Preston has been driving us crazy with his constant need for attention and defiant behaviour. I think this is simply because we can't give him 100% attention all day long - for our sanity and also because we do need to get things done during the day. His behaviour issues seem to stem from boredom (he is far too clever and most things don't hold his attention for more than a minute) and tiredness (we fight a multi-hour sleeping battle every night, only to be rudely awoken very early in the morning).
So, since I can't get anything done at home usually, and my patience has been worn dangerously thin, I'm getting some help. Starting this week, I am having either a nanny or a high school aged babysitter come for a few hours each day to play with Preston! This will give me time to deal with Maxwell plus all the other things I need to do around the house, and hopefully it means I will be able to finish a job rather than being interrupted every 2 minutes! I have a nanny/preschool teacher starting next Friday who will come for the whole day. Preston also likes this idea because it means I'm taking him out of his daycare, which he no longer enjoys (all his friends left, including the good teachers, and now the remaining kids are either mean to him or are generally too young for him to play with properly).
I'm also enrolling him in an accelerate preschool class. For a long time many people (both friends and doctors etc) have told us that Preston could be 'gifted' and we should look at special schools for him. We have been pretty much against this idea as we don't want to label him or push him or whatever and figured we would wait until he is at school to see what additional educational needs he has. However with his boredom-triggered behaviour and persistent need to figure out how the world works, I've looked up the Small Poppies preschool after reading about it yesterday. Out of curiosity, I got their enrolment pack which had a series of questions relating to behaviour, mental and physical development and skills etc to help determine whether the child fits into their category. As I ticked nearly all the boxes on 2 pages of questions, it felt like they must have snuck in and monitored Preston for a while, because it very accurately described him!
So while we have been against the concept of sending him to a gifted school, it seems that it might actually be quite appropriate for him, and let's face it - since I'm having a constant battle with him, if there is a structured program that is designed to help, then it's worth a try. The preschool is only one morning a week, and I'm very curious to see what it is like.
I should mention though that we are extremely proud of Preston and his abilities - he is so amazingly clever and has the most interesting 'true' logic (unspoilt by decades of 'exceptions' to rules). When he is being good, he is such a lovely boy with perfect manners and a very caring nature. We spent the whole weekend pretty much giving him 100% attention and despite not getting anything else done, we had a lovely time with him, and I think there were no time-outs for two whole days!
1 comment:
I'm glad you're getting help - and that you're taking action to make sure Preston is being challenged at an appropriate level in daycare.
It's a shame that "gifted" can be such a polarising term, I think one reason I'm so challenged by it is that all parents seem to think their kid is special, when for simple statistical reasons the vast majority are actually average.
(I'm not saying I think you're incorrect here - you know I think very highly of Preston, and I think he probably is gifted. I'm just talking about why I find the term a bit awkward in general.)
It'll be great if his capabilities can be harnessed for good, I know that mine couldn't academically, with an IQ somewhere over 150 I always acted out, even in high school and at tech with subjects at a level that probably did challenge me, because by that point I was just used to being funny and messing around to occupy myself during class, and it was to my detriment.
The younger you get him, the better off he'll be - my problems definitely started at primary school, where I had really useless teachers who simply weren't used to unusually smart kids. They didn't have much of a reading programme, so when I topped out the scale they just left me to my own devices - which led to boredom and acting out, and once that habit was formed I was naughty even when I was being taught things that I perhaps couldn't yet figure out easily, which in turn meant I didn't learn some fundamental academic skills - and had to teach myself later, and probably too late for school. (But let's be honest, in my 30s it doesn't really matter anymore - but things come up every now and then, mostly maths things, that I think I should have learned at school but never did.)
All a long way of saying: get him into whatever programmes you can. The worst case scenario is not that he's in a gifted programme wrongly, but that he's in a normal class with normal teachers who can't meet his needs.
Post a Comment