Hi Everyone,My name is LeighAnn and I am gifted. Feels good to be able to be able to say that. I always wondered why I always seemed so different growing up. I was just too ... something...... I never quite fit in after 2nd grade. I always walked slightly out of step. I spent most of my schooling in private school with a dismal failure for my only trial in public. They failed me in 6th grade after telling my mom I had the highest IQ the'd ever tested in my grade. I hated school until I finally got a 9th grade teacher who knew me. She let me finish my work and go teach the remedial readers in 1st. College was Great! If I got a teacher that I didn't get along with, I just switched teachers. Most of them didn't mind that I ask a million questions or that I had an opinion of my own.
I now have 3 gifted children. Thanks to them I now know why I'm different. Sitting in a GT seminar and listing to the speaker describe yourself will do that. I thought I was just there for them. My husband had the same wake up call. What a difference it's made in my own self esteem. I am hoping to prevent what happened to me from happening to my kids. My oldest, Alexandria, is 8. (08/90). She will be going into 4th grade this year. Jessilyn is 7 (12/91)and going into 2nd. William is 3 (02/96) and is homeschooled like his sisters were before kindergarten. Alex is probably in the High MG to Hg range. Her Wischler III was 139 with 6 out of 10 subtests ceilinged. Jessilyn got in to the TX GT programs by passing the 4 simple tests they use here. She didn't get in NM with a 90 on her OLSAT. But she marches to the beat of her own drummer and is visual spatial. William seems to follow in his siblings footsteps. We haven't found a good fit in the public schools yet. Alex has tried GT pull out as well as a short time at self paced all day GT. She gets bored quickly and is a nightmare to get to do homework. Jessi loves school and doesn't seem to care that her teachers don't give her anything that she can't already do. She does hate to write though just like her sister at her age and is very emotionally sensitive to everything. We've spent the summer trying to find a way to homeschool that fits us. The girls want to go back to regular school for now though citing lack of playmates. We'll see how it goes. I think we'll end up with self directed homeschooling in the end. William is so stubborn about what he wants to learn, and when, that it's the only way I can do it with him. I've learned a lot about homeschooling this year. It was a lot easier than I had expected.
July, 31, 1999