I have not written on here in forever, but I have been processing something over the last two years and I haven't made much headway. I hope that by writing about it, I will hopefully figure something out. Before I get to that topic, I want to catch up a little on the past two years.
I started this blog because several of us were needing parenting and nursing support when our kids were really, really young. Doesn't that seem like ages ago? Hardly any of us are blogging anymore because life got faster-paced and twitter and Facebook fit our lives better. I also knew that raising a vegan child would be unusual and that I might need some social support for that task. Well Dermot is now 7.5 and nursing, feeding, and sleeping issues are so thankfully behind us. Raising a vegan child isn't really that big of an issue either. Dermot hasn't asked us about eating any other way. He has internalized that he doesn't want to hurt animals and he's happy being a vegan. That might change. I'm not blind, but as for now, it's really a non-issue. The bigger issue is that he won't try any new foods, and he hates most food. I'm a really picky eater (really picky), and Dermot makes me look like I will eat anything. He seriously eats about 8 things. But he's healthy, and he hardly ever misses school. I give him a vitamin, cross my fingers, and hope that some day he will want to explore the world of Thai, Indian, and Ethiopian food that his parents love so much. If not, that will become his problem.
The much bigger issue, and part of what I am processing, is that Dermot has entered public school. Wow, has this ripped off a bunch of scabs for me. Scabs and scars I didn't even know I had. As you could tell from previous postings, even years ago, Dermot is really bright. When it comes to math, he's really, really bright (he just scored a 75% on the 3rd grade pre-test at Mathnasium). He's also reading at about a 5th-6th grade level. This actually might be higher, but he's not interested in books more advanced than that right now, and I'm fine with that. The school is just not prepared for him, and why should they be? He's one of 24 kids who are all at different levels and have varying levels of support at home. I go in about 2-3 times a year to talk to the teacher and principal and try to see if we can work together to challenge Dermot more. They say all of the right things and Dermot is still bored out of his mind. He got 100% on all of his spelling tests last year and he never missed a math question. He complains that he's not learning anything in school and that they keep trying to teach him things that he knows. He also told me that the other kids are starting to ask him for the answers and are trying to copy off of him. I don't remember that starting so young, but I was in Catholic school with 45 other kids when I was his age.
What I'm working on is separating my school problems from Dermot's school experience. I was extremely under-served in my K-12 education, and I went to good schools, and even a college prep Catholic high school. I don't think that anyone truly understood what I was capable of. No one pushed me, and that's how gifted kids suffer. No one pushes them. So my goals are to write about my own personal experiences in K-12 education while trying to see how they do and don't relate to Dermot's current situation. The good news is that Dermot loves school. He loves it when he can show that he knows things. He also loves his friends and the other social aspects of school. So far that has actually gone pretty well. I get the feeling that he's pretty well-liked, but he also knows that he's not like the other kids. I remember that feeling well and it was 34 years ago. It's amazing how fresh some of this stuff can feel when there's a reason to bring it all up again.
There are a ton of parenting-of-the-gifted blogs out there, and they have been really helpful, but few, if any, are talking about how their own childhoods and education are affecting how they relate to their gifted child. Many of these parents talk about how they are just now discovering that they have many of the traits of the gifted that they see in their children. Ethan and I are in a totally different boat. We were both labeled as gifted as kids. I was 4, and Ethan was older, but he was still definitely a kid when he was labeled. I know I was a gifted child and I was treated as a gifted child, but it's not giving me all that much insight into how to advocate for my child and how to parent my child. Gifted kids are a pain in the ass to parent because they fight all boundaries, they are extremely emotionally volatile (intensity in the gifted-jargon), and they do sometimes know things that their parents don't know. Parenting Dermot is exhausting because of his giftedness, but throwing on my own baggage is just making things worse.
Anyway, enough for now. I'll start at the beginning in my next post. We'll go back in time to little four-year-old Lonna in 1974. Yikes.
5 comments:
I thought maybe your blog had been hacked when it showed up in my Reader today, but I am glad to see instead that you are back! As a fellow gifted kid who attended Catholic school until we moved to PA when I was in fifth grade, as well as a former teacher, this new topic really interests me! I also didn't have much of a challenge in school until I got to middle school, where there was tracking in the schools, and even then I didn't learn that I had to work hard until college, and I didn't really learn to study effectively until nursing school. It's awesome that you are being proactive about Dermot's needs. Welcome back to the Blogosphere!
Thanks. One of my biggest concerns is that Dermot needs to learn how to study and time management of projects before he leaves high school. College is a horrible time to attempt to learn that.
Put you back in my reader. I dont often have time to comment but know I am reading.
I wasnt tested until I moved to Pennridge from another school district in 6th grade so I started gifted with jr. high school - which is exactly when the stigma really takes hold. But luckily for me I have a poor personal memory and dont recall enough to be bitter or regretful about. My memory of experiences from school is like a book I read where all I can recall is the main plot points.
I am amazed at how much you recall.
Nicole, my insane memory is a big part of how my giftedness manifests itself. Dermot has picked this up too. Imagine a kid who learns something with only one presentation. Then imagine that kid in a typical first grade classroom that is all about repetition and drill. It's horrible. The hard part is that developmentally most kids really do need that repetition. It's only a very few who don't, but Dermot falls into that small percentage. My memory is also what haunts my mental health, I think. It's harder for me to move on. It also, however, is part of what convinced me to be a psychologist. So, like many things, there are positive and negative things about this.
Glad you're back!
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