If you live in a rural community where respectability in the community is conferred for living somewhere in at least the third generation and having been doing the exact same thing as your neighbours do forever, and even having a professional degree puts you outside expected norms, it is a *lot* harder. Now that DS is in private school with a mostly professional community of parents, I can see the difference - we may be on the fringes, but we are not outside. Huge difference. Huge.
I hated my own isolation and hated my child's isolation at the same time as io enjoyed his conversation and art. I can *love* that my child has never needed a minute of prep for anything academic as I bemoan the fact that he has such a hard time fitting in.
This is a major contributing factor to my isolation. DH and I relocated to a new state 3 weeks before my son was born for family reasons. Whereas previously we had both always been attached to a university, we now live in the middle of a corn field. DH commutes but is no longer in academia and I am at home.
In the school district we now live in graduating seniors get their name on a plaque if they make above a 22 on the ACT. Some years there are no kids who get a plaque. Everyone has lived here and farmed for generations.
They almost shut the gifted program down because they didn't have more than 1 kid per grade qualify. They lowered qualifying scores across the board and lowered the IQ cutoff to 120 and they still get *maybe* 3 kids per grade.
The only way I can meet people is through the mommy groups and they probably think I'm as weird as my kid! Ha!
I have insisted to my husband that we move before DS enters kindergarten because I can't put him through this district. There is no way he would thrive.
