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Ah Sweetie, i totally remember what you are going through. In retrospect, I trace some of my son's poor fine motor skills to me 'going along' with 'his lead' to high a percentage of the time. I think perfectionism gets in really young and prevents certain normally developments from going along normally.

The good news is that this gets better and better with time. It helped me to have a phrase to say to try and give him words for what he was experiencing - I wish I could remember, sort of like: That bag of potato chips was designed to be opened by grown up hands, sorry. You give 3 tries and then I'll open it.

And that part about 'despondent, bossy and negative' sure rings a bell. I'm not sure that there is a known answer. At least you know what you are seeing and that is it a 'personality + gifted' thing. I had no idea.

You can try a few things -
1) Self care. If you have to hire a 'mother's helper' an hour a day to get yourself some relief - do it! Nobody gets how much work these kids are. If that isn't possible, regular excersize,social time, balanced diet, sleep and daily time for prayer or meditation.
2) Expect him to need to learn to handle King-sized frustration and expect lots of tears as the visible sign that he is growing on the inside. Hand in Hand Parenting
Parent resources for helping crying infants sleep, managing toddlers tantrums, fostering adolescent success, building emotionally intelligent lifelong ...
www.handinhandparenting.org/
or
3) Try Nurtured heart approach/Transforming the Difficult child - Lots of 'I see you are handling your strong feelings well, you could be screaming or kicking right now, but you aren't" Paise the smallest bit of self-control and patience.
4) http://www.amazon.com/Raising-Think...mp;ie=UTF8&qid=1293480475&sr=1-2 you can try working to help identify emotions and teach problem solving with any of the 'I can problem solve books'
5) Work with breathing and meditation to move energy to handle emotions - I don't have a book recommendation for this yet, and am in the process of figuring this out, but I invite you to learn Heart Rhythm Meditation for yourself and then get creative with it. Please keep me posted about what works.

Huggs
Grinity

I went and looked at some of the hand in hand parenting thing. It's basically what we do, so I can't say I don't like it, but:

It's a little overstrong about what will and won't work. For example, they give a story about a girl who cries to sleep with her dad. Her parents worry that she's crying so much she might get sick, but she doesn't, she feels great the next day, having worked throught her emotions. The implication is that the parents were comendable for having stuck to the plan and ridden out the strong emotions despite their worries.

That's great when it works, but I worry about the implication that you should keep with an approach like that no matter how intense/extended the crying becomes. I also worry about the assumption that it's usually better to let a kid "work through it" in extreme tears than to attempt to limit the tears.

I worry about this becasue DS (who is asthmatic) has been to Emerg more than once, and on 6 week courses of meds more than once after we were unable to limit his crying. (In fairness, I should really stress the 'unable' part... we do try everything to limit tears, though I try extreemely hard not to supress the emotion, and to listen to it. And I should also probably point out that it was a breath of fresh air to see this idea in print. It's kinda cool, I actually phrased it the same way when I gave advice to a new-mom friend once "if she cries, don't tune it out, listen to her, that's how your body learns to meet her needs" re:breastfeeding. People very rarely seem willing to admit that the very young are still people and have strong emotions that can't always be simply 'fixed,' and you have to give them the same respect as you would an adult for that)

I react strongly to this, partly becasue people know we've been to the hospital, and we get asked a lot, but also because the fear, all nighters, and hours of having to hold DS down with all my strength and that of DH and several nurses (whose claims that "they all eventually figure out it'll make them feel better" get thinner and thinner as their arms get tireder -- DS is intense, what can I say? People notice. Even nurses, sometimes ;)) in order to get meds into him kinda... well, it kinda glues it to you. Anyway.

I'd say that this is really the approach we use -- only I have to stand strongly against any kind of cry-it-out, even with the best and most careful of controls. We can't be the only ones with the asthma/intense combo (we've also had the head-banging problem, another reason to have to keep the exit valve on its threads). You have to hear emotions out. Yeah. And crying is often part of that. Yeah. But... I think you also have to limit it, you have to TRY to stop it, without stopping up the emotion. Sometimes you even have to shut down the valve a little to keep the steam to a safe level. Even when it means a bad week or a bad month of working through more slowly.

Uh. Does that count as keeping you posted about what works?

Oh, and we've taken the nurtured heart approach to heart, thanks to previous posts of yours. I haven't looked at the book yet, but will

I guess the bottom line is that exceptional kids can be exceptions, to even the stuff that says "they won't starve themselves" or "they won't actually hurt themselves" or "they won't cry themselves sick..." Though I hear that it's actually physiologically impossible to cause longterm damage through voluntary breath-holding

Ag, I'm still editing, but I'm ot of time... so poasting. maybe embarrasing, will see later...
-Mich.

Thanks Mich, That helps a lot! I wish I knew the 'right answer' - it seems like some double blind studies are in order, but I don't think that'll happen soon. One nice thing about the Davidson list is that I got to meet other moms who had also gone the 'all my strength' route. Unfortunately you have a ways to go until you get to age 5, but I am so glad you are realizing that 'exceptional kids can be exceptions' and I would add, need exceptional approaches.

The 'hand in hand' approach assumes that you get lots of time and attention your self to heal from the terror of what goes on during those tantrums.

Nurtured Heart seems like almost the opposite, with 'taking out the batteries' when rules are being broken, like 'no kicking, no disobeying, no yelling' - it puts more expectation on the kid to 'handle their strong feelings well' which I like (in retrospect.)

Hospital Visits sound purely awful, but living on eggshells and following his lead 'beyond' a certain point in fear of the next crying jag has it's cost also.

I guess my point is that the above approaches seem like likely possibilities, and that I trust your mom gut to steer you in the right direction.

((prayers))
Grinity

Yeah on the healing from the trauma of tantrums bit

I'm not sure they're really oposite approaches. Here's a go at it: At the most basic level, both approaches are about getting through strong feelings in one peice. Maybe the Nurtured Heart stuff is really just a tool for using the Hand in hand stuff.

I know that when my dad died, there was no better way than to cry (and I'll admit I gave myself asthma attacks). But when I got a bad exam result on one course I took while I was pregnant, DH took a big bite out of the feelings by grilling me on what I lost marks on. He was convieniently able to declare my prof an idiot, and outline the strategy he'd use to ace a test marked like that. I threw the frustration and anger into using it, and got very nearly 100% on the entire second half of the course, including the final

I'm still a little frustrated I didn't actually learn the material for that course, but I like my GPA, and the U actually noticed and took my complaint more seriously because of it. Experience handled.

I wonder if one could use the Nurtured Heart stuff as the same kind of an outlet. "I'm so mad right now I'm gonna MAKE myself calm down and MAKE mom understand." If mom manages to meet THAT challenge, it's gonna feel good for the kid right? Really good. Because now the kid gets points for being calm, points for understanding/explaining themselves clearly, AND mom gets points for trying to actually solve the problem. Suddenly everyone looks like last week they were off working interstellar miracles with Picard

And when the problem's insoluble, mom says "Well, I think you need a good cry," but she really understands why... which is right full circle to the "listening" part. Maybe a better kind of listening than the kind where you just hope you'll get it in the gasps between the sobbs.

(For the record, I think we may be well into that discussion I was in dire need of :))

So: What is the shape of the 'right answer?' (That's usually a good place to start)

One of the things the Hand in Hand page said that caught my attention was the "I felt like I knew how to parent" thing... that's confidence, but it's also technique. And your "That bag of chips was made for adult hands to open, you try three times and then I'll open it" kinda unpacked it for me -- A lot of the time, what I need is a technique. Something that I can pull out of the back of my mind, and use in a kind of rote fashion, in the moment, through whatever kinda disaster is happening. Right, disasters: There's a radio show called "Afganada." In one of the early episodes the woman who will later be revealed as a gifted military commander is thrown into her first command in the field. The show plays back the voice of her now-dead commander training her for command. Most of it is sound bytes, and she follows it in lockstep. And it gets her through. When she gets to a safe place, she thinks, and having made space for herself to think, she thinks good.

OK: free association session over.

I think that the shape of the 'right answer' may be a toolbox, containing the kind of sound-byte style ideas Kinsella used in Afganada. Stuff I can USE, but also that DS can HEAR, and maybe find useful at some key time himself. Stuff that will help him recognise a) that he's doing something difficult, b)i) that he can learn, ii) that it's ok to want to learn, c) that learning will likely be frustrating, and d) that he can handle frustration.

In which case, here's my first guess at an answer:

-- "That was made for [adult hands], try thrice, and then I'll help you"
-- "Watch how I do it"
-- "You're really frustrated, what's frustrating?"
-- "First, take a deep breath, then take a good look"
-- "One more for luck" (I say this anytime DS is being patient, but loosing patience, so if he's half dressed for outside and he's timing out, I say this, and then get one more piece of clothing on him. Then we open the door so the temp drops or something similar, and wait. Then we start again until done)


Anybody got 2cents on them?

-Mich

Mich, many of us have the high maintenance child you are dealing with. This site has been so helpful, just for finding like-challenged parents of children with an intense drive to take in and learn.

FWIW, DD turned 4 this month and this is also the month I felt I could do housework for the first time without hiring a babysitter.

Basically, no one around you will understand, but you are in an all hands on deck situation with your child, whose ability to take in information is dependant, still, on your ability to facilitate him.

When DD was an infant, she cried non stop, unless she was asleep or taking in novel information, with my direct help, of course. We ended up cosleeping just so we could get some sleep. She didn't sleep through the night until well after her 2nd birthday, but she stopped napping around her 2nd birthday.

We did not do the cry it out method. DD would escalate to the point of vomiting in like 60 seconds. (I could see not wanting to go there with asthma.) I figured, This is the child I got, she needs calming, I'm the person for the job. She didn't have major tantrums in her twos and our ped said we were "lucky." I had to laugh, since we had already been doing major time with her, um, emotions.

I likened those times of caring for DD before she could speak English to having to care for a little old woman from Brazil who couldn't walk or talk or feed or toilet herself. I had to carry her everywhere and take care of her every need, without the benefit of a mutual language. Maybe everyone could look at a baby this way, but it really felt like DD understood the world as well as I did, like an old lady.

We had to use logic to explain every thing to DD, from birth. "No" without logical explanation never worked.

Anyway, I guess what I want to say is that things are physically intense for us moms of intense little learners, until age 36 months, then their gross and fine motor skills are such they can go and do more independently, with less supervision.

I was aware of 2e (twice exceptional) issues for gifties, but it's only now, at age 4, that I'm looking at DD with that lens.

DS 17 months (adopted) is a head banger. Not sure if he's GT. He was/is exceptionally early on all gross and fine motor skills, but language is still not there. He's behind. He's only now saying, "No" although he enunciates it perfectly, like an adult LOL. Let me know if you get any advice for head banging.

Mich, sorry for my long winded response (post migraine). I should have said this:

your direct explanations were the type of thing that worked for our DD

and

take your multi vitamins, you just have to get through this highly demanding period

Hah! You may have noticed I sometimes run a little long myself.

DS's Granddad (do people say GD?) once shouted "No" at him about six times, with increasing intensity. After about the fifth one, DS looked at GD, cocked his head to one side like he was saying "What, man, you got a problem with something?" and then, recieving the last "no," raised an eyebrow and went back to what he'd been doing. I said something like "you might break that" quietly, from across the room, and DS said "Oooooohhhhhh" (which was one of his very few words at the time) and stopped.

People cracked up, and I filed it away in the "no, I guess I really should be explaining" category

Good to know I'm heading for the right ballpark, anyway I started a list -- and am realizing that even though I though I had a lot of things like this, they're mostly either really bad, or pretty much identical. So I'm working actively on thinking through this.

My best solution to head banging so far has been to insert something soft (frequently me, ouch). Luckily that period didn't last too long for us.


-Mich

lovely! I used to pretend that preverbal DS was an adult alien ambassador from outer space from a friendly group that was encountering earthlings for the first time, and didn't want their superpowers to harm anyone by accident, so they made the ambassador look like a baby with only baby-level outer skills, but inner level adult advanced alien skills. DS seemed to me to play the role pretty well. What fun!

I love 'one more for luck' - great tone, spirit and so true that if we do the legwork, luck will follow!

Just noticing when he is being patient (even a tiny bit) and praising that seems like a safe bet.

I'll bet you have all kinds of techniques that work very well, but I wonder if you have the time and energy to notice and celebrate them. It's very unmotivating to celebrate when there is no audience to delight. So perhaps we need a 'Parental technique brag thread'
Yippee!
Grinity

Have you seen the movie Star Man? I pretended the same things.