Perfect 10

[southbucks3]

"Stupid is as stupid does"
Intelligence should be used to make your life as comfortable as possible in any situation, with any group of people.
We were all witness to Gordon Brown's crashing political finale as he judged one of his electorate rather too publicly, without realising the public were listening of course.
I hope your daughter, with your guidance, can settle into her school soon eccentric, life for twelve year olds should be fun, punctuated by a bit of "boring" and a bit of "why do I have to". Fingers crossed for you both.

[Eccentric]

I agree with almost everything that all of you have said. I have been going the tough love route since she started at the school. I am sending her to see a psychotherapist to try and help her to deal with it and of course there are other bright children at the school.

Dads angere is for herself and the other brighter kids. I think she may possibly have been put in a class that is not a very high flying one. All the teachers at parents evening Barr one did say that she was ahead.

I have done my utmost in regards to friendships but it is almost impossible. Dd is refusing to have anyone home or to invite them anywhere and I cannot do it without her agreement.

Indie is not an option. I do not have the financial where with all to sacrifice.

It is heartbreaking for me to have to deal with this so please, be a bit considerate with your comments. I am not backing up my daughter attitude..

[Daogroupie]

If your daughter is academic and you do not have the funds for private school she should be able to get a 100% scholarship.

Every year I have known of students who have been offered one or more of our local private schools with all fees including coach fares to school paid for.

However this will require doing well in the exams. But this will give her something to work towards.

I suggest you investigate some local private schools and put her name down for in year applications and for the 13 plus if they do it.

You must refocus her away from her negativity which is very destructive.

There are all sorts of local and national academic competitions she can enter. Explore learning has a national Creative Writing competition that closes on Friday. You can hand in your story at any Explore Learning or online.

I am sure you can find other opportunities if you google.

Youth Speaks is a speaking competition and there is also Youth Writes.

There are also lots of music competitions.

I am sure there are lots of Maths competitions that Guess55 can help you with. I am focused on the English ones.

I would recommend that you are stern with her otherwise she will be completely unmanageable at 15/16. I have fifteen and sixteen old girls and if you are too understanding now things will slide out of control very quickly when she becomes a stroppy teenager.

Get her involved in lots of outside school stuff and start investigating potential private school scholarships.

Arrange something you know she will really like to go and get an extra ticket and tell her she can only do it if she invites someone from school.

Did you start the music theory classes? I am sure she will meet some more students she likes on those.

I have worked in five different comprehensives and I can see how a student who only has lessons with one class of students can be under the mistaken impression that they are smarter than everyone else.

I know of primary school students who arrive at a new class assuming they are better than everyone else but it does not last past the first class. The evidence to the contrary is too overwhelming to ignore! DG

[Dollydripmat]

Eccentric I apologise if you have felt that any of my posts have offended you. It truly saddens me to know that you and your daughter are going through this difficult stage.

It does sound as though your daughter is extremely hard on herself (I'm no expert), I'm sure you already know this but it's crucial that she learns to make friends , I do feel this will help her a lot. Could it be that as she feels different, she's scared to let anyone in?

Just another way of looking at things, my brother was uber bright at school, way beyond his year, his best friends at school varied from underachievers to some reasonably bright kids. To this day he is still very close friends with them ,he was the only one that went off to Uni, he is now a CEO of a large corporate company and he says his school days and friends are what grounded him. At school he was very popular, sports captain, head boy etc. Even now to this day when I bump into old school friends of his they all say how down to earth and friendly he still is and was at school.


Im hoping by telling you my story it might help , best wishes and keep us posted as it's hard going through this on your own, dollyxxxxx

[southbucks3]

Maybe it's time to see the school counsellor without dd and be as brutally honest as you have been on here and see what tricks she may have up her sleeve.

[silverysea]

Hi we have had all sorts of problems along these lines with both dds, to do with being an outlier in a mixed class, for whatever reasons, and we have tried some of these strategies, like treat school as a social training activity and take up the academic slack at home, or load on activities that they find challenging to show them they are not that great in everything. Neither has been that helpful with hindsight for the real problem of spending the best hours of every day in the psychic prison of the school that doesn't meet their needs, surrounded by hostile fellow inmates.

I just want to offer sympathy, it sounds like you are on top of it even if you don't feel that way. The best solution for my dd2 has been to get her into the right school, luckily she was on board and mature enough having seen now Y10 dd1s struggles, and had a rotten time at primary, and I think you should consider reapplying for in year admissions, private scholarships and 12+ for sure. Other things I have been looking at for my dd1 who is so uninterested and uncooperative in school now, are more complaining AGAIN and yet again to school, music academy, Steiner (older levels only), sending dd1 abroad for a year to family, and HE. This is all more in desperation than hope! Currently we are ramping up the tutoring, as having switched off after her disappointment with the slow pace of year 7, she now is behind and underachieving, and gets very little out of her classes. She has started calling the other students thick which is new but I think is an expression of her lack of enjoyment at the pace and repetition of school. Home tutoring has helped rekindle some sparks but is hard going after a tiring long dull day, or messing up the family's weekend.

I haven't followed your story but could there be hidden issues like dyslexia, ADHD/add, asd type things? This is often discounted in girls and hidden by a high IQ so they come out average "on average", but frustrated as they know something's not right.

[kenyancowgirl]

I'm sorry to be frank, Eccentric, but in my opinion, sending her to a psychotherapist may well be reinforcing her opinion that there is a problem with the school. Isn't the reality that the problem appears to be her attitude to the other children? A tough love approach is telling her to stop being superior about her perception of the other children's ability and get on with it. It is difficult when you feel you have a child who needs more of a challenge and they feel it too - I went through a similar thing with my academically very able son. Tears, tantrums every morning as he felt he wasn't learning anything - I hauled him in there and told him to get on with it as he needed to work on his social skills. Job done.

Maybe, as well as exploring the school counsellor option, as south bucks suggests, sit down with your daughter - does she realise how she comes across to the other children? She may not realise that she is giving out a vibe of being better than them as she has got herself in a bit of a rut? As silvery sea says, there may be asd things that you have not mentioned, which could affect her ability to socialise effectively - but this can be learned, if not completely, certainly to make it easier for her to relate to others and be slightly more empathic to their views.

What happens if she wins her appeal and gets in a GS and then realises it isn't the holy grail? That there are children there that she perceives to be less intelligent than herself (which there may well be!)? Or worse, that she is actually less intelligent than them (which she may well be!)? She is still going to have to tackle the making friends issue there - challenge her to (as Daogroupie suggests) choose one person to do something nice with - tell her that it is good practice for if she passes the appeal and if not, it will help her settle into the school if she has someone she can relate to. Why do you think she won't engage with anyone? Is she worried that you won't take her wish to leave seriously, if she starts to make friends?

And, also as Daogroupie says, if she is that academically able, I suspect indies will fall over themselves to offer her financial support either in the form of a scholarship or a bursary - clever children do get given effectively free places - investigate these, if you haven't already -to be honest, she will have to take exams and pass them at a high level, but passing exams is a skill she has to learn, whatever school she is in, so that will also be a challenge for her.

Nobody wishes you ill, Eccentric, or is having a go, but you asked for advice and help and we can only react to what you are telling us about how she is, what she says and how she feels. It does not appear to me that the real issue is that she is not being challenged, the issue appears to be more about the lack of friendship groups (possibly brought about by her attitude) - we know that Y7 is a year that allows them to find their feet in the wider sense of the school community and a lot of the work is fairly straightforward - I wonder if she would be worrying about not being challenged, if she had lots of friends to hang out with? There is no tougher job than being a parent and there is no right or wrong approach - sometimes we have to be cruel to be kind - I do wish you well in this challenge.

[Yamin151]

I do agree that there are lots of challenging things that can be done for a child who wants more of a push and challenge academically, (and not that many do!) but I'm getting the impression that this is less about what happens outside school and more about what happens in it.
For this, whilst I wouldn't dismiss keeping on top of the kinds of things school can do to challenge her more (and perhaps you already are but are you able to take a positive stance and go with ideas rather than meeting with them to tell them whats not working? Forgive me if you have tried this) - I so feel that there is a large element here of 'suck it up'. Both my boys complain about school. Many here will disagree vociferously I expect but for many of us, school is school! Nobody actually wants to be there, at least, nobody prefers being there to being at home! And in fact I feel suspicious of those parents who say that little Johnny adores school - some children are better than others at concentrating on the social aspects and get a lot from that, and thats crucial, but even those ones spend time in a maths/physics/english/PE class thinking they'd rather be at home listening to Imagine Dragons and munching Pringles! I'd find it odd if they didn't.
Having said that, true misery in school is an awful thing, whatever the cause, but I guess what I'm saying is that no child should particularly expect to find school a barrel of laughs, start to finish each day, with a non stop range of fully challenging activities, and we do them a disservice if we lead them to expect that or fall in with how awful it is if it doesn't pan out as 100% fun (again, of course very genuine exceptions, I'm not talking bullying or anything like that, please do not misunderstand me.). But it is, after all, school!!!!!!!!!

I like the idea someone mentioned of a ticket to something but only if they invite someone, or, whilst she is still young enough, a friendship branch extended to another mum and daughter to meet up for coffee in town or something, non-threatening and short, to see if you can cultivate a connection.

No easy answers, but for me, I'm not sure the continued pursuit that someone suggested of getting an appeal going or all kinds of initiatives to get her into a better school is necessarily helping her with acceptance, but I don't know how I would feel in your situation and only you can judge that.

Good luck anyway.

[Moon unit]

Hi Eccenric,
I too apologise if anything I have said has offended.
It just crossed my mind that perhaps the school are reluctant to give the differentiated work because they are concerned about the other issues your dd is having. I know you have been asking about it since Sept so perhaps that is the reason.
Could you ask the school for support with the social side?
One of my two is often complaining of boredom at school. I think lots of children do but let's be honest as Yamin said that's just how it is at times.
I can't see an advantage of being very far ahead of the rest really.
Several children locally to me do GCSE maths at primary. They still do the same maths lessons as everyone else at secondary school. I imagine that must be quite boring. I often wonder if they think they shouldn't have bothered to do it at such an early stage. I'm sure I would.

[Justinterested]

Eccentic
Your daughter is obviously bright so she will understand a conversation along the following lines.
You are a clever girl BUT
You didnt pass 11 and 12 +
We are trying hard to appeal for GS but realistically chances not great.
We cannot afford private school so we have to make the most of what we have at current school.
If you refuse to go to school several things will happen.You will not achieve your potential. Mum will get fined and that will be very hard for us. If you persistently refuse Mum will be in court and could go to prison. You will then be in care for that period of time.More important than all that you will not be the success you should be and will be unhappy as you will not be able to get a job .
Tell her academic success is only a part of being successful. Getting on with people of all abilities and backgrounds is equally if not more important for success.
Tell her that you are not concerned about her academic progress at all but you are very concerned about her happiness / frienships/ and social skills. Ask her to work with you to make a plan to work on these highly valuable skills. Tell her that she can coast academically but this must be her major challenge.
Good luck to you both.