My DH did not have a good time in school and that worries us about our DD. DH is very GT (never tested -- they didn't do that regularly back then, you know), read before K, questioned the tooth fairy, read books about planets in 1st grade, extremely mechanical, etc. But he had one bad teacher early on in 1st or 2nd grade who made him feel very unintelligent (she was upset b/c he corrected her when she said the sun was a planet), and that one bad experience affected his entire education and how he saw himself.
I had a bad experience in junior high. I was bumped up into the advanced math class, but I wasn't doing well. On the day I transferred down to the regular math class, the teacher pulled me out in the hallway and said, "Some kids are just slower than others." I could not have felt any lower and from then on considered myself stupid when it came to math. Now that I look back, I realize the teacher was not only wrong about me, but she was just a bad teacher in general -- almost half of her class had to drop out, so she obviously wasn't
teaching very well.
My experience was much later in life, but DH had a bad start from the get-go. Not to mention, when the school advised that he skip 2nd grade, his parents held him back so as not to make one of his older brothers feel bad.
We're nervous about DD in school, even preschool, because we don't want these kinds of things to bring her down. Thankfully, she has parents who are very aware of her abilities and are ready to advocate for her, whereas our parents didn't understand what GT really meant and how to make the most out of our educations. (I had limited options anyway, growing up in a military family.)
At any rate, we don't want DD to suffer the same way DH and I did in school. My DH wants to revive the One Room Schoolhouse approach in our backyard!!
I live in a small city, but I have not been able to locate any "play schools" versus preschools in the area. I'm not sure we can afford a Montessori school; there's only one public one in town and it's not close to home. The closest Montessori school has scholarship programs, though, so we were going to look into that. It's all a big question mark at this point.
When I signed up to be a parent, I never thought choosing a preschool would be such a daunting task. Most people just find one close to home or with their church and drop their kids off.
If it were only that easy . . .
