One of the challenges I’ve found with my gifted children (especially the older one) is that I tend to forget her chronological age. She and I will be having a deeply philosophical conversation about equal rights, or discussion the stock market or the housing crisis, and suddenly she’ll turn around and do something I perceive as really immature. It’s a bit jarring for my brain, and I find that in that moment I have to remind myself that she is only 8. Continue reading
My daughter has always expressed a great amount of creativity, most of it channeled well. One thing I began to notice during our last year of school was a sudden disinterest in creativity. As though suddenly it wasn’t cool anymore for her to think up projects, or make up games. Around this time she also started coming home telling me she was bored all the time. Continue reading
I first encountered the term “self motivated” when in high school, when I moved from a private school to an “open school”. At the open school we did not get grades, instead we had “validations”. I thrived in that environment and loved having control and ownership over my work. I hoped my daughter would be the same. Never did I dream she’d be so very disciplined and motivated. Especially for an eight year old.
As I’ve touched on in other posts, one of the main things I was seeing happen to my child in the public school system was a loss of self-esteem. I’m not entirely sure where it stemmed from, probably many things, but one thing I am sure of was that I didn’t like watching what had once been a very confident child, begin to doubt herself and feel badly about herself. Continue reading
Online school has been a very interesting journey for me, and I want to share my experiences with other families looking for options outside of traditional school learning models. It has also been very cathartic for me to write out my thoughts, processes and ideas.
Recently, when I told my parents what I had named this blog they laughed. Calm and composed have never been on the top list of adjectives used to sum up my personality. They are both things I strive for, which is why I named my blog this. I’ve discovered however, that this has been a much harder journey for me to transition to in effect home-schooling my child than it has for her. Continue reading
As I stated in my first post we’d gone through quite a few options trying to find a schooling situation that was productive and enjoyable for my daughter. Frankly, I would have settled even for not enjoyable, just as long as I could see progress in her learning. To be fair, it wasn’t that she didn’t learn anything in K-2nd, but it wasn’t as academically rigorous as I had hoped, and she seemed to pick up as many bad habits and self-esteem issues as she did new concepts. Continue reading
