"We always knew he was smart," Leah explains. "We had no idea he was musical."
So what now? What do you do when you discover your child is so smart, so musical, so gifted he might be in a class by himself?
"One thing you don't do is tell friends who have kids," Leah says wearily, as if she learned the hard way. "It doesn't go over well."
And yet, in many ways her dilemmas are universal. It's a fine line between following a child's lead and forcing him in a particular direction. Is it better to focus youthful energy on one activity - think Tiger Woods - or allow curious kids to explore many passions they might never master?
"I tell all parents they're only going to be little once; they'll be smart forever," says Sharon Donnelly, Coopertown's gifted teacher. "Find balance, because they'll never get their childhood back."
What a boy wants
That advice helped Leah and Alan Atlas - she's an interior designer, he's a dentist - decide not to move Carson into private school or skip a grade.
"We want Carson to be socially comfortable," she explains. "He seems so much older, but emotionally, he's still an 8-year-old boy."
This boy doesn't run as fast as his friends, and he had to overcome a fear of heights to use the swings at recess. He loves soccer, baseball, Harry Potter, Mad Libs, Legos, and Michael Jackson. "The music," he's quick to say, "not the man."
Carson begged for violin lessons for years, but Leah brushed him off, thinking, "You can't let them do everything they want to do."
The Atlases - their younger son, Caden, is 7 - learn Chinese as a family. So last summer Leah finally told the boys they could all study violin together, too.
