What a nice idea, madeinuk.
I'll ask that my post not be directly quoted, as the sum total of information here is fairly identifying in some ways.
I'm the child of a PG person. I'm also the parent of a beyond-garden-variety gifted child, a former gifted child myself, married to former gifted child.
Spouse and self both fully evaluated and HG+ via childhood IQ instruments. We were both publicly educated in high quality settings. Our needs were met relatively well during the previous golden age of gifted educational practices in the 1970's and 1980's in the western US. I have a history of underachievement (maladaptive coping with inappropriate educational setting?), spouse does not.
Our DD's needs have been more extreme than ours.
DD never tested (deliberate decision on our part not to take that snapshot)-- she was grade accelerated 3y and is an academically and socially successful college senior at the moment. She also has a hidden medical disability as part of her profile. She was educated via home schooling and virtual charter schooling prior to college-- though not without difficulties. Our local school district wanted nothing to do with her, and made it clear that they felt she would not be well-served by their programs-- both at 5yo upon kindergarten entry, and again as a 10 and 11yo who needed high school level instruction. We used a national corporate-owned virtual virtual school with a charter in my state as a credentialing step; that's the bottom line. "Education" it probably was not, unless one means learning what bureaucratic corporate KoolAid looks, smells, and tastes like.
Educational policy-- I've been a post-secondary educator, done curriculum development in working with students PreK through graduate, am the child of career public educators, and believe in appropriate education as an individual human right. My professional area of expertise is multi-disciplinary, but intersects with neuropharmacology-- so I have also got some professional interests in play here. I'm also fundamentally someone that believes in civic responsibility.
I have a soft spot for families which are low-income, and those which are struggling to manage the needs of 2e children. They have very heavy burdens, and few choices.
I showed up here on the recommendation of another couple of friends that I knew from another online community, when my DD was about 8? 9? and I really needed a group of parents that weren't going to attack me just for opening my mouth about my daughter. We live in a pretty Tiger-parent-ey community, and it's highly competitive. Not a good place to be a tall poppy, socially speaking.
I don't talk about my child IRL. This was a good place to do that during some of the more difficult years and transitions in raising a PG child. The advice that applies to neurotypical children sometimes is counterproductive in parenting an outlier-- but it is still important to respect the developmental arc of the child, and remember that they ARE children, in spite of how they may behave a lot like tiny adults at times.
