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Hi Everyone,
I was just wondering what those of you who have been at this awhile have found to be the most challenging aspects of having a gifted child? Is is day-to-day parenting, schools, college, tutors, peer/social, etc? Also along those lines what has been the most valuable aspect of DYS? What has DYS provided for you that you absolutely wouldn't/can't make it without? Thanks so much.

School, definitely, has been the hardest for us. No contest.

Parenting has probably been easier for me with my DYS kid, actually, because he's so logical and follows directions so well. Not every HG+ child is. But mine is easy-peasy to raise.

He's also a social kid and has enough "regular" interests (right now, Bakugon, Pokemon and Transformers) that he can fit in with age peers with ease. So social stuff isn't hard.

But school is hard! We chose to homeschool rather than to fight our rigid school system for the scraps of semi-appropriate education they might allow him to have.

So right now, DYS's help with school is insurance for us for later, when DS7 will presumably go to some sort of more traditional school--probably a private GT school--for junior high and/or high school. We might ask for some help with tuition from the DYS program, too, if that's the route we go. We'll see.

But so far, the connections with other parents of HG+ kids and the get-togethers have been by far the greatest benefits of the DYS program for us. I have made some really good friends IRL through the program, and DS7 LOVES to get together with friends from DYS every chance he gets.

It's a really good program!

Is there anything I couldn't live without from DYS? No, probably not. But there are things I'm glad I don't have to live without!

We're not in DYS (yet, maybe someday!) but I can answer the others. The most challenging part is by far school. We've had a rough ride and we're about to move schools for DS in hopes of finding a smoother path. Our attempt at getting everyone on the same team failed miserably.

The benefits of an HG+ kid? I have a boy kind of like Kriston's. He's very rule-driven, very logical and likes structure. He is rarely in trouble for disobedience because if I say "please do ___ because___" it nearly always happens. By rarely, I mean like maybe once every few months! He's never been a tantrum kid partly because he learned to communicate early. It's not all wine and roses, he needs constant stimulation or begins creating his own, which is generally not pretty! But overall, parenting has been relatively simple.

Exactly. Substitute DS6 for DS7 and you have my answer. All the HG+ local kids we know are either DYS or kids who were introduced to us through the other DYS. This is absolutely priceless.

The most difficult part? There are no local gt schools around us. There are so called gt programs in PS but they start much later and gt program usually means once a week pull out. One of the local PS is no longer allowed to use the word gifted! We are homeschooling which gives us lots of time and freedom.

One more thing even people who get MG kids may have no idea what do do with HG+ kids