Each year around this time, kids all over start thinking about candy and dreaming up ways to increase their load. The kidlet is nearing the end of his trick-or-treating days (already his friends are eschewing the idea), but this year he is still excited. If it's for the costume or the candy is unclear, but we've got 10 days to go and he's already bouncing off the walls.
One of the challenges we face each year is making up the costume. The kidlet has never wanted to be "a firefighter" or "a crayon" - oh no no. Those might be easy. One year he was an Arcadian Beast (I didn't have a sewing machine, so the whole costume was done by hand), another year he was a Nemian Lion, another year a tank. Last year it was a pilot - but not just any pilot, one who flew a certain type of jet with a unique uniform. And this year... sigh... a "dragon insectoid" (half dragon, half dragonfly).
In the process of creating these amazing works of imagination, we end up piecing together bits and pieces of all sorts of things. Part of the process is creating the plan, but the far more difficult piece is finding everything you need to put it together. And thus begins my story...
As is our usual process, we first travel around the costume shops to gather inspiration and see if there is anything we can use to enhance the costume. Since this year's creation requires the head of a dragon, in particular I was hoping to find something already made for that piece. I can make wings, and the dragonfly eyes I figured out - but how to make a convincing dragon head? So off we went in search of a dragon mask.
Always before this year, I've been extremely careful about which sections of the costume store we walk through - but the dragon mask required a little deviation. The masks are usually back with the zombie costumes. So we found ourselves walking through a horror shop, with kidlet's eyes growing larger with each step. I could see it happening - overactive imagination going wild with all of that horrific new information. The clown costume with glowing eyes (think Stephen King's "It") made him stare for a good 2 minutes until I finally pulled him away (with his eyes not leaving the clown's face until we turned a corner and he couldn't see it any more). That was on top of the skeleton at the first store that was motion-activated, and started moving and laughing maniacally when the kidlet walked by - making him jump about a foot off the ground.
Needless to say, by the end of our shopping trip (which was sadly ineffective in finding a dragon mask), the kidlet was visibly shaken. As we were getting into the car, he complained, "Why is Halloween becoming so much about bad things?!" I had to explain the origins of Halloween (All Hallows Eve and All Saints Day - well that was the version I told him anyway), and also how I've kept him out of those scary parts of the stores before. He listened intently, but I was nervous that the images he'd seen would stay with him, like so many images from the news, or movies, or anything remotely unsettling have done. Welcome to the world of super-sensitivity. He's already hyper-anxious about pretty much everything, and I'd just added some new horrors to his ever-growing list. Great job, mom.
I remembered as a child having a horrible series of nightmares about a billboard in my town that advertised the Stephen King movie, "Carrie." Nothing could convince me that the blood that covered the front of her gown wasn't her own, from having her skin flayed from her body. In my own over-active imagination, she was dying - and the horrors that had been inflicted upon her were coming for me next. I had nightmares for weeks over that scene. (It wasn't until years later I heard the story of pig's blood being thrown on Carrie in the book/movie.)
Seeing that look in my kidlet's eyes reminded me of those days... but fortunately the kidlet is much older than I was (4yo) and managed his fear far better than I was able to. I'm pretty sure he has had some nightmares - he hasn't said anything, but he has been extra tired and hyper-sensitive to stimuli during the days. But he will learn from this, as I did, one more step down the road of learning to manage his own over-excitabilities.
And his costume is going to be great.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Perspective
As a parent, it's sometimes difficult to keep a realistic perspective of your child. Some of us make the mistake of expecting too much, some of us not enough.
I think this is especially difficult when you have an only child - and a gifted one at that. I've got no other reference point, other than this one child who is clearly different from most other children his age. So, I have a really hard time keeping perspective on who he is and what he can do. And it goes both ways - sometimes I expect too much, and sometimes not enough.
A perfect example of this was over the weekend. We attended a marine biology event for gifted children, offered through Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. It was a great opportunity, with lots of fun adventuring and learning (well, I learned a lot). But it made me very conscious of how unique my child really is. I told him there would be other kids "like him," but I was wrong. These kids were clearly quite smart, but they weren't in the same league as the kidlet. Not even close. And the really amazing thing (as his mom, I know these things) is that there he was, astounding the socks off the teachers and other adults, and this isn't even his main area of interest. I could see it in the look I got from one of the teachers, when she asked the kidlet if he wanted to be a marine biologist - clearly expecting that this is a special interest of his - and he said "no, I want to be an inventor." I could have told her that his interest in biology/marine biology/etc lies in his fascination for the mechanics of how things work.
It made me a little sad, as I was reflecting how hard it is for this little person to find peers - those intellectual peers he might find have no similar interests, while his interest-peers don't follow his logic and don't get his jokes. It's no wonder he doesn't engage others very often. For a socially immature person it's hard enough to know how to enter into and maintain a conversation, but when your experiences mostly end up in misunderstanding and frustration... well, it's easy to understand why he might stop trying.
But then there's the other side of the "perspective" coin, too. Sometimes I expect him to act like an adult simply because he can reason like an adult. But that's not appropriate, either. When he is falling apart in tears because he made a mistake that can't be undone, I have to remind myself that he is still a child. When he has days that require more physical movement ("run around breaks"), or he has trouble calming himself over something exciting - I have to remind myself that he is still a child, and still learning skills that most adults take for granted. Yes, he is definitely behind the curve in some areas, as much as he is ahead of it in others... which makes it doubly important for DH and I to set appropriate expectations (and doubly hard to know what ARE appropriate expectations. Grade level expectations, while his maturity isn't grade level? Is that fair?).
I hope that I am keeping my expectations realistic - whether intellectual, social, or emotional. I hope that I am giving the kidlet the support he needs to become better at those things in which he does not excel, while continuing to find joy and interest in those areas in which he is beyond the curve.
I think this is especially difficult when you have an only child - and a gifted one at that. I've got no other reference point, other than this one child who is clearly different from most other children his age. So, I have a really hard time keeping perspective on who he is and what he can do. And it goes both ways - sometimes I expect too much, and sometimes not enough.
A perfect example of this was over the weekend. We attended a marine biology event for gifted children, offered through Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. It was a great opportunity, with lots of fun adventuring and learning (well, I learned a lot). But it made me very conscious of how unique my child really is. I told him there would be other kids "like him," but I was wrong. These kids were clearly quite smart, but they weren't in the same league as the kidlet. Not even close. And the really amazing thing (as his mom, I know these things) is that there he was, astounding the socks off the teachers and other adults, and this isn't even his main area of interest. I could see it in the look I got from one of the teachers, when she asked the kidlet if he wanted to be a marine biologist - clearly expecting that this is a special interest of his - and he said "no, I want to be an inventor." I could have told her that his interest in biology/marine biology/etc lies in his fascination for the mechanics of how things work.
It made me a little sad, as I was reflecting how hard it is for this little person to find peers - those intellectual peers he might find have no similar interests, while his interest-peers don't follow his logic and don't get his jokes. It's no wonder he doesn't engage others very often. For a socially immature person it's hard enough to know how to enter into and maintain a conversation, but when your experiences mostly end up in misunderstanding and frustration... well, it's easy to understand why he might stop trying.
But then there's the other side of the "perspective" coin, too. Sometimes I expect him to act like an adult simply because he can reason like an adult. But that's not appropriate, either. When he is falling apart in tears because he made a mistake that can't be undone, I have to remind myself that he is still a child. When he has days that require more physical movement ("run around breaks"), or he has trouble calming himself over something exciting - I have to remind myself that he is still a child, and still learning skills that most adults take for granted. Yes, he is definitely behind the curve in some areas, as much as he is ahead of it in others... which makes it doubly important for DH and I to set appropriate expectations (and doubly hard to know what ARE appropriate expectations. Grade level expectations, while his maturity isn't grade level? Is that fair?).
I hope that I am keeping my expectations realistic - whether intellectual, social, or emotional. I hope that I am giving the kidlet the support he needs to become better at those things in which he does not excel, while continuing to find joy and interest in those areas in which he is beyond the curve.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Resilience
If there is one thing I am trying to teach the kidlet, it is the amorphous quality of resilience. You know, that thing that makes you keep trying after something doesn't work out quite right, or that makes you push through when something is hard.
Wikipedia starts its article on resilience like this:
Resilience is important for everyone, but it can be elusive for gifted people. Since most things come easily for someone who is gifted, they don't encounter enough push-back in early years with the frequency that most people do. So they don't learn how to move through it and find the successes on the other side. In fact, for highly gifted or broadly gifted people, even the slightest bit of resistance can lead to full melt-downs or quitting.
We have spent quite a bit of time recently dealing with the inadequacy of the kidlet's resilience level. He hates being unable to do something, so he refuses to try. My favorite illustration of this was back when he was closing in on 4 years old, and not yet potty-trained. His younger cousin had just been potty trained, so I asked the kidlet when he was going to do it. He asked me when he needed to have it done. I told him that I'd heard if he wasn't potty-trained by the time he was 4, we'd have to go to the doctor to be checked out. He told me then that he would be trained when he was 4. He still refused to try out the potty chair, but what do you know - on his 4th birthday he put on big-boy underpants and never looked back (for day or night!). He had to be sure he could do it before he'd be seen trying. It's been the same story all along - riding a bike, sports, handwriting, and especially anything to do with academics. Frustration builds fast and ends up in melt-down mode when challenged to try something that is difficult.
Most people know that most things that are worth doing take a little bit of work - but someone who has never had to work for anything doesn't connect the level of work with a positive result. If you've never had to work hard/ think hard/ try hard / practice hard /etc. in order to accomplish something that gets accolades and rave reviews, once you hit that point where you need to work (and in order to really succeed at something, you've got to hit that point), instead of giving you that sense of, "okay, I can do this!" - it feels like a failure.
One of the final straws at the last school kidlet attended was when the math teacher told me that she wasn't pushing the kidlet to do hard math problems because she didn't, "want to frustrate him." After three years of that kind of attitude, his resilience level is on the Delicates cycle. So we've been pushing him pretty hard to work through the tough problems and get the right answer (and go back and check it to make sure before you move on to the next math problem). I love hearing the sound in his voice when he finishes some exercises and says, "I got 100%!" - or even when he is re-doing some problems he'd done poorly on and says, "I improved by 200%!" Not only does that tell me that he is understanding the work, but that he is getting positive feedback from his attempts at resilience. And next time, maybe it won't be so hard to find the courage to keep trying.
A piece of paper in the kidlet's work area quotes Albert Einstein: "One should not pursue goals that are easily achieved. One must develop an instinct for what one can just barely achieve through one's greatest efforts." It is there to remind the kidlet (and me!) that effort is not only worthwhile, but a positive aspect of achievement.
Sadly, when faced with something that is difficult, it is all too easy to quit. But then you never get the satisfaction of knowing that you conquered something that was hard. Resilience definitely builds upon itself - the more success you find (and that great feeling that this was hard but you did it anyway), the more you will be willing to keep trying when failure looms.
Keep going, kidlet! I know you can do it! But you need to know it, too.
Wikipedia starts its article on resilience like this:
Resilience in psychology is the positive capacity of people to cope with stress and adversity. This coping may result in the individual “bouncing back” to a previous state of normal functioning, or using the experience of exposure to adversity to produce a “steeling effect” and function better than expected (much like an inoculation gives one the capacity to cope well with future exposure to disease).[1] Resilience is most commonly understood as a process, and not a trait of an individual.
Resilience is important for everyone, but it can be elusive for gifted people. Since most things come easily for someone who is gifted, they don't encounter enough push-back in early years with the frequency that most people do. So they don't learn how to move through it and find the successes on the other side. In fact, for highly gifted or broadly gifted people, even the slightest bit of resistance can lead to full melt-downs or quitting.
We have spent quite a bit of time recently dealing with the inadequacy of the kidlet's resilience level. He hates being unable to do something, so he refuses to try. My favorite illustration of this was back when he was closing in on 4 years old, and not yet potty-trained. His younger cousin had just been potty trained, so I asked the kidlet when he was going to do it. He asked me when he needed to have it done. I told him that I'd heard if he wasn't potty-trained by the time he was 4, we'd have to go to the doctor to be checked out. He told me then that he would be trained when he was 4. He still refused to try out the potty chair, but what do you know - on his 4th birthday he put on big-boy underpants and never looked back (for day or night!). He had to be sure he could do it before he'd be seen trying. It's been the same story all along - riding a bike, sports, handwriting, and especially anything to do with academics. Frustration builds fast and ends up in melt-down mode when challenged to try something that is difficult.
Most people know that most things that are worth doing take a little bit of work - but someone who has never had to work for anything doesn't connect the level of work with a positive result. If you've never had to work hard/ think hard/ try hard / practice hard /etc. in order to accomplish something that gets accolades and rave reviews, once you hit that point where you need to work (and in order to really succeed at something, you've got to hit that point), instead of giving you that sense of, "okay, I can do this!" - it feels like a failure.
One of the final straws at the last school kidlet attended was when the math teacher told me that she wasn't pushing the kidlet to do hard math problems because she didn't, "want to frustrate him." After three years of that kind of attitude, his resilience level is on the Delicates cycle. So we've been pushing him pretty hard to work through the tough problems and get the right answer (and go back and check it to make sure before you move on to the next math problem). I love hearing the sound in his voice when he finishes some exercises and says, "I got 100%!" - or even when he is re-doing some problems he'd done poorly on and says, "I improved by 200%!" Not only does that tell me that he is understanding the work, but that he is getting positive feedback from his attempts at resilience. And next time, maybe it won't be so hard to find the courage to keep trying.
A piece of paper in the kidlet's work area quotes Albert Einstein: "One should not pursue goals that are easily achieved. One must develop an instinct for what one can just barely achieve through one's greatest efforts." It is there to remind the kidlet (and me!) that effort is not only worthwhile, but a positive aspect of achievement.
Sadly, when faced with something that is difficult, it is all too easy to quit. But then you never get the satisfaction of knowing that you conquered something that was hard. Resilience definitely builds upon itself - the more success you find (and that great feeling that this was hard but you did it anyway), the more you will be willing to keep trying when failure looms.
Keep going, kidlet! I know you can do it! But you need to know it, too.
Monday, August 29, 2011
It's the First Day of School
The simple answer to "Why did you decide to home school," is this - we had no other choice. The child needs to be intellectually challenged, but also needs to be a kid. You can't put a child like this in a typical classroom and expect that it will all go smoothly - he takes to boredom like I take to grass pollen (it makes bad things happen in our bodies). We've tried it. It wasn't successful and led to even higher anxiety, lower self-esteem, and a more frustrated everyone. We tried a school that did all one-on-one instruction, but ended up paying for extremely expensive child care, since they didn't understand giftedness and the needs of gifted students. One teacher told me she was afraid to frustrate him... um, resilience anyone?
My answer to the martial arts master was this, "I'm not a genius like HE is, but he's still a child and it is my job to teach him." Much of learning is figuring out how to learn - questions to ask, problem solving, critical thinking. Also, because of the kidlet's asynchrony, there are areas in which he is not as advanced; although his ability to think about those areas is quite advanced - math, for example - you can't just skip over the "easy stuff" because he can think in complex mathematical ways... he still needs to learn all the building blocks so he can do the complex stuff correctly.
Now the toughie - which grade is he in? No idea. I can tell you for sure that he is NOT in 6th grade -which would be his chronological grade. He had easily passed all the 8th grade requirements by the end of last year, so we're calling this 9th grade. But even that is a misnomer - since the work he is doing is equally from college texts as from high school. We picked 9th because that seems like the lowest common denominator for him. We expect him to complete 9th grade work by the end of Autumn and start into 10th - IF things go as quickly as we think they can. But the beauty of home schooling is that we can go at whatever pace works best - some subjects might go more quickly (I have him going through a full college text on Marine Biology in one month, as we prepare for a group trip through Johns Hopkins CTY to the aquarium at Newport, Oregon for a weekend class - but don't let that fool you, he's been "studying" marine biology on his own for years).
Another nice thing about home schooling is that you can really tailor learning without being stuck on someone else's idea of flow. This year, I decided to mold everything to World History (that being a key element in 9th grade). So, we are taking things era by era, and most of his assignments will be linked to whichever era we are studying. For example, we start off with the earliest beginnings of the world - he will read from two different history texts about pre-history and ancient cultures, will study the geography of the middle-east then and now, is reading some ancient myths about creation and flood - as well as a book on the Big Bang theory, learning about scientific advancements in the ancient world (hello Aristotle!). For those subjects that don't fit into the plan - we'll work our way through anyway. It's not a perfect system, but I think it will work well to put everything in perspective - since no learning is in isolation, may as well make as much as possible work together.
Who knows what this year will bring... but at least I can be sure that my child will continue to learn, will have opportunities to explore his world, and can find that spark within himself again. It has been so hard seeing his interest in learning fade - that excitement about school turned inside out into angst, boredom, and frustration. I don't know if we can turn that around in one year, but I'm going to try.
Learning is fun! School is fun! I think we'll go to the fair later this week to celebrate. :)
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Math: The Eternal Struggle
 |
| Photo of Einstein's desk from Life Magazine, - note the written-out equations. Even HE couldn't do it all in his head. |
Here's the struggle: he won't learn math facts, and he won't write out the problems on paper and work it out by hand. I guess his little algebraic formula is supposed to take care of that for him. The problem is: you can do that with simple equations, but as the problems get more complex, it gets too difficult to keep everything straight as you are walking through the steps. So, his brilliant little math mind is making a complex equation that much harder by sending it through all these extra filters, and since he isn't walking through it on paper, he can't go back and see where his mistakes are - and he is getting the problems wrong. When we sit down and work out the problems with him, he gets every problem correct. I know he knows the process and can work out the answers.
But he is failing.
And this is the (rhetorical*) question with which I struggle as his parent - do I let him fail?
On the one hand, it would be really good for him to learn what it feels like to fail, to pick himself up and try again. It's not something he is good at (are any of us?), and he doesn't frequently have opportunities to try it out and see where it can take him. Failure leads to discovery, and discovery is all good. And failure builds resilience, which is definitely a character trait the kidlet needs to learn.
On the other hand - this is an expensive (online) class, and I'm not sure we are going to be very willing to pay another hefty sum to have the kidlet retake a class he should have passed the first time. And since the kidlet is already bored and impatient, I can't really imagine trying to do this again. He has been surprisingly cooperative this time around, but I don't see that happening again if he has to retake the class (performance anxiety rears its hideously ugly head).
And so... the math drama goes on. As I'm sure it will in the next class, and the class after that.
*I say this is a rhetorical question, because I know that Daddy and I will come up with the best answer for our family. I am not asking for you to answer this for us. Not that I don't appreciate your comments, dear readers, but we will make our decision based upon far more complexity than a blog post can communicate.
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