Testimonies
I started to get fed up with school and only found stimulation in activities that I developed together with children in 4th grade (and I was in 1st grade). In fifth grade I remember not relating to anyone because I had no interest in relating to my peers (I thought they were immature and uninteresting) and only talked to teachers. I read and studied a lot until late at night, I had a very rich vocabulary and used words and sentence structures that were too complex for my age and that my peers wouldn’t understand. I quickly became the target of bullying and was nicknamed “geek”, “library rat”, “weirdo”, ” freak” and ” brainiac”. And that’s how I felt… weird. I frequented the library religiously and lost count of the books I devoured. During the summer vacations (5th and 6th grade) I begged my parents to let me study English and I took two intensive English courses – the first year I had classes with a native English speaker and the second year with an American. The classes were taught in English and I was surrounded by high school students who could not learn the language nor pass the subject. I became fluent in English.
Yet I continued to be bullied and refused to go to school when I was still in the sixth grade. I was accompanied by a child psychiatrist who medicated my little body with much higher doses of anti-depressants than it could handle. In high school I skipped most classes, became rebellious and irresponsible – it was the way I found to defend myself from the bullying I was subjected to daily. I finished with a 17 average and failed to get into medical school. Nowadays I have a degree and a job in the public sector. I still have a lot of trouble relating to people and understanding them, and I need strong intellectual stimulation to keep my mind active. I have a good visual memory and I am able to mentally “photograph” any document and memorize series of digits “without meaning to do so”.
I am sharing my story in the hope that you can help/guide me regarding the situation I have described above. From my perspective, I have “suffered” and still “suffer” from lack of stimulation and maintain some peculiar characteristics that cause me to have difficulties in some areas of life, namely socialization. I have had several severe depressions throughout my life and part of that is certainly due to the fact that there are too many questions for so few answers. I feel that I need answers so that I can have a better quality of life from now on and stop feeling and being called “strange” and “inadequate”.
— From a gifted young adult
If we could afford it right now, we would not hesitate to move our lives to Porto/Gaia and transfer our son to the school grouping where they work.
The stigma, the lack of support, seeing a decrease in the passion to learn, the stress generated by the lack of motivation and the lack of challenge worries us more and more. Our son has struggled over the years to adapt. He learned to play soccer in order to be accepted by his peers. When a boy doesn’t play soccer, it becomes difficult to have many friends at school. However, his peers usually don’t share his interests or passions. They don’t make an effort to be interested. A child who is forced to mold himself to a society that doesn’t accept him for who he is sometimes succumbs to group pressures, is bullied and becomes a vulnerable child. Throughout his schooling he has developed the idea that doing the bare minimum is enough. He is still an excellent student, but without much dedication or motivation. He begins to ask to not go to school, as he feels he is not learning anything new. During the preschool and the primary school, we opted for silence. We were afraid of the labels and consequences that exposing his characteristics could bring. This year we had a different attitude. We talked to the school and asked for help. They gave us a document of pedagogical differentiation to sign, but it seems to us that it was just a formality and a way to silence us. We felt that they started to see us with different eyes, the “annoying” parents who believe that their child is better than the others, and that, in a certain way, distanced them even more from our son. They even told us: “But do you feel that your son is not supported/challenged, or do you want him to get 100% on everything? Isn’t that over-expectation on the part of the parents?” We never aimed at grades, we always privileged the integral development of our son, especially in the areas where he has more difficulties, such as autonomy in routine tasks.
Ever since our son was very young, we have felt a strong social criticism always present. As if we, parents, were the ones forcing him to have high abilities, as if we were molding him, as if we were training him, as if we deserved all the discouragement he faces at school for allowing him to increase his knowledge. We heard several times that he shouldn’t know many of the things he already did, that it’s not good for him. He has often been denied the opportunity to participate in areas that interest him because he is not in the age group they are intended for. We have been told that he should just “be a child” for the time being! We feel like answering that our son is a child! But that he still loves to learn new things and needs constant challenges in order to feel happy and fulfilled. For 5 years we stayed silent, we hid and normalized, we thought that fitting in with peers would be the best way in a society that stigmatizes and is not prepared for the difference. This year, because we think that silence and normalization doesn’t work after all, we have talked and asked for help, but we feel that no one has taken us seriously, it’s as if, having so many abilities, he doesn’t need any support. On the contrary, he is left completely adrift, left to his own abilities and inabilities. Were it not for the constant support and challenge that we try to provide outside the school context, the demotivation and frustration would certainly be worse.
We are sad, we feel tired and lost. We see a bright, passionate, enthusiastic child becoming more and more unmotivated, more disinterested, losing his pride and self-esteem. We have tried to support him as best as we could, but we feel that this is not enough, we need help. We need an education system that supports these children, that understands their asynchronous development. That understands that high abilities are a discouraging factor in the face of an education system that forces all students to move at the same speed. We need a society that understands that having high abilities is not a construct or a threat. That a child with high abilities faces many challenges, and that, just like a child with difficulties, he or she needs specific support so that they can develop to the best of their abilities.
We need a world that understands the meaning of the word equity because the false belief in equality has not brought answers to many children with such diverse needs.
We thank APCS for the important work they have been doing in this area and for all the support they provide to these children and their families.
— From a family in the center of the country
