It has been fascinating to watch D15 show gifted traits in more areas as she gets older. Her verbal gifts are profound and obvious to every who has met her for pretty much her whole life, and showed up early in her academic work. She has been a slightly above average math student... but she took the PSAT last week with one weekend of prep time with a SAT book ahead of time, and told me she thinks she may have gotten all of the math problems right. Last year she took drawing. After years of daily or every other day art in school with just average results(liberal arts K-12 school), her drawing talents blossomed last year, and she did astonishing work. And this is a kid who has recently been diagnosed as 2e with a non-verbal learning disability -- who would think she would be good at drawing and now math??
It has been a lesson to me not to pigeonhole my expectations for her based on what I think her areas of strength are. Although her gifts in one area showed up early, I am learning again and again not to underestimate her in any area. Especially as her brain matures. I am glad we have keep on feeding all areas of academics and many extracurricular activities. I wish we could differentiate her education more to allow acceleration as she is ready for it in each subject, of course. Maybe someday all our schools will work that way for everyone...
