My, what perceptive readers I have. Kirsten recently wrote:
This post loosely touches on comparison between the parent of a gifted child and the child themselves. It seems like your area of talent and C.’s area of talent are similar (language arts and history). As she takes on challenges that are closer and closer to adult challenges, how do you keep from being jealous?
Well funny you should ask, because I recently had an exchange with a friend of mine on just this topic. She too wondered if other parents struggled with some resentment or envy over how much our kids are getting–and what we didn’t get.
And I had to answer her honestly: ‘Yes” As teens, our kids are so bright and stand on the cusp of all that…possibility. While we’re at a place in our lives where we’re realizing that…we’re not. Or not at least in that exciting, totally clean slate, the world is wide open sort of way. They’re moving onto the stage. We’re moving off. It kind of sucks.
So although “resentment” or “envy” or “jealousy” are probably too strong, there certainly is this wistfulness, this awareness that time is running quickly. You’re made to reckon with the choices you’ve made–or were made for you. I would love a few do-overs. But there is also excitement and happiness on my kids’ behalf. Because so much of it was so much fun, and now they’re going to get to do it too: first love, college, beginning a career. Meanwhile, I have to remind myself not to put all my eggs in their basket, so to speak. Eventually they will leave and I might get call once a week. I have to be sure that I will be living my life, learning new things, meeting new people, having new experiences. Those possibilities are not over.
As for C.’s talents and interests, they are uncannily similar to my own. Which is actually kind of nice. It’s meant that over the years I’ve felt very confident in my ability to provide her with suggestions of books to read, movies to see, activities to try. I’ve gone out of my way to expose her to experiences and people that would stoke her interests, and build her knowledge. I have been able to give her better than I got. And it’s been fun, because I love the things she’s interested in too! If somehow I had produced a child whose passion was zoology or computer gaming, well, it would have been more challenging. l don’t know people who do those things, and they don’t really interest me. Perhaps I would have risen to the challenge…but I imagine it would have been a bit of a slog.
[Part II of my answer to Kirsten in my next post.]
I haven’t run into this issue just yet but I do suspect one of the reasons why my parents have such an issue with my homeschooling has to do with their feeling a bit defensive about their own choices for my education.
Is my DD getting a better education at home than what I received at a traditional government-run school growing up? I believe so. But my folks didn’t have the same kind of information and resources available.
Homeschooling at the time I was growing up was a fringe activity for ultrafundamentalists and hippies. It wasn’t even legalized in the state where my family lived until I was 10. There’s no way my parents- a “progressive”/”cafeteria” Catholic and a mainline Protestant who were more yuppies than hippies -would’ve ever seriously considered homeschooling.
They did what they felt was best given their circumstances and it turned out okay. I can’t honestly say that I would’ve done anything terribly different in the same circumstances. Making the decision to homeschool in 2006 was relatively easy; making the same decision back in the early ’80′s would not have been.