I guess as her primary educator, I am not sure if I am doing right by her in terms of giving her an academic experience that includes effort, frustration, and all the things human beings should experience in order to gain the life skills and coping mechanisms needed as an adult, outside of school.
I am neurotic about this because I have a gifted brother (IQ was tested as a child, and it was close to 150). I won't get into the details here, but he skated through academics, but has never been functional in terms of work and relationships as an adult.
Right now everything is excessively simple to her, even most of the advanced content we've kind of fallen into without any plan.
When I try to push beyond that, I am at times met with tears of anger, humiliation, and self-loathing, which makes me feel TERRIBLE and back off immediately, berating myself for asking ridiculous things of a 6-yr-old.
But then at times, she comes back a few days later and shows off her comprehension at whatever I was trying to explain to her when she had her meltdown. Is this just a random epiphany or some demonstration of giftedness, I don't know. She's only 6, and her perschool years appeared pretty typical, so our experience is limited here.
I guess if she is gifted, I would hope to find resources (like Young Scholars) so I don't screw her up trying to educate her? I don't want her to end up like my brother, but I also don't want her to grow up thinking she has to perform feats of genius to win my approval.
