I've been thinking a lot about this lately as we try to decipher all of DD's 2E issues. According to family folklore I taught myself to read at the age of 2. I don't remember ever not knowing how so I guess it must be true. I was a friendly, very verbal kid. Small for my age so people were really astonished with what came out of my mouth.
I remember in kindergarten there was someone who came in the classroom and took each kid one at a time to a special corner to play games. Different people kept coming for me, sometimes 2 at a time. When I described it years later I was told it was likely IQ testing and they were trying to see if they could actually get a good read on mine. I asked my mother and all she could remember was they told her "145 or 155 - something like that..."
School was great until 3rd grade. I was always the smartest kid in my class, probably in my grade and never had to work at any of it. I had trouble learning to write cursive that year and they also started construction on the building because of the energy crisis of the 1970's. I later figured out that I probably was affected by the new fluorescent lights that were installed, as well as things like having them close off air supply vents, nail the windows closed, etc.
Things really started to fall apart in 5th grade - instead of being the teacher's favorite she really, REALLY didn't like me. I guess she felt like she was going to teach me a lesson. Still not sure what that lesson was supposed to be but I learned to hate going to school that year. (It was her tenure year and she was denied. I think to this day that it was because of turning everyone's favorite student into a kid who hated school.) 6th grade was a total disaster. I didn't have the organizational skills to deal with middle school.
By 7th grade I insisted on going to a private school instead. Unfortunately it was a bad one - no challenge, no discipline. By 8th grade by best friend (IQ of 165) and I were drinking wine in the stairwells because we were so bored. By 9th grade we both decided that we wanted something better and arranged to transfer to other schools. She went away to boarding school where she remained pretty bored and moved on to some fairly significant drug use. I found another private school in the area, arranged for all the application materials myself - even took a taxi back and forth for the admissions testing. That school kicked my derriere into shape! I developed serious study skills, was challenged and was nowhere near the smartest kid in the class.
Unfortunately I developed some serious - and bizarre - visual issues along the way. I never knew that other people didn't experience excruciating pain when reading. Seriously I had no idea until I was a senior in college and my then-boyfriend-now-husband told me. I had to drop out of law school when my vision went kapploo-ie. I developed debilitating migraines and cannot be under fluorescent lights for any period of time. If I control my environment I'm ok but I can't function too well "out in the real world" so to speak. It's really frightening to see so many of these things affecting DD as early as 1st grade. Lucky her - she seems to have inherited many of my issues along with DH's ld's.
Wow! - it's so strange to write all this out. Only the people on this forum could ever understand...
