I don't come here often anymore. When I first joined back in 2009, my DYS daughter, then seven years old, had just been identified as a highly gifted dyslexic/dysgraphic student. There were times, particularly in elementary school, when I doubted every decision that I made as her parent. She was in a gifted and talented classroom from 1st through 8th grade. She went to our local high school which had an IB program but she opted for the AP route instead. Now, she is just finishing her first quarter of college.
She is in college close by so I try to go have coffee with her every week or two. Recently, I asked her to reflect on her K-12 experience. I was curious about what she thought. She told me that, as I suspected, elementary school was miserable. At the same time, she said that she would never be where she is today if she hadn't been in a GT classroom. She said that although she often felt like an imposter being in class with kids who were talented in language arts, her teachers never treated her like she was stupid because she struggled with spelling and writing. Her teachers recognized her deep thinking and extreme attention to detail. We recalled the time when she made a model of mountains and valleys using aluminum foil. They were then supposed to draw a map of their model using the creases in their models as a guide for their pseudo topo map. My daughter drew every line that she saw in the foil. When I looked at it, it looked like she had scribbled hundreds of lines on the paper. My first thought was that she hadn't even tried to do the assignment correctly. She had a wonderful teacher who asked her to explain her drawing to me. It became clear that she literally drew every crease that she saw in the aluminum foil, so much that it looked like a total mess. She had too much detail. This gave me much needed insight into why she sometimes got overwhelmed by the input that she received from the world.
The things that she listed as successes in the early years included vision therapy which helped resolve a visual tracking problem and eliminated the headaches that she got when she tried to read, my reading with her every night for years (even though she hated me for it at the time) and making her participate in meetings with her teachers (when we started doing this in 6th grade, she literally huddled under the desk for most of the meeting). She also cited piano lessons as being a big positive. She remembered that she would go to lessons upset and/or drained from school and come out energized. I fessed up that I kept sending her to lessons for the mental health aspect.
Things that didn't work included a typing class that was recommended by the psychologist who did her testing (the reliance on computer "games" that rewarded speed and accuracy totally stressed her out). She also mentioned the elementary school sending her to see the school psychologist to address her anxiety about writing which they scheduled during the writing portion of her class - she missed the writing instruction and had to make up all of the work which stressed her out even more. We laughed about how much she hated being sent to out of the GT class to the lowest spelling group in the grade. At the time she couldn't understand why she had to work on baby words while her friends got interesting words. I asked if she could spell the baby words. She said of course not, but she figured that she wasn't going to be able to spell consistently either way and she could have been learning some more interesting vocabulary.
In middle school, she told me that she thought I was lying to her when I said that things that were easy for other people might be hard for her (i.e. reading) and that things that were hard for other people might be easy for her (math/science). We had a lot of clashes as she wanted independence and I continued to worry that she needed more support. She said that having a gifted dyslexic English teacher was awesome. She said that worst thing was having a terrible music teacher in 8th grade but she appreciated that I went to bat for her and got her out of a toxic situation.
High School had a lot of drama. I took a back seat and tried to let her deal with it. She almost failed three classes one semester but managed to pull off As and Bs in the end. I told her that I was proud of her for digging herself out of that hole. Although she didn't always make choices that I would have made, she mostly ended up making good choices for her and from the "bad" choices, she learned a lot. There was one point where she thought about taking an alternative career path that really did not require her to go to college. She explored pretty seriously during her senior year and realized that she wanted something more intellectual. That exploration allowed her to apply to college with much more focus and purpose.
During her first quarter of college, I've watched my kid shine. My little introvert actively work on making friends in the dorm during COVID restrictions. My dyslexic worked out getting extra time on exams. She spoke to her professors and TAs about her spelling challenges. She actively sought out a professor who was doing research on a topic in her major and got herself into his lab. In short, she has done just fine without me and I'm thrilled about it.
For those of you who are still with me, I just wanted to thank this forum for making me feel less alone on this journey and for keeping me sane through the years.
