Your responses brought tears to my eyes. They are so right on. Thanks!
J, your comment about not pushing for calculus but for character is exactly it. I never said, "My son is not being challenged. He needs hard work so that he'll be a genius." I said, "My usually cheerful and pleasant son is not being challenged, and it's affecting his character." Why is it so hard for people to understand that bored, frustrated kids generally wind up miserable and unpleasant, at least until they find challenging work and people who are like them--usually in adulthood? It seems obvious, so why can't other people see that?
The growing disrespect you discuss, Trinity, was painful for me to see happening in my son. He talked of being the smartest kid in his class--at age 6! (A discussion about the way that would be received by others followed...) And he *hated* 1st grade, the kid who adored half-day kindergarten and loved to learn. He even said some not-nice things about his teacher once, which was TOTALLY not like him. I never once heard him say anything disrespectful about any adult before. But the disrespect was growing. That was when I knew we had to take action.
I'm still quite worried about the sensitivity issue. I may wind up starting a thread about that, after I've thought things through a bit. As someone highly sensitive to criticism myself, I find it hard to know how to teach him that a little constructive criticism is okay, even good. But also as someone sensitive to criticism, I know that it's one of the best things I can help him to learn. I'm hoping that giving him work that's challenging to him, that he sometimes gets wrong, will help. Aside from one math class late in high school (which I'm ashamed to say actually drove me to contemplate suicide...over a B+...), I never really got that challenge until grad school. By then it was too late, I think. I want DS to bump up against hard stuff much earlier so that he'll be more resiliant. I don't want him to fall apart or get rebellious or think about ways to do himself in every time he's not 100% perfect or someone in authority criticizes him.
Then I look at the subject of this thread--a subject line that I wrote!--and I have to laugh! Teacher, teach thyself, right?!? Ha!
Then, too, as I look back at what I've written, I worry that I'm trying to exorcise too many of my own personal demons in my son. He's very much my son, very much like me--for better or for worse!--but I worry that instead of using my experiences to help him, I'm actually just trying to fix my missteps through him. I know all parents are prone to that error to some extent, since our experiences are all we know. But again, the resonant nature of gifted kids strikes me as problematic, or potentially so. He may be like me, but DS is NOT me. Am I doing it wrong for him by looking at him through my own lens? So little has changed for gifted kids in the past 30+ years. So many of the concerns I'm having are the same ones my mother had for her gifted kids when we were children. But am I inappropriately projecting the "sins" of the father (and mother and grandmother!) on the son? I guess the fact that I'm aware of the danger there is half the battle...or at least I hope so!
Please forgive me for my babbling on so self-indulgently. I just feel so in the thick of things right now! Self-doubt is weighing very heavy on me, more heavily than usual. Big choices, big fears, big worries...Who knew that taking a child out of public school could dredge up so much? I'm sort of hoping that I can purge my system of all this GUNK if I write it down here, where people get it. Your posts make me feel better. It's nice to know that, as Trinity writes, we are in this together. That helps.
Bless you both!
K-
