My son (Austin) was born visually impaired, being born with bilateral cataracts. We knew we would have some challenges while raising him, but little did we know what we were really in for! He has since had 4 surgeries with lens implants, and has done well. He had also gone through the divorce of his father and me and a big move to another state by the time he was 5 years old. I feel this is significant in sharing because it shows how much he has overcome in his life.
Austin been involved in early intervention services to assure that he was able to function as well as possible, considering his low vision, from the time he was 9 months old. So by the time he was 3 and one of his teachers came to our house for a session and it occurred to her that he still was not talking – at all! – we referred him for speech therapy thinking that he was delayed in this area. I didn’t think that was necessary because just observing him, I got the suspicion that he COULD talk, but that he chose not to. Whatever; I went with the flow and brought him to his first speech therapy appointment. The therapist was working with him for a while and observing him, and he suddenly decided he was ready to talk. Not only was he talking, but he was speaking in FULL sentences with proper grammar and absolutely no deficits whatsoever. He went from not speaking at all to speaking like an adult in the span of about 45 minutes (just to show them how wrong they were, I’m sure)! That was our first clue that something was different about him.
On his first day of kindergarten, I had a hard time getting him to get ready for school because he was busy reading and didn’t want to stop. You know what he was reading? The Hobbit! Not the kid’s version, either. He was also one of the younger ones for kindergarten, having only turned 5 years old the week before this. I didn’t think much of it because it didn’t seem terribly unusual for him.
Halfway through kindergarten, his teacher and the principle called me in for a meeting because they thought he was not functioning well. I didn’t understand, but then they went on to explain that he refused to do any of his work. He constantly got out of his desk and walked around the class trying to help the other kids with their work, but never did any of his own. He’d get bored then and start crawling around on the floor hiding under the desks, and they thought he was refusing to go out to recess because he was too busy pretending to read. I told them to make him read out loud, and they quickly realized he was not pretending at all! Anyway, after a couple of weeks of arguing that my son was probably bored, they finally did some IQ testing on him. They were amazed at the results with his IQ measuring very high (I can’t remember the exact number now). Keep in mind, this testing was done when his vision was around 20/100 and had no special equipment to allow him to see better.
At the end of that year, we changed schools to one that had a program for the gifted. He was still not thriving. He still didn’t want to do his own work, but was always trying to help everyone else do theirs, and he was just bored. He was start singing in the middle of class (loudly, I might add!), and just started becoming more disruptive. Now they start thinking he is having too many problems and may need special ed. I said NO WAY, just give him some harder work to do. So the other teachers started giving his teacher some assignments, and his teacher went through one grade level at a time giving him harder work. He wizzed through it all and wanted more. They just couldn’t give him enough. Finally they started supplementing him with 5th grade math work (he’s in 1st grade at this time), and he seemed content. He became a model student, and no more complaints. Well that didn’t last long either! This was the year he had his first eye surgery, and he was able to see well for the first time in his life! He then needed even more stimulation.
By the time he was in 3rd grade, we moved to another town and put him in a better school system that could accommodate his needs. He went through 3rd grade with little difficulty while attending a half-day gifted program at his school. By the end of that year, his teachers all agreed that he needed something more or they would quickly lose their handle on the situation again. So when he started 4th grade (the year he just finished), they decided he needed to try college. That school had a small program for the profoundly gifted students (about 7 kids) that attended a half-day gifted program at the school, then once a week they all went to the college and took 2 classes every semester. He absolutely loved this and is thriving to this day! At 9 years old, he has taken college-level computer applications, creative writing, biology, and some other fun ones like pottery and self defense. His poems and stories were so impressive in his creative writing class, that he is actually published in the book they publish at the end of every year when the class is finished!
He will be starting 5th grade in the fall and will turn 10 years old shortly after. During 4th grade, he had his second set of eye surgeries (due to the lens capsules becoming crystalized). We are already preparing for him needing even more stimulation, so he will be switching schools so that he will be in an all-day gifted program in addition to attending the weekly college courses.
Am I a proud mom? Heck yeah! It’s not all wonderfully warm and fuzzy though. Imagine having a child who, at 7 years old, starts getting depressed at bad news on TV and in newspapers to the point of being diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. He loses many nights’ sleep by trying to carry the weight of the world on his little shoulders. He has very few friends, as the only people he can relate to are much older children and adults. His peers think he’s weird. He told me one day that he wished he wasn’t so smart so that he would have things to talk about with kids his age that would actually interest them. He even said he pretended not to be smart once, but then he just felt silly and couldn’t do it.
So yes, I’m proud, and I love my little boy more than anything else in the entire world. If I was faced with the choice to make him “normal” and not quite so smart or to foster what he already has, I wouldn’t change a thing. As hard as things are for him (and for me), I would trudge on and get him through this as intact as possible. I always keep things in perspective to the best of my ability, and I work hard not to push him beyond what he is capable of handling. I have to allow for him to be in these gifted programs and attend college just to keep him stimulated; I don’t have any options there and have to make decisions that I think will be the most beneficial. There are very few people that understand what life is like with a gifted child and all of the trials and tribulations that come with it. As huge as the trials are, however, the rewards are tenfold.
If there are others out there with gifted children, please make yourself known. Sometimes I feel alone in this. I know there are others out there that need support just as much as I do.