This is a great thread. I'm a teacher (though I only do long-term sub jobs right now), and also GT certified and trained. I've also raised two children, one of whom passed all the GT tests as a kindergartner and is now in college. My other child passed a few of the GT tests as a third-grader, but honestly I don't see her as 'gifted.' Part of the problem is that this school district includes achievement tests in the battery of GT tests, which is completely inappropriate, but there it is. And she is an extremely hard-working kid. Anyway, I've always been hugely interested in GT education and absolutely LOVE working with these students. But I'd like to let you in on a couple of dirty little secrets.... The first secret is that there are many teachers, even GT-certified who don't LOVE teaching these kids. In fact, they often appear (to me) to be defensive and ready to shoot down these kids at every opportunity. I think it is difficult for a parent to truly realize this because they aren't in the classroom. But I have witnessed it over and over again.... It's heartbreaking, and I try to intercede when I can, but that isn't always possible. The second 'secret' is about teachers being expected to differentiate instruction for all the levels in the room. It's a joke. Not because the teacher doesn't try. It's just a ludicrous system. It is politically incorrect to group students by ability, and no longer allowed anywhere that I've found. So a typical classroom has students with IQs below 70 and students with IQs above 125, occasionally very far above. Imagine you are trying to teach 25 children something -let's say .... how to knit. Some of your students have been knitting for four years, and some could not tell you what a knitting needle looks like. While you are trying to figure out how to group them, four boys have grabbed needles and are trying to stab each other, two more have grabbed your balls of yarn and tossed them to each other, which has caused them to unravel of course. The girls are yelling at the boys to stop it. Some are crying because they really, really want to learn how to knit. So you finally bring order to the chaos, and figure you can divide them into three groups, which does not truly correlate to the levels in the room, but is the best you can do. You truly need the entire time with each one of the groups. But you only have 1/3 of the time with each of course. And what do you suppose the other two groups are doing while you are working with one? You have given them some books about knitting to keep them occupied, but they are old and have only black and white photos so that isn't terribly successful. So you start with the least experienced group because they need the most time. After you spend ten minutes with the first group, you will barely have begun your session with the second group before a few students from the first group come running over with problems. And then that happens again. So the second group's instruction takes twice as long as it should because of the interruptions. And since the third group's time was used for the second group, suddenly, there's the bell! Guess which group didn't get attended to AGAIN?!?!? You may remember that I was fairly strong-minded in the original post on this subject -and felt you needed to think about removing your daughter from a toxic environment. If she wants to be at this school and the good outweighs the bad, okay. But from the sounds of it, her educational needs are not being met. Which might be okay if you or she are supplementing them at home. The way I see it, there are two types of needs for these kids. The first set of needs is what she needs to get into a college where she will hopefully truly have her abilities matched to her environment. And the second set of needs is what she needs to feed her hungry brain. The first set of needs could be covered in one year rather than four for most of these kids. When the information is drawn out over four years, boredom and frustration set in, and many GT kids simply begin to tune out. Some lose all of their enthusiasm and interest in learning and begin to fail. And then they can't get into the colleges where they might truly flourish for the first time. As I used to tell my son, don't kid yourself -there are some extremely bright people who never made it to college. There is a whole group of gifted dropouts, mostly boys, who didn't get the first set of needs met. And Anele -it sounds to me as if your daughter IS gifted. The sheer fact that she is interested in reading what you describe is a give away. I hope I haven't offended any one here -I am passionate about the short shrift these very top students are getting in the K-12 system, all over the nation. It is a huge loss to them, and a huge loss to our country. It's mind-boggling to me that we put forth so much time, money and energy to the first-string on the football team, but not to the academic team. Okay, stepping down off the soapbox now....

My previous cat had a similar problem. It is possible your cat may be sick so you should take her to the vet just to be safe. However, it could be an issue that your cat is eating her food too quickly and it's too much at once so they throw it up. My previous cat suffered from this for a long time. There are several ways to tackle this problem. First, you could give the cat only a little bit of food at a time. Give a little. Wait 10 minutes. Give a little more, repeat process until all the food given. This is a simple method, but I also realize some people are busy and don't have 30 minutes to feed / wait / feed wait. Second, (and this may sound a little weird and it ONLY for dry food, not wet) but put large SMOOTH stones in the food bowl. The purpose of doing this is that it takes the cat longer to pick out the food bits around the stones / crevices. It basically forces the cat to eat more slowly. Third, you could give your cat only wet food. This method worked very well for a friend of mine who also had a cat who threw up all the time because he ate too quickly. In general cats take longer to eat wet food. Anyhow, I understand the frustrations of cats throwing up all the time. It gets a little annoying cleaning it up constantly. Good luck!

This dumb white rosebush from Kroger or the like. Kids got it for me for Mother's day one year. I kept it nice outside, assumed it would die with the winter and I'd be done with it. Nope! Come spring, it roars back with growth. I ignore it, after chunking the whole pot/paper/decor in the back of my butterfly garden (very busy spring/summer). The dratted thing is STILL THERE and thriving come fall. And winter. And the following spring I potted it nicely and made it a spot where it sits. And thrives. And I just don't like roses!! Eventually MY mother took it for her garden. At least it's loved there.

Dawn wrote-: he came to me first and asked permission. It's the right thing to do; his work but my home.. That's where it gets lost here. The "professional" in this case is anything but and is not doing anything really to correct what has been "effed" up. No courtesy no doing the right thing. Desperate times and desperate measures. ( I am referring to the "professional"- not Kristi).