Ok, I’m sure I’m getting ahead of myself because my 2 month window isn’t nearly up, but I think the folder might be a long term solution!  T doesn’t fight me about his school work anymore.  If the folder says it has to be done, he just does it.  Don’t get me wrong, he argues about *starting* school, but that I can handle.  The actual work, he does all on his own.  It feels so strange to be so hands-off with him, but he really does so much better when I leave him alone with it.  He also really likes doing his work at the coffee table instaed of in the office, because he doesn’t feel like he’s missing out on anything.  He was so excited today when I showed him how to check his own math work (working backwards to see if your answer adds or subtracts correctly to get the original numbers given), he said “Oh, good, from now on I’m going to check my work before I give it to you”.  I figured this would be good practice for algebra (which somehow seems to loom in our future, lol).

It just feels so nice to *not* fight about this one huge thing, it really makes it easier to not fight with him about the million smaller things.

T has decided that maybe being pleasant and cooperative will make this whole homeschooling thing a lot more fun for everyone.  His attitude adjustment has been spectacular.  At the beginning of last week we started back at school, he immediately started back with fighting me about doing his work.  Na and I sat him down and told him that 1. His work must be completed by noon (lunch time) or he would lose TV for the day and still have to complete the work and 2. He had until the end of this month to show significant improvement in his attitude toward school or he would be going back to public school.  I had just really had it with fighting him on something that I’m doing because *he* asked me to.  I also made him a folder with his self-directed assignments for the week (grammar, handwriting, and math), worksheets clipped together with a “to-do” sheet for each day.

He really is doing so much better!  I’m trying to be realistic and remeber that it’s because the folder and being responsible for his own work are new and things always work well with him when they’re new.  I think that’s one of the most frustrating things is that just when I get used to something working, he gets bored with it and it stops working.  I can’t decide whether I should just enjoy this while it lasts or brace myself for when it stops working and be ready to move on instead of fighting him.

It’s especially noticable with math.  Before we went on break he fought me daily about math, this is the child who was teaching himself math concepts, yet was screaming that basic addition was too hard.  So now I tell him the text book pages he’s supposed to look through and the workbook pages he needs to practice and he just does it.  If he’s frustrated at not understanding, he’s frustrated with the book and he will pleasantly ask me to explain something to him and then calmly listen to my explination.  For now, I guess I should take any pleasantness I can get, lol.

Letter-Word ID:  Grade Equivalent 5.3, Age Equivalent 11.0 (99%)

Calculation:  GE 2.4, AE 7.9 (81%)

Spelling:  GE 3.3, AE 8.5 (91%)

Comprehension: GE 4.0, AE 9.4 (95%)

Applied Problems:  GE 2.8, AE 8.4 (83%)

Academic Knowledge: GE 4.1, AE 9.3 (91%)

Punctuation & Capitals: GE 2.1, AE 7.6 (59%)

Total Academic Skills: GE 3.6, AE 8.10 (99.5%)

Total Academic Knowledge: GE 4.1, AE 9.3 (91%)

I don’t know why, but my stomach is in a knot waiting for T’s test tomorrow.  I’m really, really glad that they give the results right then.  I’ve read about some of the tests you have to wait a couple of *weeks* for the results, I think I might go crazy by then.  I vacillate between thinking “Of course they’re going to be blown away by him, he’s really smart” to “This is all in my head and if I just don’t do the test I get to pretend a little while longer”.  And I know in the grand scheme of things this doesn’t matter at all.  He’s T.  He’s going to be T when he wakes up tomorrow before the test and he’ll be T still when the test is over.  But this is something of a moment of truth for me, either he’s what I’ve been saying he is or he isn’t.  I’ll post tomorrow when we get home.  My prediction, just to have it in black and white because I’m curious how accurate I am at gauging him:  Word decoding ability 6th grade, comprehension 5th grade, math high 3rd grade, general knowledge 4th grade.  If I come back tomorrow and he’s only at the 2nd grade (which is still perfectly respectable for a 6 year old, lol) promise not to give me too hard of a time

Ok, I know I just posted about this, but we decided to go ahead and spend the money to have an achievement test done.  It’s $65 (way cheaper than a full scale IQ test) and will give me information that’s relevant to our situation, like what level he’s working at in reading and math.  After posting about it and thinking more, I decided that since this will be concrete information (as opposed to a theoretical number) it wouldn’t be nearly as anxiety-provoking as the thought of the IQ test.  I *know* for a fact that he’s above grade level, so there’s nothing to worry about, the only question is how far above?  Well, if he’s working on a 2nd-3rd grade level that’s fantastic, because that’s the materials I’m planning on working with him this year.  If he’s working further ahead, that’s fine too because I’ve been planning on letting him move through this stuff as quickly as he wants to, without forcing him to demonstrate absolute mastery before we move on and I’ll just know an objective source is telling me that it’s ok to move really quickly.

Anyways, the test will be next Monday at 10:30am.  I’ve got a call into the tester because I need to make sure she understands that he’s working ahead of most other rising 1st graders, otherwise I’m afraid he’ll burn out about 10 minutes into the test, lol.

Have you guys thought about having your kids tested? I have so many mixed feelings about it and so we haven’t done it. On the one hand it would be nice to have a number to reference for the things he can do, on the other hand what if that number isn’t high enough to explain his behavioral quirks and it just leaves me with a child who is going to need a bunch of other labels to explain it. And what if I really am just an over-bearing mother and am out of touch with the reality of what he’s capable of? What if that number is lower than I think and it just proves that his school was right?

I think really though, what scares me is that based on the things he can do that I *don’t* teach him and his behavior issues (which apparently are pretty good indicators of high level giftedness), I’m afraid of how high that number is. What if everything we’ve done for him so far is so woefully lacking? What if he’s going to need college before he hits puberty? What if based on that number I stop parenting him and helping him in the ways that I sense to be best and start looking to “experts” to tell me what to do with him?

I’m so torn and the curiosity is *killing* me, but I need to know that if we go into a testing situation I’m prepared for whatever the outcome and right now I can’t say that.

….and I accuse T of over-thinking things, lol.

Apparently without T here, it’s much easier to be logical and think about how I can better approach raising him (imagine that, not having a screaming match at 7am over breakfast cereal makes me more logical, lol).  But this whole Evil IL think got me thinking- is part of the reason he freaks out so bad because he understands things about people and sees parts of situations that others don’t and he doesn’t know how to handle it?  Because I *know* what my IL’s are thinking, I can describe to DH his mother’s motivation and see right through her manipulation and it pisses me off to no end.  To DH, I look paranoid and delusional, until she slips up and her real motivation is exposed, in which case I’m proven right.  It’s happened time and time again with them, it actually happens quite a bit with people in general, too.  I forget that not everyone can see the things I can and it makes me crazy to no end to have to justify over and over what seems to me as plain as day.  If as an adult it tends to make me look off-kilter and act irrational when I’m told I’m crazy for seeing more to a situation than what’s evident to others, how can a 6 year old handle that?

So, I’m wondering if at least part of our issue isn’t so much that he refuses to take risks in general, as it is that he’s seen that the whole way he understands the world is so radically different than what other’s experience, that unless he *knows* he can translate fluently his inner experience to the outer world, he can’t risk it.

Does that make any sense?

T is at his grandparents house for a week and the house is so quiet.  It’s too quiet, really.  And yet, it is so relaxing to have a break from that knot that lives between my shoulder blades that tightens up every time I have to ask T to do something I know he’s going to argue with me about.  It’s so nice to say “I want you guys to stop doing that” and have N and A just stop, no one asks me why, no one demands an explanation, no one tries to tell me why I’m *wrong*.  It’s so nice to see that I am actually a really good mom, that I am capable of going through the day without screaming, that it is in fact, not my normal way of interacting with my children.

And I do miss him, I can’t wait for him to be back, but it’s more of a rose-colored-glasses sort of way, not a wish for reality to come crashing back down on me.  The constant fights and drama, the yelling and screaming, the tantrums, the threats.  That I could live without.  But, the house is too quiet because T isn’t here.

How do I reconcile that?  I like this part of him, but not that part.  This part I can live with, but that part makes my head hurt.  As a mother, I’m supposed to love my children unconditionally, accept them for who they are unconditionally.  And it’s taken me a long time and I still fight against it, but I’ve come to accept that this is who he is, it’s not a phase, he won’t outgrow it.  He has to learn to manage it and I have to learn to live with it.  If he wasn’t fighting, he wouldn’t be T.  But, if he wasn’t fighting, I’d get to feel like a better mom.  But, if I actually managed to break his spirit, it would make me the worst kind of mother.  No one wins if he’s not T and yet no one wins when he is.

The juxtaposition, this contrast of goals and personalities, he wants to be right, I want to feel effective, he needs to be the center of attention, the other kids need to have my time and attention just as much but aren’t as loud and demanding of it.  It’s what I fight against and for and in the middle of and around and through and over and under every day.  But, the knowledge that the rest of the worlds gets the best parts of him and we, his family, especially, me his mother, have to deal with the mess, well I don’t always feel selfless about that.

I love that we’ll have this space to be able to post honestly about what it’s like living with our kids.  It really is so comforting knowing that I’m not alone, that it’s not *me*.  Even on the gifted lists I belong to I feel kind of like the odd-man-out because no one talks about their behavior issues with their kids.  And like Karen said, I never know when he’s being gifted, when he’s being 6 or when he’s just being T.

I don’t actually have anything interesting to post right now, T is at his grandparents house for a week and it’s hard to fight from 500 miles away, lol. But, the blog looked lonely with no posts. I envision this as a place to keep all my posts regarding living with a spirited, strong willed gifted kid. If you guys don’t like the theme or title or really anything, we can absolutely change it!