I haven’t been posting much this week because I haven’t had enough time to really flush out a number of things that I have been thinking about. Since it appears that a giant wad of uninterrupted spare time isn’t going to appear out of thin air, you get bullet points.
- On the church thing. Again, I am hoping Mr. A loses interest. Since he didn’t drag us to church last week, I suspect this is a strong possiblity. Besides, we don’t have enough time for another regular activity.
- I feel a little over-scheduled, though I know other people cram in more stuff than we do. Right now, M has school every morning, swimming lessons (Monday afternoons), Chinese lessons (thursday PM), Chinese class (Sunday PM) and Chinese dance class (sunday PM). Ideally, we would add an instrument soon, but I don’t think it can really happen until L starts preschool (please-oh-please let her start next fall).
- Speaking of Chinese school, this year is heaps better than last year. This is due, in no small part, to the new via mail registration system. Also, the school is located in a much larger building so they can have much smaller class sizes. According to M’s chinese teacher, chinese dance teacher and a friend who speaks chinese, M’s receptive comprehension in Chinese has really improved lately. Her spoken Chinese isn’t nearly as good, but she has much less opportunity to practice it. I think if we keep doing what we are doing and try to find some opportunities to have her in an environment where she has same-age peers only speaking chinese, she will improve rapidly. I have some ideas in mind for that. As for L, her language is improving daily and I will probably try to start her with a chinese tutor when she turns two this spring.
- I spent the last week researching the possibility of starting M in 1st grade next year instead of Kindergarten. I am very opposed to grade-skipping, but at Thanksgiving, my aunt who is a 4th grade teacher really put the screws on after hearing M read and do math word problems with my dad (don’t ask!) and said that kindergarten would be a bad placement for M. I blew her off, then my grandma sent me an article that talked about the benefits (academically AND socially) for grade skipping, which struck a cord for me. So then I had to go read about 57 books on the topic. After a lot of talking with Mr. A, research etc, we are still thinking kindergarten will be good for M next year. For one, her writing needs a lot more practice. For another, kindergarten is fun and I hate to think of a 5 year old cooped up doing math flash cards when she could have her last chance to build with blocks and sit on a floor circle at school. Also, one of the books I read said that enrichment such as learning a foreign language is an excellent alternative for kids who already have a grasp on the subject matter being taught at school. So I felt like that proved that our instincts are right on, so far, with respect to keeping M challenged and teaching her to work hard.
- All the education research I was doing involved reading books about “giftedness” and “gifted” education. I could write an entire post about how the term “gifted” irritates me, but I will try to suppress it. Also, all the books gave me flashbacks to being ashamed of being in a gifted class (woe is me!). Also, I flashed back to how my parents’ trying to make my sister feel ok that she didn’t do as well academically as I did made me feel like the way I learned was mildly shameful (like I got dealt a better hand and should be grateful but keep it to myself ?!?). I think that it is a cop-out to think of kids who learn differently as “gifted” like it is some kind of privilege. In truth, these kids are kids who simply have different educational needs than kids who learn like the majority. If it turns out that M is “gifted” (gag!), it will be a good bit of work for Mr. A and I to make sure she remains engaged and gets her educational needs met, the same as if she had another kind of learning difference.
- A couple people emailed me to see if I wanted to comment on the bruhaha about the disrupted adoption of a Korean girl by her Dutch adoptive parents. I don’t want to comment on it. Not because I don’t think it is an important topic, but right now I don’t have the brain space to get worked up over it. The adoption part of my brain is full-time processing other things that are more important to me, L and our family right now. (See below).
- I am continuing to research L’s history before we met her. This topic deserves at least a few posts all to itself. Collecting this information is HARD. Not finding the information, but processing things I have learned. The more work I do, the more obvious it is that ladybugs and red thread have absolutely no business in the story of L’s adoption. (Not that I ever thought they did!) The business of adoption is messy. L lost her family because the world is an unfair, fucked-up place. Every little bit of information (and they are VERY little bits here and there) lead me further toward the dark, unpleasant truth. I am not sorry that we are seeking this information, but I understand why other adoptive parents don’t want to have to face these things. At the same time, I am more committed than ever to trying to find out everything we can and I think acknowledging the reality will make me a better parent to L. So, onward I trudge.
- Tonight will be the first night that Mr. A and I have left the house alone together since L came home last March. We have to go to his work Xmas party, so it isn’t even like it will be fun. My parents are coming to watch the girls.
I am woefully stupid when it comes to Chinese adoption lore, and I have heard so many references to ladybugs and red threads, both “pro” (meaning: adoption is lovely! and magical!) and “con” (it’s a bunch of stupid propaganda) and I really do not understand what these symbols are supposed to represent.
I also hated being in the gifted program in school and tried to quit but wasn’t allowed.
Thanks for saying what you did about the search for L’s history. You know I’m right there with you.
With regards to the whole skipping kindergarten deal, I looked into it for my own four year old and came across several interesting articles about how being a more “advanced” child in kindergarten is actually a good thing because it helps children build a foundation of self-confidence when they see that they can successfully accomplish things with relative ease instead of finding everything to be a difficult challenge. Of course, I’m sure there are many articles suggesting the opposite, but that idea made sense to me and made me feel good about my decision to put my son into kindergarten after all. Besides, I thought that kindergarten was supposed to be about socialization more than anything and what four or five year old doesn’t need a little more experience in not hitting, not having tantrums, respecting the feelings of others, etc.?
I would love to know what you are doing to research L’s background. I understand why you might not be comfortable sharing this info, but I’m intrigued. The information we received was so sketchy at best. I would love to be able to tell my daughter everything I could about her life before us.
The ladybug lore started on a China adoption Yahoo group. My understanding is that years ago someone mentioned something about seeing a lot of ladybugs, and it was followed by referrals. The next month, someone else did the same. Before you knew it, ladybugs came to mean good luck and that referrals were on their way.
The red thread comes from an old Chinese story that says lovers are connected by a red thread and are destined to meet. The adoption community has adopted and adapted this story to now mean that the parents and children were destined to be together. This angers many because the implication is the birth family was then destined to lose their child.
If I got these wrong, please correct me!
I have never met anyone who was “gifted” in school who enjoyed wearing that label. I shudder to think any of my kids will have to deal with it. Ugh.
We considered skipping for Soleil, BUT once we saw how the school worked, we felt Kindergarten was the right place for her. Socially, she is learning the proper kindergarten stuff. Educationally, she is near the top of her grade, but that’s ok. The teachers give her work that challenges her. They shift the level of the work around for each kid. She feels “good” to be in Kindergarten. She likes it.
I don’t know how the schools are by you. Find out what you can about it. See if she won’t still be engaged in Kindergarten
I’d love to hear how you are keeping up L’s mandarin. We have a 16 month old home 3 1/2 months and are trying to figure out how to do anything as locally no classes start until 3. Any ideas would be really welcome.
Good luck on the search. Any information no matter how bad will be important to her later.
So, say I have a “gifted” kid. (How about we call it “smarter than entirely necessary” or something like that?) I am really interested in your perspective because I am, uh, not gifted by any means, so I don’t have any experience with what that’s like as a kid. I feel like I have this big learning curve, kind of like the one I’m facing parenting an Asian child when I’ve never been Asian. The point is, any further things you want to say on that topic will be gratefully received by me.
I was a “gifted” child, too. I could have skipped a grade or two, but my parents ultimately decided not to. I’m now in 11th grade and really appreciate being with people my own age. Plus, I had a friend who graduated early and missed out on a bunch of cool scholarships for studying abroad and stuff because she was too young.
As a former Special Ed teacher (believe it or not, Special Ed includes ‘gifted’) here is my take on the Kindy thing: I think Kindergarten is fine if the classroom and teacher are flexible. She can have fun playing with blocks and sitting on the floor, but when the rest of the kids are learning the Letter of the Week, she can be reading the book of the week, or whatever. When other kids are counting manipulatives to 20, she can be using them to add and subtract or write word problems, etc. Kindergarten is an exceptionally easy place to accommodate learning differences.
However, some teachers/schools make it their mission to funnel the kids who come in to Kindy from all over the spectrum into the center of the bell curve. The middle of the bell curve being where public school was designed to teach (and also mastery style learners, which I’m going to guess M. is one). This essentially means that academic learning will purposefully stop for M. So the other kids can catch up with her and they can send a class into 1st grade relatively close in ability level. This may not make a difference, if your goal is socialization and she is having fun. Besides you are supplementing her academically outside of school so she will really not be ‘stopped’ no matter what they do in the classroom.
Worst case scenerio, I think, is the teachers who are totally inflexible on a petty, day to day basis and will demand that M sit there and do stupid letter A worksheets or counting to 20 activities over and over because that is what all the other children are doing and the teacher can’t be bothered to come up with something different for different kids. This situation is where gifted kids start really hating school and become your stereotypical gifted underachievers.
So, it hugely depends on the program. But of all grades not to skip, even if you know all the material covered, Kindy is probably the most beneficial and flexible.
I don’t have your email, but I would like to get info on how to begin a birthparent search. I don’t really know where to begin, who to trust. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Kindergarten is the “new” First Grade. At least at the school where I work. There are no blocks. Every child has a desk with their name on it. It’s all-day and they doing some reading off the board. Also, as far as “the rug” is concerned, most of the classrooms up and including 2nd grade in my school have a rug area where the teacher will read a story to them once every couple days. In Kindergarten the story reading is more frequent, like once a day. You mention her writing, which makes me wonder how’s her cutting? Just curious about the fine motor.