Met a mom last week with 3 kids under 3

Avatar for myshkamouse
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Met a mom last week with 3 kids under 3
1350
Sat, 03-25-2006 - 9:59am

A 2 year old and 17 month old twins. First she accomplished *that* through two surrogates! Wonderful what modern medicine can do.
Anyway, she doesnt work full time, she consults to several companies so is out of the home one full day then a few hours a day on other days. Sometimes for work, sometimes to go to the gym, etc.
She has a full time live in nanny, and two part time nannies. Essentially they always have someone with them and the kids. She feels she needs two to properly care for her three.
I immediately thought of all the comments her lifestyle would elicit from this board.
The day she and I met she had just come from a 2 hour session at the gym, and was then heading off to go do some shopping.
BTW, she's a complete rock star in industry, having 'retired' a year ago after a 30 year career that took her right up to the top of corporate America so she's definetly *earned* her right to do whatever the heck she wants.
But anyway, she feels she is a super hands on mom. I was curious what others would think?

MM

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-28-2003
Wed, 03-29-2006 - 12:08pm
Well, that's a tricky answer. Many of them have flexible employment and just find a way to work around their homeschooling schedule. Some of them don't have the problem of giving up that second income because one of them never went back to work because they found their child so fascinating to be with. (This is very common.) Some of them make huge financial sacrifices to homeschool. And a handful of them find a way to homeschool and work full time. These are some very creative people (some highly accomplished) who you might not necessarily relate to because they find fostering their child's intellectual growth more important than providing an income from two working parents. Some of them come from such depressing childhoods--where their own educations were completely inadequate and many of their needs were never met-- that they will do almost anything to make sure their own children don't have to do the same. Once you have embraced homeschooling, you don't need to live in the house in the best school district so a second income isn't as crucial anymore. And plenty of them are so darn smart, that just one person can make a perfectly adequate income for the whole family. (They aren't stuck working at WalMart, if you know what I mean.) More often than not I've noticed, if both parents are working, it is more because both parents NEED to work for personal reasons and personal goals, not for financial ones.
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-14-2003
Wed, 03-29-2006 - 12:09pm

i think that in many cases, the people that trained educators don’t “get” are the parents who will go to any lengths to assign some sort of twisted interpretation of “genius” on their child no matter the harm that this olympian distortion can cause.

another poster already pointed out that extraordinary ability is almost never present in more than one skill set—not by any means reason to push a child in a broad range of areas of study, nor too much for most families to well nurture *in addition* to a normal school setting. the implication that there are a large number of children in the world—much less in a single community—who are truly “gifted” in so many areas that they wouldn’t benefit as much from a normal classroom as any other child the vast majority of the day is in and of itself evidence that such a community would necessarily badly misunderstand child development and education. what’s more, just about any child of normal intelligence can be taught a number of skills at a much faster rate than is customary—a rate that is “normal” not because, as such parents choose to misinterpret, it is the outside limit of a “normal” child’s potential, but because, as educators know, it is the pace at which most children will tend to develop a skill set without that development interfering in development in other, equally if not more important areas or without undue and unhealthy pressure put upon the child. intellectual gifts are not normally particularly different than athletic gifts; parents needn’t force a child to quit school or other normal activities to foster them, and, it is not any more reasonable to condemn a school for not offering latin in lower el even though a parent thinks that they study of it would suit her child’s “gifts” than it would be to fault it for not offering pole vaulting even though another parent thinks it would suit her child’s “gifts.” a given school’s offerings might be considered insufficient by an individual parent, but that lack doesn’t necessarily reflect either what the school should provide nor the quality of what it actually does provide.

educators tend to get a bum rap in certain circles not because they have neglected the special needs of gifted children, but because they understand that there is a great deal more to nurturing and educating child—and even a “gift”—than meeting his or her parents’ desire for skipping grades, forcing academics, and otherwise feeding a desire for bragging rights and keeping ahead of the joneses. the fact that most educators understand that most children labeled as “gifted” could as rightly be called simply “bright and well (or in some cases overly) prepared” is to their credit—despite the damnations of the parents who feel that their children’s emotional, social, and the majority of their educational needs should be subverted for the sake of a gifted label that to their thinking trumps all else.

“getting” a child is about much more than treating him or her like a one-dimentional freak. it is to their credit and a credit to their training that most professional educators don't buy that bill of goods even in the face of a parent's hard sell.

there's nothing inherently wrong with homeschooling, but no parent of any child who actually is too gall-durn smart to be with his age peers in a school setting is going to learn that only after trying it out. a kid who is unfit to learn alongside his peers is going to be referred elsewhere by trained educators before he darkens their classroom door; a kid whose parents deem his peers unfit to stand in his epic shadow is another animal altogether.

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-16-2005
Wed, 03-29-2006 - 12:10pm

I'm still unclear why you feel the need to try to educate me about how the academic world operates. But I continue to get from you the attitude I see in your on-line communities that you know better than absolutely everybody else, and that the gifted child is always being treated completely unfairly without explanation. Got it.

I feel no need to go into my background but suffice to say, you are not qualified to once again "correct" me about educating the gifted. Anyone who relies so heavily as you do on the on-line communities loses credibility with me. I've lurked on the boards, I've read the articles. All of their kids are not simply gifted ~ they are all highly and profoundly gifted. Yet, the schools always, always do nothing. That says something to me. The on-line communities base everything on the tests. That is completely misguided so I am not in the least surprised that so many of your on-line friends are disappointed and heartbroken. They are causing it themselves.

I have never seen your on-line friends say a positive thing about any school administrator either. It is just not possible that absolutely everyone has it in for these parents of allegedly gifted kids.

Recently, we learned that a relative tested THREE years ahead of his age level in both math and reading. Yet, he's autistic and deficient in so many ways. Would you have him skip a few years in school? Of course not. That would be hubris. And that is what is causing these on-line parents so much heartbreak.

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-13-2006
Wed, 03-29-2006 - 12:17pm
when we were in texas working with the gifted program there one of the things they really stressed was that regardless of the intellectual ability of the kids they needed to learn how to socialize with their peers, and that alot of times the parents would neglect that part of the child, focusing entirely on the academic, and it was almost always to the detriment of the child. that doesnt mean the child has to sit in a classroom all day, but they do need to learn to get along with their peers.
Jennie
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-13-2006
Wed, 03-29-2006 - 12:21pm
excellent post...........while my oldest was way ahead of her peers academically she was still just a 5 year old little kid with the same needs as other 5 year old little kids. i am so thankful, now, that we had people smarter than we were that convinced us that her best interests in the long run would be to stay with her peer group.
Jennie
iVillage Member
Registered: 07-16-2005
Wed, 03-29-2006 - 12:23pm

<>

Yes, you misinterpreted. School includes all schooling.

I wouldn't pay a dime for tutoring for my kids from someone who is not or had never been affiliated with the schools.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-28-2003
Wed, 03-29-2006 - 12:29pm

As irritating as I am to you because I apparently know everything, is your thinking that you know who my friends are and where I spend my time on-line. Did I tell you where I was hanging out on-line? Did I give you the names of my cyber friends and acquaintances?

I never said I knew better than everybody else. I never said that the gifted child is always being treated completely unfairly.

I guess it is a character flaw of mine that when I see someone who doesn't understand a notion (homeschooling as a viable option for gifted children) that I want to help open a mind and give information to help that person make a more thoughtful evaluation of the notion.

Sorry. I keep forgetting that some people are happier with a closed mind.

Now I've gotta go prep my kids for their monthly IQ test.

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-16-2005
Wed, 03-29-2006 - 12:29pm

<<...otherwise feeding a desire for bragging rights and keeping ahead of the joneses.>>

Thank you. You said what I've been unable to get across here! There is so much of the parent's ego tied up in the term "gifted." That's what can lead to the parent's hubris and eventual heartbreak. But they have no one to blame ~ they bring it on themselves. (Though certainly as you noted, some gifted children may fall through the cracks because of for example, arbitrary or capricious or megalomaniac administrators ~ but not every single time.)

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-16-2005
Wed, 03-29-2006 - 12:35pm
We too are leaving a lot of this to the experts. I would've preferred living closer to family, instead we live where we live because of the schools. It's possible if one of my DDs and even my almost 3 yr-old son continue to advance as they've been doing, they may have inherited their father's high IQ (not mine ~ snort!). If so, we will work with, not against, what the experts say.
Avatar for myshkamouse
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Wed, 03-29-2006 - 12:45pm
Oh but its OK for PNJ to actually call me names? Whatever.

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