Okay, more cogent thoughts on why I'm a bit uneasy about this particular example being a "poster child" of what PG looks like:
a) PG children DO NOT all have this much difficulty within the standard school system; much depends on the school's flexibility, the child's individual strengths and asynchrony, and other factors.
A recent write up that looks at a FAR MORE BALANCED sort of approach to educating a PG child. This young lady's family was willing to consider the rest of her family's needs and also those of quality-of-life and having a childhood in which the entire family dynamic doesn't revolve-- exclusively, anyway-- around the PG child or his/her education. Even with that said, I'm pretty sure that I still wouldn't have wanted that to be written about my own DD.
b) comparisons to the difficulties of a
profoundly disabled child are baaaaaaad news. Always. This really ought to be a rule somewhere. Gifted 101; thou shalt not seek sympathy for your trials by comparison to disabled children. This never ends well, and it often just showcases fairly self-absorbed thinking. None of us with PG children (who aren't 2e) knows the pain of setting up a trust and the profound guilt of burdening our child's
siblings with his/her care when we're gone. We may be afraid to SHARE our child's triumphs, but we don't experience some of what they do. Check in with 2e parents if ya need a reality check once in a while, that's all I'm sayin here. I get it, I do... we've changed MUCH about our lives and some of it was PG-related. But some of it wasn't, too. Disability changed things ohhhhhhh so much more. The PG-related changes were no-brainers by comparison.
c) the side-show freak aspect of this kind of write-up always bothers me. It's not that I'm uncomfortable with the high ability of the children featured... it's that I look at
some of what gets reported as anecdote by parents and think "um, that MIGHT not mean what you think it means... and even if it does..." I'd have told anyone who wanted to know that I was going to win a Nobel Prize
and wow Carnegie Hall, back when I was an EG and enthusiastic 15yo. Part of the reason was basically some naivete, which was certainly charming in its own way, my youthful hubris aside, but I'm sure glad that nobody
seriously held it as an expectation-- or wrote it in the newspaper. I also said a few things that
sounded perfectly plausible and very avante garde to the adults around me... but which, upon reflection from more than 3 decades out, were actually not that brilliant or even thoughtful-- just incomprehensible to those around me. I can say that, though, because I know their genesis, being the one inside my head. Nobody but me knew that it was just talk and wasn't going anywhere because I just wasn't THAT interested. Or committed. Whichever. I'm naturally a dilettante. I can admit that now, but it's probably not something to actively
reward in most teenagers.
I thought that the message re: Davidson Academy was lovely, and positive. It explained-- without hyperbole-- some of the challenges of educating highly asynchronous students and how to answer those challenges.
I consider this piece a very nice showcase for Davidson, at any rate, but it probably does VERY little in the way of 'normalizing' PG youngsters. Some of the emphasis seems to be on the "weird" or "extreme" aspects of having a PG child, and not on the positive and wonderful and reassuringly normal ones. They do exist.
