Sian

Thursday, 26 May 2005

Help!!! I'm surrounded by aging gifted children, and I can't get out! I think the worst part of it it that I'm finally beginning to realize how dumb average can be. I'm also beginning to realize how egotistic parents of gifted children can be. One of the little girls from the church I went to, when I was a kid just graduated from college (at a ridiculously young age) and I really want to smack her parents firmly around the ears. This was the wrong choice. I know this, because at some point, her parents declared me to be a role model (Gd help them) and she became more or less my puppy. I remember her as being a bubbly four year old, who probably would've been prom-queen if she had been allowed to have a normal childhood. I'm probably a little biased, here, because when my parents made "the choice," they asked me. If I hadn't agreed to it, I would have been left alone. They also set a limit on it--one class in school, and I would remain with my own age group, everywhere else--so it wasn't quite as detrimental to my "social well-being," as it would be in the case of a child graduating from college at 16. Socially, though, I think that even the low end of my peer group was always substantially above average.

I always seem to find odd little corners of genius in which to shelter myself, and I'm probably more objective talking about my friends than about myself, so, I'm going to talk about them. Parents who push their kids through high school prematurely always seem to me to be engaged in some massive pissing contest in which it always seems to be the child who winds up getting splashed. I know what I'm talking about here; I've seen it over and over and from every possible angle. I've seen the little girl, I've seen the 14 year old, and I've seen the 60 year old professor. To a lesser extent, I've been there(or at least, thanked Gd that I was not there.)

First of all, let's be honest. Gifted children who are dramatically separated from their peer groups cannot and do not catch up socially or emotionally. Look around, and you can find examples. Try the college professor population--when I was in school, I had no less than 4 instructors whom I knew to have been in college by the age of 14. There were certainly others whom I suspected of this. More than that, I can name specific departments. Think about what majors you would have chosen, at 14, and that's where they are. Forget about not being able to go to the clubs: a child in college can't even go to an R rated movie. Will never have a date. One of the girls I went to school with (who most certainly was intellectually able to keep up) used to have to tell men who asked her out "You should know that I'm 14 years old." Hello, rock. Meet hard place. Hard place, Rock.

Pushing a child to finish high school early is a little like encouraging a convict to get a degree in law--yes, they'll have the degree, but they won't ever be allowed to practice. They won't have a college experience equivalent to an 18 year old's, and they won't have the highschool experience, either. In college, the child will be sheltered--if his ideas are questioned, it will not be with the same enthusiasm with which people question their peers' ideas. I remember reducing a 25 year old man to a puffing, stammering, idiot in class. Would we have done the same, if he had been a child? Of course not. I sat in my first university lectures (a conference on populist history) at the age of ten or eleven, and there was no debate--either positive or negative-- on any topic I raised. It was the same atmosphere in which one could see Barney the wonder horse do sums, except, of course, that I was Barney. For me, this was an "experience" a one-day event for me to stretch my muscles, but for a child who has been advanced, it would be a lifestyle--just not the college lifestyle. For a girl, who would be able to pass for 18 or 19, this would be less of a problem; for a boy, he could expect to be coddled throughout his education.

I was reading at a college level before I got to kindergarten. That's pretty decent. I was in a rural school house (one teacher per grade, if there were enough students to make it worth it.) and the so-called "gifted program" consisted of sending me to the library durning any time the rest of the class was being taught something I already knew(math, science, reading, history...). After I had been advanced, they would send me up to the grade above me for an hour or two, where I would still be at the top of the class, but I would be someone else's problem for a while. The point, here, is that there are exceptions, that in certain very specific instances, it improves the child's intellectual and social lives. But I would still point out that I have never had a birthday party (avoiding "rubbing it in") and until I was in a place where no one knew, I was always a little bit of an outsider. I still joke that my first language was written English, and that people should be patient with me as spoken English is my second language.

Being "GT" is a dirty little secret that we tend to learn to keep to ourselves as much as possible. Here I am, in my twenties, and a friend of mine only just very tentatively admitted to me that she had been advanced. It's a fact of childhood that is both incredibly relevant, and incredibly anti-social. A confession which has the tendency to alienate the very person in whom you are trying to confide. How many people have I actually told? Not many, and most of them are people who figured it out, on their own, by doing the math...

It's definitely something to think about, if you're making a decision. At the very least, you're yanking your kid out of the group of children he knows and is comfortable with. You'd think long and hard, if you were holding him back. This has more impact. The switch between peer-groups is the same, of course, but you're adding a flashing, neon sign "this person is better than you. He's smarter, and that's why he's been moved up to your level." Then you stand back and hope the new class accepts him, and maybe that he's able to maintain the old friendships. Big gamble.

My IQ, when tested, places me in the "I'd have to walk by thousands and thousands of people in order to walk by someone who's as smart as I am" category. On a practical level, however, it takes far less to interest and challenge me. Competence and knowledge are just fine.

posted by: SianNorah at 16:51 | link | comments (2)

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posted by: SianNorah at 16:51 | link | comments (2)

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