Gifted Children and "The Reaction"

"You must be drilling him."
"Stop teaching him, let him watch T.V."
"Oh...sure he can do that."
"If he is advanced as you say he is..."
"Oh, there must be something wrong with him."

*

Clearly I'm delusional.  Either that, or a tiger mom/hot-housing drill sergeant.  To my STUBBORN THREE YEAR OLD.  I mean seriously, how does one force a stubborn three year old (any three year old, really) to do anything?

I'm Marnie. This is my story. 

I have two beautiful children, Gabriel (the aforementioned three year old), and Julian, a wiggly eight month old bundle of baby squish.  

I'm just going to put it out there:  Gabe is gifted.  Boom!  No, we have not had him tested yet - so I will amend that and say, we think very strongly that he is gifted.  Let's keep one thing in mind - even as I write this, even though I know in my heart it's true...it feels like I just said a dirty word.  "Gifted".  What does it even mean?  It sounds privileged, it sound arrogant.  I don't mean it in that way at all.  So what do I mean?  Well, in simple terms, he is advanced.  In more specific terms, I mostly mean that my three year old loves math.  LOVES - all capital letters.  He loves math (and numbers in general), the way another 3 year old loves trains.  He wants to "play" with them all the time, draw them, read about that, sleep with them at night, talk about them, find connections to number in almost anything.  He literally builds numbers and equations out of legos.  He draws "number people" playing at the park.  I made him squishy felt numbers for Christmahanukkah.  He plays and sleeps with them.  He does math workbooks.  Anything math, and my kid is in.  It's his passion.  Do we force it on him? Hell no!  But we do indulge his passion in the same way a mother of a train-obsessed kid would.  Instead of buying him train pillows, and lots of train sets, and train books... it's numbers.  If I ask Gabe, "Hey, what do you want to play?  Do you want to color, read a book, play a puzzle or add decimals?"  9 times out of 10 he will say "decimals".  That's my kid.  And who am I to squash that?  He certainly does other things - he loves legos, he loves books (he learned to read at 2, but would much rather be read to),  he colors, he watches T.V., he runs and plays catch and tackles his little brother.  He just so happens to also do 2nd-3rd grade math.  At three years old.  

Now before you start thinking this is going to be a 'brag blog' or that this is a 'brag post', let me clarify something.

Despite what you may think, I do not go out of my way to tell people these things.  I used to - in the way that all parents who are excited about their children's accomplishments do.  Someone would ask what Gabe is up to, or he would have done something that I thought was really awesome, and so I would tell people.  And then...I would get "The Reaction".  

If I may... (indulge the minor repetition)
"You must be drilling him."
"Stop teaching him, let him watch T.V."
"Oh...sure he can do that."
"If he is advanced as you say he is..."
"Oh, there must be something wrong with him."  (I simply love that one.)

"The Reaction" is awful.  It sucks.  It really really does.  I got so angry and indignant and frustrated...especially because if you spend more than 5 minutes with my kid, you will figure it out yourself.  But, just telling people brought all the skeptics out of the woodwork and right to my front door.  So I stopped talking about it.  Even when asked a direct question: "Wow, he's reading already?"  "He wrote that?"  "He can add?"  (and subtract and multiply and divide...)  I use my stock reply:

Yeah, he's just really in "insert appropriate vague reply here".  (He's really into "numbers"/He's really into "words"/He likes to"write stuff, that's kind of his thing.")  This is always followed  but a little shrug and smile.  And not a lick more information.  Because I know you won't believe me anyway.  And I don't want to be pissed off at you today.  So I keep my mouth shut.  (For the most part, anyway.)

I wanted to start this blog to talk about giftedness - it's quirks, it's delights, and it's challenges.  I have done a lot of research on gifted education, and it turns out, I have a lot to say on the matter - school, success, happiness, socialization, loneliness, asynchrony... I wasn't sure where to start, and this seemed as good a place as any.  Any parent of a gifted kid knows what I'm talking about it.  


Thus begins my account of this ongoing wild journey as mother to one of the coolest kid I know.

I shall await the slew of disbelieving comments with a lot of hope and a just dash of snark.

Until next time,

Marn