Frum school for gifted girl? Is there one?

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Forum -> Parenting our children -> Our Challenging Children (gifted, ADHD, sensitive, defiant)

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amother

Coffee

Fri, Jun 26 2015, 5:08 pm

I don't know if my dd is technically gifted but she is definitely brighter than the other kids her age. She is young for her class but academically at the top. socially/developmentally she has some issues that are really very likely to resolve smoothly, she's getting some help and doing well, but I don't think it's so good for her to keep pushing ahead with kids who are older and developmentally ahead of her. On the other hand I can't see holding her back because she is SO ready to move on academically I just don't think it's healthy to not nurture that part of her. And in our school, those are the choices: another year learning letters and numbers (which she knew already before starting LAST year but was fine anyway) or move on as the youngest and probably always be a little behind socially. And also maybe be pressured into things like sitting still in a desk for hours when she is really still young and especially with her mild special needs could use to move around more. And then she will have self esteem issues forever because of being pressured to go into a mold that she isn't ready for. I know I seem to be overdramatizing but I have seen these things happen to others. Help!

Currently in NY but may have option of moving at some point so any suggestions in USA welcome.

amother

Gray

Fri, Jun 26 2015, 5:25 pm

You're going to want a school that has accelerated learning programming, so that she is with her grade but pulled out for advanced math, reading, etc. Some schools have every grade do math at the same time, like 1:45-2:30 every day, and kids move classrooms to whatever grade suits them best.

This is very hard to find. Most schools use their money for resource/supportive services, not enrichment. Though you'll need that too for her social needs. Also, sometimes gifted kids find there is one subject they just can't get. My bright dd who everyone borrowed noted from needed a tutor for high school math.

Your best bet is usually going to be modern or middle of the road schools, because they have more money. Some of the Bergen County schools people tend to complain about tuition-wise do some of this. I know YNJ has some opportunities. I don't know enough about the others, or more out of town.

SplitPea

Sat, Jun 27 2015, 10:54 pm

If you would consider a more modern school I am thinking HALB in long island might be a good option. I know a few girls like your daughter who have gone there. Yes it is mixed until 5th grade but its moving more and more to the right every year. academically they can't be beat and they have so many enrichment programs that could keep her stimulated.

amother

Beige

Sat, Jun 27 2015, 11:22 pm

What are her mild special needs?

amother

Coffee

Sat, Jun 27 2015, 11:27 pm

So the thing is, theoretically I would consider more modern schools because I'm not such a fan of the super-yeshivish education system. But the only more modern schools that I have seen up close were just too modern for me, and I am pretty sure that among modern schools they are considered the more right-wing ones. So I don't know. I'm more the type for an open-minded out-of-town-ish all-inclusive school, I think. The school we currently send to is a little too frummy for my taste but I'm OK with that and the student body is more mixed so it all balances out. I consider that a better alternative to the more modern school which has a more robust program in some ways but as far as I know does not have any special enrichment for gifted kids in the younger grades, maybe after-school programs but I don't know of anything within the core academic program. Hashkafically and for what I want in a school for a regular kid the school we are currently in is excellent, I'm just not sure if it's the right fit for this particular situation. I'm talking about a kid who is on about the wavelength of a 3-4 year old socially but more like a 6-year-old academically in reading, writing, math, and general knowledge and thinking skills. Emotionally she's in that awkward zone of kids who don't innately have strong skills but have been worked on with therapists a lot so they know more coping skills than the average kid but their nature is still struggling - since I'm posting in the "challenging children" forum I'm going to assume that many of you know what I mean! So in our current placement, I think their main approach is to keep the kid moving with her age group academically and have counseling and special ed support for the missing skills. I just don't know if that will be a happy solution for her in the long run. For now I'm going with it but it's giving me such anxiety that I'm already looking for what the next step will be if this year doesn't go well.

I could look into HALB, thanks SplitPea. The problem is that I don't think Long Island is going to be possible for us. When I said we are going to be considering moving out of NY someday I meant to someplace with a lower cost of real estate and a lower standard of living... from what I've seen I doubt Halb fits that bill... Amother, what is this YNJ like? How modern is it?

amother

Coffee

Sat, Jun 27 2015, 11:46 pm

amother wrote:

What are her mild special needs?

The social/emotional/behavior difficulties. It is not a major problem but earlier this year - she then got help for it and improved a lot but I expect things to keep cropping up because I was somewhat similar as a child - there were a lot of complaints that she didn't follow directions, had outbursts when things didn't go her way, some transition difficulties like taking a long time to start a task - which is the kind of thing that if they're saying it in kindergarten is definitely not going to be a good thing in higher grades where there is more independent work. We don't have a diagnosis yet but are in the process and I would not be surprised to hear ADHD or high-functioning ASD (only because Asperger's isn't a thing anymore; I am pretty sure she does not fit autism criteria and yet she has so many characteristics similar to Asperger's)

She has friends in her class now because they are young and not that hard to please and she is a really sweet kid overall, but she is definitely not what you'd call "with-it" and I worry that she will not be able to hold her own as the social scene gets more sophisticated. Between that and anyway being on the young end of the grade, I would much rather leave her back a year to give her more time to develop and be with kids who are more on the same level socially and emotionally. But I think that would just crush her because she just loves intellectual stimulation so much. At the beginning of the year at parent orientation the teacher was talking about the goals for the year, which included counting to 20 and knowing the letters of the alphabet, and I was inwardly rolling my eyes because at the time - almost a year ago - this child knew how to count to 100 by ones and tens with perfect 1:1 correspondence not just by rote, and not only knew the alphabet in English and Hebrew but knew all the letter sounds - a drop fuzzy on the vowels, OK - but was starting to try to combine them for both reading and writing (she had used my phone to write a text to DH that was definitely worthy of competing with teenage textspeak. missing lots of vowels and spaces but I was impressed. She was not yet 4, after all. In the middle of the year she asked me "Why are we learning about colors AGAIN, we did this in [preschool] last year!" (I pointed out that this year she was learning them in Hebrew, which she did not know yet. She accepted that.) So as much as philosophically I feel strongly that kids need time to develop socially and emotionally without pressure and with kids who are on the same level, I just don't think that repeating another year with the same curriculum (and whatever she didn't know before, like the Hebrew words, she now super-knows) is going to do anything for her. So I'm in a real bind with this.

amother

Denim

Sat, Jun 27 2015, 11:47 pm

My kids go to YNJ. Girls and boys are seperate from first grade. It's parent body is mainly right wing YU, with kids coming from Passaic and Monsey who are a bit more to the right than that, and some families a bit to the left. There is a color dress code in place, girls are required ton wear 3/4 sleeves starting in 4th grade. What specific questions do you have?

amother

Coffee

Sat, Jun 27 2015, 11:53 pm

amother wrote:

Thanks. For now that sounds comfortable enough to put it on my list of things to look into more when I get up to looking into things more! Do you know anything about their suitability for a kid like I've described? Would they be able and willing to work with this kind of situation - needing stimulating academics but a gentle, somewhat accommodating behavioral approach and possibly a younger class placement compared with the academic level?
Also, what is the tuition situation like and is there any room for negotiation? We are hopefully temporarily in a tight spot that might take a few years to grow out of. We currently receive a tuition discount but we intend to try to pay it back as soon as we're able to (though that might take even longer since when you make more you need to pay full tuition for THOSE years, so there is less left over to pay back old stuff... sigh, story of nearly everybody's life these days, right? But we hope...)

amother

Denim

Sun, Jun 28 2015, 12:05 am

I have found them to be pretty good about working with you. I really like the director of special services. They don't really seperate the classes based on age, but there is a range in each class of older/younger. Some teachers are better with certain types of kids than others. There is enrichment for reading and math, and the all teachers generally try to use a differentiated instruction model. Here in NJ the cutoff is October 1st, I don't know if that changes anything for you in terms of where your daughter will fall in the grade.

amother

Coffee

Sun, Jun 28 2015, 12:12 am

amother wrote:

It does, actually. In NY the cutoff is the calendar year. But as I said I would be happy to have my kid with younger kids, as long as she can get the academic stimulation she needs. I think it would be more comfortable for her developmentally to be in a younger class, but academically she needs to be reading and writing and mathing already while the class younger than hers is just going to be starting the alef bais this year. Sigh.

amother

Seagreen

Sun, Jun 28 2015, 10:53 am

I was like your daughter, and the social issues have held me back in life. It would have been better for me to have been held back even though I was more advanced than the rest of the class. The class will even out more intellectually as they get older.

Just wanted to give that perspective. I have no advice on schools. Hatzlacha.

amother

Coffee

Sun, Jun 28 2015, 2:17 pm

amother wrote:

However, you only have one perspective. It's easy to imagine "what if" but you really don't know what would have happened "if." Maybe the social issues are just part of who you are and you would have ended up socially out of sync even in a class of younger kids, adding insult to injury, while also not being on the same academic wavelength. Maybe you would have had even more behavioral problems as you tuned out in classes that were too easy for you and never learned to tune back in in time when the pace sped up, leading to a downward spiral of negative behavior and academic underachievement. I have seen this happen. You can't know.

amother

Seagreen

Sun, Jun 28 2015, 5:30 pm

Of course I can't know, and I'm aware I'm one person. Chill. I gave op my perspective and she is an adult who can make her own decisions.

amother

Yellow

Sun, Jun 28 2015, 5:45 pm

Bais Yaakov of queens has a very challenging curriculum.

SplitPea

Sun, Jun 28 2015, 6:46 pm

I have a dd that is VERY similar to yours. We have chosen to homeschool because I could not find a school that would meet her needs. Inknow it's not a solution for everyone but it's working for us

Inspire

Sun, Jun 28 2015, 10:19 pm

My advice is to educate yourself as much as possible on gifted kids, and then you will be ready to advocate for your child with the school, nomatter where you end up. Strongly suggest reading books by James Webb:"Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnoses of Gifted Children and Adults" and visit the website sengifted.org

Bruria

Sun, Jun 28 2015, 10:20 pm

You could always supplement her academic needs at home. Go to the library often, take her to museums, stimulating her mind does not need to be exclusively at school.Plus, it's more fun for her that way, many children are gifted in one area but not in another, that way she can advance on what she likes at her own pace.

amother

Coffee

Sun, Jun 28 2015, 10:42 pm

SplitPea, I would love to hear more about your homeschooling choice, it's an idea I think about sometimes but I don't think we're good candidates for it. First of all we really need my income from a job which is not compatible with homeschooling, so to make it work would mean a total makeover of that part of life as well, which would probably be enough to push me over the edge with homeschooling responsibility on top of that. Secondly I think my personality is not a good match to be the one homeschooling this child, I try my hardest to make it work during the times we do have together but I don't think all day every day would be a good shidduch. And third if she already has social difficulties, I don't know how I could provide her with a social life when every other kid in our area goes to school most of the day and gets to know each other there. Sounds like an even bigger disadvantage.

Inspire thanks for the book suggestions. I really don't know if my DD would qualify as gifted by official measures. She is very very smart and definitely among the top of her peers but not THAT far ahead. I mean, she's not one of these kids you hear about who's reading books at 2 and solving calculus in first grade. She's just very very smart, and if she's very smart among kids who are in her year and mostly older then I imagine she'd be a total egghead among kids who are in the year younger than her.

Bruria in theory that's a cute idea but in reality kids are in school about 3/4 of their life. You wake up and focus on getting to school, then you spend the whole day at work and if you're lucky like me you get back in time to get them home from school, they need an after-school snack and by then it's nearly suppertime. You maybe have an hour in which you could do some kind of enrichment but certainly not a museum trip, and after a whole day "on" with the social and behavior scene what they want is to chill out not to engage. So they do some chilling out, and then it's time to start winding down and doing supper and bedtime. If anything, the fact that she learned so much reading and writing and math skills amid that kind of schedule the whole last year is testament to how smart she is because I certainly wasn't trying to teach her any. She is just a sponge. If anything, I am not one to hold anyone back but I definitely hold myself back from trying to teach her extra things because I don't want to ruin it for her when she learns it in school. So I let her be the leader - if she asks, I answer, but I don't do anything to try to stretch her further.

I have not noticed any "giftedness" in any particular area such as a talent, hobby, interest, science, or any of that. But she is great with language and early reading, writing, and math skills as well as just understanding stuff in general and problem-solving. For example we were discussing people's ages randomly today (a relative had a baby so we got to talking about how much older this baby is than that one...) and she said "Rochel is a week younger than me. That means I was born a week before her." Just figuring out what things mean with nobody telling her. Or, when counting sefirah "Today is 29. We are counting to 49. 29, 49. They end the same! 29. 39. 49." and I asked her how many days are in between, and after barely a moment of thought and not looking at any number chart or anything she came up with that there are 10 from 29 to 39 and from 39 to 49 and that means that there are 20 days left in all which means there are 21 days until a family member's birthday that is on Shavuos. So, I think this stuff is definitely in the realm of normal smart and not einsteinian, but the other kids her age are not thinking these things at all, as far as I can tell. Counting by tens and definitely counting on by tens with other digits in the ones is way near the end of first grade curriculum, and we're talking here about repeating PRE-K. What do you do with something like that?!

rosenbal

Sun, Jun 28 2015, 11:50 pm

Is she your oldest OP? You have less of a point of reference then. She really sounds gifted. She doesn't have to have Einstein's IQ to be officially labeled as gifted. The examples you gave of her point in that direction.

Unfortunately our schools are generally not set up well to accommodate gifted children as much as they do children with LD. It's an issue in many school systems, not just frum schools...

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