Today there wasn't any school because of a rain storm. It's much like the very rare snow day from when I was a kid, except that school was called off the day before the storm. It was anticipated to have very strong winds to knock down trees and such heavy rains that it was sure to flood. Well, the wind never really showed up to make it the crazy storm it was supposed to be. The rain was heavy and there was flooding in some areas, but nothing like the aquapocolyse it was made out to be. We took off of work and just hung out with the kids all day. We made cookies, watched a movie, played games. It was a lot of fun. It is still raining heavily. It hasn't stopped and it won't stop for another 24 hours. We'll probably get 4 inches of rain from this storm!
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My son seems to be doing better emotionally. We've been taking him to therapy and talking to him a lot on a pretty deep level. He's an intense child, so it's no surprise that his feelings are so strong. He doesn't like to talk about feeling so hopeless, but I check in every couple of days to gauge it. I've, of course, tried to find some information online about depression in children. There isn't much, especially for a child that hasn't had a traumatic situation to spark it. There are some articles on gifted kids and depression, but most of it is geared toward adolescents, not 7 year olds.
It's a frightening time and it's lonely. There isn't a supportive place to find people in the same situation. I know we aren't the only ones, but it's not an easy thing to talk about. How can a kid be so depressed so young? How can he ask questions that even the therapist says is more appropriate for a teenager? His cognitive and emotional mismatch is making it so hard for him to cope. Even mentioning giftedness alienates people. I don't even want to say the word 'gifted' anymore because people don't understand. Yet, it is a cause of the depression to feel so deeply and to understand things that are beyond the emotional ability to process. Depression and giftedness seem to go hand in hand. This isn't just going to go away. This is going to be a life long issue.
He said he "just realized how other kids react to him". He constantly comes up with new games to play on the playground at school. It is something he loves to do and it hurts him deeply when the other kids don't want to play his game. It happened over a month or so that the kids all wanted to play dodgeball instead of his game. It sent him into a tailspin when the daily rejection mixed with grief, schedule changes, growth spurt, parents going out of town, and who knows what else. There wasn't really a single thing, but a bunch of things that piled up to make a perfect storm for him. That realization of feeling different might also be more apparent to him. He's in a new school that is working well for him and yet he still feels different. He's still having social issues even though he is well-liked and always has a friend to play with. His inner-self and outer world are so different.
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In more encouraging news, my daughter started doing some things that remind me of my son. She hasn't been such an obvious outlier, so it's nice to see her throw out some signs that she's just like her brother. She is more of a visual-spatial kid. She's been a puzzle-lover since she was 2, and she is hands-down the best "builder" in her preschool. She picked up her brother's old Magic Treehouse activity book this week and started doing all the mazes. I had purchased a maze book for Dx when he was 4 too, so we dug it out for her to do some mazes. She's solving them just like her brother. Out of nowhere, she's pretty much on par with what he can solve even now. Amazing!
She really wants to learn how to read. She has been picking up more and more sight words lately. I'm sure once she "gets" it, she's going to progress very quickly. It will happen and I'm excited for her when it does. She adores books and even though she can't read much yet, she has a pile of them in her bed every night.
