Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Finally joining

Hello, everyone. After looking around for quite a while I have decided to join. I'm not sure exactly what I'm looking for, other than someone who understands. We have not had any testing or formal identification for my daughter, and people who have never met her have implied to me that I am projecting my wishes for a gifted child on her. One school director, when I read through the curriculum and asked what they would do with a 3 year old who could do all of the things they had listed for kindergarteners, actually looked at me very condescendingly and asked me how important it was to me for my daughter to be intelligent. Meanwhile, at the school we decided to send her to (NOT that one), my nearly 4 year old scored higher than all the kindergarteners on her pre-test for kindergarten readiness. The only thing on the test she didn't know yet was 3D shapes. However, she can read on a 1st grade level (we think, she doesn't like to read in front of us because she says it's not "perfect" yet), can add and subtract in her head, counts over 200, writes and spells, can recognize numbers up to 185 (that's the longest book we've read together so far, she may be able to go farther), discuss God and giving to the poor with our minister, "double" numbers without counting, and talk your ears off about animals that are diurnal or noctornal, or herbivores/carnivores/omnivores. The other night we read the first chapter of Alice Through The Looking Glass and now she has decided "mirror words" are more interesting than regular ones, so she likes to spell things backwards.

But she has the intensity, too. She's always felt so much empathy. When she was 2.5 she saw a commercial with a basset hound and cried for half an hour because he looked so sad. Then she tried to think of all the situations that could have made him sad and ways she could fix them. It turns into anxiety - hence, the not enjoying reading because it's not perfect. Often when she is disciplined she realizes later what she did that was "wrong" and becomes very upset that she's a "bad kid" because of it.

It's sensory stuff too - she is very particular about lights and sounds and tastes/textures. And has a nose like a hound dog - if you walk in the room with gum in your pocketbook she knows it instantly and can tell you what flavor it is. And there are some quirky repetitive things. She licks her hands when she's nervous or concentrating, because she says wet hands help her to calm down. When she's upset she likes to rub my ponytail on her face (thus there was a meltdown when I cut my hair short - now she's accepted it, finally, and just rubs her face against my hair). And when she gets overwhelmed by emotion she just wants to squeeze and bite because she can't figure out what else to do, but she feels like she needs to do something. The meltdowns are humongous. The other weekend it took her 3 hours to calm down because she didn't want to shower and we told her she had to. She keeps wanting to negotiate and explain to us why her ideas are better than ours.

A good friend has a daughter with Asperger's, and thinks mine has it too. I don't know, she's probably somewhere on the spectrum, but she does well socially. Well, she has lots of friends, but she doesn't understand why they are sometimes mean, and she wants to talk through the social dynamics because they don't make sense to her. She will say, "Mommy, if she was mad at me why didn't she say she was mad? She said she's not my friend, but she kept playing with me, so I think she is my friend. Why did she lie?"

I'm so exhausted already of trying to advocate for her with schools. Where she is now is wonderful, but if she does preK another year she's going to be so bored - she's already the youngest kid and getting "accelerated work" - but getting her into school a year early is so ify. She would have to be tested and then even if she scores the required 98%ile, the principal has the discretion to say whether he wants to keep her anytime up to the 45th day of school. I don't know if she could handle being rejected after school has already started.

I don't know what I'm asking or if I'm asking anything. I guess I just need to know that someone out there knows what we're going through. I'm scared about her anxiety level, I'm worried she and I will have to spend the next 14 years, at least, advocating for her, and I have no one to talk to about it because the other moms I spend time with tend to think I'm bragging.

I'm not alone, right?

Welcome. No, you're not alone. Couple of quick comments:

- Asperger's. Could be your friend is mistaking the overintensities that often go with giftedness for signs of an ASD, could be she's seeing ASD and is right; very hard to say. The book Misdiagnosis is worth a look.

- School. Don't panic. It isn't necessarily going to be hard. Would home educating be an option for you? Even if it wouldn't be a preferred option, thinking of it as possible helps take some of the stress out of school negotiations, for some people.

You definitely are NOT alone.

I got the "your DD is an Aspie" from a variety of people-- most of whom had never actually MET my child-- starting when she was three or four years old.

Yes, she toe-walked. Yes, she has sensory over-excitabilities, yes she is precociously literate, and yes, she can be a little obsessive about her current interests, whatever they happen to be... but (though I can't explain exactly how) she is NOT a person with ASD. Yes, she talks to other people, but it's not that she PINS them and talks at them, if that makes sense. She is very socially precocious, too, and like your child, was CONSTANTLY talking to me about social dynamics and psychology at a young age. Highly empathetic, she has always had a strong drive to help others. The thing is, if you see her next to her friends who have ASD diagnoses, all the similarities are still there, to be sure... but she is like the Anti-Aspie. Opposites attract and all that. It's hard to explain if you haven't seen it.

I've also heard it all about how my DD is all about my ego, etc. etc. enmeshment, blah-blah-blah... well, I know what I know and I know that it's NOT a problem. I've quit taking those statements so hard, because my conscience is clear as day. But I'm careful who I talk frankly to about my DD and her accomplishments.

A very warm welcome to you; it sounds like you have landed in the right spot.

Welcome. I think a lot of us expect and it is important to us that our kids are very bright. HG+ is a different animal though.