When “Gifted” Isn’t a Gift

I was a gifted child.

It’s something I don’t say often because it’s interpreted as a boast. Being smart is good, but being “too smart” isn’t allowed. It’s a shameful, dirty secret. It’s funny, really; kids can be talented at basketball, piano or painting without anyone accusing them of showing off, but if a child learns quickly and is excited about learning it’s viewed as a put down against everyone else.

One of the things you learn along the way as a gifted child is that you aren’t allowed to be yourself. No one likes you if you can answer all the questions, so you stop answering so many, then they say “Don’t you know the answer? I thought you were supposed to be gifted?” If you’re work is so-so, the teacher gets on your case about not working up to your potential. If your work is great, the teacher holds it up as a shining example for the rest of the class to live up to. That doesn’t help much socially, either.

You try to fit in with the other kids, but your interests are different. You crave deeper conversations or more complex activities and you find yourself alone because no one around you is like you. When you finish your work early, the teacher just gives you more of the same kind of work, even though it’s boring and you would prefer to do something more challenging. When you’re taken out of class for “enrichment activities” the regular teacher gets mad that you’re behind in the work that happened when you were gone. It’s like there’s no way to win.

Once I got to high school I met more kids like me and it helped. Sadly, a lot of them had problems, too. They were misunderstood by their peers and teachers, or they were pressured by their parents to be perfect. Some of them dropped out of school, some of them became addicted to drugs, and some of them went on to do ok. Despite what a lot of people think, gifted doesn’t equal guaranteed success.

My younger brother is one who was really messed up by the system; he taught himself to read before he was 3 years old. When he started kindergarten, he was reading several grade levels ahead and he knew his multiplication tables. They decided to skip him ahead by 2 grades, which stalled his development for years. We figure he was only 12 years old socially and emotionally until he was 25, despite continuing to grow academically.

Things haven’t changed that much since I was a kid. I’ve taught gifted kids for several years and I hear the same kinds of judgments from other teachers that were around 20 years ago.

• You should behave better than this because you’re gifted.
• You should be more mature because you’re gifted.
• You should have done better on that assignment.
• You think you’re better than everyone else.

I married a guy who was identified as gifted as a kid, too. His social history follows the same general path of isolation that so many gifted kids have. And we have a beautiful, brilliant 3 year old daughter who seems to be on that same path, too. Every time I see that excitement in her eyes from learning something new, part of me is thrilled with her and part of me cringes inside. I don’t want her to feel suicidal at 11 like I did. I don’t want her to feel misunderstood like I did. I’m afraid for her because I know what’s coming and I don’t know how to change it.

It’s especially hard for bright girls, I think. Right now she’s not self-conscious about her love of learning, but she probably will be some day soon. Even if she never brags or boasts, people will hold it against her that she “gets it”, as if her mere existence is an insult to everyone else. Her weaknesses will be pointed out again and again to take her down. She’ll stop being herself so enthusiastically and this big part of who she is will become her dirty, little secret that she can’t ever talk about because if she ever mentions it, everyone will think she’s showing off instead of reaching out.

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But here is what I am worried about when The Man and I contemplate school options²:

I am worried that my child will stop saying his favorite color is pink (or sometimes purple). I am worried that he will be teased for — or, in the interest of not being teased, “politely discouraged from” — wearing blouses and ponytails and black mary janes. I am worried he will learn to say “I can’t do that, only girls do that” — and that he won’t be corrected by the adults who watch him. I am worried he will learn that “boys have penises and girls have vaginas” and that vulvas and clitorises and people whose gender are not accurately assessed by the shape of their genitals at birth will be invisible, unspeakable.

I am worried that our first, so-tentative steps to teach him to speak race will be erased in the name of the racism that masquerades as “color-blindness”. I am worried that he will learn to mistake cultural appropriation for “diversity appreciation”. I am worried he will learn a Thanksgiving tale with polite Puritans and benevolent natives and no sequelae of genocide and war and nation theft and debts still owed. (He may be too young to learn of the hundred thousand greater and lesser evils perpetrated — past and present — against America’s first peoples, but don’t teach him a pleasant lie whose eventual revelation will indicate betrayal by those he trusted to speak truth.)

I am worried he will learn to fear for his environment before he learns to love it. I am worried he will learn about vanishing habitats and diminishing resources, instead of worms and bugs and the ecosystem of his backyard and the abundance all around him. (Let his passion be sparked first, before anxieties are ignited.) I am worried that he will be taught to be “green” out of guilt and shame, rather than to reuse and conserve as an act of creativity and consideration.

I am worried he will be taught to be schooled, not allowed to live and thus to learn. I am worried he will start to believe that “learning” is done only at school, that “knowledge” is handed down only by teachers, that his own drive to experiment and experience and question and create will be squashed to fit in the box of “education”. I am worried he will learn to hate “math” instead of discovering the joy (yes, I said joy) of playing (yes, I said playing) with numbers. I am worried that reading will become A Thing, which he Does or Does Not Do, with a time line and judgments and comparisons with others, rather than something fun and functional he’ll pick up when he’s ready, something we share together in the meantime.

I am worried that he will be inducted into a binary world of bullies and victims and will learn that is he one or the other, when I know he is neither. I am worried he will learn that words wound, that conflict is resolved through scuffles when  no one is looking, that no one likes a tattle-tale, that adults are judges and juries not mediators or guides, that hurting others is bad only because it engenders punishment or “consequences”. I am worried no one will help him find better words to create more loving connections, that forced apologies will take the place of heartfelt amends, that he will learn that relationships are to be tallied, not nurtured.

In short, I’m afraid that his brainwashing by kyriarchy (already begun, because we can never escape it completely) will rapidly accelerate.

In the forthcoming Part Two: How I offer questions which I consider important in making this decision, seeking to mitigate and minimize kyriarchy’s influence on my still-so-young child.

TRIGGER WARNING There is a trigger warning on this post for descriptions of child sexual abuse. Please do not read if doing so would put your own health or sanity in jeopardy.

I didn’t have the words

I am so passionate about speaking to children openly about sexuality. On my watch, my child will never be slut-shamed or otherwise silenced. We must offer our kids our listening skills and trustworthiness, and we must speak a language they are comfortable with. I wish all kids were taught at a young age about their anatomy and the proper terms and most of all about consent.

This is why.

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When I was nine years old my father asked me if I had a boyfriend. I was mortified: at my school, to ‘have a boyfriend’ simply meant to have a crush on a specific boy. We weren’t up to juvenile dating yet – it was all schoolyard giggles. Of course, my father wasn’t to know this: his interpretation of boyfriend was much more adult.

It was too mortifying to admit that there was a boy I had a crush on, so I told my father that no, I didn’t have a boyfriend. He pressed me once or twice more for a different answer, he told me I had to wait until sixteen before I was allowed to have a boyfriend, and then he let it go.

I have played that conversation over in my head thousands of times in the last couple of decades. I know now, as an adult, that this was my father asking me if I was sexually active. This was my father asking me about abuse. This was a parent’s woefully inadequate response to his daughter’s suffering.

At school I was being groomed by an older boy (not the one I had a crush on). He was no more than 11 years old but he was already a bully and a predator. He would contrive to give our teacher a reason for us both to be kept in at lunchtime. At first I thought it was because he liked me. It was a tiny school with composite classes, a huge yard, and inadequate supervision. If we had detention we were alone. This boy (I’ll call him S) would say things like ‘you can have my Garfield sticker’, sweet-talk to an innocent nine year old. And then he would touch me. At first, it was ‘tickling’, over my clothing – first my feet or armpits, and then sometimes my crotch. It was not an unpleasant sensation, I’d giggle and squirm. It felt illicit and wrong and I’d protest but eventually allow it. And then afterwards, he’d tell me if I ‘tattled’ something bad would happen: my parents would find out and they would punish me, he would tell the other boys I picked my nose and ate it, that type of thing. S was big for his age and he had an older brother who was popular and powerful. I, on the other hand, was the school’s punching bag and perpetual nerd. Even the five-year-olds felt safe teasing me. It goes without saying that when S made a threat I had reason to fear him.

I’m fairly sure that a teacher caught S touching me one day by looking through the window into the classroom. He came right in and sent us outside. On my way out, the teacher told me I was a ‘disgusting girl.’ I don’t recall if he said anything to S.

In hindsight, I realize that this roughly coincided with the boyfriend talk my father had with me. The story had gone home, and my parents obviously promised to talk to me about it. But when my father asked me those questions, I had no idea he meant S. I had no idea that a boy who frightened me and manipulated me (and yes, in some ways perhaps flattered and thrilled me) could be a ‘boyfriend.’ I had no thought that what was happening to me was in any way my fault or my choice but clearly it was in the eyes of my teachers and parents. And because of their own awkwardness or prejudices, they failed to protect me.

Inevitably, it escalated.

S and his older brother would regale us with descriptions of pornography on the school bus: I think their parents often passed out drunk in front of the TV and the kids would simply sneak into the lounge then and watch the rest of whatever porn movie they’d had on. Ours was a quiet and isolated school: their descriptions were disgusting and bizarre, titillating and terrifying. I have a dim memory of one involving what seems now, to my adult mind, to be a gang rape of a ‘secretary’ character by men wielding staplers and letter openers.

Our schoolyard offered plenty of opportunities for seclusion. Once S abandoned the grooming phase he moved on to physical coercion. I think there were only a few incidents, but since I never wrote or spoke about them and actively disassociated myself, I can’t really be sure of the details. It was a horrible time. I was desperately ashamed and almost welcomed the bullying I got from other kids because I hated myself so much for allowing this to happen to me. He kneed me in the chest. He said unspeakable things to me. He hurt me. He wasn’t quite bold or strong or something enough to rape me other than digitally or orally and for that I am thankful. I can’t believe I just typed that. Thankful.

This was a boy who, at 11 years old, was doing these things. This was a boy who at 11 years old was already telling me about the abuse I should inflict on my own siblings so that I could tell him about it. (I never did such a thing, I hasten to add. But imagine if I had? It’s not something I can think about for too long.) And already, at that age, he was skilled at making me believe that I had ‘asked for it’ and that everyone around me would blame me for being a slut.

Blessedly, his family moved out of the area and I never saw any of them again. By the time I went to highschool, I never heard his name any more. I haven’t spoken it aloud for two decades.

Sometimes, I feel guilty for never telling anyone. I feel as though I should have been stronger than the shame, and should be now. I wonder if there are other women or children he has hurt. I wonder what was being done to him that made him that way. I wonder if speaking up could have helped other women and girls. Or him. Or me.

S’s father and uncle were truck drivers, and he and his brother often talked of how they wanted to carry on the family business. One day I was sitting in my car and I looked over to see the side of a big truck, with [S’s surname] Brothers Transport emblazoned on the side.

I didn’t see the driver’s face. It could have been him.

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Marriage, Redefined

As far as anyone can tell, we are a typical family.

We’re a middle class couple living in the suburbs with three kids. He drives a sedan, I a minivan. He has a white collar job, I stay at home. Our children would best be described as well-adjusted, bright and happy. We volunteer at the school, around the neighborhood, in our community. By exterior appearances alone, we are normal to the point of boring.

But everyone has a secret, do they not?

Ours is that we have an open marriage. And it works, too. In fact, I would argue that it works better than if we were monogamous.

We weren’t always so non-traditional. We were high school sweethearts, and for the first several years of our relationship, I was completely opposed to anything other than the norm: two people together, and that should be enough. Anything beyond fantasizing about a movie star was strictly off limits. I believed a lot of the misinformation out there about open marriages: The only person who benefits is the man, the woman only does it to make her partner happy and/or try to save the marriage, and it will surely – beyond a doubt – destroy your relationship.

So far, I’ve found none of these things to be true.

I was the one who brought up the idea of swinging – the term that best fits our marital lifestyle – eight years ago. I had always been curious about women, and thought I might be bisexual, but had never had the opportunity to have an experience with another female before becoming a wife and mother. My partner certainly wasn’t opposed to the idea, and was willing to let me try this on my own if that was more comfortable for me.

But I wanted it to be our experience, as a couple. We found just the right person – a long time friend of ours who has been in a successful open marriage for years – and had a great time. It wasn’t awkward, it didn’t put stress on our relationship, and it seemed to emphasize our strengths: Trust, honesty and communication. Without those, we couldn’t sleep with other people. However, without those, I wouldn’t want to anyway. Feeling secure and loved is essential in any marriage, but especially in an open one.

So, why do we do it? I don’t do it to please him, nor he to please me, or to save a marriage that needs no saving. We love each tremendously, and agree that if either of us ever wants to go back to a monogamous lifestyle, we’ll do it without question.

We look swinging as an extension of our already amazing sex life. Bringing other people into the bedroom on occasion (and those occasions are fairly rare due to how busy our lives are and because we don’t often go out looking for new opportunities) is, to us, a lot like using sex toys, watching porn, or telling each other fantasies. It’s another way to spice things up and share something new and exciting together. I have had the opportunity to sleep with a few other people without my husband present, but I much prefer to have him there. We both agree, however, that having the option be intimate without the other spouse – after clearing it with the other person first, of course – feels liberating, even if seldom used.

I don’t think we’re any better or worse than other couples because we have an open relationship, nor do I believe this is a lifestyle that would suit everyone. However, in an age where the divorce rate is sky high and people are feeling more disconnected from each other than ever, maybe we need to be more open-minded about our definition of marriage.

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TRIGGER WARNING There is a trigger warning on this post for quotes of abusive language and descriptions of abuse. Please do not read if doing so would put your own health or sanity in jeopardy.

It’s Never Simple

There was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very, very good. But when she was bad, she was horrid. –Nursery rhyme by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

It’s never simple.

Him picking me up and carrying me around for a whole minute when his sports team won. Sat out with neighbors on the front lawn having beer and wine and watching the sun go down, smiling, joking. Having a barbecue in the back yard listening to music and dancing with each other until it grew dark.

Him not speaking to me for two weeks for being five minutes late back one night. Me sleeping in the second bedroom crying myself to sleep. Pleading with him, sobbing, for him to forgive me. Him, shouting at me as I cried, insults getting worse and worse the more I sobbed. Literally getting on my knees and asking him not to dump me. Desperation rising. The relief when finally he said he would, but I’d have to work really hard now. Me, thanking him. The pain in my eyes the next morning from the sobbing.

We sat cuddled up on the couch watching episodes of Star Trek: DS9 every night. We’d go to the bar and chat and smile over beers. We’d go to bed and I’d lie behind him with my arm curling around him, lazily thumbing the curly hairs on his chest. He came back from work every now and again having been to the store and bought me a Doctor Who DVD. I once walked two miles carrying a box of heavy glass dinner plates because I remembered him talking about how much he loved the square plates at his friends’ house.

You stupid, fat bitch, he said. You lazy, stupid fat bitch. You’ve been in your bathrobe all day and you’ve done fucking nothing around here.
I have! I’ve done the dishes, and the baby was crying so much I couldn’t put him down to do anything else.
I thought you were getting a sling to solve all those problems, but no, it’s just more money you’ve spent on hippie bullshit.
That’s not fair, I have been doing some things, it’s just that I can’t do everything yet, I will be able to, give me time!
You’re a stupid, fat, ugly lazy bitch. You’re useless. Absolutely fucking useless. Thoughtless. Selfish. You don’t give a shit about me. It’s always about you, and what you can and can’t do. What about my needs?

We reminisced about the parties we used to go to, the clubs, or sometimes staying in to take ecstasy together, talking about everything and nothing except how much we loved each other, opening up our innermost thoughts and secrets. We remembered, or didn’t remember, what we’d done before the baby. We joked about the time he threw up in front of a cop in the middle of the city while he’d been coming up; we laughed about the time I wrote down the deep and meaningful thoughts I had on acid, which turned out to be garbage the next day.

We glossed over the fact that he’d take advantage of how loved-up I was on a pill, get me to dress up in too-tight underwear that hurt my drug-sensitive skin, get me to fuck him when I just wanted to sit and chat or dance, how in clubs he’d always make me go up to men to flirt with them to get more pills when we’d run out.

When I had morning sickness in the early days of my pregnancy, he’d cook me a healthy meal every night with lots of vegetables – “even if you just keep some down, at least it’s nutrients”. He wanted to keep the pregnancy test with the “positive” result because of how happy he was. He got his friend to come over to decorate the second bedroom as a nursery for the new baby.

You’ll have to be induced.
You know I don’t want to be. There’s no good reason, except that I’m two weeks “overdue”. They can monitor me every other day to be on the safe side.
And who’s going to drive you to the hospital then? I won’t. And besides, I want to be able to tell my boss when I can take my paternity leave. You’ll just have to be induced.

He’d sit with the new baby on his knee. The baby would lie on his knees, tiny little thing. He’d hold his hands and make him do pretend boxing. He’d smile like every doting father. He extended his paternity leave to three weeks by taking vacation just so he could spend more time with us. He was upset when it finished.

When the baby was just six weeks old he wouldn’t even speak to me he was so angry. Angry that he thought I had Post Partum Depression and this was why the house was a mess. Angry that this constantly crying baby would stop crying if I’d just give in and give him a bottle. Angry that I was using the baby’s crying as an “excuse” not to keep the house tidy and iron his shirts. Angry that I was still eating as much as I ate when I was pregnant. He was so angry and quiet that I went to stay with a friend. He said he’d only have me back if I took anti-depressants, made efforts to lose the baby weight and gave the baby at least one bottle a day.

When I came close to a breakdown after working outside the home full time for a year (not my choice but his), he was utterly supportive of me working part-time. He helped me with the job application. He didn’t say a word about me not earning. He came home from work every day and asked how my day had been. He made me a special meal when I got my new job.

I would sleep with you, but I can’t get used to your new shape, it’s a lot to get used to when you consider how slim you were when we first met. And I wish you made more of an effort. You just expect me to be overcome with lust when you dress like a scruffy Mom, with your short hair, no makeup, and how you go bra-free, not that it’s your fault they’re saggy but you could at least wear a bra when we’re having sex.

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And this was the cycle of it; he would be: happy, kind, nice for ages, then a bit cool, which always made me fear I’d done something wrong, really cool and quiet, ignoring me, then when I asked him what was wrong, because I couldn’t bear being ignored, he’d get angry, really, really angry, with hateful, hurtful, nasty words and the occasional glass of water thrown over me (but never physical violence), always laughing and getting worse when I cried, always trying to anger me to the point where I’d say something nasty to him in return, so then he could be utterly justified in the things he said to me. Then eventually forgiveness (because it was always me who was wrong) and even happy, and kind. And the nice, nice, nice bit would go on for a long, long time, sometimes months, once or twice close to a year. I’d think things had changed.

And I was frightened. Frightened of becoming a single mother (it’s hard, but not the end of the world by any stretch of the imagination). Frightened he’d do something to try and take my baby from me (I was right on that score, initially). Frightened I’d lose our joint friends (I did), frightened I wouldn’t be able to cope on my own (I can, and better), frightened of what people would think, frightened that no one would believe me (at least one friend didn’t; hey, after all, he never hit me so it wasn’t abuse, right?), frightened of telling him it was over and what he’d say. I was frightened people would think me a fool for not leaving earlier (do you?), for letting him talk to me like that, or a bad mother for letting my baby stay in that situation.

I was frightened of telling people, too. Because I thought they’d tell me to leave him. Because they wouldn’t understand that he was only like this very occasionally. Because I thought if I told them, and then didn’t leave, they’d say it was my fault. But I didn’t want to be told to leave him. I wanted to be told how to make him stop being like this. No one ever managed to tell me that.

In the end, I didn’t leave for a long time. But I did, eventually. And life carries on. I still see him; we’re still on speaking terms; friendly, even, to a point. I no longer think things have changed. I’m not naive and I know at any moment he could turn. But for the sake of our child I am friendly, even nice to him. I even have a laugh and a joke with him occasionally. You might think I should be fighting him in the courts for full custody; how can I let my child be raised by such a monster? You might think I’m lucky that he even sees his child; many don’t.

But it’s never simple.

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