threes--"here is what a C looks like internationally" and saying, "This is our new minimum."

 

Most importantly, what kind of school district has children who are simultaneously so advanced in math they have nothing to learn in first grade, but are so emotionally ill-prepared that they are literally attacking their peers for reading books? That to me is not a consistent story.

 

You have the resources to have kids reading chapter books by K, but not the resources to teach emotional literacy? Patience, composure, kindness, these all have to be taught.

 

My child's class is advanced. They spend their extra days, having finished math challenge sheets early in the week, on extra science experiments and creating experimental music together. PROBLEM SOLVED. Maybe our kids aren't as advanced as yours but our teachers must be flipping geniuses! The other week, they built models of world architecture.

 

The Common Core Cops haven't come to arrest their teacher yet. Maybe he paid them off?

[Ausmumof3]

I am pretty sure my ker can't recite numbers to 100 yet. We've used the Singapore books and they focus more on understanding how the numbers and place value etc work. Also subitizing etc.

[urthmama]

I have not read all the replies - but wanted to chime in with my experience...

 

What you describe sounds like the world where I had my kids in public school - we were in the 3rd best performing district in California and our school's educational foundation raised about $7million/year from the parents alone for our very small district's enrichment activities, low class sizes, educational specialists, etc.  These kids are very wealthy kids with educated parents who give them every opportunity they can (including, I would say 85% of kids are redshirted) - pretty much every parent was volunteering in kinder (and if they weren't volunteering, their nanny was volunteering)...it was basically a private school experience in a public school setting.

 

and yet...

 

it did not work out for us! LOL.  We spent a lot of our resources trying to stay in that district because it was "so good" - and it is good, but when you have a child SO outside the norm academically, it was just not a good fit for us.

 

My first DD was in kinder and was reading at 6th grade level, and doing algebra at home...

 

then we decided to homeschool (and move to a less expensive school district, and lower performing district - bc since we were homeschooling, it didn't matter)...

 

and now DD#2 (who just turned 5) is reading at 6th grade level and excelling at chess, and math, and all these other subjects...

 

And while it's great - it's just really isolating, as well - because if I bring up their struggles to anyone (and they do have them) - then it makes me sound like a braggart - and people either don't believe me or want to compete with me.

 

So I just shut up about it to everyone I know IRL.  I didn't really want to homeschool - mind you, I moved to that other district specifically FOR the schools - and I have a career I would love to go back to - and I wish that would have worked out for us...but it didn't...

 

I don't know what to say except my kids do exist in a bubble.  My DD (now 8) is doing highschool science, reading, and thinks she is an average kid (she doesn't believe she is "smart" or not smart - she believes that her level of achievement is quite normal) - and same for my 5 year old.  My 5 year old assumes everyone can read like she can...and honestly, it doesn't come up much bc they don't interact with other kids academically anymore...all their activities are other things like gymnastics, piano, theatre, swim team, etc.

 

It is a really odd situation to be in - and one I feel like is really alienating bc there is a lot of ego involved in other parents, some kids, and just society in general surrounding giftedness and acceleration.  In a way, I think it would be AWESOME if my kids were at grade level in a regular school environment with typical peers.  

 

But what I found is that my child was always sort of singled out - like at the beginning of kindergarten, you were supposed to have a parent come read the book for you on your special day - and my daughter wanted to take in Little House on the Prairie (the book she was reading at home) and read a chapter herself - and it just made her seem freaky...so I felt like she always had to downplay/hide her gifts - and now that she's at home, she is "normal" for herself...

[1053]

.

[urthmama]

Subitizing? What on earth is subitizing? I've never heard of it! :confused1:

 

 

It's just knowing how many objects are in a group without counting...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subitizing

[Jackie]

Subitizing is just grouping numbers. Instead of counting to 7, you recognize it as 5+2. Instead of counting to 186, you recognize it as 100+80+6 or 100+50+30+5+1. It's a different way of teaching numbers and place values.

 

I understand what the OP is saying. It's not just a comparison or a commentary on what other kids know, it's forgetting that "my" normal is not "the" normal. I remember it on some things and don't talk about my daughter's reading level with others IRL. Then I trip and forget that her reading at all is unusual, even with picture books, or I play mental math games with her while waiting for gymnastics to start. It's not that I don't know what the average is, and I have education in child development, I just get so used to being around her that it is still a jolt sometimes when I'm reminded that other people notice her.

[Spring Flower]

It is a really odd situation to be in - and one I feel like is really alienating bc there is a lot of ego involved in other parents, some kids, and just society in general surrounding giftedness and acceleration.  In a way, I think it would be AWESOME if my kids were at grade level in a regular school environment with typical peers.  

 

 

Sounds like we do have a lot in common. 

[Spring Flower]

I understand what the OP is saying. It's not just a comparison or a commentary on what other kids know, it's forgetting that "my" normal is not "the" normal.

 

Yes! This is what I was getting at.