By A Homeschooling Mom of 2xE Kids
When I was involved with The TAG Project, it was so common for bright kids to have "The Princess and the pea" syndrome that people were trading tips on children's clothing brands that didn't have tags and stuff like that. Bright kids frequently just hate things like seams in socks. Albert Einstein didn't wear socks. Some other famous person cut the toes and heels off all his socks right after…
If you have a socially challenged child and wish to watch Rain Man with them for some reason, please prescreen it and think about how you wish to handle certain things. This is not a children's movie. I'm perfectly okay with that. But you should be prepared to address certain things. If it were me, these are some of my concerns and you may have others: 1. There is a sex scene in it and Raymond…
The title of the movie has nothing to do with autism. It's the toddler nickname of a forgotten older brother, Raymond being mispronounced as Rain Man by a two or three year old. Good points: The movie shows and argues that there's more to Raymond than his limitations. It's a reasonably accurate depiction of the big strengths and big weaknesses of an idiot-savant. Bad points: I look at the behavior…
As an adult, people have seen me as extremely articulate and have expressed surprise when I have told anecdotes about speech challenges I had as a toddler, as if toddlers who struggle to pronounce things can't possibly grow up to be articulate adults. But it's developmentally normal for toddlers to have some speech challenges and highly unusual for a child to skip that awkward stage -- though it…
Many years ago, I attended one conference in the gifted world. One of the presenters told a story about a young girl who was simultaneously being denied gifted education appropriate to her needs and allowed to pursue some kind of sport in which she was talented. They were telling her it would be harmful to her in some way to adequately feed her mind. She made some kind of cutting remark along the…
Remember that the goal of my writing on this site is helping people with difficult kids raise future adults. In other words, the plan is to empower children with personal challenges to grow up to be functional members of society who are willing and able to take responsibility for their lives no matter their personal shortcomings. This is not a piece intended to make excuses for adults who didn't…
Small children sometimes blow a gasket and have a tantrum. I never allowed that to become a situation where they got the idea you could use a tantrum to manipulate mom into giving you your way. I also didn't punish them. One son has flat feet and he used to have a meltdown periodically when we were out and about and I would sit down next to him and wait and occasionally ask if he was done yet. I…
I was a full-time homemaker and homeschooling mom, so I cooked a lot and nutrition and health was a big part of raising my kids. I was trying to make sure they had a sound mind in a sound body and everything I understand about life says that's an important part of what parents do. But people have often reacted really negatively and really strongly to me talking about nutrition and health, as if…
There's no single test for ADHD and they have to go through a process of elimination and rule out other things first that may be causing the issues. ADHD was at one time a diagnosis given to a small number of children and now it gets described as being at epidemic levels. My oldest son was assessed for ADHD when he was five and attending an unusually good public school in a small city with a big…
I coined the expression Bored Gifted Kid Syndrome while participating on Tagmax and I have a post with that title that doesn't really talk about that. So let's give it another try. When my oldest was probably twelve and I realized his real problem was Bored Gifted Kid Syndrome and that was a very large part of why he made me crazy, I began engaging him in ridiculous arguments with circular logic…
Here is a short clip of Trevor Noah talking about promising his mom he would be rich so he can buy "two" (things from the menu I guess) and buy desert. He basically says they were poor and did takeout about once a month and trying to pick the one thing he wanted off the menu was such a big decision and very stressful, so he decided he would get rich enough to buy whatever food he wanted. He…
I read an article about a woman Supreme Court Justice, probably Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and it briefly mentioned that her children kept a journal documenting anytime "Mommy Laughed" because she didn't laugh much. She was a very serious person and didn't do a lot of laughing. That resonated with me. My older sister who was a serious person with a serious career and not exactly your giggly party girl,…
Caroline? is an obscure made-for-TV movie with a one-paragraph plot summary on Wikipedia that completely leaves out anything substantive. Wikipedia says "Caroline" shows up just before a large inheritance is due, but my memory of the movie is that the concern of the person claiming to be Caroline isn't money. It's the fate of two minor children in a wealthy, dysfunctional family. The majority of…
Video (not quite 10 minutes): What face blindness is actually like . He uses garlic cloves instead of stones, but it's a similar analogy to a piece I linked to previously when I wrote about face blindness before . My ex-husband really liked movies and TV shows, so a big part of our relationship was watching movies and TV shows together. And over time it became apparent we had very different…
There's a certain amount of natural variation in personality traits. There's probably not a single person alive who doesn't have a few "difficult" personality traits. I don't believe in nature OR nurture. I believe in nature AND nurture. I believe that a great deal of social stuff is learned or learnable. Spiders get just BORN with behaviors hardwired into them. People, not so much. I have…
Venus Flytrap, character on WKRP in Cincinnati (show from my childhood when I owned a pet dinosaur and rotary phone,) explains the atom: Shorter version Longer version A few short clips I tripped across recently (most of which you shouldn't try at home): Calcium Liquid oxygen Bromine White phosphorus My oldest slurped up science like crazy and I was constantly on the lookout for what I called…
I watched this clip that says on the cover screenshot "Trauma = Genius!" I previously didn't watch it but looked it up for this post because that blurb stuck with me. I first tried to find a clip from the 1987 version of the movie Overboard where Goldie Hawn tells off the teacher. This is the best I can find; Part one and part two . She describes the test as a means to pigeonhole the potential of…
I have been hesitant to write about this because my seemingly cavalier attitude occurred in a particular context where me failing to be a control freak had no real opportunity to go sideways. This was before the Internet, so I wasn't dealing with YouTube and streaming services and needing to figure out how to gatekeep access to an ocean of who knows what. But my kids had a sheltered existence even…
My oldest son is very aspie. I had a second child while terrified my marriage was about to end in divorce because I felt my child needed a full blooded sibling to have any hope of being socially functional. I fundamentally don't agree with a lot of the nonsense we hear about how children today are being born with Autism Spectrum Disorder or Attention Deficit Disorder. Spiders are born with certain…
We originally homeschooled through a charter school. They did testing, supplied the books, and had a record-keeping system. The following year, I liberally borrowed from their system when we began homeschooling on our own. I have described this system so many times, that I figured it was time to put it on my website so this is the last time I have to say this! I found a skills check list by grade…
My ex-husband was a bibliophile whose most bitter memory of our marriage was any book I ever made him get rid of. Which I did because he was in the military, so we moved a lot and had weight limits and sometimes had DUPLICATES of books, like the illustrated and unillustrated version. THAT was his zinger during our divorce: He regretted every single book I ever made him get rid of!!!!!! GRRR!!!! He…
I recently tripped across this clip of I love Lucy where Ricky reads a children's book and keeps running into different pronunciations of ough . It reminds me of the much longer poem called The Chaos which sometimes gets called English is Tough Stuff. Wikipedia describes it as a poem demonstrating the irregularity of English spelling and pronunciation . Ricky goes on a rant about in Spanish, the…
Some video about rich kids get more per pupil educational expenditures and THAT'S why blah blah. Yeah, no, fool. In a high school gifted enrichment class called G.L.O.R.Y (Greater Learning Opportunities for Resourceful Youth), I studied Latin and Greek root words of English words as preparation for the college entrance exam. I'm good at taking tests, in part because I was taught how to test well.…
An early incident where I vividly recall eyerolling and face palming occurred when my oldest turned two years old in Germany. He was born in Texas and it was June and not all that hot by our standards. Completely coincidentally, I bought him new shoes right before receiving a package from my mother. His brand new shows were a combo of primary colors: Blue, yellow and red. In the package, my mother…
There's a movie called At First Sight based on or inspired by real world events. A blind man who lost his sight in early childhood gets his eyesight surgically restored as an adult and it doesn't go like people imagined. At one point, he walks into a glass wall and breaks it because he's never learned how to see. Physically functional eyes aren't sufficient. There's more to it than that. Sight…