Hi Grinity,

Thanks for the hello and I'm more than happy to share. You hit the nail on the head actually about keeping it bottled up. It is rough for me because my niece is autistic and low functioning, so I really don't feel comfortable talking about the challenges presented by having a smarter than average child arond my family.

DD is different in many ways, and I first noticed it about the time she turned one. She has always been able to synthesize information quicker than my nieces and nephews at similar ages. She was able to connect the dots between cause and effect at a young age, and once she became verbal we learned just how much about life she already understood.

When she was about 2.5 my friend, who is an art therapist, was playing with her and brought over some drawings and said, "I think DD is gifted". Somewhat stunned I asked why, and she explained that at that age children draw people a certain way. In a nutshell they don't start drawing fingers, eyebrows, nostrils (the details) until much later. That coupled with their verbal interchange was a clue to her.

She was reading by age three and would pester me to teach her more and more words. We started going through workbooks like water. Her favorite show on TV was How It's Made. She seemed to teach herself math a some point because I got a math workbook and she read the directions and did the problem son her own. She questioned everything, and I would pray sometimes that she would just go play with barbies for a bit and leave me alone, LOL.

Today at age 6 she reads at what I suspect is a high school level. We rarely encounter a word she can't read. It still freaks me out when I expect her to stumble on something she's reading out loud and she aces it.

She went to private Kindergarten with only 5 students and was able to get very individual attention. Her teacher recommended we get her tested at our public school, which starts a small G&T program in Grade 1. She took the Otis-Lennon test and scored a 127, so not gifted by that score.

The teacher explained that she suspected that DD would do better once she had gotten used to the school and classroom. She will be re-tested this spring.

Wow, this is a long, long post!!!

Bottom line, as I have begun over the past year to learn about giftedness, I see where so many of the struggles we have with her are part of that whole package. The strong will, the stubborn streak, the perfectionism etc. Her anger when she cannot do something correctly is amazing.

I will end this post by saying that she is very much like I was as a child. Unfortunately for me, my parents chose to attempt to beat the "difference" out of me, and wanted me to be like all the other kids. I was labeled as weird by students and had few friends. Teachers said I was emotionally immature. While my test scores were always high, my school grades were average to poor because I just didn't care. All anyone did was tell me that I was not working up to my potential. I refuse to let that happen to DD.

Thanks to years of personal counseling, and lots of self-help books I have finally gotten to a point where I do achieve my potential. I know that there is nothing wrong with me and I have found many other adults who are just like me and I have a great life. Still I wonder where I could have been by now if things had been different.

Thanks for reading!!!