Accelerated (Gifted) kids are twice as difficult to discipline, because you always have to stop and think first. Are they trying to be difficult, smart aleck's or is it just the inconsistencies that are just difficult for them to accept. The only way i can tell which it is for sure is by having had long hours of converstation with my fourth grade son. i have learned to pay attention to the little idiosyncracies, a tilt of his head, his refusal to look me in the eye, his cheeky grins, they're all clues to my sons feelings and thoughts. thank goodness !
VW, my son has a particular wide eyed smile when it's just an inconsistency in something that he can not accept, or agree with. However, when he wants to be a smart aleck he usually doesn't smile at all and just gives me a bored and annoyed look. The latter usually occurs when i am having a conversation with another adult. He simply feels a need to be smart ( i have found that in him it is a plea for attention and approval) it's taken me a year to realize although he is accelerated he has little self esteem gifted or not.
What i have done is to remind him that it is disrespectful to correct me in front of other adults, and reassure him that while i do believe he is smart, this is showing off and it's never nice to show off. This is usually followed up with a time-out, my sons most dreaded form of punishment.
As far as accelerated classes go my fourth grader is taking them, this does not seem to give him a feeling of superiority,in fact it seems to have the opposite effect on him. his attending accelerated classes was not something we just agreed to, it took days of back and fourth discussions. what finally made us decide to go ahead with them was that by the time he was ready for fourth grade he began to get bored with regular classwork, he then began to ignore classroom assignments, he said what's the point they can't stop me from passing, my test scores are too high. if he was that bored now before even the fourth grade it wouldn't get better further on, this was DeJavu for me.
when i was in the sixth grade my parents were approached by my school regarding putting me in accelerated classes. my parents refused, they felt it would pressure me to grow up too fast. unfortunately that was the beginning of the end for me. by the seventh grade i was so bored with the same classwork as the year prior, i began to cut classes.
This is not the direction that i want for my children. furthermore, if i feel at any time that it is too difficult for them, our school system has given me the option to pull them out and have them put back into regular classes.
Although as a child i was considered accelerated, this gives me no reassurance. my difficulties are that both my children, the youngest in preschool and the oldest in fourth grade, are both considered accelerated. however, they have very different personalities, my daughter has a poker face. so i will have to discover a totally different way of knowing.
