As I sat waiting for my daughter to have her IQ assessment, which took a little over 2 hours with Dr. Deborah Ruf, I felt very insecure. I wondered why on earth I was there. I wondered if I was being ridiculous to even think of having her there, and if I was exposing her to the experience without potential gain. It was difficult to sit still.
5 Levels of Gifted, Dr Ruf's book, was there, so I started reading. As I read through the beginning, I was surprised how many things I could relate to. Most of the things I never realized weren't common. Many of them related to experiences from birth, and very early in the life of a child.
Our daughter was born late, and needed to be checked in the corner before I held her, just to be safe. She was screaming and overwhelmed, as all newborns are. I remember telling my husband to go talk to her. I think I shouted that, actually. He walked closer saying desperately that he didn't know what to say. She stopped crying, craned her neck and looked at him. That is the moment he became a Dad. Apparently, that isn't normal. Of course, children hear their parents' voices and recognize them. That part is normal. The degree of association, connection, eye contact, etc. is most common in highly gifted kids. Who knew? My mother says that my brother and I did the same thing; we had always related it to being born late.
Tonight, I was looking at pictures and ran across a very old one. I had some terrible tooth issues during my daughter's first year of life: failed crown, failed root canal, and oral surgical extraction. It was painful! I remember it being difficult because smiling hurt, and we have a sensitive child. Smiling was important to her. I started crinkling my nose, which hurt much less, and that became her smile for a while, as well. The 1 year photos have the "growly" smile, and I find it adorable. I digress.
A picture I stumbled upon this evening shows her communicating very early. There weren't words involved that I remember, but she told my mother that my mouth hurt. I remember us being surprised, but it took the picture to remind me. I wondered if we were reading into it, or if it was a side effect of pain medication at the time. I analyzed her expressions in other photos tonight, and I don't think so. She was telling my mother that my mouth hurt. Of course, I had to show my husband and remind him this evening. "We should have known then," is what I said. "Yeah," he said as he stared at it and the surrounding photos.
I have one child, so of course I believe that she is the most amazing child on the planet. That seems perfeclty obvious to me. However, I know that I am extremely biased. Could my attempts to be a humble parent have inhibited my ability to understand my daughter? Mother guilt comes so easily, and I'm not feeling terribly emotional about it at the moment, but I still wonder . . . This all happened before she was one year old. She already had a heart of gold, and she was already processing relatively complex thoughts and actually finding a way to communicate them . . . before she could stand on her own.
Can you imagine being born with one or more appendage that didn't function? Of course, you'd find a way to adapt. One of the most difficult fates, in my opinion, would be to have a body that didn't function and a mind that was sharp. Is that what it's like for highly gifted children before they physically and emotionally develope? Do they feel trapped by their inability to apply or communicate their amazing thoughts and ideas?
You may have noticed that I enjoy books. A boy told me today that he is reading the Inheritance Cycle. I was thrilled because it is definitely a way I can relate to him. Eragon is an amazingly complex character and I devoured those books. One character that makes me squirm is Elva, but she's not an antagonist. Eragon unintentionally put her in a difficult position. She was, in her own words, "a freak." She had an urge and ability to sense danger and an inescapable compulsion to help. This was given to her as an infant, and she grew quickly, but not in a natural way. One quote from her haunts me, "so I grew." She was referring to what she needed to do to accomodate her circumstances. In this case, growing unnaturally quickly, so she could talk early, etc.
I feel like this is getting darker than I'm comfortable with. I must need sleep. It is interesting to try and relate to people, though, and imagine their circumstances from that angle. There is a quote heading a gifted group's web site that says something to the effect that "it is difficult to have adult intelligence in a child's body with childlike emotions." When my daughter gets easily frustrated and angry, it makes sense to me. I must find a way to help her with an outlet and to have a healthy adaptation to our world. . . with God's grace, I might find it. I want her to have a childhood, and a happy one, rather than an unusual experience that causes her to say or think "so I grew."
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