Some parental advice from all the lovely parentals? Non parentals also welcome :D

[Aroura]

You don't think boredom contributes to drug abuse?

I mean, it makes for a good punchline, clearly, but that's simply your way of not addressing my point.

It's all good, Losty's going to do what she's going to do, I was just offering my two cents.

In her 1st grader.........lol?  No, no I don't.  I think that boredom leads to doodling.

We are talking about the future.  Just like you aren't talking about grade school sports scholarships, Thump isn't talking about grade school kids doing drugs.  This is about how it effects her future, and if she gets bored and learns to hate school (and learning) now, that will effect her future attitude towards school, and life in general. 

One other thing I meant to bring up is something I saw happening a LOT in my kids old grade school, and that is kids who are bored getting labeled as problem kids. My neighbors boy is a boisterous and intelligent kid.  I used to volunteer nearly daily in my daughters class, and he was in her class, so I saw how this happened.  He would pick up on the lessons very quickly, but since the teacher must cater to the children who are not getting it (and for some reason, at this age they don't allow the kids who show understanding to move on to something else) the kids who had already mastered understanding of the lesson were forced to repeat their work, or worse, sit idly with no other activity when they complete it 20 minutes before the other kids.

This was happening to about 7 or 8 kids in the class, and I noted that some of the kids were able to quietly entertain themselves, or just put their heads down and rest.  But other kids ideas of entertainment invariably disrupts the kids still working near them, even if it only includes visiting with a neighbor.  These kids are often (particularly in boys, but I saw it happen to 2 girls as well) labeled as inattentive, disruptive, or worse.  Many end up with these cards they must carry around and get stamped by the teacher for each subject for proper behavior, and any failing sends them to the "focus room" where they get to sit quietly under the watchful gaze of a single teacher, with all the other "troubled" kids.  They are labeled and branded early.

This one boy, for instance, was doing an addition problem assigned. The kids are told to use any of the tools open to them (this includes using a number line, drawing circles, or counting up or down on their fingers).  He finished the problem in about 5 seconds, wrote it out the equation and the answer, wrote that he had used his fingers, and when a teachers aid came around and told him he needed to show his work (she wanted him to draw a number line or circles) he said that he'd used his fingers and even written that was the tool he chose.  He got sent off for backtalking a teacher.  Of course, by the end of the conversation he was in tears and really was causing a disturbance, but to begin with, he had done nothing wrong!  I saw this kind of thing EVERY DAY.  Kids labeled as everything from autistic to problem kids because they could not sit still at age 5, or 6, or 7, after they had completed their work and were waiting for the other kids.  

I saw a LOT of bored kids being turned into problem kids, and then labeled and made worse by the school system.

Funny thing is, I ran into the teacher who used to run the focus room earlier this year, while selling GS cookies out front of a Safeway.  She stopped to chat with my daughter, buy some cookies, and tell me she was glad I was homeschooling.  She told me she had left that school and found a job at a private school, and how she had disagreed with how discipline was being handled by public schools, and oh, some of the horror stories she could tell me of good kids with lots of energy or a quick mind being labeled by the system as problem children!

Anyway, school now is different than it was when we were kids.  There is 0 tolerance for anything anymore, including any child ahead of or behind the designed curriculum. They are left to languish in boredom or frustration, which can indeed lead to bad behavior, even early on.