Most of my family is spread all over America, so I take pictures and send them via e-mail and post them in PhotoBucket for them to browse through. I also send them seeds and plants and trees. When we do get together for family gatherings, it is a joy to take them on tours and talk flowers. The grandkids love all the paths, the Koi pond, and all our animals. Their favorite thing I grow is fruit, especially the peaches. :) I do see people slow down and look from time to time and that makes me happy, but our house is built on a hill high up off the road and there are large trees, so they don't see much. Plus, most of the cottage garden flowers are situated in the back and along the north side of our cottage. However, since my DH cleared out the front along the top of the bank above the road, you can now see up into the north side of the yard, and right now it really shows up with all the fruit trees, shrubs and spring flowers in bloom. I hope to one day have a big white gazebo out there to enjoy. It will show from the road and add beauty to that part of our property. Someday, when we add onto the house, it will bump out that way with lots of windows. There will be access to a deck on that north side through French doors, so we will be able to sit out there and enjoy the view all year round. In spring, the view will be heavenly. All the flowering fruit trees and bulbs and shrubs and green grass. In summer, it is partially shaded most of the day and will be a great place to sit and have cookouts. In the fall, we can watch the colors change on the trees and the fall flowers bloom. The Canadian geese migration and enjoy the return of winter birds. On cold, snowy days in the winter we can enjoy the view from the dining room through the new wall of windows and the French doors. On warmer winter days, I will no doubt sit out there too. Visitors Will Be Welcome. Someday... I digressed a bit there...ah hum! Sharing plants and seeds with others on the Garden Web has been one of the most wonderful experiences in my gardening life! I enjoy giving "gifts" from the garden and I have also received generous pass-a-longs from many of you and others on other forums, as well, and my gardens thank you all for it. Mostly, I have all of you with whom I share my cottage garden, and I am very thankful for the friendship and the bond we have on this forum. ~Annie

This is a great thread. I'm a teacher (though I only do long-term sub jobs right now), and also GT certified and trained. I've also raised two children, one of whom passed all the GT tests as a kindergartner and is now in college. My other child passed a few of the GT tests as a third-grader, but honestly I don't see her as 'gifted.' Part of the problem is that this school district includes achievement tests in the battery of GT tests, which is completely inappropriate, but there it is. And she is an extremely hard-working kid. Anyway, I've always been hugely interested in GT education and absolutely LOVE working with these students. But I'd like to let you in on a couple of dirty little secrets.... The first secret is that there are many teachers, even GT-certified who don't LOVE teaching these kids. In fact, they often appear (to me) to be defensive and ready to shoot down these kids at every opportunity. I think it is difficult for a parent to truly realize this because they aren't in the classroom. But I have witnessed it over and over again.... It's heartbreaking, and I try to intercede when I can, but that isn't always possible. The second 'secret' is about teachers being expected to differentiate instruction for all the levels in the room. It's a joke. Not because the teacher doesn't try. It's just a ludicrous system. It is politically incorrect to group students by ability, and no longer allowed anywhere that I've found. So a typical classroom has students with IQs below 70 and students with IQs above 125, occasionally very far above. Imagine you are trying to teach 25 children something -let's say .... how to knit. Some of your students have been knitting for four years, and some could not tell you what a knitting needle looks like. While you are trying to figure out how to group them, four boys have grabbed needles and are trying to stab each other, two more have grabbed your balls of yarn and tossed them to each other, which has caused them to unravel of course. The girls are yelling at the boys to stop it. Some are crying because they really, really want to learn how to knit. So you finally bring order to the chaos, and figure you can divide them into three groups, which does not truly correlate to the levels in the room, but is the best you can do. You truly need the entire time with each one of the groups. But you only have 1/3 of the time with each of course. And what do you suppose the other two groups are doing while you are working with one? You have given them some books about knitting to keep them occupied, but they are old and have only black and white photos so that isn't terribly successful. So you start with the least experienced group because they need the most time. After you spend ten minutes with the first group, you will barely have begun your session with the second group before a few students from the first group come running over with problems. And then that happens again. So the second group's instruction takes twice as long as it should because of the interruptions. And since the third group's time was used for the second group, suddenly, there's the bell! Guess which group didn't get attended to AGAIN?!?!? You may remember that I was fairly strong-minded in the original post on this subject -and felt you needed to think about removing your daughter from a toxic environment. If she wants to be at this school and the good outweighs the bad, okay. But from the sounds of it, her educational needs are not being met. Which might be okay if you or she are supplementing them at home. The way I see it, there are two types of needs for these kids. The first set of needs is what she needs to get into a college where she will hopefully truly have her abilities matched to her environment. And the second set of needs is what she needs to feed her hungry brain. The first set of needs could be covered in one year rather than four for most of these kids. When the information is drawn out over four years, boredom and frustration set in, and many GT kids simply begin to tune out. Some lose all of their enthusiasm and interest in learning and begin to fail. And then they can't get into the colleges where they might truly flourish for the first time. As I used to tell my son, don't kid yourself -there are some extremely bright people who never made it to college. There is a whole group of gifted dropouts, mostly boys, who didn't get the first set of needs met. And Anele -it sounds to me as if your daughter IS gifted. The sheer fact that she is interested in reading what you describe is a give away. I hope I haven't offended any one here -I am passionate about the short shrift these very top students are getting in the K-12 system, all over the nation. It is a huge loss to them, and a huge loss to our country. It's mind-boggling to me that we put forth so much time, money and energy to the first-string on the football team, but not to the academic team. Okay, stepping down off the soapbox now....

Hi to all, God Bless you. I hope I have the faith and courage you all do when the time comes. I have been lerking in the shadows for weeks now. Reading and hoping to see the magical answer to the question our 21 year old daughter threw at us last month. Our 3rd grandchild (second grandson)will be born in Septmenber. She has decided she doesn't want to raise him after he is born. She has had a tough life for a young adult. Cervical cancer was discovered the week before her 18th birthday. She has had several surgeries to remove the cancerous cells and has very little cervix left. They said sh'e never get pregnant (other female problems too) and if she did she'd never carry till term. She is determined to have a healthy baby boy, but doesn't feel she's ready to raise him and wants her father and I to take him immediately after he is born and raise as our son. A million warning lights flash in my head. 1) We are too old 43 and 44. 2) Our youngest child of 5 is 16 and very active in school and will go on to college in three years. We'll then have an empty nest and were looking forward to it. 3) Our oldest two are raising their children. 4) We like being grandparents. Can send the kids back when we get too tired. 5) What if she changes her mind after she grows up and wants him back? 6) I just got a wonderful new job last July. Don't know about raising a child and working full time. Adoption by a non-relative is out of the question. My youngest brother and SIL have not been able to conceve and are finally after 3 years getting their baby boy from Guatamola in August or September. My older brother and SIL had "help" conceiving and have two beautiful little girls. Our family is very close and I am unsure of what the opionion of others would be if daughter gave baby up. I haven't even begun to think of what my mother would say. I know I am rambling. I'm just so glad to have somewhere to bounce my fears and ideas off of. My husband is very supportive and will do what ever needs to done for the good of our grandson. P.S. Daughter just moved to Florida. We live in Michigan. Would love to hear from you all on how to prepare for this lifestyle change. Take Care.

I've never heard that "SWAN" but really that's it! They nickname it "Happy to Starve" in gastro school (per my gastroenteroligist) And many call it "Putnam's Syndome" but that's just a nick name as well given that Dr. Putnam has spent so much time analzying kids with this problem. They tell me it's a great deal like when you're told your child has died of SIDS. There is always a reason children die, but systemically they can't find the reason and so you get SIDS. With us, we got Putnam's or SWAN I guess (Dr Putnam is our doctor as well) :o( Eating disorders normally happen with children who have special needs, like autistic children, children with brain disorders, etc., but we don't have any of those problems so the fun part of this is dealing with insurance companies for treatment, when he has no official disease (his actuall diagnosis is Fail to Thrive without reason). The insurance companies seem to want him to go ahead and "Fail" and we insist that isn't the route we want to go. I learned abut the Kennedy Kreiger clinic on feeding disorders and while reading realized they were describing my child to a T! They do work with kids with much more significant issues involved in their eating problems (ie cleft pallet or inability to swallow etc) but they also have a place for the Jesse's of the world who just won't eat because it hurts. Somehow we need to figure out why it hurts before we begin treatment....that's the hard part. But fortunately we're going to do more poop testing first, instead of anything that will hurt him. Thanks for SWAN. I'm going to have to keep that on the tip of my tongue because I'm tired of having to explain this over and over and over to people who want to hear a name fancier than "Happy to Starve" (Which actually fits him to a T as well)