Until now I've yet to use the e-mail button, didn't see a use for it. I just e-mailed Pru's definition to the hubby since he's said before "your definition of gifted must be different than when I was growing up." ((i.e. gifted=state spelling bee champion = what special needs?)). He just thinks the boy's normal, just smart, but normal. He just thinks the boy will go to school, if he's well behaved, like a normal kid, and the teacher will see how much he knows and let him teach the class. (I guess, like a normal kid?)
Talking about special needs. Here's one of my old friends, Jon Pennington. He's now a poster child for bipolar disorder. He basically remembers *everything*, which makes it nice when you talk to him. He always remembers me.
The bipolar diagnosis explains some of his more interesting features.
"Though his own post-competition life was slightly rocky, Pennington warns off anyone looking for scandal in the lives of Spelling Bee winners. "There aren't any... living under bridges or cracking under the pressure. I haven't heard any horror stories, like the cast of Diff'rent Strokes or child stars gone bad. They seem to be average people. The only thing that tends not to be average about them is they tend to be smart and have very large memories and usually have more degrees than the average person."
Nevertheless, it took Pennington nine years to get his postgraduate degrees at the University of California-Berkeley. During that period, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which he believes may have prolonged his academic quest. "That was one thing I didn't even know about myself when I was in the National Spelling Bee," he says. "I'm generally quite open about it. It shows that many people with bipolar disorder are high functioning professional members of society. I do all the things I need to do to keep it in check. I keep healthy, take the right medicines and try to live right. I guess we all have our crosses to bear, everybody's got their 'something.'"
A member of three national Quiz Bowl championship teams, he also spent his years at Berkeley running a website that kept close watch on political conservatives. Now, with his Ph. D in sociology, he's a federal contractor in Washington working for "a minor agency" in the Department of Defense. But, he says, "I'd prefer to be working as a statistical consultant to help the Democrats retake the White House."
www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1624100_1624098_1623359,00.html
