Daughter's bathroom habits at school are sending me over the edge.

My daughter is in first grade at a small, rural private school. She is the stereotypical second child and has always chased to keep up with her (academically achieving) older brother. He loves to read, so she reads his books with him. He does math flashcards. She does his math flashcards. It all seems to come easy for her, although we work hard at home to foster a learning environment.

In Kindergarten, her teacher stressed that she was of the opinion that our daughter was gifted. I was proud and relieved to hear that she was doing well, but didn't go overboard. It's equally important to me that she has friends and builds relationships and that she is displaying appropriate behaviors in the school environment. I know the stress and anxiety a label can put on a kid, and I really don't want that for her.

I volunteer about three times a quarter in her class because she has expressed that it means a lot to her, and honestly, I just love being with her. I wish I had the time to volunteer more often. It has been really insightful to read one on one with the other kids in her class or to help them with their math rotations. At the risk of sounding absolutely insufferable (probably too late), it has given me a reality check on where my kid is at. I do believe she is learning, but she isn't being challenged. The math sheets are not hard for her. The class is not reading books that are appropriate for her reading level. She has run out of vocabulary flashcards for the whole remainder of the year. Which brings us to the problem.

She is using the bathroom up to seven times a day. Every day. Sometimes it's four. Sometimes it's seven. Sometimes it's only 15 minutes apart. The teacher brought this up in the beginning of the year and mentioned that she was worried about it causing our daughter to fall behind. We talked to our daughter and she insisted it was because she really needed to use the bathroom. We took her to the doctor and she was declared medically fine.

We explained to the teacher that we thought it was maybe related to our daughter's extremely high energy levels and needing to get up and move around. We asked if there were any suggestions the teacher had from past high energy kids (using an exercise band on the desk, movement breaks, etc). She said she would think about it but never got back to us.

She began to express her concerns more often about the bathroom breaks. There was no longer concern about our daughter falling behind, but rather, that the other kids would fall behind during partner work when our daughter is in the bathroom. She sent home a few notes listing out the times of the bathroom breaks which helped to facilitate conversations with our daughter. We asked the teacher if she would be willing to keep sending home the notes to help us with positive reinforcement. I know this was probably a strain on her day, but it did work. We rewarded our daughter's behavior on days when she only visited the bathroom 2 or 3 times and we got into a great routine. Eventually, the teacher stopped sending home notes, believing the issue was solved. Not long after, we were back to six bathroom trips a day.

The teacher has begun to express her frustrations again. We haven't reached any solutions and I feel so anxious. Medically, she is fine. She loves school. She has friends. She does well. She doesn't seem to suffer from any anxiety. I am pulling my hair out and the only solution I can come up with is that she is bored from lack of stimulation. She finishes her work so fast that she has to seek some kind of stimulation? Conferences are coming up within a few weeks and I know this issue will come up again. I hope to be able to work with the teacher to build some more constructive options on what we could try differently. I badger my poor kid every dang day over this. I'm trying so hard.

Has anyone else been through this? Was it related to boredom/academic overachieving/excessive energy? Was there anything that worked for you? Is this a stupid manufactured problem? HELP!