How to help ‘advanced’ child

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My daughter is 9 and year 5. She’s a mostly happy child, with lots of friends and very extrovert socially. She gets on very well as school generally.

However, her teacher has spoken to me saying she’s been getting annoyed with some other kids in the classroom when partnered with them, and visibly showing it.

My daughter has previously told me it’s because she gets frustrated, she wants to do the work and knows the answers but the other kids are messing around.

I said this to the teacher who said that she is ‘clearly a gifted child’ so she pairs her with those that need more help sometimes.

I’m not sure how to address this with her. Obviously being visibly annoyed isn’t ideal but at the same time should she keep quiet when partners are messing around instead of working? Why should she?

Any tips or advice on helping her deal with this without crushing her spirit?

I am not sure that this is really about her academic ability. Any child who is conscientious and just wants to get on would struggle with other pupils messing about. It seems like there is an issue with low level disruptive behaviour in her class.

I think your daughter may need assistance with ignoring and blocking out other people messing around. You say that she does not struggle socially, but not being able to remain calm and tolerate other children not behaving exactly as she wants does sound like a social problem.

I think her ability affects it because the teacher said she pairs her with kids that ‘process things more slowly’ to try and encourage them and let her lead. I think this is leading to the frustration. There’s no problem with disruptive kids and she likes and gets on with her whole class, they’re actually all really close it’s sweet. She’s not getting angry or anything and teacher said it’s no biggie but she’s just looking visibly frustrated.

tolerate other children not behaving exactly as she wants

but yes. This is the core of it I guess. Any tips on how to gently approach this with her?

I would request that the teacher does not do this. It is not your child’s job to help regulate another child in the classroom. Your child should not have to deal with that. I have experienced this with one of my children. It was not ideal for my child to be grouped with a disruptive child although it made the teachers life easier. It was not my child’s job to be a calming influence

It's very common that kids that are capable and diligent (and more often girls) get sat with disruptive kids to try and reduce the disruption. It benefits the teacher and the rest of the class but not the child put in that position.

Kids shouldn't be expected to be support aids. Every one deserves an opportunity to learn including your child, who's school day is being disrupted because she's being expected to support other kids.

If there is a need to partner children perhaps you can discuss rotation so that everyone gets a chance to focus and learn

My dc learned to ignore and just get on with his work, to a certain extent anyway.

I didn't mind teachers doing this, as long as it wasn't all the time. There's a valuable skill there to be learnt in working with people who aren't as capable as you are. It will happen in working life too.

I actually think you need to reframe your thinking here op - the words youve used to describe your dds behaviour are all positive - advanced etc - but actually, the way she's behaving isn't particularly nice.

I don't see how appearing visibly frustrated when other children are being disruptive is 'not nice'. Is there an expectation that we should all pretend that we're ok with something that is irritating?

I was the child who continually got paired with weaker learners. It was excruciating. (Once an overseas pupil transferred in, with no knowledge of Irish aged about ten or eleven, and I was given the job of teaching her!) I don't blame your DD for getting annoyed. No, it's not their fault they don't grasp things as quickly, but she's not a teacher, she's nine. I's be suggesting to her teacher that she gives her extra work to stretch her while she's dealing with the others.

I have this problem with my 8 yr old son too. He is quiet and hardworking and always gets paired with the naughty kid. I don't know if they think it will help balance the naughty child out but my son is at school to learn just as much as the rest of his class and shouldn't get lumbered with the responsibility. It really grinds my gears and it holds him back in his learning, ie he runs out of time to move onto the next task as he's spent too much time explaining to his partner.

My child is very academically able. He is used as a helper and on occasion gets frustrated if they "mess around" as you put it.

However he doesn't act like this. He supports the other children and encourages them to stay on task. If they are messing around beyond a point he can manage he puts his hand up and tells a teacher. This is a common practice in most schools.

My daughter was the opposite and struggled and benefited by the more able children supporting her learning. I see both sides. It does benefit both children and is a great opportunity.

Your daughter needs to be compassionate. She can let the teacher know if it's an issue and they can change pairings around.

Hopefully it will work out.

One of my children often had the badly behaved kids put by her or was partnered with them, as the teachers thinking seemed to be that she’d be a good influence on them.
It really stressed my child out and in the end we said no more as it was making her hate school and causing a lot of issues.

I can see why teachers do it, but it’s shit for kids who want to get on with their work, follow the rules and not get into trouble.

Im also aware some of these children may have SEN, my daughter is autistic, but it’s not fair to leave them for other children to help manage.

This happened to my DD (also Y5). In fact it's happened every year! They always put her next to someone who they think she'll be a good influence on, and it drives her insane. They never actually said this was the case but it's pretty obvious!

At the start of this year they had an odd number of kids in the class, so someone had to have two partners... guess who that was! She put up with it for a bit but eventually asked me to talk to the teacher as the boys (I know it's not always boys but it was in this case) just talked over her the whole time, or didn't bother doing the work, or took over everything and wouldn't listen to her at all.

I spoke to the teacher and explained I was fed up with this happening so often, and she said she'd swap the partners around straight away. Now DD is partners with a girl who is conscientious like her, and just gets on with her work. And they actually like each other and work well together, which is a bonus. I know DD needs to get used to being paired with different types of people, but all of her previous partners have stopped her from doing her work and that's not on. You wouldn't put up with it at work (I hope!) so why should they at school? DD just wants to turn up, do her work, play with her mates and go home.

Thing is, I can see this happening to DS when he's a bit older (Y1 currently) because he just wants to get on with his work as well, and is quiet and calm (at school).

Hope you get it sorted OP, it's a pain in the arse!

Ah, maybe I misunderstood @HesDeadBenYouCanStopNow

I read the op to mean that on being paired with Tommy, the dd is rolling her eyes or whatever. Which from Tommy's perspective isn't kind. But maybe op meant once work is underway her dd is getting frustrated. Which I agree is different.

My child is a boy just to add as someone mentioned it's common for girls to be paired. It's a real mix of boys and girls mixed in his class.

I worry that this is the start of 'be kind' for girls despite it disadvantaging them so it is a bit reassuring that it happens to boys too, but I'm still not a fan if it's not done fairly and the brighter kids are pulled down to help bring up the less able/less motivated children.

All should be educated to be able to reach their own potential

It sounds like the teacher is deliberately pairing her with less able kids. I would push the teacher not to do this. It's not fair on your daughter to be an unpaid teaching assistant, when she should be getting excited about learning the materials at her own pace.

The teacher needs to stop using her as an unpaid teaching assistant for one. My DC's school used to do extension lessons where year 5s went up to the year 6 class for English and maths and they partnered with the local secondary school so the year 6s got half a day a week taking extension classes there.

How you can help is ask your child what they want to learn at home and encouraging it, buy the books, take the day trips, watch the documentaries, engage with their special interest.

Tell her to get her head down and ignore them or make a nuisance of herself and keep reporting it to the teacher. Teachers are constantly telling us you need extensive training to do their jobs, so why do they think a 9 year old should do it?

One of my daughters had this issue. Tbh, I just decided it was better to support her in not having to accommodate it. I told her to be polite, and that it wouldn't affect her in terms of his schoolwork.

She's now gone and got a good scholarship for her academics at an excellent school.

My point is that primary school is just something you have to go through and because it's got to cater to all abilities gifted children find it boring or annoying. Encourage her talent outside of school too. It pays off.

We have the same problem at the school my dd, same age is at. We’re putting her on a waiting list for a school futher away which is excellent as unfortunately, we live in an area where a lot of the children are disruptive.

Even her teacher asked if we could move her or afford private at the last parents evening as there was little they can do about the disruptive children as there are so many. They do have streamed groups for core subjects though which helps as the more disruptive ones aren’t generally in the top sets with dd.

Last year the teacher said she paired dd with the disruptive children as in her worlds, dd “is a very bright child, if she’s distracted and misses a few lessons, it won’t hurt her”. I made them put a stop to that immediately, it wasn’t acceptable to me and they haven’t done it again.

It’s a school where parents have full on fights in the playground, smoke weed on the school run and the teachers hide so they don’t get abused at pick up though, so there’s nothing they can do for some of the children, it’s how their whole families are.

Primary school is about more than academics. It's about social skills as well.

Yes so why does it only work one way? The kids who act up never improve from using this tactic. They didn't improve 40 years ago and they don't improve now. All it does is shatter the bright well behaved kids love for learning.

I agree that it can be a very useful skill to learn to teach others, have patience etc. It depends how often it is, because she should also be getting opportunities to do extension work, bounce ideas off other children who are equally engaged at the same level, and so forth. I think if these pairings with less able children are deliberate, rather than happening at random, that starts to become frustrating and unfair.

The best way to learn and cement anything in your own head, is to teach it to someone else; so actually there can be value for the more capable children. It's also brilliant for confidence, tolerance and empathy.