Great question!
First and foremost I would have documented their developmental milestones better. I never really saw the relevance when they were babies (they were the first grandkids on either side). I assumed that the developmental guidelines must have averaged in babies from third world countries who had no pre-natal care and suffered from poor nutrition, so I stopped looking at that chart! If I had looked at Dr. Rufs levels of giftedness I would have identified them earlier.
I wish that I had educated myself about giftedness earlier and been a more critical consumer of education. If all that had occurred, we probably would have moved to a large city of a neighboring state that has some requirement to educate all children appropriately rather than a community in IL with sky-high standardized test scores. I now realize that a situation where the very bright children of well educated and supportive parents attending schools with a very average curriculum where they receive straight As does not equal an excellent education.
I really didn�t want to be one of �those parents�, so I never encouraged early academic study especially for my first. As it turns out, I have had to become one of �those parents� anyways as demonstrated in the above paragraph. I am willing to tell the emperor that he isn�t wearing any clothes.
My kids are both sight-readers. I wonder if I had bought a phonics program for them when they were very young and reading by sight, would their phonetic abilities be stronger now. My daughter especially had been reading for several years before she started 1st grade and so wasn�t even included in the reading instruction given in class.
Sorry that I�ve rambled in free-associative form here. I�m really interested to see the responses of others also!
