School Report - what is criteria for marking and comments

[sushee]

My son was considered gifted. At 8 years of age, he was assessed as having the vocabulary of a 24yo. He also was in the top 1% of students in creative writing in year 5 nationally. Born in December, he was almost always the youngest in his class, but his teachers in grade 1 wanted him to skip a year. But because he was born so late in the year, we decided it was too much pressure on him to be away from kids his own age (and that was our decision, no reflection on yours) so he didn't skip.

He is 16 now and often talks about how his dad (my XH) put too much pressure on him as a child to excel. He was known in his school for being the 'smart' kid, so he had to work extra hard to be accepted. He also was given extra work by XH during the school holidays and after school (my DD too), and was expected to top his class each and every time. When he sat his test for entry to the Gifted and Talented Program in year 5, he did so while wracked with fever and sick from the flu, because he could not bear the thought that his big sister had gotten in but not him. And when he didn't get in, he cried for days. When he was later accepted on the recommendation of his teacher and the principal, he felt cheated for not having done it the 'right' way - he felt humiliated that his friends and this family might have thought less of him. This is despite the fact that his teacher called him a prodigy, and said he was easily one of the most gifted children he had ever taught.

Yet now he shows no signs of being above average. He's smart, yes, and incredibly witty, but he dropped out of high school to study Art in Tafe. He also caused me untold amounts of anguish when he hit puberty too, becoming incredibly rebellious, pushing the boundaries more than most kids, because he was clever - too clever sometimes. I still feel sad at all that potential being wasted, but he often tells me he feels like he's living the life he wants to live, not the life we wanted him to live, and as hard as it is for me to accept, I understand that he's happy.

He says being smart felt like a burden, and I know that I too perhaps didn't have to skills to deal with a gifted child, thinking the best thing for him was to allow his dad to push him to be the best he could be. Because as parents, that's what we want - for our kids to live to their fullest potential. But somewhere along the way, it felt to him like our love was conditional on him being the brightest and the smartest. That if he wasn't the best, then he wasn't good enough for us.

Now our natural instinct is to push, we are parents who want the very best for our kids, But it's sooo much pressure on them to have their parents, their friends and their community expect them to deliver each and every time. I completely get why your son was crying - his whole identity is wrapped up in what people see him to be, and not living up to it is difficult for him to accept. Perhaps as his parent, this is what you should be focussing on - helping him accept that he is more than just a gifted child, that that is only one part of who he is. I don't doubt that you have his welfare at heart, but even as parents, we cannot possibly know how our children's minds work, and we have to expect that we too need to learn how to balance their intellectual and emotional needs. You sometimes don't see the signs that something is out of balance until it's too late, but I do believe your son crying over his report card is a glaringly obvious sign that you need to redress the balance.

JMO, though, and you can take it or leave it. Like I said I can see the mistakes I made in hindsight, so feel like those hard lessons I have learnt might help you too. I wish I had known better, or even been more watchful, back then when my son was young, perhaps I would have sought to develop the skills I needed to deal with his gift in a way that nurtured all of him, and not just one aspect of him.