Soothing the Savage Genius Part 1

My daughter Maggie is a genius.

I understand that just by typing those words, I risk coming across as one of those douchy parents. You know the ones....my kid is great....yours sucks. Okay, maybe your kid doesn't suck, but certainly couldn't be a great as mine. Here are 500 pictures and 32 videos illustrating why my kid is awesome.....

Well....maybe I have some healthy pride about my daughter, but that doesn't change the fact that Maggie is a genius.

Now...the term genius is used a lot in the world....so let me be clear about exactly what I mean. Maggie has been evaluated by multiple professionals...and her IQ has been placed in the 160 range. I say range because they said it could be higher, but some of her answers were completed after the alloted amount of time. Her answers were correct....but did not count. She also answered a bank of math questions correctly that she did not have the knowledge to complete. She instead found an alternate way to calculate her answers using skills she had mastered.According to her elementary school psycologist, if you put Maggie in a stadium with 50,000 other people, statistically there would be a good chance she would have the highest IQ.

Maggie is a genius.

This was not shocking to Jeni or myself.....she had demonstrated advanced vocabulary at 14 months, and was answering basic addition problems before her 2nd birthday. To this day....she can recall facts and memories from as far back as 18 months.

Maggie is a genius.

Most people think we hit the lottery....you have a gifted kid. And we did...kinda. But it's not always that easy...or clear cut. Don't get me wrong, Maggie is amazing, particularly with her communication skills. Most kids who are profoundly gifted have difficulty relating to their peers. Maggie could make friends with a rock. She truly values her friendships with her classmates...and loves people.

But.....it's not always easy. Maggie has an acute case of perfectionism. She believes that she has to always be correct. She has to be exceptional at everything. She is not allowed to fail, or have a learning curve, and make a mistake. She came home in tears in the beginning of school becuase she got one wrong on her spelling pre-test. Yes...I said pre-test. She had never seen a number of these words before, and one of them she missed the silent e. And it took two hours to talk her off the ledge. She got a 96 on one of her math tests...and was afraid she would be grounded.

I know this sounds like Jeni and I keep her in a cage and only let her out when she's perfect, but believe me, we've been working with her on this for 5 years. We've had some breakthroughs.....but it'll always be tough. I taught her how to play chess last week....but it took me months to get her to try, because she didn't want to be bad. And if I ever want to play with her again, I couldn't actually beat her. No....we'll mess around and I'll let her win until she gets good enough to be competitive and has enough confidence to win or lose on her own.

Jeni cannot help Maggie with her math homework. In 2nd grade. I thought we'd have more time....god I wanted more time. I had to walk her through a logic problem over the phone on my way to work this morning.

We cannot lie to Maggie....even one of those parent white lies. You know...some story you push through to get them to do something or not to do something. We aren't smart enough to correctly answer the barage of questions to certify our story. Conversely, she can't lie to us.....she tries. She can never, ever get away with...I forgot. Because she didn't forget....she never forgets. It's kinda like living with Jiminy Cricket sometimes.

Maggie has a temper....some of which can be blamed on her red hair (as a red head myself, I can confirm the myth that we have bad tempers), some of which is her artistic bent, but much of it on not understanding why other people don't see the world the same way. I always wondered how difficult it must be to have a different perspective than 99% of the other people in the world.

The worst thing is that it is so easy to forget that Mags is 7. You can fill in the blank with the age....becuase it's always been easy to forget Maggie was her age. We are guilty of this way too often. Why can't you remember your piano lessons? Why don't you put your dishes in the sink? Why didn't you feed the cats? Because your 7!

While we're guilty of this....it's far more painful for Mags when other people forget she's 7. She's been in two plays in her short life...and in both cases she has been cast in a large age appropriate role. I say age appropriate...but in reality people would normally cast an older kid who is short for their age. If you can use an 8 year old that passes for 5....double bonus. In both cases, the people who made the casting decisions got frustrated...Mags wasn't focusing the way they wanted. Can we help get her to focus?

No...not really. She's 5. Or later...she's 7. And an energetic, busy 5...or 7. And an energetic, busy 5....or 7, that never needed to pay attention to anything to learn it. I wish more than anything that I could get Maggie to focus, but if I can get 10 minutes of attention from her, I'm having an excellent day.

So...everybody's frustrated. Mags wants to be perfect, but doesn't have the emotional maturity to match her intellect, The director is wondering why this kid, who remembers everything, including all of the other charaters lines and blocking, can't do their part right. And us parent who want every experience to be wonderful, are sad that it's not always. In both cases things ended up going well....but not without some bumps in the road.

You know....research says that people with intellects slightly above average are more likely to be successful in their careers and make more money than people who are profoundly gifted. There is no guarentee that a profoundly gifted person will graduate high school or college, have a good fulfilling job, or be able to be happy with their lives.

All we have now is potential.....and right now a happy 7 year old. I'd be lying if I didn't feel like I've been given this amazing gift, but one that I could easily screw up. It's more than a little intimidating and scary. Do we let her skip a grade, should we send her to a special school, what are the right activities to keep her challenged?

Right now....I'm going with trying to keep her being a happy 7 year old. Until she's 8....