Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Intensely Independent

SynapticStorm, I have a 9 yr old dd who, although not PG, is profoundly intensely independent and fights authority from parents etc, seeing it as unreasonable and unfair. Although she is not an autodidact across-the-board she is possibly profoundly gifted in her ability to size up how to manipulate a situation with parents to simply make it seemingly impossible to deal with her

So... fwiw, my advice isn't worth much as this is something we have struggled with for years and continue to struggle with in parenting her, but these are the things that have helped some:

1) She will accept authority from the few people she chooses to - so we have her on a gymnastics team (her choice, and she loves it). Although she gets frustrated with them at times, she respects that her coaches are experts and will listen to what they say - and the cool thing about that is that on her gymnastics team (as well as on other sports teams as well as some group activity teams that my kids have participated in), the lessons taught and values that are talked about don't apply to just gymnastics, but to overall development and to life. So while she's at gymnastics she's also learning some life skills that are important at home and school and she's listening because she respects the authority of the coaches.

2) Church and Sunday School. I am not talking about one specific faith here - from what I've seen and experienced all religions have at their core the same essential set of ideas and values re how we treat other human beings. For all the lessons that my child *won't* listen to at home, she listens at church. This doesn't translate directly into good behavior at home, but it gives us, as parents, a talking point from which to start when we need to address behavior issues - we can substitute "because your parent says" with "because this is what God wants us to do" or "this is what God teaches". I am sure it wouldn't work for every stubborn child out there, but it works (somewhat) for our dd.

The key from our experience hasn't been so much having a gymnastics coach specifically or having God as our "go-to" as much as it is having some other authority figure, outside of parents, that our dd respects.

The other thing that has helped us is to simply ignore (as best we can) when she is in full-on raging-against-parents meltdowns, and talk it through with her *later* when she is calm. She is a personality that relies on logic to understand the world - although it can be a very twisted convoluted logic. When we do talk to her and try to reason with her, we approach it through her way of looking at things - logic. So wait for calm, and meet her where she's at in terms of how she tries to make sense of the world.


Our dd values her personal *desires* over desire to please others. In some ways, I feel like it's a bit of a developmental delay. Most kids typically go through a phase at around 6-7 years old where they discover in a meaningful way that they are separate individuals from their parents and that the world doesn't revolve around themselves as center of the universe. With my dd, I feel that she's still coping with that phase of moving from being the center of her own universe to realizing other people also have perfectly reasonable needs, desires, feelings etc. This comes out the most when she's upset - that inability to understand that her actions impact others feelings etc.


On the surface, I think this is a good idea. I have to chuckle though, because we are a family that camps a lot and does a lot of outdoor activities, and to be honest, for us, it's simply been one more place for dd to continue to prove that she doesn't need her parents for much of anything (in her mind lol). The one benefit to the outdoors however, is that when she screams in outrage, at least the neighbors don't have to listen

Best wishes,

polarbear