This Happened

[Tahlvin]

One harrowing taxi ride later, and my wife and daughter now understand why NYC was my least favorite travel destination for work. On the plus-side, the hotel upgraded them to a 45th floor room that looks right down on Times Square. Of course, my wife's afraid of heights, so I'm not sure how close to the windows she'll be getting.

[Zen]

My daughter LOVES that musical... From the songs she's played for me, it sounds pretty amazing.

[Tahlvin]

They're at the theater right this moment. And they have good seats, in the 6th row from the stage.

[Phoebe]

[Mike]

Your mystery is at once intriguing and offputting.

[Phoebe]

Don't worry, there's nothing off-putting about it, but I can't say because it will match up with public things.

[Mike]

Oh no, I totally understand why you are unable to share.

Allow me to rephrase:

The air of mystery you project (for understandable and perfectly good reasons) makes me really want to know more but is also kind of annoying.

[Phoebe]

Dog pee touched my rug.



We finally finally finally played Pathfinder in my house. One promptly fell asleep. We don't really have a "party" yet. It took an hour to wander Sandpoint, run around crazy, dispel some assumptions (like that the internet would be available in this world), and not even make it to the Swallowtail festival yet. The Sorcerer (played by the shyest one among us) popped out with a surprisingly bold personality and scared the others. The Paladin is suspected by the Archer of being insane, given all the screaming and crying she did (in the game, thankfully, not in real life). Most characters are wearing outfits of solid yellow. Not because they're together. We may never make it to the goblins. The oldest one refuses to share his dice. Really.

[Phoebe]

Much like an idle border collie will find things for itself to do, my son knows all the math that anyone is able to give him during school, and has exhausted all the worksheets and supplements and computer time that they're willing to provide. Having been diverted through motivational strategies of reward from finding less desirable things to amuse himself with during the school day, he now turns to creating a new system of mathematics. His system involves combinations of the four basic operators and something that has to do with imaginary numbers since we were explaining it the other day to work on sister's math. I think his theory is that it doesn't make sense for operators to have to work in a sequence, as opposed to simultaneously, if we can also posit something like an imaginary number based on a combination of factors like square root function, and positive/negative numbers. So he has come up with some weird system of producing results by combining things he calls subdivision, multiadd, and power-up (all four). I'm watching this go by on the whiteboard and for the life of me I think there's something to it. The results get played out in different ways on a chart. Some are applied to a thing called "hero base" which represents the x axis. Others have to do with stamina or the fighting base.

Bottom line I have no clue how to proceed with this kid. People always think these accounts are about bragging, which is why I don't discuss with anyone else, but I'm sure that a lot of you here have been through similar with your own kids and it really is perplexing what to do. It's challenging to explain to the kindergarten teacher what is going on. She kind of gets it but then also not really. And I feel like I need to come up with some new math curriculum of my own and persuade her to start introducing that into what he does all day. Otherwise he's going to be doing things whether we like it or not, and it would be helpful if the things he were doing were based on learning something about math that he needs to know.

[Iantha]

[Phoebe]

Thank you, I am really happy with his school so at least that's a big relief. They are doing the best anyone could be doing, under the circumstances.

[Tahlvin]

Been there, done that! We actually had one of our oldest's teachers apologize to us for not challenging him enough after she saw the results of his placement scores at the end of 6th grade for moving into the public school gifted program. If you've got a school system with a gifted student program, use it as much as possible. He eventually got placed in classes a grade level higher, meaning half his 8th grade year was spent in the high school, and the school system actually paid for him to take a college class his senior year (and he even gets to apply that credit towards his college graduation and core requirements). But at the younger ages, there's a not nearly as much support for gifted students, so much more of it falls on the parents to keep the kid challenged and motivated.

[Phoebe]

I do think of your kid here and am reassured that he was academically successful after what must have been long stretches of boredom. Later you also have diversions like music and student groups to occupy the mind, but at this age it's hard. Plus to say he beats to his own drummer is a bit of an understatement. A whole band is playing over there, complete with singing and dancing. The gym teacher is displeased. "Jim was dancing again during basketball, which disrupts the game..." I laugh now because most of the other kids find this amusing (this is why it's disruptive), but it probably won't always be that way.

[Zen]

Our school system is almost exactly the opposite of Tahlvin's, or was at least. I have no idea what it's like now and have no intention of having another kid to find out! LOL! My daughter was placed in the 'Self-contained gifted' program in second grade. They were pretty much working at an accelerated pace, above grade level, and she was STILL not challenged by it incredibly. Then she got in middle school and was in honors everything where it was possible, including the "Honors-squared" math, which is a program where they work two years ahead of the standard math curriculum. (So, instead of taking Algebra in 9th grade, she had it in 7th, then Geometry in 8th.)

As you know, she wanted more challenge... so she applied to go to the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy.

By the way, she has been accepted to at least one college now. It's her third choice, but it's a start.

In our experience, the upper grades in our school district don't serve the gifted students well at all. They pretty much are expected to just continue doing well and are ignored at the high school level. Yes, there are AP and Honors classes offered, but even in those classes, my son found that the students were frequently apathetic or disruptive, making it harder for the class as a whole to function, and the teachers weren't concerned about it. They were much more concerned with just getting though the day and not having violence in the school.

[Zen]

[Tahlvin]

Sorry to hear about that, Zen.

[Phoebe]

How tragic! So sorry to hear that.

[Zen]

On a more positive note, my daughter texted me yesterday to inform me that she was accepted to her 2nd choice college with a fairly substantial scholarship. (It would still cut the overall cost in half, which my wife said is about what the FAFSA seems to think we can afford to pay... Not sure where that money is supposed to come from...) She was accepted into her 3rd choice within a couple of days of submitting the application. Still no word from the 1st choice school, but we expect to hear soon...

[Phoebe]

When you're under serious duress and some fancy person in a fancy VW is blocking you because he can't get it done, there is nothing quite so satisfying as shouting Drivers wanted! to the Four Winds.

[Zen]

Where is the "Like" button?