The Boy Is GENIUS!!

I'm not being very modest, am I?



So, my son was having "behavior issues" in kindergarten, i.e. he's not conforming to the teacher expectations and being a little automaton. He would make noises in class and bother other kids by constantly touching them on he head or arms or something. But in the same breath, the teacher would say "He is so smart! He's way ahead of the other kids academically..." We were told that he may be ADHD and should be put on medication to "even out his behavior". Hmmm...I didn't like the sound of that. So this year, we tried to head the problems off and gave his 1st grade teacher a bit of a "heads-up" that The Boy was not like other kids, and he would need a little extra attention. The Boy was then saddled with these "touching tallies"...every time he touched someone or acted out in some way, he would get a tally mark; 5 marks in a day, and he would lose something, like recess. The Bohunk and I were getting pretty discouraged with the whole thing, until his teacher said something during his last parent/teacher conference...she showed us his benchmark test scores, and he consistently scored much higher than what they'd expect from a kid his age. His teacher then suggested that we have him tested for the highly gifted program.

After figuring out where to do this, The Boy was tested with something called the CogAT and the Ravens Test (I have no clue what these are...ask your teacher-friends...). All I was told was that my son scored in the 95th percentile nationally for one test and 96th percentile for the other, and he qualifies for the DPS Gifted and Talented Program. Now I understand why he was having so many problems in class (with some help from his teacher reporting what he actually does in class) - he was BORED! He'd either finish his work way ahead of the other kids, so he'd bother them, or he wouldn't finish his work at all because he knew it already.

So now, my new crusade in The Boy's education is to find a school that can challenge him - as the NAACP says, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste".