Precerpt from Raising God's Rainbow Makers: Precocity and Disconcert
Their children's precocity can often disconcert parents. These children not only do unpredictable things, but the things they do are also often unimaginable to their parents--and how to deal with them perplexing. After all, when do you reward creativity and when do you punish it? Shane setting the house on fire with a science experiment clearly belonged in the latter category though one still wants to laud the creativity and scientific depth behind it. But what about when those unpredictable things go beyond the home? When Shane was 12, I picked up the phone--landlines back then and anyone could answer. The voice at the other end sounded like a man in his 30s, and it turned out in reality to be a man in his 30s. "May I speak to Shane?" asked the voice. "Well, I don't know," I responded. "Shane is a 12-year-old boy." The voice hesitated, then said, "Ok, but I think I still need to talk to him." I put Shane on the line, and he immediatel...