Reallytired,
Totally agree with you that every child is unique and no one child is better than another. Iq tests indicate potential but you cannot force a child to fulfil that potential if they arent academically motivated. The ultimate goal for any parent is that their child is happy and the fact is there are miserable college professors and happy bin men out there! We want our children to pusue whatever makes them happy.
Dont be in awe of us....we are a normal family who struggles everyday with parenthood meeting different challenges. What i get most annoyed about is not the people who brag their children are better but the ones who claim parenthood is easy and they have never had problems. We have good times, we have bad times but we have been very lucky to get through things with some good support people. We are not rich, we cannot afford to look at top schools, tutors, private psychologists and the like but we make do.
We live by the motto that happiness is about learning to appreciate what you have rather than dwelling on what you dont have.
My wife and i went to private grammar schools in northern ireland but never fitted in. In the environment i was in there was so much falseness that it was uncomfortable. It became less about education and more about social status which i didnt have.
When we made the programme our hope was to show people the difficulties when intellectual development is out of line with social development. I personaly do not beleive that any Gifted child doesnt have social problems due to an inabiity to relate to their peers.
Our middle child has severe autism. Her mental age is 3 although she is actually 12. She cant talk and is still in nappies.
Our younger daughter is "normal". She is very into her drawing and reading a lot more than her brother.