Tennille Smith first noticed her son, Angus had an advanced learning ability at his 18 month check-up when asked how many words he had.
While the normal range for a child his age was around 10 or 20 words, Tennille counted that Angus had 110 words in his vocabulary.
Later at a visit to the GP, Tennille was told by the doctor to get Angus’ IQ tested after the then three-year-old instructed the doctor on how to use his medical equipment.
“As we walked out, the doctor goes, ‘he’s very forward',” Tennille recalls.
It took her about a year to save up for the psychologist who, after testing, deemed the four year-old as being at the level of a seven or eight-year-old.
“When I finally got the report and I read just how well he had done, that’s when it really hit and I got really anxious,” she recalls.
Tennille admits she was anxious about Angus' future when she found out he was gifted. Photo: Supplied Source: Insight
Tennille, who had spent most of her life in a small town in WA, surrounded by her friends and family, was unsure about the next steps to take in regards to his schooling.
In January this year, in a quest to find the right school, they left behind everything they knew and moved to Adelaide after Angus was invited to join a special school for gifted children.
“It was a big, big move , really scary,” she says.
“I sold everything we couldn’t bring on the plane.”
But just a few months later the pair wound up homeless.
“The place we were going to live fell through so we wound up technically homeless,” she says.
“We briefly stayed in an Airbnb then the department of housing helped us. They referred me to their homeless service, put us in an emergency accommodation in a motel then moved us to a caravan park until a house became available.”
Tennille says while she was happy with their country town school and the approach teachers took to Angus, she was concerned that as he grew older the school wouldn’t be able to cater to his special needs.
So when Mensa Australia contacted her and suggested she try to get Angus into Dara, a new private gifted school, Tennille looked into it.
Despite fees of $1100 a term, a struggle on her pension, she was determined to make it happen, in part to provide Angus with the opportunities she didn’t have.
But it’s all been worth it, she says, as the pair has been warmly welcomed into the Dara school community, and she feels she and Angus have found their ‘tribe’.
Angus has quickly made friends he can relate to, and Tennille enjoys being around supportive parents going through similar experiences.
“Conversations between these kids are phenomenaI, I love listening to them.”
She admits Angus has mixed feelings about moving to the new school. He relishes the academic and social side, but gets homesick.
But for Tennille, who sacrificed so much for Angus, she says the benefits for Angus’ future outweigh the negatives.
“It took about a month before Angus turned to me one night, I was putting him to bed and he goes ‘we made the right decision coming to Dara, because the work is much harder but it's way more fun and the friends are better’, and that was it.”
