Giftedness rears its ugly head again

Labels don't belong on children. Within a week of starting a new preschool, we were taken aside by several teachers and told "Your child is highly gifted. He doesn't belong here. We don't have anything that will challenge him." It was quite ironic, really, because their environment challenged him so much his emotions were running away with him more often than not, leaving him experiencing rage routinely and being chastised for "being bad."

I don't really want to talk more about the failings of that preschool environment. I'll leave it at the teachers were great with genuine interest and affection and did their best in a bad system. What I want to talk about is why on earth a preschool thinks it has nothing to offer a three year old boy. After all, we thought the program had a lot to offer him or we wouldn't have chosen it!

It is beyond comprehensible to me that a program with gross motor activities beyond compare, highly trained, engaged teachers and a well-stocked room full of three-year-olds has "nothing" to offer a "gifted" child. "Gifted" children certainly stand out, often for the wrong reasons, so it's readily apparent when the program doesn't work for them. But surely one-size-fits-all education fails most children (or at least half of them), even if it's not quite so easy to spot?

We have dug deep into our pockets and tightened our belts to enroll our son in a Montessori program. He was a completely different child within one day. The child who had spent seven months having "bad days" because he "didn't listen to his teacher" suddenly cites "listening" as his favourite part of the day. Whereas before he was a frazzled, over-tired wreck every evening, at the end of his second day he spent the evening singing (much of it in the shower).

Montessori isn't the only program that treats children as individuals, giving them the room to grow into their unique personalities in a positive environment. We were blessed with a truly remarkable daycare in Nashville. Grace M. Eaton Childcare Center recognised when he arrived as a cruising and crawling 5.5 month old that he was "different." They didn't say "he doesn't belong here," just like they didn't say that to the parents of the blind child in his class, or the child with severe speech delay a few years later.

We are now committed to keeping our son in Montessori until the second grade, when "challenge" activities start being offered to "gifted" children. Right now we haven't given up on public education, but after recent experience, when we get there, we'll be on the look out to see if public education has given up on our child.

Onto Math Concepts

The wee man has had a two-year-long tussle with letters and phonics and is now up to a point of sounding out 3- and 4-letter words. The sense of wonder when he sounds the words out and then makes sense of the sounds is a joy to behold. It's only about one word a day on average that we encourage him to sound out, it's not like he's actually reading or even close to reading per se. Mostly we focus on word recognition. "Can you find the word 'Spot?' That's right sss-ppp-oh-tt, Spot. Now can you find another place where you see the word Spot?" Again, by "mostly" I mean a couple times during his bedtime stories or while we're driving in the car if he happens to have a book.

His brain has finally made peace with words, for now, and so it is now grappling numbers. He has had sequences down for ages; he can sing the alphabet song, mostly say the days of the week in order, count to 14 (but then leaps to 16, 19, despite my best efforts of drawing comparison to 4-5-6) and count to twelve in Spanish. We've toyed with addition and subtraction concepts (How many people are in the car? If one gets out, how many are left?), but today I noticed he's doing division. This morning he put the eggs in the pot to boil them -- six of them -- and announced that here were two for each of us. Two for Mommy, two for Daddy and two for him. When the chicken Cordon Bleu came out of the oven, again he announced that there was one each.

We're also introducing money to him -- it is, after all, Financial Awareness Month or so NPR told me yesterday. When we go to the Kids Drum Circle on Saturday mornings at Bongo Boy Music School, he now hands over the cash. He puts the dollar bill into the machine at Meijer that releases the locking cart with a TV inside and when we're done with our shopping he puts the penny into the horse.

On Thursday he was pestering me for bubble gum out of those annoying candy vending machines and I told him I didn't have the money for it. He persisted. I told him the machines take a "special coin called a Quarter" and I didn't have any. I opened my purse, tipped the coins out and found a quarter. He was delighted. Yesterday he found his "treasure box" that has his fake (and some real) money in it and he went through each coin: "Mommy, is this a Quarter? Daddy what about this one?"

Introducing a Second Language

When I was pregnant with the small boy, I intended to speak Afrikaans to him from the word go. Once he arrived, though, it just didn't feel right. To be honest, I felt a bit of a fraud. I am, in fact of Afrikaner stock. My grandmother goes back to the Voortrekkers and my father learned English at school. Whatever his reasons, he chose not to share his language with his children and when struggling through at school, we never thought to ask him for help.

I remember the first time I spoke Afrikaans without being required to: I was in my third year of university and we had to do a 3 week survey camp in a tiny west coast town. I called the lovely Tannie to inquire about her flat for let and when the phone call concluded successfully, my flatmate and I looked at each other in amazement. Soon, most of my memorable social interactions involved speaking Afrikaans.

There was the river rafting trip with Anne and a pile of young men from Riviersdal, and then weekends visiting Jeanne and Kelly in Albertinia. Those turned into weekends in Wilderness and nights out in Mosselbaai. Next thing I knew I was living in George and working in Knysna on a construction site alongside Afrikaners. I had a moment of clarity when I found myself embroiled in an Afrikaans conversation with another Soutie.

My journey with Afrikaans is a curious one. It was forced upon us at school and delivered without houding. I remember a friend in London being astounded that I didn't know the words or tune to Hansie Slim. (I still don't.) Sure there was Wielie Waalie and Pippi Langkous on TV, but there were no nursery rhymes, songs, folk tales or anything cultural in the curriculum.

Instead we had posters on the wall remind us about conjunctions and prepositions and we spent as much time studying taal (grammar) as voorskrif (prescribed reading) and opstel (composition). Quarterly mondeling (oral) was universally feared. In high school, the Afrikaans classrooms overlooked the pool, and we whiled the classes away watching people brave the high board. (People did bomb drops or turned back; I only saw one person actually dive off.)

Johnny has been introduced to Spanish over the past 9 months or so and is really enjoying it. Unfortunately, I'm only a couple steps ahead of him and while we're still exploring Spanish (a book of Spanish songs just arrived today), it's time to add Afrikaans to the mix.

Dealing with a "Gifted Child"

My child has never followed the schedules published in baby books. He was born at 41 weeks after two days of labour and had some head control immediately. He rolled over at 3 months, crawled, sat and pulled up to stand at 5.5 months, walked before 9 months, potty trained by 18 months and coming up on his 3rd birthday is writing his name unaided and learning how to read.

This development path invokes a variety of responses. Shock, awe, disbelief, inadequacy. There isn't a lot of nonchalance. As a parent to a "different" child, I feel awkward. I want to celebrate my son's successes, and be proud of each milestone. Surely every mother earns that right -- for a lifetime -- after enduring pregnancy and childbirth? But when I shout from the treetops about the latest milestone, I feel like an insufferable braggart. A lot of the time I talk instead about the things he doesn't do yet, like sleep through the night or put himself to bed.

We knew before we got married that our offspring would be likely to fall into the "gifted" category. That isn't to say we were daydreaming about introducing our child, the rocket surgeon. We haven't started saving for a Harvard education. (We are only just embarking on paying for our own education.) But the advanced warning our own ahead-of-the-curve development paths has not prepared us for the responsibility of shepherding the development of our own child.

Early childhood education is very flexible. His daycare is absolutely brilliant. They follow the Hawaii Early Learning Program (HELP), which has two books (birth-to-3, 3-to-6) that sequentially list development milestones in a host of categories. Each month they pick about eight milestones that he's working towards and every week they engage him in play activities to help him practice those skills.

He finished his birth-to-3 at 27 months and already is well into his 3-6 book. What do we do if he moves beyond his daycare's resources by the age of 4? The public education system is set up well for dealing with "average" development track children, and reasonably well for children whose development is slower. However, both the husband and I have negative experiences from our parents' and teachers' best efforts at accommodating us in a normal school environment.

My nearly-3yo has the reading skills of a 5-6 year old, the gross motor skills of a 4yo and the social skills of a 3yo. If he stays on this development track, it is going to be very challenging to provide a positive school experience for him. He is a sensitive little boy, which would be hard enough on its own, but he's going to be a very tall boy who thrives on positive reinforcement and will always have his hand up shouting out the answer.

I feel isolated as a parent at the best of times, but I have found a great resource of likeminded mothers online. However, as I grapple with how best to educate my son beyond the age of five, it feels like I'm in a vacuum.

Finally Weaned

I don't want to speak too soon (like with the night time bedwetting which was over for at least a month and has returned with a vengeance), but I do believe the menace is finally weaned! He last "tried" to have "some nana" last Sunday (and he didn't really get any), but still asked as recently as yesterday morning. When I refused him he got out of bed in a strop and headed to the lounge to turn on the TV.

Chivalry Lives

In the playground today Elizabeth decided to take off her shoes. The problem with this is that Elizabeth is a pansy when it comes to walking barefoot on anything other than grass. When she has to walk across stones (round river stones, with which the playground is populated), she wants to hold onto your hand and lean all of her body weight on you. Of course the stones don't actually hurt, so this is overly dramatic, but she's 2 and she's not used to walking around barefoot.

With her (patient as a saint) mom's help, she made it over to the slide. She climbed up and played around on top so her mom sat down again. When she was ready, she slid down, and landed on the stones to a sea of more stones to cross. Panic struck her face. Her mom and I sighed. Then Johnny walked up to her, held out his hand, and walked her to the stairs. I nearly cried.

Another small communication explosion

I marvel at Johnny's mind sometimes. On Monday on the way home he said "No, we do not go home. We need to get diesel for your car." It has been over a week since we've put diesel in, nowhere near where we were, and I cannot fathom the trigger for this.

He has been telling more stories. I like his stories. He made the most of the tornado warnings with "The siren made a noise. We need to go in the basement with a flashlight." He told everyone. Repeatedly. Sometimes he'd trip up on the words and give away his age. He also tells me about his day at school now.