Had the interview, wasn't much of a one, but gifted coordinator said the class is filling up well and as far as he can tell with very socially balanced and pleasant kids, and probably a third of them girls (the unbalanced gender distribution a perpetual problem due to their heavy stem component and GT girls often preferring the bilingual or music magnet schools or the catholic girls school in town) - "it will be a super class".
DS9 had a screaming fit when we made him go, who knows why, but was pleasant and coherent enough during the interview and afterwards he was skipping out of the building, talking about how much he loves his new school.
DH, off work sick, was the one behaving badly, dumping all his reservations about the program (most of which are problems created due to outer factors and not due to the school) on the poor man.
Naively, I'd thought that they might bond about the pleasures of teaching talented and motivated students. But DH just isn't sold, and I realize it's not so much the location but the idea of segregation and non-conformity inherent in congregated gifted programming, also reservations whether schools can really be just as good across the state line.
In some ways he doesn't get it - he has no traumas left over from his own education or none due specifically to being gifted, the way I have, due to his gifts not being so obviously academic and in your face the way mine were, and due to simply having better schools available, and he has always been able to create his own intellectual stimulation without being dependent on school or on other people, the way I have never been. I think that while the regular schooling options DS has are good enough, he is dependent on stimulation by teachers and other kids in ways I was and am, not independent like DH was and is, who will just do stuff on his own level on his own, period.
Sample discussion in your lives: "so if that is the choir you're looking for and can't find it in this town, why don't you start one like it?" - "because am just a very good singer, not a conductor, and anything I conducted would never be good enough for me!"
DS9 is enrolled in the gifted program now, simply because across the state line, the dead line for enrolment is this week so he had to be to keep the option open. We'd have to remove him and reenrol him in the regular school in May. DH was really mad on leaving the school because he realizes just how unrealistic this is - and realized that I have now come down firmly on the side of the gifted program, but we couldn't really discuss it because he was so sick!
If he just drives a few blocks on past his own and and past DDs future school, he can drop DS off at a bus stop where the bus would take him to the gifted magnet within 11 minutes, no changing. We will just all have to get up earlier and it will be hardest on me and DS.
Happy kids make happy parents. Unhappy gifted kids make parents life hell!
Last edited by Tigerle; 03/15/16 04:32 AM.
