Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Almost PTSD flashbacks to my schooldays

How many here find that raising a gifted child reopens scars from your own childhood?

My DD has never (yet) complained of boredom at school. Even with Maths she just sits there and does the work expected of her despite its glaring lack of challenge.

I constantly worry about whether or not she is becoming habituated to lack of challenge in the classroom. This is really why DW and I skipped her and she has been 'advanced proficient' right out of the gate even in her skipped to grade. And this worries me no end. I know from personal experience just where never being challenged leads...

Way back in the seventies when I was a schoolboy and we had tracking I was still not at all challenged. I can remember staring out of the window for months in certain classes occasionally giving an answer that seemed so obvious I wasn't even sure that it needed to be said when the teacher would ask the class a question and being surprised at the teacher's vigorous head nodding LOL.

It was later after two school changes in 3 years and attendant radical curriculum changes that I floundered. By then I lacked the executive functioning/study skills because I had by then no clue of how to study still at 15! Long forgotten memories are being roused!

I desperately wish for my DD not to end up in that same boat...

oh dear me, YES to all of this. my husband and i were talking about the "obvious answer" thing a few months ago - it's still happening to him at his work. sometimes he doesn't speak up in meetings because he assumes the higher-ups have previously rejected the solution he sees so clearly. it's so, so depressing. mercifully, i work alone and mostly deal with clients over email - his situation would literally drive me crazy.

we're homeschooling the kid this year - and i'd say my desperate need for her to know what actual learning feels like is the number one reason we pulled her from school so early in the game.

Oh yes. DS is still very young, but trying to understand the environment he'll need has brought back previously dormant memories. Perhaps most obvious is the fact that my parents viewed my ability implicitly as a status symbol (still do), and I see old patterns re-emerging in their interactions with DS. My father used to teach me to look down on less able people, a terrible habit that I quickly disabused myself of as an adult (and continue to work on). If my father ever tries to tell DS that, if you're smart you don't have to work at anything, I know I will fly off the handle at him.

I was shunned as a child. When I mentioned this to my parents recently, they said, "that's the first we've heard of that." Right...a heavily perfectionistic child documented by a child psychologist as an almost pathological people-pleaser with a (then) touch of anxiety wouldn't try to conceal that sort of self-perceived failure from reaching her judgmental parents' eyes. The daily begging not to go to school didn't provide any clues. Nor was my sudden weight gain and compulsive eating. And this was AFTER my skipping.

I remember grades 5 and 6 being worst. The skip wasn't enough (the second that the school recommended, but my parents refused, wouldn't have been enough, either). I was told that this was a solution, and I became quite disenfranchised when my teachers didn't respond to my repeated requests for acceleration. Everyone around me was drinking the "this is the best placement for you" Kool-Aid, which left me feeling terribly isolated and misunderstood. I'm glad to say a private school placement in grade 7, with lots of personalization, was sufficient to bring me back to enjoying school, though it wasn't until late high school and university, when I had control to cut out a few years myself, that I felt I had the "fit" close to right.

At the very least, these memories have prompted some very honest and productive discussions with DH. I am so fortunate that DH and I are on the same page.

He grew up in a house where his father only valued (and continues to value) intelligence and academic achievement. His children are his trophies. DH has lasting issues from this toxic and--dare I say, psychologically abusive--messaging from his childhood. We're firmly committed to modelling hard work, persistence, and ambitious goal setting with DS. I want him to see us try, fail, and persist until we succeed. As an entrepreneur, I know I can show him that in spades!

These thoughts have led me to want to create a tailored school environment for DS and children like him. So, yes, your concerns are top of mind to me.

Yes. This is why I am always lurking on this site, because it is so comforting to know there are people out there who feel the same way.

Even my DS6 struggles sometimes with homework because the answer is so obvious to him that it couldn't possibly be the RIGHT answer, could it? So he spins his mental wheels looking for something meaningful. Major flashback.

I wish I knew how to help my kids with that. I wish I knew how to help myself with that. I still struggle in meetings.

My approach at work is different, and it causes me PTSD to this very day. If we're discussing the issue, and there's an obvious answer, then it's obvious to me that the obvious answer has been overlooked. But I've gotten in a lot of trouble for "interrupting," because apparently wasting a lot of time is the real reason for meetings. So now I'm stuck waiting around for others to eventually come to the obvious answer, occasionally poking the conversation if it's headed in the wrong direction.

I'll also sit in on meetings where someone will start to air a "concern" that is completely irrelevant. I have to sit still and listen to Chicken Little wax on for however long is necessary (and for others to chime in with their support as they like) before I'm allowed to say why it's not a concern.

Then there are the people who like to repeat themselves.

Or the ones who need to hear things repeated over and over.

Or the ones who missed what was said because they were too busy playing with their iPhones.

Now that I think about it, the drudgery of elementary school was good preparation for the drudgery of IT meetings.

YES.


I think that Dude and my DH are living parallel lives, btw. Because I did a bit of a double take, thinking-- Honey?? Is that you??

Of course, he's found that this is much more bearable now that he has his own smart-phone.

LOL.


YES-- and by my first years of high school, I simply STOPPED going. About half the time I wasn't in a particular class at a particular time. I'm trying to think of a day during my sophomore year where I did not cut at least one class... and I can't.

I should add that, even at a think tank and high end management consulting firm, I've been told that I over-complicate work, speak too fast, or use words that are too large. I often feel stymied. I'm also convinced meetings were designed for butt kissing and cow-towing. I can usually succeed at implementing my more complex ideas, but it requires inordinate explaining, coalition building and, to some extent, people just saying, "ok, we still don't understand, but we trust you."

That's one of the reasons I left my consulting firm--I felt dirty providing such gross over-simplifications to our clients. No scientific method. This was a major consultancy, too.

Amen to everything Dude said.

We had laptops from grade 10 onward, so I could actually learn in class then by checking out.

UGH - this really nails why i'm so grateful to be a freelancer. i think everything you've described, Dude, is a lot like my husband's daily experience - though he's in a creative field rather than IT. i do wish he would speak up more often - even if it did get him in trouble sometimes. staying quiet isn't helping his career, and it's probably giving him an ulcer (or maybe it's only giving me the ulcer!)