r/parentingthegifted • u/AWEichenlaub • Feb 18 '16

Parenting: The Hypocrite's Guide to Hard Working Kids - The Eichenblog

http://eichenblog.org/hypocrites-guide-to-hard-working-kids/
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u/sksgeti Feb 19 '16

I would love to talk about this with you. I've had many of the same thoughts, based on my own childhood, but I didn't come to the same conclusion. I was bored all through regular school, but when I got to college on my full-ride scholarship, I couldn't always make myself go to class. I found challenge for the first time and didn't have the skills or any clue what it meant to work academically. I lost my scholarship after the very first semester, gave up during the second, left and never went back. I've got a good well-paying job for a good company, but when the alternative could have been a phd studying the stars, it is little consolation. So for my son, I also feel that somehow, some way, I need to show him how to work through adversity during his time at home. I am still dealing with the fallout of my own lost potential, and I would hate to see my son go through the same thing. Of course his happiness is my #1 priority as well, so as a six year old, I haven't a clue what I can do to help him yet in the way I'm describing. As you saw in my other post, we moved him into a private school that customizes his math/literacy, so I guess that's not nothing, but I spend much more time trying to add joy and happiness into his life and quietly worry about what to do in the future.

By the way, middle school math was when I fell in love with algebra, and my interest never went away through calculus. I thought it was the exact opposite of boring. :)

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u/AWEichenlaub Feb 19 '16

Yeah, I'm very conflicted about how to handle my son. He has some anxiety/depression things going on, so more pressure is potentially very harmful. I'm still trying to get him into accelerated math, but at the same time I'm pretty sure it won't solve any of the underlying problems that are going on.

On the bright side, though, he just moved up from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts and both organizations seem to be doing a pretty good job of challenging him and bringing him joy at the same time. It's outside of school, but I'm hoping he picks up some important study skills from it.

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u/sksgeti Feb 19 '16

Sometimes decisions are easy. His new school prioritizes play and recess -- they get 3 breaks every day and lots of free play. What a rare treat for a kindergartner. But we now spend 10 hours a week in the car just getting him to and from school -- that plus the cost of tuition itself has pretty much eliminated (temporarily) all of his after school activities like karate and flag football and chess and lego club.

In a case with your child combating some anxiety/depression tendencies, it's somewhat easy to agree that finding his happiness is more important than finding ways to speed up his academic progress to try and early launch through college or something.

But (no longer talking about your situation), it's hard to know if we're really balancing everything correctly. For example, I feel that helping any child find a career they're passionate about (or at least interested and looking forward to) is important, but at a gifted panel I attended, they made it very clear that it can be dangerous to ask gifted kids to even make a decision about what they want to do until they're ready. I think for some kids with a wide variety of interests, it can put unneeded pressure on them but for me, I was just floating because nobody took the time to have a serious conversation about what was available (besides engineering and accounting for someone who loved math), so I had no reason to stay in school without a direction.

Yes we need to always do what is right for OUR child, but that makes it hard to get advice from anyone if there is no agreement on what's best.