Bored Gifted Child

So we’ve known for years that my daughter is bright, but when the school tested her for giftedness in second grade, her scores didn’t make the cut.

For the last two years, I’ve been lobbying her teachers to help me get her reassessed, and while they keep telling me that they agree she should be in the gifted program, nothings been done. She has tested on state assessments anywhere from three to seven years beyond her grade level. They have also continued to embarrass and shame her for behaviors in class that have led to her being ostracized by her peers.

I’ve now paid for her to get independently assessed by a licensed psychologist and per the district website, her scores equate to qualifying for the highest level of gifted support in the district. I’ve sent the scores to the gifted program and am waiting to hear back. I’ve relayed this information to her current teacher.

Last week, there was an incident in class where there was a parent volunteer helping the teacher with prep while the kids were given a math assignment. My daughter was given the same assignment as the rest of the class. She of course was bored by the assignment and started getting off task, but not in a way that was disruptive to anyone else. Think doodling. The only reason the teacher found out was that another student tattled on my daughter.

The teacher proceeded to shame my daughter and told her she might lose her ability to attend class field trips and forced her to write an apology.

That night, I walked my daughter through the situation and discussed why we sometimes have to do boring things and had her complete the assignment from class, which she completed in five minutes. I then sent a message to her teacher, letting her know the at-home consequence, as I am trying to support her teachers.

The teacher then sent a note back about she was disappointed with my daughter’s behavior because there had been a parent volunteer in the class and calling my daughter untrustworthy.

While I fully understand why the teacher might feel that way, as an adult, years of emotional intelligence training says she is responsible for her emotions, not my fourth grade child, particularly as my daughter was not being malicious or disruptive.

I haven’t taught in many years, but I used to, and I would have definitely ignored the issue as a teacher.

I’m still upset by the teachers response (and general treatment of my daughter) and want to follow-up with the school, but I’m still worried I might be overreacting.

What are your thoughts? What would you have done in the teachers shoes? What should I do from here?

TIA

Update/Edit: So a lot of the responses were extremely hurtful and negative. My own experiences in school and growing up have trained me to flee from conflict, but I’m working on that in myself, so rather than delete this post and feeling like crap, I’m choosing to fight: I’d like to thank those who provided thoughtful feedback (I’ll be looking into 2e for sure and reaching out to the gifted program about other reasons they might be denying her) and to give information to those persons who were less than kind, some of which I didn’t put in my post because I didn’t want it to be a novel, but it looks like that’s what some people need.

First, to those who are saying that I’m not giving the full story, I did change some details, which I tried to be clear about (“Think doodling.”) because I worry about the teacher finding this post and it making the relationship worse. I stopped teaching because of a parent who became abusive towards me because I wanted to get her verbally and physically abusive (screaming at other kids and throwing whatever he could get his hands on) son help. I have no desire to in any way make the teacher’s job harder (please note that my first response was to give my daughter consequences at home) as the work was self-paced digital instruction (which is entirely brain-numbing and can mistake a typo for a need to reteach a skill (and, yes, I know we want her to pay attention and not make typos, but practicing a skill because I made a careless mistake would make me frustrated too, and, yes, I know she needs to learn this but she’s freaking nine and will make mistakes on her way to learning how to manage frustration that shouldn’t result in point two below).

Second, I know full well that there are many different aspects to success/intelligence. Personally, I don’t give a shit about my daughter being “successful” in life; I care about her being happy and mentally healthy. Right now, she wants to be a YouTuber, and if that sticks, that’s great! What I can say is that she comes home from school most days saying she hates school and has been for months, because she keeps getting in trouble and has zero friends. This is not healthy as attitudes like this are what drive kids to drop out of school or worse.

Third, I don’t put much stock in IQ tests and never have, but I’m pretty damn desperate over here because, shocker, I love my daughter and see point two, and looking at the school district website, that seemed like the only option, as petitioning the school hasn’t worked. I would love to have her tested for ADHD but the school isn’t recognizing the symptoms because they use that checklist that doesn’t fit if she is also gifted and her symptoms are presenting in a typical way for girls. I would love to have her independently assessed, but I could only get my ex (her dad) to agree to the IQ test because he doesn’t think ADHD is real (one of the reasons we ended up divorced to be honest). I’m low-key hoping that the teacher in the gifted program sees the signs and pushes on my ex.

Fourth, I know my daughter isn’t perfect. Far from it. She is challenging on the daily. She gets herself into these situations 100%. She instigates a lot of drama in her little world. My job, however, is still to hear her feelings and honor them, even as I work with her on them. My job is to help her. My job is to see all of her “flaws” and know them as part of what makes her, her. I don’t need to help the world fit a square peg in a round hole. I need to help my square peg navigate a round hole world, and sometimes, I just need a little advice on how to do that. Not to be insulted for having feelings about being a square peg myself.