Parents of a girl in 6th grade tell
The art of the possible
“In December 2020 we were acquainted with Johnnie and Grith. Our first contact was due to our daughter’s suffering well-being in school, which back then was 6th grade. Back then, our daughter was on her third school, and from one day to the next she experienced going from thriving, to being decidedly miserable, which is both due to direct and indirect bullying, and the days were darkening and the tears were multiplying, and if you as a parent even once has seen your child suffer, then you no doubt know the pain that comes with it, when thoughts consume a young teenage girl from the inside out.
5 years before that, we had a WISC test made on our daughter and therefore knew that she was more gifted than most, but we were unsure of which effects it had had and would have on our daughter’s education.
When our daughter, even in her misery, came and asked us to get her tested again, we knew it had to be the entry point to learning more about our daughter’s place in the world, and not the least how she saw it, and a larger investigation started in relation to who should administer this test, and not the least who we could talk to afterwards, as a test in no way can stand on its own.
There no doubt exists many capable psychologists, who can administer these WISC tests, but the more we researched and the more we learned, the signs all pointed towards Grith Tschorn, and Johnnie Rasmussen (Authorized Psychologist), whom everyone who knew even a little bit about the world of gifted children, were sure that it was Grith and Johnnie we had to get a hold of
So, we did that, and in December 2020 we had our first introductory meeting, and from then on, we never looked back. Back then we had a daughter with anxiety, depression, and who all-in-all felt terrible, who in addition to that had two parents who did not understand her (sorry dear) so she was actually completely on her own with her, at times, overwhelming swarm of thoughts, and if you like our daughter is not doing well, there is no room at all for any positive thoughts. We knew we had to ask for help, because we simply didn’t know how to handle all of this, and never before have we experienced such understanding and hospitality, from someone who wanted our daughter to flourish, almost more than her parents wanted it, and from the very first moment Grith and Johnnie took up the mantle of leadership.
This meant that our daughter ALWAYS on ALL hours of the day had a lifeline which wasn’t her parents, a rock to hold on to, a confidant, where all thoughts were okay and could be shared, an adult who built trust in a way our daughter had never before experienced from anyone other than her parents, and these people also had a toolbox from which they kept pulling up new tools with only one goal in mind, namely to make sure our daughter became happy again.
Here half a year later, our daughter is thriving again, she loves going to school, has found new girl-friends that actually care for her, has calmed down, so the alarm-bells are not ringing all the time, has started learning again, has come far in being comfortable in her own skin, and believes she is good enough as she is, and is actually discovering (this is a really long process) that she has some special circumstances compared to her peers, the question is of course, whether she with some help manages to nurture this “gift” which is hard to understand, for her completely average IQ parents.
It is just as important to mention, that Grith and Johnnie took over a large portion of the talks with the school, for most importantly the school is an ally, and wauuuu it has been an unique interaction which ended with our daughter being moved up a grade, which would never have happened from a normal parental discussion, but which can only be attributed to the professional correspondence between Grith and Johnnie, and our daughters school.
So if you feel that your child’s intelligence is “different” from their peers, and if you sit there and think about what you can do from there, then we can strongly recommend you to contact Grith and Johnnie, SEEK HELP from someone with the skills needed, so you can “just” be parents, it worked, and is continuing to work, for us.
If you read this, you are probably already on the website, but otherwise we would like to tell you what worked for us.
But there are many other good approaches, and this is ONLY our journey, and the end result is that we don’t know where we would have ended up without Johnnie and Grith, who have our deepest respect due to their knowledge, work, and last but not least great passion for working with children that have received an extra gift for their journey.
It takes one to know one.”