[Skooz]

No problem. To a certain extent, you were right. She is one of those really gifted yet socially awkward types. She is borderline genius--one of the top academic acheivers in the state. She had planned on med school after college and was taking a science-heavy curriculum. But, she lacks the maturity of most 18 year-olds and is in no way ready for something like this.

[wimpycat]

If you can find an 18-21 yr old girl who had a baby and gave it up for adoption, that would be ideal. Find someone near her own age that she can "identify" with; someone who has "been there".

[Alberta's Child]

I once worked for a guy whose kid set a record for absenteeism in his high school. The kid barely made it out of school, and ended up working in a gas station on the overnight shift at the age of 18.

One night he was held up at gunpoint. He was not harmed, but he suddenly got the fear of God in him and came home and told his parents that he had to do something else. His father had recognized early on that the kid had some good mechanical skills, so he helped him get enrolled in an airplane mechanic's program.

But that only lasted about 6 months, because the kid was capable of far more than that. He ended up going to school for avionics and aeronautical engineering, and the last time I heard of him he was the top avionics expert (at the age of 30) for one of the major airlines.

Maybe it takes the grace of God, but sometimes these things just end up working out in the long run.

[Alberta's Child]

Ironically, stories like this (and the one I posted) support my contention that the worst thing we can do with a teenager is let them go right from high school into college. For some time now I've advocated a mandatory "leave of absence" from high school at the age of 16 or so. Let kids go out into the real world and see what it's like to get out of bed in the morning and drag themselves to a menial job working for a boss who doesn't give a sh!t about what their "issues" are. These kids will come back to school for their senior year with a much more mature outlook on life, and they'll be far less prone to a lot of the nonsense that otherwise goes on in their young adult years.