Living With Live Wires

We have always had well-behaved children who listen to me, in most cases.

I remember orderly, usually quiet classrooms growing up, where the kids sat in their desks and did their assignments – at least in most cases, that was my memory.

So I wondered, why was I witnessing more and more crazy behaviors?

They were always talking about other things, doing other things, getting stressed out from having to sit still and go through lessons.

They never sat still in their chairs – my choice of chairs made it worse because they constantly tipped on them, fell over backwards and stood on them, and they preferred to balance on two of the chair legs more than sitting in them correctly. We now have a term for this at our house- it is called “Monkey Time.”

I bought wonderful math manipulatives that only served as building toys and great distractions to our learning- I called them distractions, they called it great fun.

They both preferred to ask numerous questions and they wanted to do their own projects more than the lessons I chose.

Certain things were very easy for them, and other things, like reading directions were not.  I didn’t think we would ever get anything done.

But, of course we did, just not in the way I planned.

[excerpt from my Minnesota Council for the Gifted and Talented State Conference presentation: Don't Fence Me In - Mastery, Creativity, and Adventure in the Home Education of Bright Children]