She liked her teacher, but told me she often did not listen to her in class, and when pressed for a reason said that almost anything else was more interesting than listening to classwork. She told me playing a game in her head was more interesting than school.
She enjoyed the playground, though increasingly played alone as she needed the down time. My child (with a bright and agile mind but fingers that could not keep up) never finished her work, and so seldom received awards, despite how hard she tried. My child (who was known to have fine motor difficulties) spent her day colouring in and cutting out – not allowed to just circle the correct picture because “all the other children” had to colour it. Yet from the third week it began to take a downward turn.įrom week three, my child (who had entered school adamant she could not recognize the alphabet) was reading complex, unfamiliar sentences – yet was kept on level 1 readers. My cherub began school nervous but excited, and was so engaged for the first week or two it alleviated many of my fears for her highly anxious and introverted little self.
Or did the journey really begin in earnest as school enrolment approached and I needed to determine the most appropriate school to meet my child’s needs (not that I yet had a clear picture of what those would be)? Perhaps it started there.Įither way, a school was carefully chosen, enrolment accepted, meetings with executive staff attended and all seemed in order. Both of us panicking that this was going to be more of a task than we might be ready for, but remaining optimistic. Was it when my eldest child was assessed and formally identified as gifted? That began a huge learning curve – mountains of reading, and naïve conversations with a friend in a similar boat, both of us trying to convince ourselves it would all be ok, that we would be able to help our kids through the challenges ahead. When asked to write this article I tried to pinpoint when my “gifted journey” began.
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