Our road to BRIGHTLinks began in Minnesota. In 2015 it was clear that our Christian college-prep private school had worked for as long as it could; we’d made it to grade 4 and 2. They loved Isaac and Eli and had bent over backward to accommodate us, but they could not give Isaac enough of any subject for him to be challenged ("you don’t learn something new at school every day, Mom,") and they didn’t even notice how gifted Eli was. We worried more about Eli whose exuberant, creative self was diminishing. Aaron, a preschooler, was getting less from me than I’d have liked, especially as school issues took more time. We needed a new school—Eli especially—and we were moving anyway. Maybe we could move somewhere to find a good fit?
A friend suggested we apply to Davidson Young Scholars. I remember being skeptical; sure, my kids were extremely bright, but they weren’t THAT bright. I didn’t have a child who wrote in Norse runes or who could recite every battle company at Gettysburg; mine preferred LEGO and Star Wars movies to NOVA or spending time at the museum. But since Wake Academy required an IQ test, I figured we might as well get it and then see if we could apply to DYS.
I ended up taking Isaac (9) and Eli (7) separately to the same tester; the lady tested Eli in her home, which had cats. As soon as the test ended, she ran up to me “I’ve never seen a 7 yr old do this before! He got all of the fluid reasoning questions right!” Eli was unfazed, not excited or anxious, and as we got into the car his eyes were swelling shut. “Will we do stuff like this at the new school? That wasn’t boring.” His IQ test was the first time “school” was interesting, and all while he was having a massive allergic reaction to cats. What could he do if he felt well? They both qualified for DYS, and I began to rethink how gifted our kids really were.
We chose to move to Raleigh and visited schools in spring 2016. Wake Academy at least had other gifted kids with the same need: something different than the false choice between a content-free Crayola curriculum and a rigid, lifeless, worksheet one. It was a crazy plan, but we felt we had little left to lose.
As you probably know, Wake Academy failed before Christmas 2016, and Lisa and I decided to tie our rafts together and start homeschooling. We tried co-ops, classes, meetups, outings, etc. Nothing really worked. BRIGHTLinks came out of Lisa’s fervent desire that our children need to have real peers, and my continued sense they could handle intellectual challenges at much earlier ages than others believed. Yes, some 10 year olds are ready for hs computer science, and 11 year olds for college level. Yes, 3rd graders can learn about electrons and the periodic table and why compounds bond. They can even perform chemistry experiments and dissections. Yes, students thrive when they have real peers. The more we could grow BRIGHTLinks, the more we could share these benefits.
Perhaps the greatest benefit of BRIGHTLinks for me was finding other moms with whom I could share my concerns. The fear I was doing it wrong, that it was never working, that my kids weren’t learning, that they weren’t growing emotionally—I needed a place to talk about those concerns without hearing “you should put them in school” or “you place too much emphasis on their giftedness.” I needed to talk about how hard parenting these kids can be.
We’re now beginning year 9 of homeschooling. It looks different, with one off to college in days, and two becoming more independent. Our BRIGHTLinks needs have changed, too, but we hope new families find in it what we did: a community for the flourishing of these amazing children.
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