[HPFGU-OTChatter] re: a few things / Brontosaurus / Gifted Children

[Laura Huntley]

Okay...more on this topic...this seems to be developing into a full-blown debate here.  What fun. ^_^

Kimberly wrote:
<< I was left trying to figure out why I should get particular 
attention, or to do fun things the other kids didn't. >>

catlady_de_los_angeles replied:
>You must be a far more innately virtuous a person than me: it never 
>comes naturally to doubt that *I* have a *right* (an unmet right!) 
>to favorable attention and fun activities.

Oh, you both make me insanely grateful for my own upbringing -- that I never had to deal with any of that.

The only "special program" I've ever been in was one for helping kids with speech impediments in second grade...(I've had a paralyzed vocal cord since 6 days after my birth...unfortunately no one figured this out until I was about 12 or 13.  Until then I had to put up with all kinds of well-meaning types trying to figure out what the heck was wrong with my voice and "fix" it...I actually got diagnosed with asthma once...*chortles*) 

Anyway, that kind of program wasn't likely to make me feel..erm...special or privileged.  Actually, it's sort of weird that I didn't feel inferior because of it.

One thing that *did* bother me however, was in first grade...there was this boy in my class whose parents were forcing the teacher to give him special advanced math lessons.  I remember wandering over just about every day and trying to convince Mrs. Dennison to teach me too.  She wouldn't.  In fact, she got very upset with me for asking and made me stay in for recess several days in a row.  I was quite livid.

Looking back though..that boy is now just about ruined.  Engaged in just about every self-destructive activity I can think of.  I think he may have even dropped out of school at this point.  Maybe being singled out in school like that had something to do with it.  Although, now that I think about it...his family life was really screwed up..so it could have been that.

Anyway, as I remember it, it was always *my* choice whether I did things differently than the other kids.  Skipping grades and such -- my mom always presented these options to me and let me decide whether I wanted to or not.  To this day I can't decide if that was a good thing or not.  On one hand, I passed up allot of opportunities that I now wish I hadn't.  Honestly, I can't count the times I'd wished I'd skipped a few grades here and there or went to one of those special summer program things.  Right now, I'm kicking myself for not coming to MSSM a year earlier.  However, would it have been good to *make* me do these things?  I mean..the reasons I didn't were all pretty stupid -- I didn't want to leave my friends (craziness here...we couldn't stand each other anyway) or go to high school early (ooo...those big scary teenagers)...but, would it have hurt me mentally to have these choices made for me?

I think it might have.  I may have made bad choices...but at least they were *my* choices.  And, eventually...I did make a good one.  Coming to MSSM -- that was hard.  But I knew it would be hard, and I made a conscious decision to take it on.  If the choice had been made for me -- or if I was used to such choices being made for me -- I don't think I would have been very successful here.

catlady_de_los_angeles:
>Intelligence IS the stigma! Words like nurd, geek, and wonk were NOT 
>intended favorably! You can tell by the words accompanying them, like 
>fat, ugly, weird, drinks from the toilet, slut...  Hitting you and 
>taking your bicycle from the bike rack to put it in a patch of poison 
>ivy are NOT signs of friendliness despite what my mother always said!

Eep...Now I'm really grateful for my childhood.  Maybe if I had stayed at the public school I attended from k-3 I would have had these problems...but in fourth I switched to this tiny little private Christian school (my choice also..another one I'm proud of).  There were no special programs here either..but the work was admittedly a little harder, and the teachers cared allot more about the students than at my old school.  There, being smart was a good thing.  There weren't really any boys there (for some reason they couldn't seem to handle the schoolwork), and the girls in my class (all 8 or us ^_~) had a vigorous competition going as far as grades were concerned.  When we got to public high school that sort of changed (it makes me sick to think what all my proud, opinionated, passionate, and intelligent friends have turned into) but for awhile I had the advantage of an atmosphere that was pretty encouraging to the learning process.

Of course, I was at one of my most miserable there...but I think that had the most to do with going through puberty and getting hit with depression for the first time and not knowing how to deal with it (I also have a biological major depressive disorder, btw).  I shudder to think what it would have been like if I had still been at public school. 


catlady_de_los_angeles:
>Maybe they should tell the kids that they are being put in a special 
>remedial class to learn to deal with their handicaps: poor social 
>skills and addiction to reading and thinking, rather than telling 
>them that they are 'bright' or 'gifted'. 

I'm sort of assuming that you're being facetious here.  I don't know how destructive telling kids they are gifted is, but I KNOW what telling kids they have a "handicap" is.  One of the biggest problems with LD is that 1) It's something that needs to be addressed with special attention, but 2) telling a kid they have an LD is a sure way to create problems down the road.

One of my brother's biggest problems is that he *expects* to do bad.  He's always done bad and people have always told him that he's going to do bad.  So he doesn't even try most of the time.  As for the fact that he's got ADHD...it's the same thing.  People have been telling him forever that he's got behavioral problems and he always will -- therefore he makes no effort to behave himself -- he's been told it's impossible.

Although, on a good note, now that he's in high school, he's starting to get away from this stigma.  The authority figures there have ALLOT better things to worry about than a kid who's a bit hyperactive.  In comparison to kids who are nasty to teachers, do drugs, and get into fights, Jason's an angel.  


catlady_de_los_angeles:
>I was in regular school (regular school is a subset of Hell, a place 
>where all adults ignore you except to punish you, and all kids hate 
>you and try to harm you in every way they can) from pre-school and 
>kindergarten (actually, pre-school wasn't bad!) through fourth grade, 
>when I very luckily ESCAPED to -- even tho' they called it a school 
>for gifted chldren, I knew that I was being put in a kindly 
>protective shelter for total losers. 

    Again, it was my choice to go to a private school that incidentally offered a better education -- I didn't see it as being put in a protective shelter...I saw it as ME bettering MY position.

    As far as the social thing went, though...it wasn't much better.  As I said before, learning wasn't such a stigma as it was at public school -- but my friends -- even now all I can do is smile and shake my head and thank my lucky stars that I got away from them.

They were just -- so PERFECT.  They were smart and beautiful and confident and they KNEW it.  I mean, I remember in 6th or 7th grade one of my friends was dating a *popular* sophomore at the local high school..and they were so nonchalant about it.  It never occur to any of us that that was unusual or special.  Both I and they believed that they were simply entitled to such things.  In some ways I admire them more than anyone else in the world.  They had so much power and they used it without hesitation...but they also had a tendency to BREAK people, and they almost broke me.

I guess the thing I hate(d) the most about them is that when I'm around them -- they bring out the bits of my own personality that I hate the most.  The insecurity mostly, but other things too.  When I've been near them, even now...I start to -- *notice* things that I just don't want to notice.  Terrible or weird or undesirable things about myself and other  people that I just don't want to think about.  And their attitude toward other people, too.  I hate it when I start to think like them in that respect.

I mean, they hardly even think of boys as *people*.  Boys, to them, are objects -- status symbols.  I guess, in some ways, this was almost a good thing.  My female friends now have a tendency to  act insanely when it comes to boys.  Hate each other forever because so-and-so took the love of so-and-so's life.  Do incredibly stupid things in the name of love -- come crawling back over and over to some jerk who's awful to them, because they "love" him.  My old friends would never do something like this...or let boys get between them in that way.  They were a bunch of back-stabbing b***hes, but they -- I don't know...they never let a boy come between them, at least not for very long.

In some ways, I was even worse than this -- I didn't just dehumanize boys..I tended to..um, demonize them.  I have allot of close male friends now..but it's hard for me to trust them or give them credit for having the same feelings and insecurities as I do.  I guess I just spent a long time seeing the very worst of them -- it's very hard now to make myself vulnerable to them.

Which brings me to how the boys were at my old high school.  If anyone ever gave me a hard time for being smart or different, it was them.  I didn't have much contact with the "normal" boys...I suppose they were allot better...but they "popular" idiots that my friends hung out with...they were just about the worst people I've ever met.  It was like -- they were awful to me and they expected me to *like* it or something.  I'll never understand it...they made fun of just about everything about me.  My voice, my grades, the fact that I'm a very tiny, young-looking person, that I'd never dated anyone -- that I was different and undesirable in every way possible.  I never did anything to them, why couldn't they just leave me alone?  I didn't ask much back then -- I just wanted to be able to hang out near people that I knew and was most comfortable being around and remain unharrassed.  I didn't mind being ignored, I'll never understand why they just couldn't pretend I wasn't there.

*lets out a deep breath* um..that kind of turned into a rant...*sheepish smile* sorry.

laura


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