By twelve months, my son was reading signs at the mall. By his second birthday, he could read anything. At around 30 months, after focusing on a "MasterCard" logo, he commented that "Red minus orange equals negative, yellow." When he was three, he showed me and asked me to figure out two equations he had written:

A - l = 1
A = 10

When I asked him to explain them to me, he smiled with great glee and sang out, "Binary code! Base Two!" Mind you, he was not only working in bases other than decimal, but also using algebraic letter substitutions, entirely self-taught.

We thought school would be a breeze for Peter and for us. We thought that educators would be delighted by Peter's intense curiosity and ability to integrate new knowledge. Instead, we were met with one roadblock after another. The public school would not consider him in any way until he was five, so when he turned four, we placed him in a private school pre-kindergarten. Although he could read and do math as well as or better than the average fourth-grader, the school refused any academic accommodations. The argument was, "If we let him do second-grade science now, what will he do when he is in second grade?" My self-assured, sparkling little boy became intensely sad. He became so clingy to Mommy that I felt like I had to peel him off me at times. In school, he began exhibiting behaviors that showed his unhappiness in a manner very inconsistent with the sweet-natured, nonviolent boy we knew at home.

Finally, my trips to the state capital, my phone calls and letters to everyone within the public school administration paid off. The public school took him from pre-K and placed him, at age five, in a third grade self-contained "highly gifted" classroom. It was wonderful for a little while simply because there were a few new things to learn. However, the teacher's idea of a fascinating project was a report on chickens. Only once was Peter allowed to pick his own topic for study. His favorite book at the time, dog-eared from being read, reread, and taken to bed like a teddy bear, was Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. Peter was six, and he decided to do his independent study on quantum physics. He read Weinburg's The First Three Minutes, Asimov's Understanding Physics, and a book called Instant Physics by Tony Roth which he thought was hysterically funny. (The only joke I understood was, "What does a duck with an advanced degree in quantum physics say? Quark, quark!") Physics professors at a nearby university were quite amazed when he joined in their professional conversations.

In the name of "socialization," elementary school teachers forced him to play soccer during recess when he didn't like soccer and never got near the ball (the other kids were three years older and a foot taller, on average.) He would do a wonderfully creative project, and the teacher would say his mommy did it for him, or that some bureaucratic detail meant his project was unacceptable. Some teachers denied that Peter was particularly gifted. One said Peter would be "normal" if we would just make him play Little League baseball. In the school system's never-ending quest for "socialization," they insisted that he repeat fourth grade. His grades were excellent; their rationalization was that he would have to repeat some grades because he simply would not be "ready" for middle school at age eight. No kidding, that was the reason.

Peter was first formally diagnosed as suffering major depressive episodes at age six. He had nothing positive at school. The teachers said to his face that he didn't belong in their classrooms. His classmates called him names, pushed, and kicked him. They obviously picked up on the teachers' repudiation of Peter. It was open season, and Peter was Bambi caught in the headlights. He began inventing excuses not to go to school: headaches, stomachaches--even foot aches! He stayed sad, withdrawn, and clingy. It took him hours to get to sleep at night, and there were periods as long as ten days when he did not eat-at all. He lost significant body weight, and showed little interest in sports or play or even academics.

It was not until he was eight years old and we managed to get him into high school that we rediscovered the sparkling little boy we knew before he started school.

Every expert who has evaluated him has found that he does less well on easier tasks because they are boring and he loses interest. The summer of 1997, a neuropsychologist reported that "failure to place Peter at his academic level would result in serious emotional damage."

Eight-year-old Peter entered a local public high school in August 1997. He took upper-level honors and Advanced Placement courses, and he has thrived. It is a whole new world for him where he actually gets to learn "academic stuff" in a school environment where nobody routinely abuses him, physically or emotionally. Most teachers actually encourage him to attend their classes, and his classmates are pretty nice to him. The only complaint from teachers during his first semester was his habit of bursting into song in the middle of class-even during the precalculus exam! Compared to his life-threatening depression in earlier years, these expressions of spontaneous joy were a delightful problem to work on!

During the 1997-98 school year, he took Honors Computer Science, Precalculus, Art Ill, and Honors Chemistry. The following year he took Advanced Placement Calculus BC, Advanced Placement Computer Science, Honors Music Ensemble, and Spanish I. This past school year (1999-2000) he took Spanish II, Honors U. S. History, Advanced Placement Chemistry, Advanced Placement Physics, and a post-calculus Internet course in Linear Algebra & Multivariable Calculus arranged by the school system through Stanford University.

In the fall of 2000, we plan something different. At the same high school, Peter will go "undercover" as a ninth-grader. He will be almost 12; the incoming freshmen will be about 14. He has signed up to take ninth-grade Honors English, ninth-grade Honors Social Studies (Legal, Economic, and Political Systems), a basic key-boarding class, and a basic computer applications class. He will continue to work on appropriate math at home via the Internet with Stanford. We have a bet going as to how long he can keep his ninth-grade classmates from figuring out that he is in his fourth year of high school. Our goals for the 2000-2001 school year are for Peter to learn how to "hang out" and to work on his organizational skills.

Although it has occasionally been awkward or difficult for Peter in high school, because he did stand out as the only half-pint cruising the hallways, he has been happy and healthy there. It is a huge advance from his days of being "Bambi caught in the headlights."

Permission Statement

Permission to reprint this article has been granted to the Davidson Institute for Talent Development by author, Jill Howard, and California Association for the Gifted's publication, The Communicator.

This article is provided as a service of the Davidson Institute for Talent Development, a 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to supporting profoundly gifted young people under 18. To learn more about the Davidson Institute’s programs, please visit www.DavidsonGifted.org.