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What if he's gifted? What if he's not?
Sunday, February 6, 2011 We crowded into a small auditorium on the IIT campus this afternoon, a Sunday during a time when Lil E would normally be sound asleep in one of the weekend naps we still luxuriate in. But today, bigger plans than resting up from a weekend at his dad's were at work. We were assigned the time to test Lil E for gifted programs in the Chicago Public Schools.
I'd been downplaying the whole thing since we were given the timeslot. At first mention, he asked if every kid in his class would be tested, said he was nervous and didn't want to take the test.
And maybe he doesn't need to take the test. He goes to a good school -- a very good school with some great teachers and an amazing, award-winning art teacher and a committed gym teacher who keeps the kids in stitches. He has a lovely kindergarten teacher and is still connected to his outstanding preschool teacher there. It has magnet status and the climate seems to be ever improving.
Still...I wonder. Is in the right the place? Will this school give him what he needs to really to fluorish? Will he be challenged? We've already spent two-and-a-half years in this building. But have we landed?
He was well-prepared for kindergarten but I worry that it's too easy for him. Perhaps that sounds pretentious. It's not that he isn't learning and doesn't love it. He is, he does. Some people might scoff and say that it's only kindergarten, that it's tying shoes and forming letters. I disagree with that. This is the foundation, the beginning of many years, the time for setting expectations and igniting those sparks that become a much bigger love for mathematic equations or constructing bridges or molding clay or building furniture. Is that loaded? It is. I know it is.
This child has had a reading explosion, jumps at the chance to count money, can spend an hour drawing and writing stories, is excited to learn about almost anything. I don't want that thrilling, furious momentum to stop. I don't even want it to stall. Just as every child has a checklist of talents and adeptness and wonder, I imagine most parents will do everything they can to keep that moving along.
This is what I can think of to do -- pursue a school that's more intense, where he's challenged more. Who knows? He may not fall into that category of gifted. He may not get into one of the schools we've applied to. He may not go even if he does. Opening the door, considering the options, that's what feels incumbent to me as a parent. As his parent.
I tried to counter his anxiousness with comments about it being fun and no big deal, but the worried look on his face told me he wasn't convinced. I gave him an early nap, packed a lunch for him to eat in the car so he could sleep as long as possible. Sitting in his car seat with a Tupperware with half a ham sandwich, a few pretzels and apple slices left, he let out a meek, "But Mommy, I am scared."
I asked him to tell me more.
"I've never been to this place." I told him I hadn't either. This part was new for both of us. BUt I would be there.It would be fine. We'd figure it out together.
We did, finding our way in the snow and person-high piles of slush into the visitor's parking lot and then the auditorium full of parents and children. I smiled to myself as we settled into our seats. Child after child was hunched over maze books and activity books and chapter books. A mother behind spoke a little too loudly, "I BET THIS WILL BE EASY PEASY LEMON SQUEEZY!" while a father down the aisle from us poured over the disciplinary book "1-2-3 Magic". An older sister of a kindergartner worked seriously on a report with a library biography of Jimi Hendrix on her lap. One parent talked on her cell phone for the entire two hours we were there, her other children yelling out and hitting each other in their seats. Other parents had a serious pow-wow on the state of the schools. It was contradictory. It was intense. We were right in the middle of it.Literally, figuratively.
Lil E finished his lunch and asked me if he could draw while we waited for his group to be called.
"My number's a six!" He whispered that to me, flashing the card he was supposed to carry with him. "It's my favorite number!"
HIs favorite number is always the age he is, and I think he was recognizing the good fortune of that shiny plastic beckoning to be brave. He drew a volcano, a man making his way toward it. The figure was grasping on to his head and around the lava and smoke, he wrote, "HOLD ON TO YOUR HATS!!!!" Lil E loves exclamation points. And fire. Also, drawing x-eyed death and people throwing up in buckets, but I tried not to put that into the gifted testing universe.
It calmed him. When his group was called, he hopped up, we kissed goodbye and we hurried off to join the other five- and six-year olds in a long line to a classroom where they would "circle things" and "solve puzzles" and "give out very best guess if we didn't know the answers." I ate chips from the vending machine until he came back and told me, chipper and engaged and maybe even excited, about the test he spent over an hour taking.
Before bed, he told me more, sharing some of his frustrations ("I really think they should read each question more than one time") and accomplishments ("on some, I didn't see the answer I really knew it was, so I circled the one that seemed the most like it") and questions ("are they going to send that little book back if we want to keep it?").
We have almost two months to wait until a letter arrives telling us his percentile among all children in the country tested with this particular tool. In Chicago alone, about 35,000 children were tested. There are clearly far fewer spots in our city's gifted programs and schools. Until then, we go about life as it has been, leaving all those worries and all that wondering in the auditorium where they were shared, understood. We go back to school tomorrow, where I will help Lil E out of his snow gear and he will rush blissfully into his classroom.
For now, there are no decisions, no pressure, nothing out of our current ordinary. Should Lil E be on a trajectory to a new school, he will still be the kid who regularly appears naked and wielding a...ummm...light saber, who knows every word to "Hey Soul Sister", who cries when I make him put a quarter in the Potty Talk Jar. And the truth is, no matter what school he attends, what program he's enrolled in and curriculum he is making his way through, I will worry about whether he's bored or overwhelmed, is whipping through work or paying close attention, is curious and happy and immersed and loving to learn.
This realization strips away the stress of circles and percentiles. It lets Lil E just keep on being the kid he is, and allows me, even in the brain spinning I do late at night, to keep being the mother I am. Whether Chicago Public Schools deem him gifted or accepted elsewhere or not, it's really just the venue that may change. There's a chance that change could carry its own anxiety and bravery.
For now, though, I see what he's capable of already, who he is. What he will become, I believe will be magnificent, and I believe that because I am his mother. Not the teacher, not the labeler of gifted or great kid. I'm not concerned about whether he'll get the big G go-ahead. I just want to know he is sitting at a desk -- or clamoring around in a gym or bubbling up stuff in a lab or caked in glue in a studio or not eating his carrots in the cafeteria -- in a school I feel confident in. That I feel confident is where he should be.
Similar to what he did, whisked off in a college campus classroom with a long line of other children and without me, we will wait for the word, look at all our options, take our very best guess and move on to the next thing.
