Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy My Recollections

Reading this board over the weekend has brought back a lot of memories from my childhood.

I want to provide some background, a specific recollection as a DS6/7 of dealing with the Public School and then some general comments.

First, my parents divorced when I was 3. My dad was a highly trained aircract mechanic who served 17 years in the Army. My mother had a degree in English. My mom was also an unstable person - she often left me with my grandmother from my infancy on so she could go have a good time for weeks at a time. We moved around a lot ( just about every year ) and her personal life and job superseded her duties as a mom. She was also very good at arguing and my dad could not deal with that.

You have to read the following with the above as background and realize that it tended to increase the chances that I would fall between the cracks.

My mother did nothing special for me other than reading to me on occasion. My earliest memories ( 2 years old ) are watching her read and having her read to me. Once I was 5, that ended and she had her life to live. By age 8 I was cooking my own meals using a cookbook and by the time I was 13 I cooked at home most of the time. Same for other household tasks including shopping and laundry.

I was in private Montessori school where I was with kids in grades 4-7 until the 2d grade where I was put into 2d grade at a public school. I recall sitting in class looking at the "see spot run" books and wondering why spot was running all the time. I had a huge sinking feeling.

I wanted to read my Jack London books and the teacher took it and my other books away from me.

My silence in class was diagnosed as a speech or learning disorder. Furthermore, my reading without an adult to help meant I had weird pronunciations. "Rendezvous" was "Rindezvus", etc.

They brought in a speech therapist and that lasted just two sessions. She was so kind to me - she would bring in books from middle school and we would read them together during our hour once a week. She showed me how to use the phonetic spelling in the dictionary. I really appreciated her for this.

It all blew up one day when I refused to "learn how to tell time" ( BOOORING) and just started reading a book. The teacher made me sit inside during recess and told me I was a Very Bad Boy. I had zero respect for her at this point. I clearly recall thinking that there was nothing here for me and got up and walked the three miles to home - I had never walked it before. I called my mom to tell her I was at home. She freaked out and then called the school to ask where I was...THAT was amusing.

From then on, I was allowed to do whatever I wanted as long as I took all the tests with the class and was quiet. (I remember I amused myself by taking the tests one day with my right hand and then the next day with my left hand...) I got to spend the first hour and last hour of each day in the School Library. I would read the newspaper in the morning then dive into a book. The Librarian was a great lady and helped me pick out books. ( I already knew how to use a card catalogue and had the DDS memorized. )

I was put in with 5th/6th graders for field trips and other activities like book club. Which I recall looking forward to. I got a lot of attention from the older girls who kind of mothered me.

By the middle of the 3rd Grade, there were no books left to read in that libary and I had started on the Encyclopedias. That was the time of the next crisis.

We moved around quite a bit. There were other incidents like this. In no case, with one exception, did the school district know what to do. In the 5th grade I could do 8 digit division in my head. I could and often did correct teachers in class. This was right before calculators. I recall one test where the teacher got the answer wrong and marked me down. She refused to admit she was wrong so I took it to the principal and was vindicated.

The exception was getting tested when I arrived (7th grade/DS11) and they moved me over to the High School where I was in classes full-time. I could no longer play football, but in soccer I played with the Freshmen. (We moved 6 months later - back into the slow lane.) I was in pre-Calculus geometry, 2d year Algebra, honors English ( 10th grade), physics, and chemistry - essentially a 10th/11th grade load. I was in heaven. I recall being very SMALL compared to most kids. My "best" friend was an 11th grader who was a star football player in my Chem/Math classes. ( In retrospect we had something in common - our exceptional skills in one aspect of our lives. He went on to start as a Sophomore QB in college.)

From then on I hung out with 17-18 year old kids even though I was 12. At least they were interesting and most realized I was young in some ways.

But I was still profoundly alone with no one to share my thoughts with - until I got a "mentor" when I was in 8th grade by accident. He was a professionally trained Astronomer (cool!!), a video game nut and a DOD contractor whom I met while reading books on programming and mirrors at the library.

He gave me books and lists of books and answered my questions. I had someone to talk to. He affected me profoundly. After I knew him for 2 months we moved again.

In some cases, there would be a gifted program. I was already way beyond the programs. For instance, there was an Astronomy enrichment program in the 7th grade. I told the teacher I knew about Astronomy. He just laughed me off and showed us a film on stars and planets. The next time I brought my 6 inch mirror that I had made myself and the list of stars I had observed with it. That was the last time I went to the Astronomy enrichment program. Another program was Botany. Same thing. On the first tour of a greenhouse the guide could not name some plants - I helped her. I made $50 once by naming all the plants in a garden during an organic gardening field day when I was DS10.

Almost ALL of my learning was by myself. No teachers, no parents, no other adults. Just books. Or I would read about something going on and get someone to take me there. And every now and then an adult would step into my life for a few weeks here and there to make a difference or just let me be myself. When I got into Calculus class and into honors English my interests and the school's finally had something in common.

I went through the motions in class - Once I got into 8th grade, grades meant nothing to me - I'd built my own world and a B average was fine and no one paid me any attention. Which was fine with me. I had a job and could buy the things I wanted.

The "system" finally took notice of me when I took the PSAT, the ACT, and the SAT. The latter two I had the highest scores in the entire school district with 5000 graduating seniors. A lot of the perception of me changed when those test scores came in.

In retrospect, the few comments I can make are:

1. Recognize what your child is. Help your child to recognize who they are and thus set appropriate goals that challenge them.
2. Stability.
3. Skip grades asap. I felt comfortable around adults when I was 7 and by 12 I felt confortable around HS Seniors. I was so happy the time I was accelerated to HS.
4. Map out a roadmap for them in all subjects and adhere to it. Make sure the roadmap aims right through a college curriculum. This will give them discipline. My mentor noted above did this for me in Software and Astronomy and it made a huge difference.
5. Let them spend half of their time with their own explorations - ( find them a mentor when they turn 13 - volunteering at that interest helps, ie art museum or planetarium.)

Austin, thanks for posting your experiences. I really enjoyed reading your post.

Cathy

Yes, thank you Austin. Your story holds some similarities to my own. I appreciate your story and your advice. It think a lot of parents here are on the same page.

Austin-

I was another kid who fell through the cracks. Glad you found your way here, and it sounds like you are compensating for your own lack of parenting by being very deliberate and loving in your own parenting. Bravo!

The Kitchen Wars

I was a DS6. My mom had stayed up too late and it was 9 am and I was very hungry.

I was already making sandwiches and chocolate milk by myself. And I had observed my mom cooking...soo..

I decided to cook for myself and my sister. I pushed the chair over to the gas range and cooked bacon, eggs, and french toast. The bacon and eggs were fine, but the french toast was probably not that good. No big deal because as kids most anything tastes good when you are hungry. My mom got up and smelled the food. Her first reaction was to ask who cooked breakfast. My sister said I did and because she never lied, mom believed her. And that was that.

Despite the addition of coffee for my mom to the AM menu, the morning forays into cooking had an end point.

One morning I attempted to make chocolate pudding. This was the old style pudding requiring some serious simmering to get the pudding to set. On top of this I decided to make a triple batch. If I had left the pot on the range to cool, or had it been just a single batch, it all would have been fine. But I had seen mom put the hot pudding in the fridge and I was convinced that was the way. But standing on the chair with a very heavy bowl of hot bubbling pudding undid me and I fell, the pot landing on my arm, and the pudding going everywhere. Some of the pudding scorched on the range and the smell hung in the air when I woke mom up complaining of being burned. One look at the pudding monster convinced her to get up whereupon she found my sister in the kitchen eating pudding off the floor.

The 3rd degree burns on my arm and the realization that I had almost caught the house on fire put an end to the kitchen free-for-all. I was no longer an amusement for her friends, but a Safety Hazard!

The kitchen got a set of doors with a lock.

That kept me out for a few days until I unlocked the kitchen window one morning then got back in that night with a screwdriver. Bread crumbs do not lie. And a week later mom was making sure the other windows and doors were locked.

I then studied the new doors carefully. The lock was a combination lock secured through a bail and loop whose plates were secured with shallow wood screws.

I simply unscrewed the screws and got back into the kitchen, then reseated the screws. Bread crumbs don't lie and mom had the screws replaced with bolts.

Next to fall was the combination lock. I systematically tried combinations until I figured it out. I was better with the bread crumbs, but one morning sisterly prodding and hubris got me and I made her breakfast again.

A key lock went on the door. At the library I looked up locks in the card catalog and then found out about lock picking. I got a book on lockpicking and my mom and friends laughed over me reading it.

Problem was I did not have the dexterity or strength to do it properly. But I did find another book on doors and learned how hinges worked.

It took two chairs, but I did take the pins out of the hinges and took the doors down.

At that point mom was furious. But she made a deal with me - no cooking while she was not home and I had to get help with heavy pots - and she would leave the doors off. If I broke the rules, she would put a steel door up. I kept my end of the deal and she kept hers.

Three years later I went to live with my dad and his new wife. The next morning I was cooking breakfast when they got up. My dad was not amused and I got spanked pretty bad and he really enforced the no-kids-cooking-in-the-kitchen rule.

Thanks for sharing your stories, Austin. It brings to mind stories that my mother-in-law sometimes tells us about DH as a kid (e.g., when he was 5 or 6 at school, he decided to climb telephone pole outside to get to the alarm (fire?) and see if he could activate it. He could.

After my parents divorced, my mom worked full time. Once when I was eight, I stayed home sick by myself because Mom didn't want to take the day off from work. I tried to make tomato soup (which Mom used to make for me when I was sick) and I forgot it on the stove and it burned. I called my mom's office all upset, and her boss answered her phone. He had a very deep voice and a thick accent, and I couldn't understand him. I remember just bursting into tears...

I highly recommend the book "Glass Castles" by Jeannette Walls. Her childhood makes mine look like Disneyland. She talks about getting burned (so bad she had to get hospitalized) while cooking hotdogs for herself- she was THREE years old! It's a tough story, but well told with a good dose of humor, similar to Angela's Ashes.

LOL!

I read Pat Tillman's bio written by his mom. She had a lot of stories about Pat doing stuff like this.

I just looked it up. Its on my list.

I wonder how to give my son freedom like this - today we are so overprotective.

Hi Austin,

I'm also from crazy divorced home, though I depended on my older sister to cook or ate Life cereal for several meals (basically all the time--still enjoy it). My little sister says she did her own laundry at 6, but my memory is a blur (perhaps I only wore dirty clothes).

I don't think this early independence is necessarily to be celebrated. It is a painful thing of absent parenting, shirking responsibility to provide supervision and a safe home. I am not a conservative, overprotective mom by any means, but I think parents (especially those traumatized by absent parents) should know the value of a safety net. I desperately do not want to repeat what my parents did for my kids. I am probably too permissive and allow too much freedom, but I try to let them know that I am there if they need me and that they do not have free reign--they are part of a bigger entity (family) & have responsibility, rules (not a lot), and must make some compromises.

I agree with you that some are so overprotective, monitoring kids' every move. How stifling! However, I think kids derive security and self esteem from some boundaries. I know I didn't like being the only kid on the block who didn't have to ask permission to go places. It made me feel like an orphan who no one cared about.