This thread has slowly arrived at the place where I want to chime in. One of the things I wish someone had told me when my children were small was... these kids are expensive. Maybe it's because I am indulgent--which I am--but maybe it's because they are so able to learn new things so quickly that you want to "feed" that hunger. When we first bought our house, we stretched a little to get into a "great school district". Have we ever used said district? Sure... for a couple of years. But really we've paid for private school. and Online school. And "tutor/mentors". We've spent thousands of dollars on what some would call enrichment which for us has just been trying to keep our children's minds satisfied.
I've finally looked around the 'hood and realized that the other children don't ask their parents for violin lessons at age 4, or clamor to do "more math now!, mommy".
I know folks on this list who have probably spent 4x what we have...and others who have taken a different tack, but I imagine that we can all agree that the potential to spend and spend is great.
If I had to do it all again, I'd buy much less house, but probably still in our same community.
The director of DS's Pre-k told us he had only met 2 or 3 like DS in his lifetime association with gifted Ed and that we better be prepared because he was going to cost us a fortune! Iwas thrown and a little pissed at the time becasue DS was getting nothing in the Pre-k classroom and the social aspect turned out to be almost harmful. In retrospect, it was a huge confirmation that he was different and that we needed to make changes. So you are right herenow, having that kind of outside voice was helpful in terms of the long term planning that we did - which was to move to make DS commute shorter to his gifted school which is far from perfect.
As helpful though as that voice was - this site has been SOOOOOOO much more valuable. For resources, for a sounding board and for a community that doesn't think it's crazy to sacrifice lifestyle and other choices for an educational fit.
DeHe
