How It Came Up

I'm not sure how I want to tackle the subject of "What Happened to Bring Me Here".  For today, I think I will rely on some of my own correspondence.  I haven't really been able to tell anyone about it.  Then, one day I just unloaded on a poor, unsuspecting friend who lives abroad.  This is, at least, most of the story:

"School started in August.  I started working there the second day of school.  I introduced myself to both of my kids teachers, and told them to stop me in the halls or find me in some way if there was anything that needed my attention.  My assignments was for 2 months.  Parent teacher conferences were about 2-3 weeks after that.  The gym coach (nice guy) had told me a few times about Grant having issues in gym, but he was sure it was stuff that would work itself out with time.  But he told me anyway.  The morning of parent teacher conferences, I was asked to come in a little early.  I had no idea what it was about.  In fact, I was hoping they were going to offer me more work.  It was about Grant.  The principal had a whole panel in the conference room.  All these teachers, including his classroom teacher, told me that Grant was having troubles almost daily, and that recently he had pushed someone out of anger.  When he was told of his punishment and that it was early and he could still, "have a good day," he said that he never had a good day.  That's red flag stuff, you know, so they called me in.

This is how I found out that my son cried in class every day for the first two weeks of school, and no one thought it was important enough to tell me.  This is how I found out that he is somewhat paranoid about the other kids' feelings for him.  This is how I found out that for weeks he had been distancing himself from the other kids.  This is how I found out that, no matter what he tells me when he comes home at the end of the day, my son is unhappy at school.

Here's the part I don't like talking about.  Grant is gifted.  Not just gifted.  When he took the test for the gifted program, he was in the 99 percentile, nation wide.  I HATE saying that.  Being told that you have a gifted child (especially one deemed "highly gifted") is just as life altering as being told that your child has autism, only there's no group out there crusading for you.  No one, and I mean NO ONE feels the slightest amount of pity, unless they are the family of gifted kids, too.  And there are none out here in Warrenton.  It's like trying to get pity by saying, "DAMN it!  My stay-at-home-gourmet chef supermodel wife did all my ironing on Wednesday instead of Thursday and I had to wear a shirt that was merely dryer fresh!  WHAT THE HELL!?!?" 


The Discovery teacher was one of the ones called in for the meeting.  She says that Grant is the main discipline problem in the class, and it's only gotten worse now that Abbie is there, too.  He's bossy, but also short tempered and whiny.  No one in the school cared much about that all year, but now he has also started to have emotional outbursts.  They care about that."  

FYI:  The sort of emotional outburst I'm referring to when I speak of my son is like this - He squirms, squishes his face up, uses a whiny voice and face, and then becomes angry.  I've never been around when he says horrible things (not profanity, but threats, sometimes about killing), but lashing out verbally and physically is the next step.  He trips people, kicks, pushes, and hits in a sneaky, underhand kind of way, accuses people of cheating, etc.  He has done this in the recent past to my husband.  He has never done anything like it in my direct presence. 

"At the end of the meeting, I asked Grant's classroom teacher to please write me an email anytime Grant was having a bad day. The other thing that was decided, and I agreed to it, was that the school counselor would see him once a week for an undetermined number of weeks. 

I've had no emails from the teacher.  However, last week I did get calls from the principal and from the Discovery teacher about Grant.  Plus, Friday, there was another red flag incident.  It is reported that he said something so bad to another kid that there is now talk of sending Grant to a professional.  The worst part is that it was only one kid telling the story.  I have asked the school to get another witness to confirm or deny what Grant said, so I can make this very hard decision based on a fact, and not a rumor.

I started doing Internet research on highly gifted children, and I am slightly less hysterical than I was.  He is in the normal range.  Even violence is not uncommon for highly gifted children who are "frustrated", and the things that frustrate them are not what one would expect:  imperfection of their own work, something they can't immediately succeed in, not understanding something - already knew about those ones.  But highly gifted children get frustrated when the actions or reactions of their peers aren't what the child predicted they would be.  And who can predict the actions of kids?!?!?  So....that explains a lot.  Now I have to keep reading to know how to fix it, and whether I still need outside help.  Getting cooperation from his educators would be a start."

This is definitely the short version.  Plus, it doesn't really give you much of an idea of the impact it had on me.  However, as for Grant, I've been presenting it in a very particular way.  He has been told:  1.  Some of his recent actions/reactions have been brought to my attention by the school.  2.  Although what he is feeling is normal, he needs to work on what he does about feeling that way, because losing control is not acceptable.  I've never used the word "gifted" to him.  I've never said anything about his being "different".  I've just continued my normal parenting, which relies heavily on reason.  When I say that, I mean it in both ways:  my responses are reasonable,and full of advice, and I always give a reason for an expectation, and a reason for the natural consequences.

Part of me thinks that the reason I was blindsided by this, is that I already am what Grant needs from a parent.  Then, when he didn't have similar reactions from the adults at school, he started having the frustration that he could have experienced all along.

Probably, that should make me feel better about what kind of a parent I have been.

It doesn't.  I feel awful.  I feel responsible.  I feel inadequate.  I feel like I'm being eaten from the inside.

I owe it to him to research this, to find the right answers, and to present the information to his school, and especially to the gifted teacher, who, by all rights, ought to be presenting it to me.

This is a picture of my children when we were all still at home together: