Albert Einstein was a Dummy?

No, obviously, he wasn't, but there was some doubt about his intelligence when he was a child.

By now, many of you are aware of our search for a new school for Pumpkin. He has been attending Ricks School for Gifted Children, but I'm extremely undecided about whether he ought to continue there or enroll elsewhere. For starters, Pumpkin does not want to return to Ricks. He's told me so on at least two separate occasions. Also, well, there's the tuition, which seems outrageously expensive to me for a preschool. I mean, it's more like tuition for a year of college...community college anyway...or possibly even a year of grad school...part-time...at in-state residence rates.

Whatever. My point is that I've been looking around at other schools trying to find one that's a good fit for Pumpkin, but so far, I haven't had much luck. The thing is that I'm not altogether certain that Pumpkin NEEDS to be in a special school, but I'm also not altogether certain that he doesn't. If I knew with absolute certainty that he did, then I would find a way to come up with the tuition no matter what. But I just really don't know.

Today, I was reading up on a school called Community School for the Gifted. It's slightly more affordable than Ricks, plus I have the option of only sending him for 3 days instead of 5 (which I'm totally against, btw, but which is what Ricks has him in for next year). One of the items I was reading was an article about the special needs of gifted children, etc. Apparently, gifted children have a different way of learning, and they often do poorly in regular classrooms because of it. This, in turn, leads them to drop out of high school at the same rates as the lowest 2% of the general population (the other side of the special needs spectrum), which is something I mentioned in a previous post (I just hadn't heard yet about the different ways of learning).

Among the characteristics of giftedness are: an obsessive need to understand, perfectionism, and a need for logical analysis...among others. And although I can see the entire list of characteristics in Pumpkin, I still have trouble believing that he may truly be *gifted.* When he pesters me with questions about why, where, when, etc, I literally yell at him to please stop. (Hey, at least I say please.) All of this pondering only brings me back to square one. I have an appointment to tour a Catholic school this afternoon. I'll keep y'all posted.