night and day

just different...

Linda Silverman was explaining at a lecture that I was at recently that gifted persons are more different from one another than one average person is from another.... I thought that little tid bit rather interesting... how do they go about "proving" this, let alone "discovering" this...

She explained it makes categorizing them in little cliques rather impossible...

yesterday I saw yet another example of how my kids are so different.

compatible, but different.

Some similarities are that they both gifted, and both have their "issues" and would most likely be labeled "twice exceptional" because of these issues.... One issue they both have is vision tracking, though that is where the similarity stops. HOW the tracking issue manifests is different, what sort of therapy each of them needs to correct their issue is... different... how bad the vision is for each of the is... different... and how it manifests itself in everyday life is... you guessed it ... different... so the only thing the same is that they both have some sort of eye muscle/visual tracking issue.

Yesterday they both started an art class. Taught by another home school mom, who is an art teacher. One child loved it! Loved the drawing big, the cluing, cutting, painting, learning about design, elements, color, really felt free with her brush. This was my daughter. She told me she would love to have paper as big as the room, many different brushes and walk barefoot just painting!

This distressed my son. who likes to draw, but with a pencil, small pictures, not large. Not with a paint brush, not with paint. Not with big strokes, broad strokes... He found the whole experience frustrating... He really liked the teacher. He really liked the other kids. He was glad no one was mad when he sprayed them all with paint on accident, trying TOO hard to BE broad with his stroke...

What went wrong? Why was he actually "frustrated"...? It is one thing to NOT be an artist, another to be actually "frustrated".

I prayed about it, and asked questions, and decided it was the fact that his eyes jump, they dart, and he was always drawing in his comfort zone. This nice new teacher was asking him to step out of his comfort zone. His eyes couldn't track that brush and what it was doing, and it was stressful to him, it took sooo much energy to focus on the tip of that brush, he was spent, exhausted, wiped out.

Yet my God is good, all the time, and He had my day planned in such a way that I had BEEN frustrated ALL day. After art class was the chiropractor/therapist (who does occupational/physical & some vision therapy with my children) and then off to the eye doctor at Costco. It would be a crazy, traffic laden afternoon, one I was dreading!

I told the therapist about his dislike for the "large painting project" the problem with the broad strokes, and she pondered this, asking him questions about what those movements were exactly... and altered his therapy after discovering some significant issues not noticed previously... Praise God. At the eye doctor we discovered his eyes were worse. My husband who met us there, asked why, why are they worse every time we come? The answer... His muscles are weak, and cross when he focuses on anything like a word or anything, that is why two different scripts, that is why bifocals. I asked, what about Vision therapy? She looked confused....

I don't want to bash my wonderful Costco Optical Dr. Frankly she is terrific. She is however like most in her field, not willing to tell us to go for therapy, to work out those muscles, to learn how... rather than just have another script and watch our sons eyes get worse and worse and worse.

We brought our daughter in a while ago, but she passed the tests at Costco... Her "vision" was fine. Its ONLY her tracking that is bad. Glasses won't help her, and so it seems to me, the therapy they are getting is great, but at some point we MAY need to see a real live, in person Vision Therapist! What do you think?

Oh and their paint wheel.... One is all gloppy, a huge mess (his) and one is perfectly pretty, numbered and everything (hers), utterly different, utterly night, and day....

Emotional Stress........

I am told, and I read, and I experience each day the fact that gifted children are VERY sensitive. Their sensitivities are at times almost hyper, acute, and painful to witness. They FEEL things more intensely, things hurt MORE, rejection cuts deeper, grief pins itself harsher, joy a bit broader, louder, or just more... They are perhaps a brighter shade of the same color, a more vibrant color, a deeper color....

When things are bright yellow, they are BRIGHT and light and brilliant, and when they are gray, they are like storm clouds rolling in over the waters, rich and deep, making you want to board up the house and pack away the glass.....

My mother is ill with Cancer... my mother is very close to my children. We made choices, my husband and I, to put family before academics, before their hungry minds... We chose to put their hungry souls, their need for meaning, purpose, belonging first, and let academics always come second.... So, our school week has made a point as my mothers health has deteriorated the last couple years to include one full day a week with just her. The diagnosis of cancer is new... but her health, has not been tip top for a while...

We have always tried to reach out to family, especially to those in the family who were reaching out to us... Some don't. Some are fairly busy in their own lives, their own worlds, their work, friends, schedules, we are not a priority to them, and that is OK... it really is. They can't all be a priority to me either. So, I choose those who reciprocate a bit, and don't go chasing after rainbows....

So my mother, she is close to them, and they to her. She is the storyteller, the magic weaver, the craftier, the baker, the laughter, movie watching, encouraging, always ready to hear their hearts, wanting to KNOW their achievements as well as their struggles grandmother, known only to them as Oma...

Now she is ill. We take her every third week to chemo, we pick her up. We visit each week, some weeks are good, some are not. This week she's been hospitalized, this week they've visited her everyday..

Perhaps its too much. Perhaps I should take a break. I know I am tired, worn down with all the quick meals, rushed lessons, driving everywhere....

But there is that grayness, that only lifts when they SEE her, and know it isn't worse than they imagined in their lay in bed time before drifting to sleep last night... There is that look on her face, of sadness that is gone as soon as she sees them! There is the Light that turns on for all of them when they are together, that makes me go back each day. Somehow they can't believe a phone call, they won't take my word for it... something in them is so afraid, so concerned, so in love with her, they simply must see,....

They have faith in God you see, not faith in Dr's or hospitals, and certainly not faith in cancer. It took too many they know already...

My daughter wants to find the Cure sitting on the bed just expecting it to go away NOW! My oldest son is withdrawing, and forgetful, and my youngest is loud, and emotional., very dramatic..

I am tired....

I am glad to not shelter them from this harsh reality, I am honored to shepherd them through it... frighting as it may be.

Somehow their brightness, sees more, understands more, and because of it, pat answers do not work, and so the comfort, the time, the space needs to be their. The prayers, the patience, the walking through this with no expectations of one another, is the most important... Because Cancer sucks, that IS a fact of life. And Love conquers all, if we just DO it, and LET it, and learn HOW....

still learning.....