I can't believe I'm writing this post. I had a really unpleasant conversation with a very close friend of mine. We've had some slightly tense conversations before about some of my child-rearing choices, but I guess I kept believing that if we could just talk things through enough we'd come to understand each other. She can be a bit prickly and judgmental, but she's a long-time friend of the family and has seen me through some really rough times in the past.
Anyway, she came down to visit and I decided to finally "come out" to her about my ponderings about giftedness and homeschooling (Hanni is only 2, so I could have kept it quiet for a lot longer.) It did not go well. Actually, it went really badly, and then she apologized, and we talked some more, and I thought things were really okay, and we'd even learned something about communicating with each other.
And then this morning I sent her an e-mail with one more thought, which I thought would just further help to allay some of her concerns, and she BLASTED me. It's becoming clear that she has issues with everything, from my choice to co-sleep, and continue nursing at age 2, and not put Hanni in pre-school yet, up to and including my plan to homeschool. And she has some very strong opinions about how I would end up homeschooling Hanni, and what my motivations for doing it are, which are not based in reality at all. And it is also clear that a big part of what was fueling her angry-cat-biting-me reaction was the whole issue of Hanni being gifted and my eagerness to do right by her on that score.
(This friend is childless, so I really really didn't get it how much of an emotional hook this whole giftedness thing is for her. I think it has to do with her issues about herself, and her feeling less than successful in her career and life. The irony is, when I was growing up, her and her family were the smartest people we knew, and I used to wait all year for summer when we could see them again. I even told her that last night.)
Am I a textbook case or what? I really thought my peeps would be different.
