I'm new to the forum and I hope you don't mind I post about what it was like for me growing up. It's something that has always been on my mind but is resurfacing now that my 8 year old daughter tells me she thinks she is weird.

As a child I was definitely different, I could tell even at a young age. I grew up in a rural area where gifted wasn't really important but even if it had been I doubt I screamed gifted. Instead I was rather quirky. I can remember as far back as when I was 9 months old. I didn't talk til I was over the age of 4 and had to go to speech therapy. I had an obsession with school buses and I also was very fascinated with hospitals and the medical field. I started reading at a young age and never remember the process or struggle of learning how to read. I would also read anything I could get my hands on, encyclopedias, cereal boxes, Farmer's Almanac, history books, etc. My grandparents would always have a stack waiting when I would come to visit them. The library was my favorite place. When I was about 10 I checked out French dictionaries and French classical literature and began to teach myself French. Starting around age 8 I began drawing complex mazes and really enjoyed drawing geographical maps of imaginary countries, cities, oceans, etc.

In elementary school I was an average student and it wasn't until junior high and high school that my grades improved. I think it was because I was able to finally choose what I wanted to learn (geography, languages, art, and history primarily). I never needed to study for any tests and still managed to get A's in all my classes which for high school I didn't think too much of it but I was really surprised in college when other students didn't seem to get concepts right away like I did. I thought college was supposed to be challenging and it just wasn't for me, it was really no different than high school.

My thirst for knowledge hasn't ended, I still frequent the library to explore and learn about topics that interest me at the moment. I prefer conversations that have an intellectual or deeper meaning... philosophizing. I will think of things (make connections) and many times my friends/family will say they never looked at it that way or never even thought of those things (hard to explain but usually involving the bigger picture of life). I still can't seem to find satisfying friendships with others who share my interests of talking about real, meaningful subjects. My best friend is my sister because we seem to get each other. Although I would say she is probably the poster child for gifted. So we couldn't be more different from that aspect. LOL

I had never been a typical child and was many times called weird, even by my own family. I don't know what my IQ is (never tested) but I feel I can relate to others here because I have always felt different than my peers (still do) and never felt like I fit in.

Thanks for posting this. This resonated with my life experience as well. Where do you live?

I also thank you for posting this. I will be very curious to read responses. I was always weird. Never had any friends. After reading about traits of gifted kids - especially where the kids are never supported and end up as slackers, I realized that is me! I have been wondering lately what might have been. I might elaborate more later, but don't have time right now. Thanks again for posting this.

I think I've written about this elsewhere, but I was really extroverted and advanced but then the longer I was in school, the more introverted I became. I didn't understand why the other kids didn't know how to read or wouldn't follow the rules in games.

I was the only 3 or 4 year old actually doing the dance choreography in dance class. I read 700 books in 1st grade (or 2nd?) because the teacher would give us a little prize for every ten read and an actual book if we reached 100. No one came close to that.

My teacher didn't believe I was doing it, so she sent me home once with a few and I came back and recited the plots of all of them to her the next day.

I'd always read the entire reading book at the beginning of the year while I was waiting for everyone else to finish reading whatever story we were assigned. I did this even though I was in the advanced "A" reading group.

I wanted to stay in for recess and read, but they wouldn't let me. So I read under a tree instead. A little girl chased me around and hit me and I figured out she was just lonely so I negotiated with her and told her I'd be her friend and play with her once in awhile (1st grade?). So she stopped trying to hit me. And I played with her only when I couldn't get out of it. I usually only had one friend a year and didn't get along with a lot of kids.

In early elementary, I convinced an boy a few years older than me on my bus that I had a twin and I'd pretend to be a different girl every time. I think I even gave my twin a British accent. I don't know why on earth he'd believe me but I'm 99% sure he did.

I read under a desk the whole time and started writing a novel in 4th grade. I lost the notebook, though. My teacher in 4th grade called me "morbid" because I kept reading ghost stories. I remember always reading in my desk in 4th grade and she sometimes made me stop. I think she was mostly letting me get away with it because I had straight As, except in conduct. I always had Cs in conduct.

I didn't care about math, but somewhere in middle school I ran into something I didn't intuitively understand and I remember crying a lot to my dad. I think it was pre-algebra and I'd missed some days of school. After that I thought I was very stupid and just couldn't do math. I know now it isn't true. I learned it all easily and fast in college when I started from scratch.

I was tested for gifted and my mom thinks they kept me out because the district would have been required to hire a new teacher and open a second class if I got in. I got my scores back awhile ago and they were added together wrong, but either way, it seems I missed by a few points.

I was looking at some standardized test scores from 4th or 5th grade and I think they placed me at high school level for almost everything. I don't know if that is even accurate, though?

I started talking back to the teachers by 5th grade and when they opened up the advanced middle school classes to anyone with a B or better, I just gave up entirely. The promise of those classes (by my mom) was the only thing that kept me making A's during elementary. My mom kept telling me it would get better in middle school if I worked hard and made it into the highly selective class.

Anyway, there is my story. My husband and I are very set on homeschooling our child(ren) and my DD is hitting milestones much faster than either of us did.

Funny, I was just thinking about this earlier today before seeing this question. I was pretty oppositional ("C"s in conduct also would have described me!). But when I look at the environment I was in, it doesn't seem like a surprise. One of my stongest memories is taking a reading test in 4th grade and scoring at the 12th grade reading level. The teacher hauled me to the principal's office and accused me a cheating (teacher said, "I couldn't score that high on this test, so this kid MUST have stolen the answers."). Of course, I didn't cheat. That teacher loathed me, and I returned it. I spent most of my recess time in side that year writing this sentence: "I will learn to remember to raise my hand before I speak in class.". Argh. That was the worst year, but in general I remember school as just being so DULL because it was so slow.

I read for hours every day (including when I should have been doing schoolwork). And spent many hours practicing and perfecting my skills on my musical instrument. I actually don't remember doing homework hardly ever, even in high school. Don't think I had to. But I honestly did not have any clue that I was signficantly smarter than everyone else (I would have just said that I read faster, and was "weird") until I was a senior in high school and was told I had the highest SAT score in our county, then won an automatic scholarship for an ACT score in the top 150 in our state.

College at a top university was a shock to me, as I did not have good study skills. Really, I never did develop them, even there I was mostly able to get pretty good grades without a lot of self discipline. (which I have since developed -- have been thinking about going back for another degree, wondering how I would do now. Or would I just revert back to my old habits?)

I had one sister 5 years younger than me and one sister 9 years younger than me.  I had a lot expected of me.  One step dad from age 2.5-5yrs, and one step dad for a grand total of six months at 9 yrs. old.   We moved practically every 6 months.  I was in 13 different schools (from moving) by the 6th grade.   Always honor roll, always obedient, except when I was stubborn.  They stuck me babysitting a lot at the church because I was responsible and engaging.  The church, as a whole, was our whole life.  The Pentecostal church zealously teaches that Christians are alien on Earth, ambassadors, Citizens of Heaven and that knowledge, wisdom, and understanding are gifts from the Holy Spirit dwelling within you.  I would choose from 1 to 3 playmates  in my class every time we moved.   The Queen Bees would try to introduce themselves because I was something new every time I moved, I would ignore them and befriend the outcast because they still liked to PLAY and the socialites weren't very active that way.  (climbing trees, etc).   
My mom tried her best, kept us off welfare, kept us together, kept us in church, sheltered us.  You do the best you can with what you know at the time, right!

Glad to hear I'm not alone I live in Colorado.

I can see how that can happen. My biggest problem was I would be determined to learn something or accomplish something and I would do it (i.e. teaching myself French, or learning to play an instrument). I would live, sleep, breathe, whatever it is at the moment that interested me until I mastered it, got bored, and then I'd quit and move on to something else. Looking back I really wish I would have followed through more. So I too wonder what might have been.

You reminded me of something... I too would read the entire reading textbook in advance in school. I also would lock myself in my room and read for hours. My mom always said I was in my own 'little world' and used books as a way to bribe me or punish me. I would spend hours in the library looking up stuff, I wish I had grown up with google.

Another weird thing I would do while in college is I would buy textbooks at the college bookstore that weren't for my particular classes but interested me. Textbooks on psychology, international relations, political science, etc...


Reminds me of when I convinced my sister I was adopted and lived in an orphanage like in the movie "Annie"... lol

I wonder this too. I've been contemplating going back to school and getting a different degree but worry about being much older and out of school for so long. I also never really developed good study skills and how that may hinder me now that I have been out of school for 12 years.

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.

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?

Well the scroll came off, I just submitted this post twice the first time the scroll would not come off. I did nothing different and the scroll came off? Oh well

I can relate to wanting something different from where you currently find yourself. I'm curious if you still enjoy any of these things from your childhood?

Lol. I thought I was pretty good at hiding too, having practiced so much in my childhood, but I was with my sisters-in-law this weekend and I heard one of them referring to me, "Yeah, she's the intellectual one."

I've had this from my inlaws too!

I don't play the violin anymore, it became impractical after I finished high school. But I still have a lot of the other interests. I still love baking and cooking, I knit, crochet and sew, I like to create little bits of art for my house. I'm not always very good at any of it, but I keep on trying. I do have secret dreams of turning it into a business some day, but I don't know how or when.

Sorry for the thread hijack everyone. Discovering my child is gifted has brought back many painful memories for me, as you can tell!

hug

My childhood wasn't painful, but I did hope that I wouldn't have gifted kids so I wouldn't have to go through it all again - I call it my gifted baggage. The baggage has gotten lighter over the last several years, as I've discovered my kids are gifted and have worked to improve their experiences over my own. My parents worked hard to give me a good experience, but they didn't have the internet or a forum like this to help them out!

I've found that I'm much happier looking back on my childhood as I've worked to improve my kids' experience. I've reflected a lot on my own experience as I've read posts on this forum. And I've used some of the advice I've gotten on this site to help me talk to DS7 and better frame his thought processes in relation to kids around him. Things I wish my parents had known and had been able to discuss with me. I'm waiting to see how things play out with DD4 as she enters K next fall, but I feel like I have the tools now to help her when she needs it.

Kikiandkyle, hopefully as you journey forward with your DD, you can help her have a better experience and start to feel more empowered and less regretful about your own. My mom could have written your post, and she made sure that I had a better experience than she did. I appreciate it immensely. Your own painful memories give you a lot of insight to help make your DD's better. It can give your past, and your present, a higher purpose.

This has been a useful thread for me on a very basic level. Hearing the resonance of shared experiences has helped me better understand my own kids and helped me make peace with the idea that maybe I didn't fail as a mom despite often not understanding what my kids were going through.

acculady & deacongirl - I think I may fall into gifted in written expression but otherwise, I think it's likelyjust above average, not gifted. And I think my ability to adapt, play the game, and "fit in" made my life in school so much easier than it's been for my kids. I don't have, at least in my own opinion, a lot of the telling points of gifted traits, so that's where I'm coming from. As a mom, especially with my first child, it made it very difficult to empathize and help a child who not only would not "play the game" to make her life easier but at times seemed incapable of "just fitting in" at school. With my next two kids, I'd learned a bit more and stopped trying to "fix" my kids when they were little and spent more time advocating for a better fit for them at school.

kikiandkyle - I've spent over two decades as a stay at home mom. They have been such a blessing to me and my family. Don't spend any energy at all on regret of what you didn't do in the past. Savor your place in life now and start finding ways to nurture yourself creatively, whether it is through taking a cooking class, starting a blog about cooking or some other topic, or delving into organic gardening and joining a local group with similar interests. Start a degree online if your kids are still at home; a friend of ours just graduated with an engineering degree he earned one class at a time.

I've found creative ways to blend being at home with finding some professional satisfaction by starting home-based businesses as well. The first was freelance writing, and you don't need a degree - just some time to learn the ropes and the ability to research info, interview, and put it together. Have you considered pitching articles to publications that cover topics you like to read about and have some expertise in? I'm now running a tech startup that is still based in my home, not only does it save money on costs, it lets me be home when my kid is out o f school. Find what you're passionate about and find a way to blend it into your current life.

My wife does the same thing.

These days college doesn't actually require study skills. Or at least much in the way of study skills.

As I keep saying, it's more of a high school degree.

Why did you "fail miserably"?

I'm planning to have a long conversation with my parents who are coming to visit in a few weeks about this topic, as I figured out I need to sort out some of my own "gifted" baggage before subjecting my little ones to anything.

In kindergarten, I remember being able to read and baffled about why the other kids could not. I read anything I could get my hands on and raced ahead. I went to a magnet school with a mixed group of students (i.e. poor neighborhood kids and bussed in non-neighborhood kids). My school's windows frequently sported bullet holes but I never once felt unsafe during school hours on school grounds. I wouldn't have walked anywhere else...

I do know that starting around 3rd grade I got to leave my classroom a few times a week, to go to the gifted program. I enjoyed this but can't recall anything specific we did. I also got to see the ??school psychologist? where I did things like play puzzle games and look at ink blots. My parents were concerned about me socially. I was pretty introverted and preferred books to people. Despite this I usually had good friends to play with in elementary. Outside of the pull out times, it was boring. At a certain point there wasn't much in the library I hadn't read. I remember during these years my parents got me an encyclopedia and I often would sneak a volume into bed at night and read from it.

Middle school I had a very tough time socially, got teased etc. I had some academic challenges too perhaps tied to the social changes (in the advanced reading group I quit doing my work for a while, which spiraled into a bad grade, trouble with my parents etc). What I remember I loved about middle school was the 6 person advanced humanities group. We studied Latin, Shakespeare, etc. So it wasn't ALL horrible, but I struggled. I know my parents were worried I would not get into the HA/GT HS where most but not all students skipped a grade upon entry. I did get in, but only after not skipping. Thankfully my parents persisted with me and/or the HS as I got in eventually.

I loved the HS. It was a very unique environment (public, by the way). I did not have to worry about being weird as there were a lot of kids far stranger than I was. Everyone was expected to go to college, and a decent one. Work was challenging but for the most part very achievable. I did have to learn study skills there. I had a few minor academic bumps but ended up shocking the heck out of everyone and even myself senior year as I got some prestigious awards that year - until then I had been seen as a middle of the smart/gifted pack kid. I also took my first college class while in HS. After graduating, I spent a year in France before going to university on delayed entry (already admitted so no academic benefit whatsoever). I wanted to do the year abroad but not miss a year of school, and it helped my parents financially a bit too.

College seemed more a continuation of HS academically versus a new level. My university had a lot of kids that went to special public HSs, private or prep schools, like I had. Some were brighter than others, but we all were within a few stripes of each other so it was a great environment. I loved it, graduated w/Honors. Many classmates went on to grad/med/law school right away. I did not.

Now many years later, I'm finding my way to career #2 and presently in grad school. I guess it was inevitable.

But there are things I want to understand, so if at all possible I can head off any challenges with my own kids who are very young still. Like some others have mentioned I guess I shouldn't be surprised to be wondering if they are gifted but by the same token, it puts a whole new spin on what I think they may experience in school.

I failed college before because I have a hard time focusing on things I'm not interested in. If I can't see the point in learning it beyond to pass an exam, I can't get motivated. My daughter has the same problem. I feel like a bit of a hypocrite telling her that she has to do things she doesn't want to sometimes, when I don't like doing them either!

The irony of failure #2 is that I was kicked out for failing Statistics 3 times, while I was busy managing the finances of a company with annual revenues exceeding €1m, assisting my clients with their complicated cross border financial transactions and overseeing my team of 3. I didn't need to know anything in that entire class to do my job, but without it I wasn't allowed to stay in college.

Most recently I dropped out before I even took a class. The day after I enrolled I got yet another $1k+ medical bill in the mail, and that was before I found out my insurance was not going to cover the $1500 we had to pay for my daughters psych eval.

Life just seems to get in the way I guess, but that's what happens when you have kids. My time will come in the end.

Kikiandkyle, I am exactly the same - as is my dd. I finally found my 'thing' fortunately, but only by chance and not till I was 30. It might not have been the case for you, but what that meant for me was that I had extraordinarily unsatisfying jobs for a long time, working with people I had nothing in common with. Recently I twigged that this could be my reason to ride dd a bit (I was finding it really hard to ride her when I couldn't see the point either). So now what I say to dd about learning the pointless stuff is that doing well with the pointless stuff gives you more options in life and ultimately reduces the amount of time you have to do pointless stuff later on. I'm honest about feeling the same way as her, but I explain my experience and why I wished I had bothered with study earlier.

No idea if that's relevant to your situation, but thought I'd mention it in case it's useful.

Sounds familiar. I enlisted in the Navy in order to pay for college. I came back from a Navy career in computers and enrolled in a couple of IT classes... and quickly discovered they were a giant waste of my time. I knew enough about the field to know that what they were covering had no value in the real world, so why would I bother spending my valuable time and money, just to get a useless piece of paper that said I knew it?

That's when I discovered the power of "or equivalent experience."

My childhood was pretty good and relatively happy.

In elementary school, I didn't have any problem being "gifted" and it really didn't have any impact on my academic achievement, since tests were easy, fun, and I generally got higher grades than my peers. I got to go to another school periodically and spend the day with the other gifted kids, so it was like a weekly field trip. I was annoyed that I didn't get to skip a grade, which was what I wanted to do. I don't remember why I wanted to do that.

In middle school, I was finally in the same school as the kids in the gifted program, so I could spend more time with the people I enjoyed being with. I kept my good elementary school friends. So, this was one of the high points of my life.

I got to move for high school, which was somewhat traumatic for me, although since my father was superintendent (which was why I had to move) it made things both worse and bettter. Took me about two years to really feel comfortable and then I was fine.

Although with respect to high school, my overall purpose was simply to "win" with respect to grades, meaning that my only goal was to get better grades than anyone else. This was only an issue in high school because my parent (particularly my father) were convinced that those grades were all that mattered, because those were the grades that determined class rank. I had lots of fun with friends, activities, such as band, school plays, travel, debate, etc. Unfortunately, I got overloaded and basically burnt out.

I also went through my "life has no purpose or meaning" period during late high school, so I kind of remember that period as some sort of existential despair period.

I really didn't have an interested in being in college, but I figured that the last thing that I wanted to do was to have to work in a job. However, I was pretty much exhausted from high school, so I went from doing everything (including playing computer games and reading fiction) to doing nothing except playing computer games and reading fiction. Since my parents essentially provided all of the underlying structure in my life, I pretty much did nothing because no one was making me do anything. I had a full scholarship, which I had to keep a 3.2 (?) to maintain, which I did. It was difficult for me to form friendships, socialize, and get involved in college activities because looking back on it, I was very immature for my age and lacked fundamental social skills.

I never really ended up with a "thing" that I have an interest in doing with myself. Went to law school to avoid work for another three years and to try to get some sort of "elite" degree that would serve as a ticket to wealth. At the time, I figured that you needed several million dollars in the bank to accomplish anything of value. Got a job and realized that I was no longer in a position to play computer games and read fiction all the time. By that time, my work ethic and whatever time management and organizational skills I had were long gone, being that I had spent the last 8 years doing what amounted to "nothing". It's quite overwhelming to go from doing nothing to being expected to perform at a relatively high level.

At the same time, I got married and immediately started having kids, which adds it's own stress.

This was all colored by the fact that my mother died of cancer and my father had a stroke and I got fired from my family for a bit when I was in college/law school. So this has something to do with my situation, but it's more my lack of psychological resilience and poor coping skills than anything else.

At this point, with respect to my kids, I'm not sure that putting in effort or doing well in school means much of anything because you kind of end up in the dull, gray world of adulthood, where you simply endure life. Childhood was fun. Anything past age 17 was not so fun. I think that's mostly because I never developed any idea of what I wanted to go do with myself, durable social or career networks. I often have approximately zero interest in your career or your day to day life.

My life is functional, but I have no interests, friends outside of my family, real underlying purpose, or any direction. I spend much of my time bored. Being that I practice law, I also spend much of my time angry.

One moral of the story is that college and professional degrees don't really accomplish anything on their own.

Another moral of the story is that you should not let your kids play computer games and read 100% of the time when they should be out actually living life, even if they are in college.

Interesting thread.

We moved a lot and I always associated any difficulty "fitting in" with being the new kid -- not with being gifted. Although the frequent moves were traumatic at the time, I credit them with making me more adaptable and strengthening my social skills. Like Annette, I am sure I "dumbed myself down" to a degree.

I taught myself to read before I was three and was an avid reader of anything and everything throughout childhood, including the cereal box. But I didn't take it upon myself to learn other things on my own. I was happy to just go above and beyond with the class assignments and was an obedient "A" student.

By my teens, I really got into theater and hung out with the theater kids in junior high and high school. The junior high years were the worst. That was the one time I was labeled as a "geek" and treated like an outcast, but even then I had one or two close friends (who were not gifted). In high school, I was generally socially accepted. I was voted "most likely to succeed" which translated to "smart kid that isn't despised" at my school. And I dated guys in college -- don't know why my parents let me get away with that, in retrospect.

I went to a challenging college and was surprised that classes seemed to come easier to me than to others. Later, I graduated at the top of my class in law school and eventually became a successful partner in a large law firm. After a dozen years, I tossed that career aside to become a stay-at-home mom. I sort of felt like there was nowhere else for me to go with the job and my "mom" job felt more important and fulfilling to me.

My DH was also gifted, but also athletic. He very much dumbed himself down, identified with the jocks, and still would rather throw a ball than engage in intellectual pursuits. Which makes it even more irritating when he beats me at Scrabble, but I digress...

Our DD is like my DH in that she enjoys sports and is not the bookworm that I was. For that reason, I don't fear her not fitting in so much as I worry about her dumbing herself down (and underestimating her own potential). So many potential pitfalls!

Dude I was always able to get by with 'equivalent experience' in Europe, here it doesn't work. But that might be because I'm in Finance & Accounting and CPAs are a dime a dozen.

JonLaw I think it's interesting that we had completely opposite experiences in our childhoods, education and career and still ended up feeling the same about life as adults. I wonder if either of us would feel the same if our lives were swapped.

We moved around so much when I was in primary school that I didn't have the chance to assess myself against a constant peer group. I enjoyed the moving. I always made friends easily, and never had any difficulties doing well with the academic side. I started reading early. The first passion I remember was international folk/fairy stories, but by 11/12 I was desperately keen on biographies, science fiction, and massive romance novels (Anna Karenina, Gone with the Wind). I was always good at maths. I had a silly and sometimes irreverent sense of humour, and was never in a *nerdy* clique.

The family settled down, deliberately, for the high school years. I had a small, steady group of friends, and didn't stand out in any way. I was bored witless. I skipped class whenever I could, didn't study, didn't hand in anything I could avoid. And so my marks were bad. Not interested in school + bad marks clearly meant that I wasn't very bright. At the same time, I was increasingly aware that the things I was interested in were not the same things that other kids were interested in, though I did my best to keep this covered up. So not very bright + strange and boring. Which left me in a bad place. Back in the days when I'd never heard of depression, let alone that it could be helped.

University was a revelation - challenging questions, independent study. Somehow I didn't have any issues learning study skills, as some have mentioned - apparently motivation was enough and I did very well. I didn't socialise much though - depression had changed me from social to extremely shy. But I got past it eventually, and came out armed with the knowledge that I'm great at studying and even have to tone down workaholic tendencies.

(Unfortunately the discovery came too late. Because I didn't have the high school marks to get into one of the sought-after degrees, and had never thought I was *that* kind of person, I ended up doing literature and philosophy. These days I am in a frustrating job working, for the most part, with rather thick people who think I'm strange and boring.)

very interesting thread.

I was a middle child in a group of 7 where really everyone was very smart though we varied widely in how well we did in school, socially, etc. I was always 99th percentile on all the standardized testing, however I think folks saw my work in reading/writing as more obviously 'gifted'. I did the tag classes, got to take french in 7th grade and so on, really wonderful classes actually. I was labeled as very verbal, when in fact I am most comfortable and interested when I have a logic problem to ponder. Conduct was never ever an issue. I just did whatever would keep my overwrought parents from stressing out even more than they already had to, for the other 6 kids.

We went to a good elementary and a very good high school for girls, however even this was a breeze. College was harder and I did shift around a lot, finally deciding to get a degree in art because the work was fun and the people were very interesting. I met my husband in college, also an art major.

I have ended up in the computer field, well paid, and almost every day a new logic problem comes my way, as well as an opportunity to polish my people skills (apparently no one else at the office has time to polish theirs!). This confidence in my abilities has been a long time in coming, due to early labels that others applied which took a long time to fall off.

My husband's story is very different, he is smarter in a lot of ways but lack of people-savvy has been an issue for him more than once. After a very long time in technical theater (set building, etc.), he changed careers and has been in the computer tech field for a while. With the dawn of all sorts of technical courses online and the chance to interact with professors he chooses, he is dipping his toe back into studying and school, and so far is enjoying himself. He is excited to have a job with some interesting prospects. He seems to be coming more into his own after quite a meandering path.

For our kids, we are excited to be finally homeschooling our 11 year old and think about doing the same with our younger child. She is far more capable in the social skills department than almost any of us, but much more of a handful than our oldest; school is a much better fit for her than it ever was for our sensitive and fair-minded boy. We want both of them to be more comfortable with themselves than we were able to be as kids.

For me, school was always too easy. I never studied and yet aced tests. I was identified as GT in first grade and started with a GT program for my school district. In third grade I'd go twice a week by bus to a GT center in the basement of one of the schools. I was in heaven! Games like Risk, Stratego, and chess, computers (including access to the town's mainframes, oops!), other kids just like me. Still I rarely worked but it was fun. In those days (70s) we had open classrooms and contracts, so generally I'd do a pile of work in my workbooks and keep going. I was teased and thought I must be horribly ugly and unpopular. I was talented (not extraordinarily so but good) in music, playing cello, piano, and singing.

In junior high, no more GT program and honors classes bored me. My parents sent me to a top prep school (hated it) and even though I took whatever classes I wanted, I was challenged only in writing, where my teachers actually gave me dings for not being as good as I could be. I finished AP Calc as a junior and took Calc 2 at a local university at night after school my senior fall.

I did my undergrad at Cornell, where I quickly found that I was not nearly as bright as the mostly geniuses around me, but could hold my own. For once I felt normal and no one cared what grades I got or classes I took.

I still have a weird knack for remembering random bits of information, like what cardiac tamponade is. I have two masters degrees and my CPA, but grad school was a grind, like a marathon, and not very fun nor challenging. I'd rather do crosswords and math games all day.

I wish I wasn't so lazy, that I could really do something. I always feel that I'm not living up to my potential, but I suppose that part of that was my parents. I just want my kids to feel how amazing it is to let go and really soar. I've had some moments like that in my life and they were incredible.

I love reading all of these posts! I really identify with a lot of it.

I too was reading before K and was bored by the reading speed of my class. I would always be the first one done a reading assignment and would always read ahead. I didn't find out until much later that my reading speed was 1k+.

Great posts!

Wow. There a people like me out there. I was the kid who teased for being too smart and never did fit in. I never had more than one friend at a time. On the plus side, I never tried to dumb down my abilities. Being an extremely smart girl in the 70s & 80s was very uncool. I dropped out of high school at 15. I took community college classes, boring, got in a little trouble and then headed off the university at 17. The best thing about that was meeting my husband - the only man I'd ever met who was smarter than I was and not at all intimidated by my intelligence. I still think so after 28 years of marriage.

I did not do well at college. My physics professor tried to fail me, and nearly everyone at the private college I was at said women couldn't be engineers. The point of this is that it took me until my 30s to find out what I really wanted to be when I grew up, especially since I am good at many things, and at 46, just 2 months ago, I graduated with my bachelor's degree. I was already successful in the eyes of the outside world, owning a pair of weekly newspapers, but I needed to finish and I desperately needed the mental stimulation. The classes were not challenging, but they were interesting.

My EG and PG children did better than I did, but still struggled. Two of them are in their mid 20s and finally succeeding in college. They were motivated enough to learn how to study and to "suffer fools gladly" (even when they are the professor.) I found this site to help my grandson who lives with me. Our whole family of happy, gifted misfits has decided we need to do more to help him succeed than we did.

Great topic. Brings back a lot of memories - good and bad.

I was very shy and sensitive. I liked to read. I was sensitive to other people's pain. I was concerned about all the unfairness in the world and often noticed things like bigotry and hypocrisy, especially in my own extended family, but didn't feel I could do anything about it except talk to my mother about it over a cup of hot tea. She was never a bigot but I could see that she felt uncomfortable speaking out against bigotry and hypocrisy when she saw it in her family. As a child I just learned to be quiet and try to ignore it. It was more important to try to fit in.

My IQ was never tested. I never felt as smart as my mother who could answer more Jeopardy questions than anyone I knew because she had been reading so much her entire life and I don't think I was as smart as my younger sister, but I always thought I was smart enough until I had my son and he started correcting me before he started kindergarten and realized at that point that I didn't know everything. I am sure I thought my mother knew everything when I was four or five.

Some of the things I read about selective mutism sound a lot like the way I was as a child. I wanted to talk but I couldn't. As an adult I was always attracted to smart, articulate people like my husband and his family. I think part of my problem was that my dad was in the Air Force and we moved several times during my childhood. It was difficult for me to make friends, but I talked a lot at home to my mother and sisters. The year I was 15 and moved to California was the most difficult. I became very depressed because of bullying at the school and not fitting in. Some of the teachers were bullies. I got frequent migraines but managed to get very good grades. It was the only time I ever thought about suicide but luckily I was never impulsive and always thought before I did anything. I was very close to my parents and I knew what it would do to them if something happened to me. They always listened to me. They believed me when I told them I couldn't take living there any more and they let me move back to the state where we had lived previously to live with my grandmother. I didn't need counseling. I needed to get out of that toxic environment and once I did there were no more problems. I think of this when I listen to my son who hates where we live because of the attitudes of people in our small town as well as the monotony. We hear people openly expressing their bigotry. Some of them are in our extended family.

Unlike my son, I could color in the lines and enjoyed coloring. I won a coloring contest once.

I usually made straight A's--unless I had a PE class where the highest grade I was ever able to make was a B. I didn't do sports and didn't particularly like sports. I didn't like the idea of people watching me when we had to do sports in PE. I was very self conscious. I would never have been able to get up on a stage and perform in front of people like my son does in musical theater. I would never sing or dance or even speak in front of an audience. I avoided the social activities that my daughter loved and could never have been a cheerleader like she was. I preferred more solitary activities. I taught myself to crochet when I was about 10 and could make things without a pattern.

I didn't have any trouble doing math, usually made A's, but I didn't like it so didn't take any more math than I had to and algebra II was as high as I went with math in high school. My younger sister loved math and took calculus and trigonometry. She was interested in engineering. Two of our uncles were engineers. My dad talked me into taking accounting classes in college because he thought it would help me get a good government job. I lost some of my shyness in college and got married at 19.