PlayIsTheWork.com

I got one of those phone calls this week where the disembodied voice on the other end of the line seems to vibrate with meaning, and I spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what part my ear played in that perception.

It was a woman from the local school district where my ten-year-old daughter attends fourth grade. She was informing me that as part of a gifted testing program, my girl would skip music the next day and get more testing. I asked if this was standard practice, and the answer was yes. Still, I couldn’t get the excitement feeling out of my head. The test took place. My daughter informed me that as well as being completely boring, the testing only included one other kid from her school, one who speaks several languages and is known to be a brainiac. I’m a mom. My anticipation grew.

But I’ve had enough therapy to know most of the time where I end and my child begins. And I recently read the saddest story in a long time in the New Yorker, about the suicide of a fourteen-year-old profoundly gifted boy in Nebraska. I come from a family with a number of gifted members of multiple generations, as well as a history of suicide, and I know well the dark side of being smart, as well as the pitfalls of misjudging how much a kid needs or doesn’t need to be pushed. Let’s face it. Some of the most intelligent people we know are also the most nutty. And some of the most successful people are that way based on character and not on testing well.

So I approach the subject of giftedness with caution. We haven’t gotten the results yet, but I think I know enough right now to make this judgment: I don’t care.

Yes, testing well has benefits, including possibly opportunities for Middle School. I don’t denigrate those chances. But lying in bed with my little girl, the topics we cover while she’s stalling — it’s a ritual in our family to have mother-daughter chats while she’s avoiding going to bed — include how one of the moms in car pool has suggested that my kid is dressing flamboyantly in order to “get attention”. Completely true, she’s new to her school and looking to be noticed and liked. Which seems to be working. But the mother in question doesn’t approve. My possibly-gifted kid’s talent for dressing with flair is already making her the nail that sticks up that someone is trying to drive down. This has happened before. At her old school, my daughter was routinely taunted for knowing too many answers, for stopping fights on the yard, for being too tall and thinking she was so great. She’s now ten, and as we all know, the thinking you’re so great stops at ten. The carpool mom is seeing to that, the world will see to it as well.

So what about being gifted? We’re lying in bed in our p.j.s and she’s leaning into my shoulder in that way bigger kids do when they want to be held but are too large for it. She still has two baby teeth but the rest of her looks like a teenager. Just her luck. She’s wearing a bra already. Boys notice her. It’s impossible for her to avoid attention, that’s just who she is.

So I say, because I’ve been around geniuses all my life, not being one, “do you want to be gifted?” She shrugs. Should she want to be? She loves school, doesn’t complain of being bored, in fact has to work on keeping her mouth shut and sweating the details. This is all good.

She doesn’t seem to possess the relentless obsession that some gifted people have, the lack of perspective, the obliviousness. She’s sociable and popular. Adults and kids frequently adore her. She’s funny.

The best thing we did this week was Google a palindrome site and read them to each other, screaming with laughter. We figured out a great new way to clean her retainers (Efferdent). She scored half the points at her basketball game and was roundly applauded by all the dads, especially her own. Does she need to be singled out as potentially smarter, given extra opportunities, told she’s different? Yes, she’s reading at the eleventh grade level, but last time I checked there were still thousands of books she hadn’t yet read.

This is one of those moments where parenting comes down to saying the right thing. She asked, “I don’t know, do I want to be gifted?” and from somewhere (not my own childhood) came this response, “Well, I don’t care. As far as I’m concerned, being you is all you have to be.”

Spending time around smart people, I believe this: you can push kids to achieve, but genius is a gift not given by educators, or even parents. And it can’t be taken away all that easily, not even by indifferent educators or neglectful parents. The human spirit (I know from my own childhood) is a thousand times more resilient and stubborn than our culture gives it credit for. If my kid is a genius (and who am I to judge? She’s my kid after all) then she’ll be one whether she gets recognition for it or not. And she’ll keep on being one whether she receives a mandate to be extraordinary or whether she lives a perfectly ordinary life.

So we decided we aren’t interested in the test results. Now, that’s a white lie of course. But we’re sticking to it. That night we hugged and cuddled and recited some palindromes. And then sent her to bed. Gifted at staying up past her bed time, that’s what!

And the next morning before breakfast she sent me an email telling me I’m the greatest mom in the world. Hey, I’m no genius. But I never felt smarter in my life.

Posted on January 21st, 2006 by MomStar
Filed under: Uncategorized, The Urban Parent