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COPYRIGHT 2004 The Record
Byline: Leslie Brody
Nov. 15--It's not easy to raise an 11-year-old whose brainpower comes along once in 10,000 children. Dakota Killpack's curiosity consumes his family's life.
His dad had to replace the computer six times in six years -- Dakota keeps dismantling them, blowing them up or wearing them out.
His little sister endures his constant experiments with her toys. He split open one mermaid Barbie to see how the tail bends and tore the head off another doll to see what makes the eyes move.
"He's a handful," Dakota's uncommonly patient mother, Patricia, says with a sigh. "He has a rage to learn."
Finding a way to educate Dakota has been an exhausting odyssey. Now Patricia spends much of her day escorting him around Middlesex County College in Edison because he's too precocious for regular schools but too young to wander around a college alone. As he rolls his blue backpack down the halls, she follows him to the classroom door and pushes his squirming sister along in a stroller.
The Killpacks say most people don't realize that profoundly gifted kids have needs as unique as some children with learning disabilities. Even now, as Dakota attends three college courses -- algebra, English and microcomputer systems architecture -- he doesn't feel challenged.
Dakota gets good grades without studying much. Extroverted and confident, he is often eager to please and cheerfully gives tips to confused classmates at least seven years his senior....
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