Well DH is from India. Basically the philosophy there is you make or break the kid. My DH is an exceptionally intelligent man, but his light was covered by years in harsh boarding schools. He was beaten to conform. So, he conformed.
If a child cannot make it in India, the situation must be severe and obvious. Anything else is just met with strict discipline and abuse. While the system is improving, it is still far from where it needs to be in recognizing ability differences.
DH feels that if Mite has handwriting problems it is because I haven't practiced with him enough and I am not strict enough in discipline. Neither case is true. DH feels that the "giftedness" really is an American/Western term that is meaningless in life overall and as such doesn't matter in education.
He can be quite harsh with Mite over things regarding his hands, but he does think Mite is smart. For example, tonight supper was a miserable time because Mite, who was exceptionally tired after a daycamp with his choir, was very clumsy and having difficulty cutting his meet and scooping food onto his fork. He spilled several times, dribbled down his shirt and used his left hand (big no no with food for Indians since the left hand is used to clean the ****ocks after bowel movements in that culture) to hold down his meat while he took cut at it. DH hounded Mite all through the meal which only added to Mite's distress and increased the errors. Mite continually apologized and said excuse me. Finally he just gave up eating (not pouting, just simply found a lull in the storm and set the knife and fork into position for done). All this from what I understand is symptomatic of dyspraxia. Fatigue increases clumsiness and decreases organization and motor planning. DH will not take any time to understand the disorder. He just finds it "another weak American education excuse". I'll give Mite a bedtime snack to get him over any hunger, but I'm so stressed out by DH's negative reaction to the school districts assessment, I could scream. He's been much more strict since the results meeting.
I'll address DH about it later. He has periods where he is better about stuff, but other times he freaks out and tonight he must have been very tired.
He works with Mite on math, too. Most of the time it goes really well, but he doesn't have patience with fatigue and concentration lapses in Mite and frequently erupts. That's very Indian father style.
So, things are not smooth on that front for us.
