Tuesday, February 25, 2014

My Child is in a Testing Phase

...Bring on the booze.  Okay, not really.  But really.



I meant to write earlier than this, but it has been a rough couple of weeks, and blogging got left a bit by the wayside.  Apologies.

I actually have a couple posts in mind to write, but at this exact moment, my brain is on fuzzed-out mode, and needs to kind of rant.  Double apologies.

So, as you can tell, things have been pretty stressful - life is pretty busy right now, which always adds to the stress, but the main reason for the crazy is that we are in full-blown testing phase purgatory right now.  Gabe, like all little kids, goes through definitive periods of time which we like to call 'testing phases', which basically means that he pushes and pushes and argues and does things he knows he isn't supposed to and drives us bananas for anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.  AKA acts like a huge butt.  (That's the technical definition).  It's is super frustrating because I know how he is capable of acting, and I also know that this is totally normal, kids toeing the line, feeling out boundaries, discovering a sense of self, that his opinions are his own ...but it essentially boils down to 'he wants what he wants right now and nothing will deter him'.  We used to be able to offer choices...if he wanted to do something he wasn't allowed to do, we would offer a few other choices and he would pick one.  Now it's nothing but "NO, I don't want any of those!" and whining and crying and yelling...super fun times for all.  He also tries to find loopholes, or manipulate his way out of things, which, while clever and impressive, is hugely annoying when you are, for example, trying to punish him.  Sigh.


One of the upshots of this is a stubborn refusal to cooperate with most things.  Including answering questions.  Now granted, Gabe has never been the best question answerer...he refuses to 'perform' on cue...which is fine, who likes to play monkey, really?  But when it's things like "Hey Gabe, what did you do at school day?" and it's like pulling teeth to get even one or two things that he did, because he 'just doesn't want to tell you that'...it can get pretty damn frustrating.  Clearly, this only gets worse during testing phases.  But now we are reconsidering the IQ test at this point...I know that having a professional asking the questions, and someone he doesn't know already might make a difference, but I can totally see him just being like 'I just don't want to answer that' to the psychologist...and that would be bad. But we are just riding it out to see how things go...we have another month before we have to make any decisions.  It's just...draining, you know?  But it never hurts to take a step back.


If anyone has any advice for how to deal with super smart, manipulative, whiny almost-4 year olds...leave a comment.  We can use all the help we can get!


I feel like I need to say that while the testing phase really sucks, it is by no means all the time, every day. Gabe is still his sweet, kind, curious self a lot of the time...it's just when he's NOT, that it's like,  "woah there, kid, chill yourself."

Tangent Alert!!  Gabe's mental math calculations are just getting so crazy good.  Like, he will often arrive at an answer faster than I do.  (Granted, I am not the best mental calculator, but still...)  And he plays with big numbers, adding two sets of 3 digit numbers, with regrouping (ie. 485 +856 or whatever).  He has also been big into squares, cubes and the like.  Oh and reducing fractions.  It's pretty magnificent, especially when you know that he isn't drilling any of this, it's just...there.  In his head.  I don't know how he holds that kind of information, especially for the calculation stuff...he must be so visual to be able to manipulate the numbers mentally like that.  And he definitely tried to eat my nose the other day, so there's that.

Since this post was a bit ranty, I'll end with some good news.  Jules just turned 9 months, and is right on the verge of walking.  He can stand up on his own, and take a step or two before falling on his butt.  It's pretty adorable.  Also, he has discovered 'people food' and has since become a bottomless pit for things like toast, fruit and pancakes ;).



So yeah, totally the most cohesive post ever.  Not impressive.  I promise I will do my best to be less divergent in the future. 

Until next time,

Marnie

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Giftedness and Perfectionism - when it's NOT okay to be wrong.



“Perfectionism is self-abuse of the highest order.” 



Perfectionism...a disease with the side effect of being good at things, and also kind of hating yourself.  I would know, I have a bad case of it.  Let me tell you this, perfectionists work their asses off to be perfect (let's talk academically here, for the moment), but the gain isn't anywhere near the emotional drain of possibly failing at being perfect.  Did you catch that?  "Possibly failing at being perfect".  I guess it should actually say "often or always failing at being perfect".  Perfectionists aren't happy unless they are perfect (who would have guessed?  Yay for etymology!) or damn well near it.  How often does 'perfect' actually happen though?  Seriously.  I am the girl that would beat herself up when she got a 94% on an organic chemistry exam.  (No lie, I loved that class.)  The sad thing is, even if I DID manage a 100%, it would be like, 'woohoo, I got a 100%', an elation of which would last about 5 seconds, and then I would be back to..."so now what?  Oh, there's another thing I need to be perfect at.  Time to fret!"  Yeah, not good, not good at all.  Perfectionists get little to no satisfaction with just working hard and being proud of the work you accomplished.  It is rather sucky state of being.  

My husband is not like this.  He is...how shall we put this...kind of academically lazy.  But he is so damn smart, he can almost get away with this.  His putting in 25% effort is like another person putting in 90% effort.  That being said, he should probably put in more effort than he does and like, cure cancer or something.  (Or a topic more relevant to his being an astrophysicist like discover what dark matter is or find a new race of alien-gremlins on Mars or whatever.)

Why am I talking about this?  Of course - young master Gabriel.  Gabe is an interesting creature in this way.  He is not competitive, but he does not like to be wrong.  And here's the thing...he rarely is.  (I think that's part of the problem, honestly.)


An example:
Gabe is doing square root something or other on ixl, and he gets super excited about knowing what the next answer is, so that he 'accidentally' types the number in reverse (I believe it was something like the square root of 225, and he typed in '51' instead of '15'.  After he pressed enter, there was such shock on his face, then he just crumbled.  I felt so bad.  He was crying and trying to explain that he didn't mean it and it broke my heart.  Gray and I (Gray being husband, for all those who don't know), sat down and had a little talk with him about how it's ok to be wrong, it's okay to make mistakes, we know he knew the answer, the fact that he typed it wrong doesn't change the fact that he knew it, and even if he hadn't known, that would have been okay too.  Because, how can you learn if you don't make mistakes?  We told him stories about Mama and Dada not being perfect, even using a (true) story about how Dada took a test in Differential Equations, and got an answer to a really complicated question wrong because he wrote that 1+1=1.  Which made Gabe laugh (because Dada was so silly).  This conversation seemed to help, and after a few minutes, he was his happy self again.


Gabe doesn't like to do things that are hard for him.  Like I said before, things are rarely hard - even after I show him something new, after a couple minutes of 'teaching' him, and two or three questions, he has usually figured it out, wholly and completely.  It's insane how fast he assimilates information, especially in math.  But, on the rare occasions that something is challenging for him, he doesn't like to do it.  It's hard.   It actually requires effort.  And whenever we stumble upon these things, I try and take advantage of them.  Because kids need to learn to work hard.  They need to be challenged and not always get everything right.  (It literally took me until sometime in college before I learned how to study.  That was brutal.  I don't want Gabe to have to deal with that.)  Besides, if everything is too easy, he will never want to take risks, or try anything that might seem out of his reach, because he is used to his 'perfect' little comfort zone.  He will be afraid to try.  And that is unacceptable.  I will make sure my child is challenged and frustrated, and will be content in the knowledge that it will make him a better person.  

Apparently perfectionism among the gifted is a common problem - one that has been addressed all over the internet and beyond.  Luckily for us, Gabe doesn't seem to be as bad as he could be (at least, for now).  He doesn't freak out if he colors outside the lines, for example.  (Though, funnily enough, I recall a memory of Gabe, around 2 years old, writing letters.  If he didn't like the way the letter looked, he would promptly erase it and rewrite it.  I also do this, even now.  Some apples don't fall far from the tree, as it were.)  Could Gabe's perfectionist tendencies be worse?  Certainly.  But they could also be better.  And so, that's why we, as parents, are in the business of beating Gabe over the proverbially head with the idea that "It's OKAY to make mistakes.  NO ONE is perfect."

"It's OKAY to make mistakes.  NO ONE is perfect."


...Boy, could I have used that mantra as a kid.

For more info, read: Perfectionism and the Highly Gifted Child, by Shaun Hately.


Until next time,

Marn