OK, I will probably regret this, but I can't resist.

We are one of those families.

When this aired (two years ago) I was ripped apart by the NYC Mom population... predominantly for crying in front of my child when we received rejection letters(a terrible mother! no boundaries!), but also for speaking so openly and cavalierly about the very process I was trying to navigate and (take advantage of) (I was trying to get financial aid to private school.)

I agreed to be part of this documentary because I thought it might help me in the process, frankly, and because I thought it would be informative for people. Anyway I had no IDEA of the hornet's nest I was stumbling into.

I had a child I worried about constantly. He was extremely gifted but also so extremely overexciteable and easily bored that any group setting was a huge problem. During the year that this was filmed (he was four) he was experiencing his first exacerbation of what I now realize is PANDAS and am treating as an autoimmune disease. I could not imagine him in a classroom of 30 kids (standard size here) and thought the private school system, with its rigid structures, high standards and small classes was his only hope for being able to go to school.

He took the ERB (WPPSI) and scored almost all 19s, so I thought it was a real possibility. I was deluding myself. The scores caught the schools' attention, but they would never have accepted a child like mine. They could see quite clearly that he would have behavioral problems. (They were right about that.) They want bright kids but not problematic kids. The fact that so many bright kids are also problematic is not a real concern to them, because they have so many kids to choose from.

Anyway this documentary ended up contributing significantly to our pain... and I learned a valuable lesson about the power of the media. (While I had no real problems with the way she edited this film, she had her own agenda obviously and the finished product reflect that more than it reflects our real experience.)

The school situation is terrible for NYC kids, and worst of all for gifted kids who need a little extra love and attention.

I am now homeschooling my son.