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

I had the same thoughts.

Academically I was very advanced as a child, despite my parents not enrolling me in school until I was almost 7. I couldn't even write my name, and yet by 10 I was scoring above children 2 and 3 years older than me. By my last year of elementary school the teachers were having to write new levels of instruction for me. I wasn't allowed to watch any commercial tv, only public, and I usually got books for birthdays and Christmas. I would often stay up all night reading a book because I couldn't wait to find out what happened. (Even today I have this problem, I've stopped reading books as its too expensive!). I was also a very excessive talker, to the point that my mother had to put tape on my mouth to shut me up one time.

I was also a very creative child, I was obsessed with cooking and baking, and art and I played the violin. I spent summers at my grandmothers house learning how to cook and doing crafts with her. I wanted to be an artist or a chef when I grew up, but my parents always discouraged it.

Socially I was very lonely, but as a child I thought it was because of my weird family. I've always wanted to fit in, to be popular, and never have. I never understood the appeal of what the other girls were interested in, and I didn't know how to talk to them. I still struggle with this as an adult too.

Sadly, despite all the ambition I had as a child, I haven't done anything with my life. My parents basically left me to fend for myself, in the belief that because I was so smart I didn't need their help and because they were so busy with my 4 younger siblings, one of whom has autism. They made me go to a religious high school rather than the grammar school I wanted to go to, and because I was never challenged by the work I never learnt how to study. I never made it to college, and at 34 I can't even get a job. I'm a housewife. In contrast, my parents had a child before me that they gave up for adoption, and because her family nurtured her talents and encouraged her to use her intelligence she's just completed a PHD and she's working in a field she loves.

And my 8 year old is almost a carbon copy of me. Except that I could sit still!

What was I like as a child?
According to my recollection, a tiny old person. I also do not remember struggling to read, but I DO remember my dad "showing me off" to some friends by having me read something from an advanced engineering text (maybe I was 4) then I explained it to the adults. Both my parents took that Evelyn Wood speed reading course in the early 70's so I thought I just inherited that.
I was a pleaser, perfectly well mannered at home and school, a kid who didn't lose things and pretty much did what she was told, when and how.
I also usually only had one "best friend" at a time and always thought I was born into the wrong time/place. I worried obsessively over things like nuclear war and would I really go to hell and burn in a fire for all eternity for thinking I would like to kiss a boy.
When I was in HS, my step mom says I had a chip on my shoulder. What I really had was the thought that no one there really meant anything because none of them would ever be signing my paychecks (and they aren't! lol!). I spent alot of time listening to The Smiths and wishing either I could graduate and move onto college early or that I would just die in my sleep one night because I was too emotionally sensitive for this world.
Even now, as an adult, I have had problems with people telling me I "act like I am better than others" or "superior" because apparently, not everyone has the same amount and command of vocabulary I do and this makes some of them feel stupid...I've also been accused of having too high of expectations and making others look bad because I do it all so well...whatever...

I posted my experiences in one of my first posts.

Looking back, I could have easily finished HS by age 12 and then gone on to college. No one really knew what to do with me. When I was 14, I was fortunate to meet coaches, teachers, and one PG adult who took an interest in me, and directed me, even though they could not always fulfill my need to learn at a high level. Prior to 14, from age 7 on, I survived by withdrawing and doing my own thing. Fortunately I had access to libraries and a parent who loosely supervised me. I was still able to grow, albeit haphazardly.

In dealing with my son, Mr W, 4y1m, has helped me to also see just how frustrating it was for adults to deal with me. Its very hard to look at him, a sunny little boy, and realize that he is really 8 mentally. Almost no one will engage with him as a 3rd grader if not a young adult, though he will act like one given the chance. And emotionally he is not a 3rd grader and this takes a great deal of work to carry him past his frustrations - and for him to perform at a higher level he has to grow emotionally. I can see how a kid like him could just withdraw.

Its fun to read the posts on Memory Lane. Our generation is the first to name and come to grips with these kids. I can't help but think and hope it will have a huge impact in their lives and in others' lives to raise them to be adults in full control of their abilities.

Its never too late. Learn from the past and move on. A lot of women (and men) have the same life story. A few classes in a tech field to get your certification and you will be off to the races, or go back and get a hard degree, and if you do really well, grad school and then the PHD.

My mom went to school in her forties and opened a business that put me through a private college. My sister changed careers in her late 40s and is doing well now. Both of them had to go back to school to do this. Making a big change is possible with a lot of perseverance and an understanding that initially, even you may not believe you can do it you have the capacity to surprise yourself if you keep at it.

I remember liking school and feeling like I was good in it until about the 2nd grade. During that year, the teacher used to have us watch TV and I thought it was boring so I would play a dictionary game with my seatmate. We would get in trouble for this. By 3rd grade my mom says the teacher was telling her I lacked initiative.

In my senior year of high school, I was shocked when my Business Law teacher asked me if I was interested in applying for a scholarship - I was a C student. My dad went to school only through the 8th grade. He did not think girls needed to be educated. My mom was a secretary most of her life. My family life was a mess and none of my 5 brothers or sisters has gone to college – 2 did not graduate from high school. I changed high schools 4 times. My best high school friend who I had not seen in 20 years wondered (at our high school reunion) how I ended up going to law school - you weren't even a good student she said.

I started working in a law firm in San Francisco when I was 17 and after working in the legal field for 7 years, I decided to go to college. I started at a junior college and eventually graduated from UC Berkeley when I was almost 31. A few years later, when my DS now 8 was one and a half, I graduated from law school. I have never been tested for any gifted program but I think I am likely optimally gifted (even though I never fit in at school). I have never been particularly good at standarized tests - my LSAT score was good enough to get me into law school in Nevada. I was very proud at my 20 year high school reunion to be able to tell my Business Law teacher what I needed a little more time than normal to accomplish.

I've been thinking a lot about this lately as we try to decipher all of DD's 2E issues. According to family folklore I taught myself to read at the age of 2. I don't remember ever not knowing how so I guess it must be true. I was a friendly, very verbal kid. Small for my age so people were really astonished with what came out of my mouth.

I remember in kindergarten there was someone who came in the classroom and took each kid one at a time to a special corner to play games. Different people kept coming for me, sometimes 2 at a time. When I described it years later I was told it was likely IQ testing and they were trying to see if they could actually get a good read on mine. I asked my mother and all she could remember was they told her "145 or 155 - something like that..."

School was great until 3rd grade. I was always the smartest kid in my class, probably in my grade and never had to work at any of it. I had trouble learning to write cursive that year and they also started construction on the building because of the energy crisis of the 1970's. I later figured out that I probably was affected by the new fluorescent lights that were installed, as well as things like having them close off air supply vents, nail the windows closed, etc.

Things really started to fall apart in 5th grade - instead of being the teacher's favorite she really, REALLY didn't like me. I guess she felt like she was going to teach me a lesson. Still not sure what that lesson was supposed to be but I learned to hate going to school that year. (It was her tenure year and she was denied. I think to this day that it was because of turning everyone's favorite student into a kid who hated school.) 6th grade was a total disaster. I didn't have the organizational skills to deal with middle school.

By 7th grade I insisted on going to a private school instead. Unfortunately it was a bad one - no challenge, no discipline. By 8th grade by best friend (IQ of 165) and I were drinking wine in the stairwells because we were so bored. By 9th grade we both decided that we wanted something better and arranged to transfer to other schools. She went away to boarding school where she remained pretty bored and moved on to some fairly significant drug use. I found another private school in the area, arranged for all the application materials myself - even took a taxi back and forth for the admissions testing. That school kicked my derriere into shape! I developed serious study skills, was challenged and was nowhere near the smartest kid in the class.

Unfortunately I developed some serious - and bizarre - visual issues along the way. I never knew that other people didn't experience excruciating pain when reading. Seriously I had no idea until I was a senior in college and my then-boyfriend-now-husband told me. I had to drop out of law school when my vision went kapploo-ie. I developed debilitating migraines and cannot be under fluorescent lights for any period of time. If I control my environment I'm ok but I can't function too well "out in the real world" so to speak. It's really frightening to see so many of these things affecting DD as early as 1st grade. Lucky her - she seems to have inherited many of my issues along with DH's ld's.

Wow! - it's so strange to write all this out. Only the people on this forum could ever understand...

Of course there's nothing wrong with being a housewife if it's what you want to do. It just isn't what I want to do. Plus I'm no good at this either.

I don't have the funds, the study skills or the desire to go to college again. I've tried it 3 times and failed miserably 3 times. I'm not saying that won't change down the line, but for the foreseeable future it's just not going to happen. I hate that I've wasted my life like this, but I don't have a way to change it so I've learnt to live with it. All I can do is try my hardest to ensure my kids don't end up the same way.

After reading some of the posts on this thread about the feeling of lost opportunities, and that time has past you by, and that it might be too late to start a career that involves higher education and that you have missed your calling. I thought I would like to post this link. I too have been thinking to returning to school, and after googling older students, non-trad student etc I game across this site, http://www.oldpremeds.org/fusionbb/index.php?

There are some people in their 50s starting med school, and many more in their 40s and even more in their 30s. Even if you are not interested in med school the diaries and general pre-med discussions are not only encouraging, but also offer some extremely useful strategies about re-entering college in your "later" years. Advice about re-taking some pre-reqs if you need to. The various reasons and advantages of why you may need to re-take courses from gathering current references to re-learning half forgotten material to changing fields. I think the forum could at the very least encourage you to return to/begin school/new adventure, and no it is not out of the question to begin new careers in your 50s


I have a question. I can not get the horizontal scroll off my reply does anyone know why its there?