Like most parents of highly gifted children, I go through my periods of denial. More experience parents who love and support me recommended transcript work . . . about two years ago. They said it a little louder, but equally gently about a year ago. Guess what I decided was premature. Guess who knew better. I was surprised, really, but my waves of denial had gotten me. Again.
Last Spring was a wake up call when we got the Peabody test results. One subject is not yet to High school level, but should be this Spring if the trajectory stays true. The others were mostly beyond High School at that point. We just kept thinking it would slow down later. I know the more experienced parents in this sphere are shaking their heads and chuckling. That will probably be me one day, as well.
For those who are very nervously wondering if "what they say is true" and that it speed up, I can't exactly say that. It feels like it, certainly, but the overall grade level progression, and most individual subjects has stayed at about the same rate for M, according to the Peabody results. I have already stated why my instincts on this particular issue aren't ones I can trust, lol. If they continue at this rate, she'll have one subject at the start of High school in the Spring, but overall, have graduated from High School. She will be 11. Does that terrify others? It certainly terrifies her father and I!!!
If you follow this blog, I humbly thank you, and you will know that we have had monstrous personal life circumstances for a couple of years. If not, I thank you for reading this one, and you now know the boiled down background for the rest of the post.
Approaching this Fall, I simply wasn't ready to start homeschooling again. I'm just too run down. I feel drained, hollowed out, and incapable of doing justice to M in the area of education. The fact that she is advancing so quickly doesn't minimize the effect. A year ago, I felt the same, but not as severely . . . although at the time, I couldn't imagine it being more severe. Here's hoping what doesn't kill us makes us stronger!
This year, we lost a beloved family member and held the funeral just before the school year started. I had not fully healed from multiple other emotional blows during the past years when the terminal diagnosis was given early this calendar year. We are honored to have been allowed to devote a lot of our time to this amazing person throughout the year, and that is a balm to the wounds.
In some ways, starting a couple of new class schedules right after the funeral was good timing. It was a clean start. There wasn't the strangeness of the regular schedule blocks suddenly leaving. Mostly, anyway. The day I had set aside for that still feels echoing and cold, even on warm days. M, thankfully, doesn't seem to be aware of that, and I am thankful she is spared that. She has enough wounds, anyhow.
In other ways, the timing was jarring. There was no buffer time to just recover and sit in the experience. 2014 left me the summer to do just that, and in retrospect, I understand the gift that was more fully than I did at the time.
We are not ignoring the experience and the wounds and the healing. All of us in this house have seen psychologists to help us cope in as healthy a manner as possible. I am so thankful for that support. We are continuing to use these resources as we have a rocky fall.
This Fall, most of M's classes are taught by others. We use online teachers, video teachers, and more than one source of in-person teachers for her. Our intention was to have very qualified teachers helping her, especially in subjects that I am not gifted in. The benefit we were hoping for was space for me to be a little bit less involved as I heal, and for her to have other environments with fewer triggers around recent events. Sometimes it seems like this is working.
Other times, it is apparent that I am not functioning as well as I'd like to. For instance, I tend to make appointments in groups. In past years, we used those as "appointment weeks" and just took a week off of our at-home curriculum. Since she's ahead of the state requirements and tends to take classes in the summer, this seemed ideal. Note to self: you cannot take a week off when you are not the teacher. This is one of those instances where someone who sometimes seems smart shows that moments of obvious lesser intelligence still shine through. Poor M. She was the one that suffered most through that one.
As a family, we are trying to adapt and meander toward a more functional lifestyle. Right after registrations, I realized we were in too deep, and M and I decided to drop one class only days after registration. That was an expensive decision and one that her father was wonderfully supportive of. We still began the Fall knowing we had a really heavy load of classes, despite having signed up for only some of what was interesting and useful for the semester.
We said we'd stay flexible and adapt as necessary, making these decisions between hospital visits and mentally shutting down for the day. We knew it wasn't the greatest time to be doing this, but it's what we were given, and we did our best. Overall, it just feels messy. I know it doesn't look as messy as it feels because we have wonderful friends who understand and are completely honest with us. They love us, accept us, support us, and let us know when we are out of line. I cannot imagine survival without them.
So . . . we have a high school student in some ways and a typical learning-time-management girl who is developmentally appropriate to her age in that respect. Can you picture it? She's also a perfectionist, as are her parents, which makes life more difficult as we all battle that particular ailment. Every time we adapt, M and I both feel remorse and some degree of failure, even when that is not an appropriate response. Her parents are also both deeply wounded and grieving, rather than perfectly resourced to help her find that balance.
We are struggling to find balance and appropriate priorities. While my own child is reasonably my higher priority as a mother, I now have other family members who need motherly involvement in a way that is appropriate and important for me to try and address to whatever small degree I can.
I also need to take care of myself while all this is happening so that I can do my best at finding balance, when what I really want is to be Superwoman and Supermom. My instinctual goal is to try and do it all perfectly all the time and looking perfectly put together & made up. Yes, I do realize it's ridiculous. It's also honest. I need to take care of myself so that I am capable of helping anyone.
After the wonderful insight of Brene Brown in the Gifts of Imperfection, I'm an aspiring good-enough-er. Who's with me?
