Spin off... if your child gifted?

[auntpoly]

Parents talk too much, and they also talk too little.

An example of talking too little, "Oh, I didn't think I needed to tell you my son is ADD and we take weekends off from his meds. You don't suppose that's why he's having trouble earning his green belt, do you?" *facepalm*

An example of talking too much, "My child is an Indigo Child. They're more creative and intense than other children and the rules don't apply to them. I don't see why she should have to spend time after class straightening up the dojo with all the other children. That's demeaning."

However, I don't think parents these days are any worse than they ever were (or any better!). We've been complaining about kids and their parents since the beginning of recorded history.

I respectfully disagree. My teacher friends in our grade schools tell a different story. They're older, and they've seen the shift towards helicopter parenting and refusing to let teachers discipline children. They tell me stories of not being able to correct children without parents rushing in to "defend" them. ("My child wouldn't have done that!")

It really wasn't like that when I was kid. If we were in trouble we DID NOT tell our parent - because then we'd be in trouble at home too. My parents may not have been involved enough, but I don't remember any parents coming in to talk about how "special" their kids were - unless they had real health or mental problems.

 

[MoonFaerie]

I respectfully disagree. My teacher friends in our grade schools tell a different story. They're older, and they've seen the shift towards helicopter parenting and refusing to let teachers discipline children. They tell me stories of not being able to correct children without parents rushing in to "defend" them. ("My child wouldn't have done that!")

It really wasn't like that when I was kid. If we were in trouble we DID NOT tell our parent - because then we'd be in trouble at home too. My parents may not have been involved enough, but I don't remember any parents coming in to talk about how "special" their kids were - unless they had real health or mental problems.

See, my kids are gonna be in way more trouble for trying to hide things. We haven't had any discipline issues, at least yet, that required discipline outside the school's discipline/consequences, but you bet there would be at home consequences for lying. If they think I won't find out, well, they're in for a surprise. We went to school with and are friends with a bunch of the teachers in their school.

 

[Magpie]

I respectfully disagree. My teacher friends in our grade schools tell a different story. They're older, and they've seen the shift towards helicopter parenting and refusing to let teachers discipline children. They tell me stories of not being able to correct children without parents rushing in to "defend" them. ("My child wouldn't have done that!")

It really wasn't like that when I was kid. If we were in trouble we DID NOT tell our parent - because then we'd be in trouble at home too. My parents may not have been involved enough, but I don't remember any parents coming in to talk about how "special" their kids were - unless they had real health or mental problems.

I strongly recommend you borrow this book from your library and read it. The research should interest you.

Kids These Days: Facts and Fictions about Today's Youth, by Karen Sternheimer (http://karensternheimer.com/kidsthesedays.aspx)

My mother's a teacher, and for the last thirty-odd years she's been giving me the same old wheeze about how her students are getting worse. If it was a straight downward trajectory, by now we ought to be pretty much squatting on dung heaps picking flies off each other.

As far as I can tell, the students you had in the past are always better behaved, more attentive, and less trouble, than the students you have today. Always. And eventually you'll come to believe that the students you have today are better behaved than the ones you'll have tomorrow.

 

[Schmeck]

My late aunt taught in a gifted program for many, many years. It was her life! She never married, never had kids, she was really devoted to her career. She developed alternate curricula, got published a few times, traveled the world (places like China and the USSR, before they were open to most people) and studied many cultures and their ways of educating children. I was fortunate to inherit her semi-obsolete, yet fascinating, library.

She spent a lot of time observing my firstborn. Told me she would be bored by the first grade, that I had a very gifted little girl. I took that information to mean that I was gifted enough not to have to worry too much about the academia to come for my child. As a parent, I could focus on other important things like social skills, athletics and teamwork, penmanship(fail!), table manners (semi-fail) and fashion sense (uber-fail!!). Of course we still worked on academia, I just felt like she wouldn't ever struggle with that, so I had the luxury to do more about other things.

Second daughter also was 'gifted' academically - tested out of all the school testing, but I never felt the need to push her into more testing. When she got a bit cocky, I squashed that as quickly as I could. I explained that she was blessed that the way we teach in our schools just happens to be a way in which she can easily learn, and while others may not have that blessing, they have others. She just recently pointed out that the reason she has stuck it out in competitive dance for the past 7 years is that it doesn't come easily to her, and she likes the challenge. She'd tell you right out that she's the worst dancer in the company.

The gifted people out there are the ones who have made this world a better place - invented vaccines, alternate fuels, cancer treatments. Unless the 'Doogies' out there can come up for a cure for all cancers, global warming, war, overpopulation, CF, MS, ADD, ASD, MD, etc, then they are just people blessed with something they are good at, but that doesn't mean all that much to me. Who cares if they are a PhD at age 14, if they don't do something useful with it.

 

[golfgal]

I strongly recommend you borrow this book from your library and read it. The research should interest you.

Kids These Days: Facts and Fictions about Today's Youth, by Karen Sternheimer (http://karensternheimer.com/kidsthesedays.aspx)

My mother's a teacher, and for the last thirty-odd years she's been giving me the same old wheeze about how her students are getting worse. If it was a straight downward trajectory, by now we ought to be pretty much squatting on dung heaps picking flies off each other.

As far as I can tell, the students you had in the past are always better behaved, more attentive, and less trouble, than the students you have today. Always. And eventually you'll come to believe that the students you have today are better behaved than the ones you'll have tomorrow.

How much time have YOU spend in a school these days and yes, things HAVE gotten worse, even since I was in high school--oh wait, that was close to 30 years ago . It isn't so much that the kids are ALL that much worse, what the problem is is the attitude of the PARENTS has done a complete 180 and want used to be the kid's fault is now ALWAYS the fault of the teacher/school somehow. A kid fails an assignment-it's the teacher's fault because she didn't get clear enough directions--it's no longer the kids' fault because he didn't LISTEN in class. If a child gets in trouble in class it is the teacher's fault because "my child would not act like that"--even though they have no idea how their child acts away from them and most kids do NOT act the same in school as they do at home...(not that it is all bad-a lot of talkative kids at home never say a word in school, for example).

 

[Magpie]

How much time have YOU spend in a school these days and yes, things HAVE gotten worse, even since I was in high school--oh wait, that was close to 30 years ago . It isn't so much that the kids are ALL that much worse, what the problem is is the attitude of the PARENTS has done a complete 180 and want used to be the kid's fault is now ALWAYS the fault of the teacher/school somehow. A kid fails an assignment-it's the teacher's fault because she didn't get clear enough directions--it's no longer the kids' fault because he didn't LISTEN in class. If a child gets in trouble in class it is the teacher's fault because "my child would not act like that"--even though they have no idea how their child acts away from them and most kids do NOT act the same in school as they do at home...(not that it is all bad-a lot of talkative kids at home never say a word in school, for example).

I dare you to read the book.

 

[golfgal]

I dare you to read the book.

What makes her right and MILLIONS of school teachers wrong

Based on the synopsis of the book--it does not address that parental factor I talked about either....

 

[Magpie]

What makes her right and MILLIONS of school teachers wrong

Based on the synopsis of the book--it does not address that parental factor I talked about either....

The book contains a lot of interesting statistics and research around youth and the perception of youth, particularly from a historical perspective. And children are the direct result of their parenting. Ipso facto and so on.

Also, teachers are right in the thick of it, which doesn't allow them much in the way of a dispassionate, balanced, broad viewpoint.

I dunno how you've personally talked to MILLIONS of school teachers, but I can tell you I grew up on a campus. My mother is a professor. Many of her friends are teachers. The thing is... that teacher can be 85 years old, or she can be 20. But they ALL complain about kids and their parents being so much worse "these days".

That's why I think they're wrong. I think they're too close to the present problem and they're falling for that natural human tendency to gloss over problems in the past.

"Wait, so you taught in a one room school house and the previous school teacher before you had been murdered? And the kids everyone knew did it were still in your class!??"

"Kids these days! They don't respect authority like they used to!"

"Uh, yeah."

 

[Schmeck]

Actually, in the not so distant past, schools were allowed more leeway to expell, suspend, basically, get rid of, problem kids. Don't forget we locked a lot of special needs kids up in institutions until just a few decades ago. Even Joseph Kennedy was pressured into approving a lobotomy for his one 'different' daughter. So, yes, there was societal pressure and societal permission to keep kids 'in line'. You'd not only get in trouble at school, you'd get it from your parents as well, at least in my extended family.

I've been in the education system as a student, assistant, tutor, substitute, etc, for almost 40 years. I've never been the one needing to contact a parent about a situation that I was involved in, so I feel like I can be a somewhat unbiased observer. Parenting in general has gotten to the point where there is a line of war drawn between the parents and the teachers. Schools have been given the responsibility of teaching so many social things, and yet they get no support from a lot of the parents. I've been in IEP meetings where social goals are demanded by the parents, and the parents refuse to follow through at home. ***?

Kids come in with their basic needs unmet, and parents expect the schools to fill in the gaps. Teachers and staff bend over backwards to try to help kids, and the parents either demand more, or get hostile when support isn't given at all times.

Here's a question for older posters - if a student was caught selling drugs, armed with a weapon, arrested for assualt, etc, would he or she have been expelled? When I was in high school, the answer was a resounding YES, and no one would question it. If a student became pregnant, that student dropped out of high school (at least during the pregnacy) not because she wanted to, but because the parents were horrified and scooted her away to 'an aunt's house'. Society was different a few decades ago, as was the parenting.

 

[HelenePA]

Actually, in the not so distant past, schools were allowed more leeway to expell, suspend, basically, get rid of, problem kids. Don't forget we locked a lot of special needs kids up in institutions until just a few decades ago. Even Joseph Kennedy was pressured into approving a lobotomy for his one 'different' daughter. So, yes, there was societal pressure and societal permission to keep kids 'in line'. You'd not only get in trouble at school, you'd get it from your parents as well, at least in my extended family.

I've been in the education system as a student, assistant, tutor, substitute, etc, for almost 40 years. I've never been the one needing to contact a parent about a situation that I was involved in, so I feel like I can be a somewhat unbiased observer. Parenting in general has gotten to the point where there is a line of war drawn between the parents and the teachers. Schools have been given the responsibility of teaching so many social things, and yet they get no support from a lot of the parents. I've been in IEP meetings where social goals are demanded by the parents, and the parents refuse to follow through at home. ***?

Kids come in with their basic needs unmet, and parents expect the schools to fill in the gaps. Teachers and staff bend over backwards to try to help kids, and the parents either demand more, or get hostile when support isn't given at all times.

Here's a question for older posters - if a student was caught selling drugs, armed with a weapon, arrested for assualt, etc, would he or she have been expelled? When I was in high school, the answer was a resounding YES, and no one would question it. If a student became pregnant, that student dropped out of high school (at least during the pregnacy) not because she wanted to, but because the parents were horrified and scooted her away to 'an aunt's house'. Society was different a few decades ago, as was the parenting.

Students these day get kicked out of school for having tylenol! Mine aren't even allowed to have "medicated" chapstick because it says medicated on it!! Where did all the common sense go!?! Heck if a kid comes up and punches one of my kids first and mine swings back mine also gets suspended...they are just supposed to stand there and take what ever the other kid does to them! I'm not older I'm only 32 so I'm not sure about the pregnancy and stuff.. there was only one person in my small class who had a child while still in hs... actually she had 3 none of us knew she was pregnant any of the times either... one day she'd be there the next week she'd be gone.. she managed to keep all 3 pregnancies hidden from the whole school (not sure about teachers)

 

[Magpie]

Here's a question for older posters - if a student was caught selling drugs, armed with a weapon, arrested for assualt, etc, would he or she have been expelled? When I was in high school, the answer was a resounding YES, and no one would question it. If a student became pregnant, that student dropped out of high school (at least during the pregnacy) not because she wanted to, but because the parents were horrified and scooted her away to 'an aunt's house'. Society was different a few decades ago, as was the parenting.

Depends what school you went to, just like today. My mother was an army brat and got to see many different schools. There was one she went to in Oklahoma in the 1950's that was so crime and drug ridden that she wouldn't go to the bathroom all day. It was blue with marijuana smoke in there, and she knew she'd be assaulted if she set foot inside it.

To Sir With Love was a semi-autobiographical novel by E.R. Braithwaite written in 1959, and described similar issues with drugs, assault, weapons, etc... and those kids could not be expelled, either. (The movie toned it down a lot!)

To quote the book I recommended earlier:

(Following on from some statistical analysis...)


In spite of the fact that schools became safer in the 1990s and early 2000s, many parents erroneously believe that schools are now more dangerous and drug-filled than ever. A 2003 AARP study of baby-boom parents thirty-nine to fifty-seven years old compared their experiences in public school with their perception of their children's experiences. The problems that many parents believe are worse today are often the same or better than they were for the classes of 1973-1982.

For instance, 70 percent of those parents surveyed said drugs and alcohol are a big concern today, with 26 percent reporting that the problem is worse now than when they were in high school. Only 25 percent said the drugs and alcohol were big issues in their high schools. According to Monitoring the Future, a University of Michigan-based study that has tracked high-school trends since 1975, over 90 percent of seniors in 1975 reported drinking alcohol at least once. By 2003, that number had declined to less than 77 percent. During peak drinking years, 1978-1984, the rate hovered around 93 percent. Likewise drug use peaked between 1979-1985, when over 60 percent reported having experimented with an illegal drug. By 2003 that percentage declined to 51 percent, down from 1975 levels of 55 percent. Use of marijuana, the most frequently used illegal drug peaked between 1977 and 1983, when over 55 percent of high school seniors reported they had tried it at least once. By 2003 that number was down to 46 percent, about the same as the 47 percent reporting marijuana use in 1975.

More than half (54 percent) of baby-boom parents reported that violence and safety are big problems today, while just 7 percent said the same was true in their high-school days; 20 percent felt that the problem had gotten worse. Monitoring the Future tracked school violence from 1976 to 1996 and found that the percentage of students injured in school with a weapon was flat for the twenty-year period, remaining under 10 percent, with peaks in 1981 and 1986. The percentage injured without a weapon also remained around 10 percent, peaking in the mideighties as well.

As far as "kids were punished more harshly in my day!" there's a whole section on the modern "zero tolerance" policies.

While it's true we're less ashamed of teen pregnancy (and that's a good thing, imo!), we are FAR more likely to expel kids for relatively minor, non-aggressive offences than we ever were before.

Once upon a time we'd have thought it ridiculous to throw a kindergartener out of school, or assign him to a special school for "troubled youth", simply because he brought a butter knife to school in his lunchbox.

 

[golfgal]

The book contains a lot of interesting statistics and research around youth and the perception of youth, particularly from a historical perspective. And children are the direct result of their parenting. Ipso facto and so on.

Also, teachers are right in the thick of it, which doesn't allow them much in the way of a dispassionate, balanced, broad viewpoint.

I dunno how you've personally talked to MILLIONS of school teachers, but I can tell you I grew up on a campus. My mother is a professor. Many of her friends are teachers. The thing is... that teacher can be 85 years old, or she can be 20. But they ALL complain about kids and their parents being so much worse "these days".

That's why I think they're wrong. I think they're too close to the present problem and they're falling for that natural human tendency to gloss over problems in the past.

"Wait, so you taught in a one room school house and the previous school teacher before you had been murdered? And the kids everyone knew did it were still in your class!??"

"Kids these days! They don't respect authority like they used to!"

"Uh, yeah."

I DARE you to read my post where I said that the kids aren't all that much worse but the PARENTS are....

 

[HelenePA]

OMG I was so afraid to send my kids to school with any types of spoons, or forks in their lunches!! I was sure they'd be calling the cops on them for having weapons.. and no I"m not joking!

 

[golfgal]

OMG I was so afraid to send my kids to school with any types of spoons, or forks in their lunches!! I was sure they'd be calling the cops on them for having weapons.. and no I"m not joking!

And the policy, most likely, is from some whack job parent calling the school because little precious Johnny told her that Timmy had a KNIFE in school-which she imagined to be a machete when it fact it was a plastic knife so he could spread peanut butter on his bread for lunch....

 

[Magpie]

I DARE you to read my post where I said that the kids aren't all that much worse but the PARENTS are....

Where do kids come from? Surely not the cabbage patch...

Not to mention, it's just moving the problem back a generation. So what if it's "parents these days", not "kids these days"? It's still basically the same complaint.

A little more from that book...

As long as there have been youth there have been people complaining about them. According to one observer in 1818, "parents have no command over their children." Nearly two hundred years later, a 1999 CBS News/New York Times poll found that 91 percent of adults said that teens today need more supervision, and 86 percent said that parents watch their kids less today then when they were teen.

I double dog dare you to read it.

 

[golfgal]

Where do kids come from? Surely not the cabbage patch...

Not to mention, it's just moving the problem back a generation. So what if it's "parents these days", not "kids these days"? It's still basically the same complaint.

A little more from that book...

As long as there have been youth there have been people complaining about them. According to one observer in 1818, "parents have no command over their children." Nearly two hundred years later, a 1999 CBS News/New York Times poll found that 91 percent of adults said that teens today need more supervision, and 86 percent said that parents watch their kids less today then when they were teen.



I double dog dare you to read it.

Sure--put that quote into context to what they meant by "no command" in 1818 for 2011--in 1818 that meant a kid spoke to an adult without being first ASKED to speak, in 2011 that means a kid stands up in class and tells a teacher to F you because she told him to sit down and be quite (REAL LIFE example, happened to ME).

You are also missing the point---when I was in school--not in 1818 even--if I got into trouble my parents got called and I got in trouble at home first, then at school (not that I really got into trouble--but my brother did ). Now, if a child gets into trouble at school the parents are called and the parent rushes up to school, not to get the kid but to yell at the teacher because her child would never______________ . THAT is the difference. Parents--and you see this here on DIS DAILY, automatically take the side of the child and automatically assume the school/teacher was wrong-before getting both sides of the story--most of the time the child WAS wrong too.

Just wait a month when kids are all back in school and the posts that show up about my 4th grader got an F because he didn't do part of the assignment but it wasn't on the assignment sheet--nevermind that the directions were given ORALLY on PURPOSE as part of teaching kids to LISTEN to directions and not just READ them--HUGE intellectual leap that happens around 4th grade for kids. Then the parent wants to go to the school board because their child couldn't POSSIBLY get an F because he/she is an A student....

In our day our parents would have said "well, next time listen better".

 

[Magpie]

Sure--put that quote into context to what they meant by "no command" in 1818 for 2011--in 1818 that meant a kid spoke to an adult without being first ASKED to speak, in 2011 that means a kid stands up in class and tells a teacher to F you because she told him to sit down and be quite (REAL LIFE example, happened to ME).

You are also missing the point---when I was in school--not in 1818 even--if I got into trouble my parents got called and I got in trouble at home first, then at school (not that I really got into trouble--but my brother did ). Now, if a child gets into trouble at school the parents are called and the parent rushes up to school, not to get the kid but to yell at the teacher because her child would never______________ . THAT is the difference. Parents--and you see this here on DIS DAILY, automatically take the side of the child and automatically assume the school/teacher was wrong-before getting both sides of the story--most of the time the child WAS wrong too.

Just wait a month when kids are all back in school and the posts that show up about my 4th grader got an F because he didn't do part of the assignment but it wasn't on the assignment sheet--nevermind that the directions were given ORALLY on PURPOSE as part of teaching kids to LISTEN to directions and not just READ them--HUGE intellectual leap that happens around 4th grade for kids. Then the parent wants to go to the school board because their child couldn't POSSIBLY get an F because he/she is an A student....

In our day our parents would have said "well, next time listen better".

We'll have to respectfully agree to disagree on this. FWIW, though, "no command" involved a lot of drugs and drinking and staying out late partying. Even in 1818.

 

[dngnb8]

 

[HelenePA]

I think the bigger question here is... did they have golf is 1818

 

[princessmom29]

I dare you to read the book.

I have read it, and others that share that opinion. I still don't think they are correct. Sorry.