To be concerned about my intelligent child at school

[Moomoomango]

This is not a boasting post before I get accused! I am struggling with his intelligence not basking in parental glory!

My son is 4 and due to start school in September. He started talking at 8 months, and has never stopped. He is intelligent and head strong, the last 2 days he started to ask about house numbers - within about 10 minutes he had learnt how to recognise numbers up to 100. I've never tried to teach him more than 10 but I was amazed how quickly he absorbed the information. He is really into science and loves discussing ideas such as gravity, electricity, marine life (a particular passion). He loves doing experiments and will quite often talk about gasses such as carbon dioxide. He loves to dissect fish (one of his fave things to do is buy a fish at fish counter) or garden insects to inspect their insides etc. He will quite confidently explain the anatomy of a fish. I am by no means a pushy parent I just answer his questions and follow his lead.

He is thoroughly bored at pre school, the activities as much more directed at younger children, I feel. I went in today and he was just sat twiddling an abacus. He tells me it's boring and he hates it. Pre school say hes withdrawn and not engaged.

I was speaking to a ta friend of mine who said foundation is basically an extension of pre school, lots of play etc. I'm really worried he will become withdrawn from school if it's not stimulating him. I want him to enjoy school and feel happy and confident. Aibu to be concerned? Is foundation very basic in terms of learning? Or will they support very intelligent children? I'm purposefully holding him back from learning to read so that school can inspire him in that way but to be honest he's so close it's painful!

I just want my child to be supported to be who he is.

I also have a bright ahead 11 year old -

Never pushed her. Could read at 3, taught herself, her maths is 3 years ahead -

Loves being the best and struggles of she is "beaten"
Hates being unorganised
Has poor social skills and a bad temper.

She has a lot to learn!

He twin is much more sociable - lots of friends popular - is OK at school - is much happier and less frustrated

I have no advice! You can't change who they are - but education isn't everything.

you kill insects together

I'd say it sounds as though he's bright, but not exceptional. For comparison, my DS2 taught himself to read (fluently) before he was 3 - it took us a while to realise what he was up to, so no helicoptering here. We provided loads of reading material, but did no more. Fast forward 10 years and whilst he's bright (towards the top of his year at a selective school), there are plenty of others at the same level.

I would say that if he's capable of learning numbers quickly, give him lots of books so that he teaches himself to read and then he'll never be bored. Why on earth would you want to hold him back from that? If he likes science, I can recommend the Basher Science series once he's reading.

He'll have lots to learn in forest school as they don't generally kill the wildlife

DS1 had a very intelligent classmate from nursery onwards he narrated the entire nativity play from memory in reception. It was fine he got extension work if needed and joined in with the rest of the class. He's 14 now and still super bright and well supported by school and his parents.

Yes invite some friends over. Make sure you order lots of dead fish beforehand though.

School will be great for his social development but I think you are being fair to be mindful (not worried) about boredom. Have you tried googling, or asking school, for information on support for gifted kids in your area?

And yes, be worried for your possessions, in my family (scientists) nothing was safe from dissection: watches, calculators, insects, dolls, remotes, suppose you don't want to hear that you can get fish eyes from fishmongers and hearts etc from butchers. Loads of fun

Hmmm: I think the pre school is the problem! Why ever would a child be left twiddling an abacus? They should be involving him in play that is creative and allows him to explore things.

Dd1 won a story competition at age 3yo. She knew her times tables before going to school.
Dd2 was reading Little House on the Prairie the summer holiday before she started school and could add three digit numbers in her head.
Ds could explain a sonic boom and could reason from cause to effect on WWII issues... From books he'd read by the time he started school. He could do basic algebraic equations (sister's homework!) too.

Not one of them were bored at school because there's so much more to life than just that. What's more they didn't find they stick out at the top. Those who arrived knowing less picked it up pretty quickly, and by the start of year 1, you couldn't have picked out those who arrived reading and those who hadn't known their letters.

My dd murdered her hamster when she was 4. Put it down the loo and flushed.

Get him reading, don't hold him back. As soon as I learned to read, it was hard to get me to put a book down. I loved reading history books, and fantasies (C.S. Lewis, JK Rowling). My gran had the most macabre true crime book with photos and newspaper articles she used to let me read from I could read. I have it in my bookcase now, it still fascinates me in a grim way. Ds not touching it until he's 13+ though. She let me read the Mary Bell biography when I was about 8 . Let him follow what interests him, but do check what he's reading! Once they can read, they have a whole world of books ahead of them. Take him to the library and let him pick what he wants and read with him. For a library card in his name think you need his birth certificate, and proof of your address (utility bill, bank statement). You could watch some (pre approved by yourself) documentaries with him, David Attenbourgh etc. Take him to a museum, an aquarium, the beach to collect shells. Ds isn't fussed about learning to read (although have discovered he likes reading street name signs, think he has a very practical mind) and can obviously read better than he lets on when we try to practice with him with a book. Just encourage him when you can. I think he will be fine once the other kids catch up a bit in terms of interest (they're made to do it in primary school and end up enjoying it). Does he like superheroes? All the rage with ds's friends. Let school teach him how to interact/socialise, although if you can get him socialising a bit outside school that would be good, a busy playground?

is there a montessori in your area?

Further up as children get older it gets so difficult because how ever brilliant they are there could always be someone even more so. The more they succeed the more they are asked to do, until one day they can't be the top, or they finally fail at something and ironically feel like absolute failures. They can become so scared of failing to be absolutely brilliant that they freeze.

Perfect brilliant children can begin to get eating disorders/self harm/drugs.It is so important not to value them just for their cleverness but for the part they play in the life of their family as a whole, their group of friends, their own time to dream and think. Their life as a whole has to have value.

I am not meaning to suggest that you are not valuing your child OP, just that reception is an important time for something much wider than intelligence and I was thinking aloud here.

Oliver James wrote quite a bit about this in They Fuck You Up Your Mum and Dad.
The Prodigy by Herman Hesse is a sad exploration of this theme.

Portia, have you never watched Flushed Away ? Hammy will have been fine.

Oh god flushed away sounds crap

Yes, a good Montessori has a wonderful environment. But they are expensive I think.

I would be more concerned that he is not engaged than about him being bright. Schools are very good at dealing with bright kids, mostly, but engagement is trickier.

If you treat him like a genius and suggest he will be bored, you will find that he gets bored very easily. If you treat him normally and say that it's always possible to find interesting things, then he will.

I agree let him read. Ds would curl up in a corner and read in reception, or even better get kudos from his classmates by reading books to them when the teachers were all out of stories! Reception was fine, it was later in school that he started to get bored when it became more structured and they all had to sit down doing 2+1 together. In reception there was lots of free time so his imagination ran wild, further up the school there was more formal teaching and he got the concept and wanted to move on already, but due to the structure of the lesson he had to sit there where they went over it another 4 times. He's moved school now and gets the challenge again.

Wait until he starts until you worry if he will be bored and teach him things he can do alone or with someone else if he is bored. Give him strategies in his tool kit. We would sometimes discuss on the way to nursery what he might do/ make so that when he got there he had at least one idea. He generally generated another 5 ideas while there and did something completely different.

I'd be a bit concerned he's bored because at that age you'd have thought he'd be starting to enjoy playing superheroes, running around and being loud, chalking on floors, soaking his friends st the water table, painting on easels etc. Is the setting not providing this kind of stuff? Play is much more important at that age than reading. He should be learning how to interact with other children, how to play nicely, how to share etc. If he's not doing that stuff then I'd be worried about why not.

As for the academic side of it, I wouldn't worry yet. Reception teachers are usually great at catering for a wide range of children. If he gets there and you worry he's not being stimulated then I'd raise it then. I wasn't really pushed at primary school (back in the early 80s when the class had 40 kids in it and it was more about crowd control) but I still loved mucking about with my mates, climbing trees etc. I just did my work and then did more at home with my mum.

Let him be a little boy. He's only going to be one for a really short time.

I don't believe you. I have an intelligent one and no way did pre school leave her twiddling an abacus. She was using a computer, looking at books and starting to read, learning to write by copying the staff's captions to her pictures, constructing things with wood & nails and other materials, learning about maths and science with physical activities.

Either you are a troll or your child is at an exceptionally crap pre school. Or perhaps you are making ignorant assumptions about what a proper education looks like.

I have to say I think preschool is the problem. DD is a bright girl at preschool they identified that she had a flare for maths and science by the time she went to school she had studied several life cycles in a detail and was whizzing through maths sheets ( her idea of fun). At school she came upon other bright children who had different skills to her she learnt to work as part of a team. They studied the festivals of various religions. She loved reception.
Many years later and now in senior school those skills of how to work with other people are really coming into their own and enabling her to grab all the opportunities that present them self to her.

Also, avoid discussing his intelligence with/ in front of him. It tends to encourage complacency and might make him a bragger.

Sorry, but sat 'twiddling with an abacus'?

Does he not enjoy playing? Enjoy socialising? This would concern me. You don't know what school will be like, why not just wait and see - he is only 4, way too young to worry about him not being challenged enough.

I am another one who would throw effort into socialising. It would concern me if he is not willing to engage and learn the social side of life. That will hold him back later on.

My ds was similar to your ds when he was that age. (he could read on entering reception for example) he is now a happy 14 year old who is in a selective school but more importantly he is social and have a wide range of friends and enjoys the time he spends with them.

To me that is WAY more important than the fact he was able to read before reception.

What is his imagination like? Is he good at making up stories, inventing new games, pretending to be somebody else? That kind of creativity is a great way of developing intelligence and something Reception really caters for ime.

From reading MN and other media over the years, I have begun to think that one danger for children who show early signs of brightness is that they are sometimes encouraged to develop a very narrow view of what constitutes learning and what constitutes intelligence. If they are unlucky, they grow up thinking that the only learning that counts is derived from exercise books and that nothing else is "proper learning". They come to believe that intelligence is the same as knowing lots of facts. In the long run, this prevents them from reaching their full potential.

When I was young children were told that "only boring people get bored". This may not of course be true of the later years of primary school where learning is more structured, but I would say it is certainly true of Reception: he will have a lot of opportunity to choose activities and take them in the direction he wants to. You would do him a massive disservice by teaching him that playing with his mates is somehow not "proper learning".