This is a (rather rambling) review of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s new show, “Making Child Prodigies ” which aired this week.
Living in Extracurricular Purgatory
When, all those years ago, we decided that homeschooling was the right choice for our deeply asynchronous children, I kind of hoped that this would mean an escape from age-based norms and expectations. We would be free to craft the curriculum and activities that ‘fit’ our kids without the limitations that came with the age-grade lockstep that is the traditional way schools organise learning.
Gosh was I naive.
Because, whether I like it or not, almost anything to do with children is organised based on these traditional age-grade levels. Finding places that ‘fit’ my kids and their very different needs has been like ground-hog day. Reliving the same situations over and over again, with only the surface details changing. And each time feels like another walk through extracurricular purgatory. . .
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Preparing for College; Preparing for Crazy
Sometimes, it feels like I’m trapped inside a B-Grade Hollywood movie. The director is at the side is yelling, “More drama! We need a rewrite here! There’s not enough punch to this story.“
The punches keep rolling in, and I feel a little bit like a punch-drunk ninja. My children went from crazy accelerated to crazy-crazy accelerated. (How my eldest managed to skip me noticing that he had learned about 2-3 years worth of maths during our ‘down’ time was the one punch. The two punch was adding yet another acronym to the growing list of family illnesses / chronic conditions / neurological differences / genetic variations / eh, I’m giving up, why don’t we call ’em Steves?)
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Gifted and 2e: An Exceptionally Different Road
It can be easy to think of exceptions as things that need to be fixed, to treat difference as something that needs to be shoved back into the box (even while we laud the idea of individuality). But living with my fantastic twice exceptional little tribe has taught me a very valuable lesson: there is no path. There is no right way to do anything, and the exception can be just as beautiful and amazing as the more familiar way. Continue reading “Gifted and 2e: An Exceptionally Different Road”
Playing to the Positives
It’s very easy to fall into the habit of only thinking about the negatives. I do it. In fact, it runs in my family – anxiety is a fact of life for more than one generation. But today, I want to talk about the positives. It’s easy to talk about the positives and negatives of my family’s special needs, and it is also easy to talk about the negatives of giftedness. It’s even marginally socially acceptable. But today I’m breaking the mould. I am going to talk about the positives of being a gifted family. Because without talking about those ‘oh wow!‘ moments, it’s hard to understand why being gifted is so different from the norm. Today I’m being brave. So here we go. Continue reading “Playing to the Positives”