Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion What were you like as a child?

Don't know about you but after growing up the way I did I am very determined to make the experiences for my children a lot different. I love my mom and I know she did the best she could given the situation, but I sure wish it could have been different.

I would read the whole textbook quickly ahead too.  I don't know what grades, but I remember I started finishing all the work in the textbooks for the year quickly too, answering all the questions since I wasn't sure which questions the teacher would assign.  I did it one year, and they told me to stop doing it when I started doing it the next year.  That's what stuck in my memory, that they told me to stop.
I used to only speak properly, semi-archaic, and was frequently told I "talked like an encyclopedia".  I was weird, which is actually expected from a strict Pentecostal.  I guess I was entertaining, but weird.  
I had that one teacher I hated too. Ms. Bolton, in the second grade.  I asked her, "you don't like me and I don't like you and I don't need to be here, why don't you just skip me?". (only time I asked for a skip, it was because I was unhappy with the teacher).  She told me because it was too much work to get me tested.  The silly little things you remember, right?  Anyway, they sent me back to read with struggling first graders so at least I was out of the room every day.  
Most teachers liked me just fine.  I guess that's why I remember her.  I was told by mom the first grade teacher (who liked me a lot) had a problem with me finishing my work too quickly then going around bugging the other kids.

I was mouthy, motor-mouth, know-it all, or that's what my mom said.  She also said I was responsible, beautiful, and brilliant.  

What a fun question, mountain mom '11.

Oh my gosh. So, I often wonder how things would have gone had my childhood been in any way "normal".

When I was 4, my mother ran out on us. (Drugs, apparently. She took off with a truck driver.) My dad then drove my sister and I from Pennsylvania, to our grandparents in Nevada. We lived there for less than a year. I went to half a year of kindergarten there. Then we moved back to PA with Dad. Finished K there. Moved again, did most of 1st in one city, then moved again and finished there. We continued moving about until 3rd grade when we landed in Texas. From K to 5th grade I went to 6 different schools. I managed to avoid memorizing my times tables until 5th grade as a result (my step-mother was HORRIFIED when she found out, lol.) Then, after 5th, we all moved to Maryland, and we stayed there for 5 years (through 10th grade) then moved back to Texas. Where I graduated with a (non-weighted )3.5 GPA (4.3 weighted) (which was quite an accomplishment considering they wouldn't give me credit for several of my classes in MD) and 18 college credit hours under my belt.

I was, apparently, quite a wild and crazy kid. I used to dress myself in fun/crazy/mismatched outfits and would freak the heck out if anyone tried to make me wear something else. I would stand in front of the TV each afternoon and jump up and down in place while watching my cartoons. I was basically just on the go non-stop! I don't remember ever not knowing how to read or learning to read - I just remember reading everything I could from at least age 5. I LOOOOVED to read. That was the only time I sat still. I still love to read.

I was a latch-key kid from 1st grade through about 4th, so I spent a lot of time just riding my bike all over the place and playing playing playing. Despite all the craziness, I think I had a pretty good childhood. I mostly remember reading and riding my bike all over with friends. (And Barbies!)

I've never been formally tested, but my SAT score qualifies me for Mensa.

- Early literacy: check. My brother forgot his 1st grade reading book one day, and I read it cover to cover that morning. I was 4. The day I was in first grade and had my first reading group in the same book was EXCRUCIATING.

- Emotional sensitivity: check. My mom always called me the sensitive one. She would frequently reserve punishing me because I'd be punishing myself harder than she would.

- Social isolation: check... at least through elementary school. I never had more than 2 friends, and frequently had zero. It didn't help that my home was quite broken, because apart from using vocabulary my peers didn't understand, I also wore torn clothes and shoes, and rarely got my hair cut. When I'd be teased, I'd react badly, because, see the item above.

Right about 8th grade I found myself enjoying far more success socially, because I'd begun making a number of accommodations. I had decided to emphasize my sense of humor, and I peppered my speech with much more slang and foul language to offset the advanced vocabulary. It also helped that "honors" classes had become an option, which at least put me in an atmosphere with kids approaching to my ability level.

- Rabid consumer of information: check. I remember a phase in elementary school where I'd become passionate about one subject a month, checking out every piece of material in the library about a given subject... space, dinosaurs, marine life, etc. The reason I burned out so quickly is because the material was so woefully unsatisfying in the elementary school library, and that was all I had access to. I ended up giving up and turning to fiction, finally recapturing that level of broad interest as an adult.

- Classroom issues: Check. My first-grade teacher approached my parents about a grade skip, which they immediately shot down for social reasons (I was already youngest in the class, since my birthday was just before the school cutoff... I was a late bloomer and small for my age... my mom wondered how a younger boy would ever have healthy, age-appropriate relationships with the opposite sex). So she shipped me to a 2nd-grade class for language arts. We moved the following year, and that was the end of any accommodations for me.

I was always done with my work first, and I was usually trying to talk to my neighbor while they were still trying to work. The handwriting was marginal, because I couldn't see any value in stretching the work out unnecessarily just to make it pretty. I got so bored and frustrated with repetitive 2nd-grade arithmetic that I'd ball it up and shove it in my desk, then defiantly tell the teacher I hadn't done it. Otherwise, I didn't act up very much... I had learned that school was a place to be bored and frustrated. I took enough pride to do my best work (except for the aforementioned handwriting, plus art, because that was boring to me, too), but I was depressed most of the day and shut down quite a bit.

After elementary I made some accommodations that helped with that, too. I'd use idle class time to indulge in my much-improved access to books, or do homework from other classes, or to write outrageous letters to my growing circle of friends.

I could read by age 4, and I've always been a voracious reader, although I have less time as a non-French parent, I was a cereal box reader, too, as others have mentioned.

I was really quiet and shy until high school. I was a teacher-pleasing, perfect student. always 99th percentile on all standardized tests, always straight A's. I never learned to study properly; it never mattered. I never realized I was different from other kids. When they didn't know what I thought were obvious answers to easy questions, I thought I must be missing something, so I didn't raise my hand. This behavior ended in law school because I felt sorry for the professors when no one raised their hand.

I, like others here, was always reading ahead in my textbooks because class was too slow. I always managed to finish my homework at school, many times while class was going on. I watched an excessive amount of television at home...

Socially, I've always been a chameleon, getting along with everyone. my best friend in grade school was a straight A student, but not like me--she spent a lot of time studying. I made decent friends in high school, and one true peer who didn't go to my high school, who is still my best friend.

I was fairly introverted in as a child. I had 1-2 good friends throughout school and was friendly and got along with a lot of people from different clicks (I was even voted as homecoming queen) but never felt like people really "knew" me and didn't hang out with groups of people.

I memorized books when I was very young and once I could read, I devoured books. I know I could read before Kindergarten because the teacher never gave me the beginning readers that I saw other kids floundering through and thought I would die of boredom if I had to read them. Phonics was the most boring subject ever. I still remember how agonizing it was in school to wait for other kids try to get the right answers to questions.

The librarian in our small town library knew me by name and would save new books for me because I had read nearly every book through young adult and a lot of nonfiction books after a few years. If I wasn't reading, I was writing...poetry, stories, or in my diary.

I also always read ahead in class. I didn't need to study and usually did my homework in front of the TV or in another class while still in school. I always got A's. I was internally very competitive and never was satisfied to let someone else get a better grade than I got. When we graduated 6th grade, I got the prize for every subject except handwriting and it wasn't because my handwriting was less than perfect. I was extremely perfectionistic.

I had one teacher in 3rd grade who placed me in my own reading group and actually allowed me to read interesting novels and discuss them with her rather than reading the silly stories in the classroom reading books. The next teacher in 4th grade said he didn't have time to run an extra reading group for me. I was in the pull out gifted program but wondered why they only let us have a "taste" of interesting things rather than really learning French or psychology or whatever.

My parents did better than their parents in certain things, and DH and I want to do better than our parents with DS. But no matter how much we improve, I’m sure there will be things that my son is going to want to change with his kids someday, if he has any.

Looking back at my childhood, so much of it was utterly boring, and it’s hard for me (although hopefully beneficial for DS someday) to see all of the educational options being considered by people on this forum that my parents probably never even knew existed. I was not outspoken in school; I was anxious to please my teachers and loved to learn. My parents didn’t have a clue that I needed and wanted more. I think they figured that good grades = happy. So I definitely want school to be one of the things I do differently for DS, especially since I believe that he will be bouncing off the walls if he’s under-challenged. No quiet complacency for him, boys have all the luck (tongue in cheek).

I, too, learned to read before kindergarten, multi-tasked in school to stay sane, moved a lot, and was a chameleon between school and home. When I was 11, my friends at school were still in the “boys have cooties” stage so we organized “no talking to boys” days. After school, I was part of a group of 15-19 year olds from my neighborhood, so I switched to dealing with the complexities of dating and friendship cliques. It felt odd, like I was just playing a part to fit in.

I didn't learn to read until grade 2, but then was reading chapter books in a month, and star trek novels before grade 3.

I tried SOOOOO hard to love school, but would throw up every single day. Plain stomach acid. I couldn't really eat at school. I remember having troubles understanding the questions from first grade, the typical "but that sentance doesn't mean what you say it means" kinda thing. I remember writing 2+4=1+5 type things and failing a grade 1 math test that way. I remember having my books confiscated by my teachers. I remember being told I needed extra help in english for answering an entire science test in early modern english. I got kicked out of a LOT of places and stuff. I was tagged as a prodigy by my art teacher, but never really realized that if it was there. I lived for art, though. I spent an enormous amout of time in hospital for asthma, and learned enough about medicine to freak out the tellers in the medical bookstore. I wanted to be a Dr. but I dropped out of highschool. I took some university courses in highschool, but family changes short-circuited what might have turned into a good thing.

I was told to drop math becasue I was inthe 25%le at it, but I found the report, and I was only bad at arithmetic, 99th for logical reasoning etc... I guess they didn't understand the results???? I tested as ASD, but wasn't labelled, b/c "She can obviously talk."

I was... squirting out in all directions, trying to survive. Getting a LOT of bad advice. Not pushed to do the things I needed to do, and dumb enough to make excuses to get out of them.

In retrospect, I think a lot of adults were actually afraid of me. I see the same thing with my older kid now. He's tenacious and smart, at 3, his vocabulary is larger than many adults', and he will hurt himself instead of backing down from a tantrum. He breaks nannies -- even when he tries not to.

-Mich

It's been interesting to draw from my own childhood and that of my husband's as I've struggled to raise three gifted kids, one of whom is 2e.

I've never had my IQ tested, but having raised three gifted kids and been married to a gifted husband for 24 years, I'm pretty sure I'm not gifted. I was adopted, so I grew up with the unique view of never comparing myself to anyone else in my family. I remember learning to read the titles of my mother's books when I was taking afternoon naps in her room, and I was probably about three then. I was a voracious reader, having consumed her entire collection of Zane Grey novels numerous times by the time I was 7 or 8. Looking back, I'm astounded at the vocabulary that man used in his books. I wrote my first "book" in third grade. I started selling magazines door to door when I was about 8 and had a job from that day forward. I sold newspapers, started babysitting at 10 and started working full time at 16. I finished high school a year early but wasn't allowed to graduate early, so I took one class in the morning and then managed a retail shop in the mall during my senior year. I took piano lessons for several years at my mother's insistence, but I didn't like playing - which created conflict with my sister who would practice for hours every day. I would practice the week before our state contests and get unanimous superiors from the judges, but it never really felt like an accomplishment, because I didn't work for it. I got along well with my peers, was quite out-going, and had friends across all walks of life from the stoners to the jocks to the geeks to the outcasts. I really don't remember anyone in school that I didn't like. I rarely studied, got A's and B's without trying and was happy with that so didn't try harder. I don't think I got a grade card in elementary school that didn't have a note to my mother that I needed more self control for talking in class.

My husband, on the other hand, started school when he was 3. (We now know his IQ is somewhere above 185.) His mother says she put him in school because he overwhelmed her with questions that she couldn't deal with. He can remember having a cousin tie his shoes for him even when he was in fourth and fifth grade, and one of the teachers stayed after school with him for a year to help him learn to read and write when he was older. We're pretty sure he had dysgraphia and dyslexia like our son. He was definitely oppositional to authority, but he said it was more out of thinking what they were doing was ridiculous rather than for some need to rebel. He experimented a lot - they were really, really poor, but he was climb on the roof and test new paper airplane designs. When he moved out, his mother discovered an entire drawer of awards and honors he'd earned in school that he'd never even told her about.

And I'm grateful that I have my husband's insights into my own children, because they haven't cared about grades, have felt different and awkward at school at times, and have had struggles completely different from my own background.

I'm frankly mystified as to why you don't think that you are gifted. Your experiences of succeeding without trying hard and not really valuing what you could do because it came easily to you really sound pretty typically gifted to me. It sounds like your husband had a pretty intense "high-maintenance" personality, and maybe your kids inherited that, but this is not true of all gifted people. I was a pretty laid-back people pleaser of a child who walked and talked relatively late, but my IQ tested out at 173 on the SB-LM back when it was the most modern test around. My husband, my son, and I are all 2E, and all have pretty high IQs, but we are all very different in personality and in how our giftedess manifests.

Please don't sell yourself short.