Don’t forget! Monday 16 May is the day I choose a winner in the 101 Success Secrets for Gifted Kids giveaway! Leave a comment (advice to a gifted kid, or advice you wish someone had given you) on the interview post of a few days ago to enter. Sometime tomorrow I’ll draw a winner. You’ll see why I’m not linking back to that post or giving a firmer timeline for the drawing in just a few seconds. Laugh for me…
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When A was a young lad, he rarely, if ever, asked “Why?” You might think that was a good thing. You would think in error. Instead, he would ask “How’s it work?” That particular question does not lend itself easily to “just because” as an answer. When he was three, we knew he had a serious science bent. He demanded bedtime stories based on the stickum solar system on his ceiling. For stories to a curious three year old I was investigating astrophysics.
Life with the gifted has only progressed from there.
A has been blessed with the World’s Best Teacher this year. He has truly gone above and beyond in befriending my son, in motivating him, in making the accommodations A needs. He has done this by tapping into A’s passion for all things tech, and helping him figure out How Things Work. His teacher and I laugh that A will develop the Next Great Thing, and I have assured him that he will get a cut of A’s profits. Seems only fair. So A runs the video equipment for the morning announcements, he has teachers queuing up for him to set up their interactive whiteboards, and he does it all proudly wearing the Tech Repair shirt I got him for his birthday. I stopped at Best Buy this afternoon with a question about a separate monitor for my laptop; damned kid knew most of the answers to the questions I was asking the guy there. While it’s so good seeing him blossom in this area, it comes at a price.
He is trying to take over MacDreamy2.
He’s had to use it for some school projects, because our other (PC) computer is a miserable POS and because the school is all-Mac. He changes settings, hides my dock, and moves things around because he knows how and that setup suits him better. Thing is, he hops on without permission, he doesn’t tell me he does these things, and as I have PTSD from the three year abusive relationship with Princess the PMSing Laptop, I freak the hell out.
So I put on a password so he can’t get on my laptop without me RightThere.
Which he guessed.
Which I then changed.
Which is now not being recognized by MacDreamy2.
Which is how I came to be locked out of own damned machine on a Sunday night.
Which is why I just wrote this entire post with my iPhone-loving thumbs.
And THAT is what life with a 10 year old hacker is like.
The end.
I would be fREakINg out. But true confession-stinking funny post.
If he really likes computers, maybe he could learn to build his own? Or fix up an old one for his own use? (I just read Soul of a New Machine, and a recurring theme was that the computer engineers had all started taking stuff apart and putting it back together as kids).
I was keeping my boys relatively un-tech-savvy. But, the big 10th birthday gift was a lego mindstorm set. Ready? Set. Go!
Happy Guy ! He’s saved !