Her mother told me that they had had no alternative but to take Supriya out of her school because she was so much cleverer than the other girls in her class; they were holding her back. She had decided on home-schooling for her brilliant daughter. 

It very soon became apparent to me that not only Supriya was not a genius in any way whatsoever, but very backward; she had great difficulty understanding what a normal 11-year old could understand. She was different from the other girls in her class and not in a way that her mother thought. 

I had a very hard time persuading the family of this and had to enlist the teacher of another school to evaluate her and attest to my diagnosis of the situation. Her parents were satisfied with this and I began, with great difficulty in helping her catch up with two years’ work, none of which she had previously understood at school. 

The fact was that her mother could not believe that her daughter was anything other than a genius. When Supriya said that she did not fit into the class her mother was sure that it was because she was ahead of the other girls. This had unfortunately given Supriya a totally unwarranted feeling of superiority, which I had great trouble in overcoming. She did eventually come to trust me and after that, although she was of below average intelligence, I did manage to teach her enough of the previous two years’ syllabus for her to return to her school. The tactic I used was to persuade her that she found school work difficult because she had a more vivid imagination than other girls and this had held her back with her school work. The six months ended in harmony as Supriya went back to school with the girls of her age and this time managed to keep up with them. 

It was a very tricky assignment; in some ways it was more difficult to dispossess her parents of their misappraisal of their daughter than to teach their daughter.