Originally Posted by Austin
If Gladwell were to survey the GT field, he would very quickly note that the majority of GT kids are falling through the cracks because there is no identification, no environment to support them, and the vast majority of parents are ignorant or just do not care.

Some of my son's gifted, public-schooled friends have talked to me about not feeling supported in their small town school and about teachers not caring if they wanted to learn more than what is going to be on the tests. They are all in band now and I think that is the one place where they do feel supported.

One of my son's friends called to tell me that the band was going on a two day trip that was going to be really fun. They did well at their audition and their pictures were in the paper and he wanted to know if I saw it. I listened to him and congratulated him, but in the back of my mind I was thinking about how I had thought several years ago that I could fight the school, that I could do something to change rules that don't require an appropriate education for twice exceptional students and that I could somehow get the school to allow my son to at least participate in band. His friends told us a few months ago about how the band kids played cards together at lunch time and when I said I didn't think they would let him skip grades the friend who is three years older said he thought they would have to put him in the same grade as him because he is so smart. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. There is no doing what is best for the child at our school.

My homeschooled son doesn't get to take band. He doesn't get to go to lunch with kids. Instead he gets to eat lunch with his grandparents and me. He gets to watch me scream when my mother sneaks up on me and pinches me and he gets to see his grandfather slap her hand when she pinches and won't let go. But my son is so very adult like in dealing with all of this. He researched and learned all kinds of things about neuroscience, brain injury and behavior. He knows that brain damage caused his grandmother's behavior. He even finds it interesting and amusing. He knows that sometimes there is a choice between laughing and crying and he almost always chooses to laugh. He is more of an optimist than I am and even more so now that doctors told him yesterday that they want to hold off on having him wear a brace for scoliosis for three months to see if there is any change. He told us afterward that his glass was back to half-full again.

I care. My son's friends' parents care, but is it enough?

My son's computer is next to mine and he doesn't play games all the time in his free time. Yesterday he was looking at politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/ and one of the things he read to me when I asked what he was looking at was "McCain said Obama called Sarah Palin a pig. My son laughed and said "Hmm, I wonder what she smells like." Most kids his age who do not watch the news would not know that he was trying to make a joke about the government's pork barrel spending and pig odor research. But the older gifted kids in his children's musical theatre group did. He felt supported there. I have noticed that most of the musical theatre kids are outside-the-box and proud of it and I think this is good for him, but most of the people in town would rather see football than Annie. They put so much work into putting on a good show and they all notice that most of the audience is made up of relatives of the kids. Even their teachers at school don't bother to go to their shows but won't miss a football game.