This is a given: All parents believe their kids are geniuses. If not in academics, then in athletics or art or music or social skills. We can’t help it; it’s part of our DNA.
But my 16-year-old son Cole? Smart. Really smart. Not off the charts Stephen Hawking smart, but…. he’s got gray matter to spare, even if he does his utmost to hide that fact from his teachers and classmates. (He gets it from his mother.)
And that has been an enormous problem for us, his doting parents. We discovered early on that Cole’s brain moves much too quickly for our public education system; he learned that whatever was going on inside his head was far more interesting than what was going on inside the classroom. This has been the bane of our existence ever since. I won’t go into our excruciating battles with his teachers or trying to persuade him to adopt alternative educational methods, since traditional high school is utterly boring and pointless. (My lovely wife does an excellent job of that here.)
We tried to tell him high school would suck. We made him watch Freaks and Geeks and every John Hughes movie ever made. But did he listen? No. He wants to be normal. Like that’s any great prize.
Long story short: Despite having a keen mind for mathematics, he is floundering in calculus. Endless sessions with Saul Kahn at the Kahn Academy were helping, but not enough. So we decided it was time for a tutor.
