Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion What were you like as a child?

I think I've written about this elsewhere, but I was really extroverted and advanced but then the longer I was in school, the more introverted I became. I didn't understand why the other kids didn't know how to read or wouldn't follow the rules in games.

I was the only 3 or 4 year old actually doing the dance choreography in dance class. I read 700 books in 1st grade (or 2nd?) because the teacher would give us a little prize for every ten read and an actual book if we reached 100. No one came close to that.

My teacher didn't believe I was doing it, so she sent me home once with a few and I came back and recited the plots of all of them to her the next day.

I'd always read the entire reading book at the beginning of the year while I was waiting for everyone else to finish reading whatever story we were assigned. I did this even though I was in the advanced "A" reading group.

I wanted to stay in for recess and read, but they wouldn't let me. So I read under a tree instead. A little girl chased me around and hit me and I figured out she was just lonely so I negotiated with her and told her I'd be her friend and play with her once in awhile (1st grade?). So she stopped trying to hit me. And I played with her only when I couldn't get out of it. I usually only had one friend a year and didn't get along with a lot of kids.

In early elementary, I convinced an boy a few years older than me on my bus that I had a twin and I'd pretend to be a different girl every time. I think I even gave my twin a British accent. I don't know why on earth he'd believe me but I'm 99% sure he did.

I read under a desk the whole time and started writing a novel in 4th grade. I lost the notebook, though. My teacher in 4th grade called me "morbid" because I kept reading ghost stories. I remember always reading in my desk in 4th grade and she sometimes made me stop. I think she was mostly letting me get away with it because I had straight As, except in conduct. I always had Cs in conduct.

I didn't care about math, but somewhere in middle school I ran into something I didn't intuitively understand and I remember crying a lot to my dad. I think it was pre-algebra and I'd missed some days of school. After that I thought I was very stupid and just couldn't do math. I know now it isn't true. I learned it all easily and fast in college when I started from scratch.

I was tested for gifted and my mom thinks they kept me out because the district would have been required to hire a new teacher and open a second class if I got in. I got my scores back awhile ago and they were added together wrong, but either way, it seems I missed by a few points.

I was looking at some standardized test scores from 4th or 5th grade and I think they placed me at high school level for almost everything. I don't know if that is even accurate, though?

I started talking back to the teachers by 5th grade and when they opened up the advanced middle school classes to anyone with a B or better, I just gave up entirely. The promise of those classes (by my mom) was the only thing that kept me making A's during elementary. My mom kept telling me it would get better in middle school if I worked hard and made it into the highly selective class.

Anyway, there is my story. My husband and I are very set on homeschooling our child(ren) and my DD is hitting milestones much faster than either of us did.