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Fireflies Light Up The Sky At Night Ellen Small shares with us the trials, tribulations, and quiet joys of raising a gifted child.
He was tested at the age of five at the urging of
his two
pre-school teachers who wanted to advance him to
first grade
after only one month in kindergarten. We were
told by the
psychologist who met with him, "I received
answers from him
that I have not received in twenty-three years of
testing
children." His suggestion: Keep David where he
was, with his
peer group. "Sure you can skip him to first
grade," he told us,
"you can also skip him to second grade. It
doesn't matter.
Wherever he'll be, he will sit in the corner and
read
encyclopedias." We kept him where he was.
Today we believe that we may have made a mistake.
Many
educational psychologists no longer believe that
skipping a
child one grade is socially problematic, and
being pushed ahead
one year might have at least put him in a more
appropriate
intellectual peer group. David is not "one of the
guys" anyway --
his interests are vastly different. He would
rather sit at the
computer or read a book than join Little League
or go
rollerblading. He dropped karate but is studying
painting and
film.
WHAT WAS ONE OF THE ANSWERS David gave his tester
at the age
of five? When asked what lights up the sky at
night, rather
than answer the moon or the stars, he replied,
"Fireflies."
More recently, David's six-year-old brother,
brought a Lego kit
he had assembled for David's approval. David
barely disguised
his disdain. "You put it together according to
the instructions," he reprimanded him. "Of course I did," answered
Mitch,
baffled. "Mitch," explained David, with great
patience,
"nobody ever created anything great in this world
by following
instructions. If everyone followed instructions,
we'd still be
living with machines from a hundred years ago."
Mitch drank in
his words thirstily.
Several weeks later, I overheard Mitch telling a
friend of his
that his grandparents would be coming to visit,
and they would
be bringing him a new Lego kit. He then glanced
at David with
pride and added, "And we'll put it together -- not
according to
the instructions."
It is not easy raising a child who walks to the
beat of a
different drummer. I've gotten used to a kid who
is often
accused by teachers of being in another world
("...but he has a
wonderful imagination," they add kindly), who
reads way past
midnight, whose favorite outings are to the art
museum and the
university library, who experiments with plants,
paints and my
new espresso machine.
I get through hard days by thinking: this child,
like the
fireflies, will one day light up the world.
Ellen Small, who is writing under a pseudonym, is an editor at Family Fishbowl webzine (http://www.wholefamily.com/fishbowl). |