I'm here! It's funny, I'm currently going through another wave of "Oh God, is my child gifted? Do I have to get him tested? I need help!!!!" and feelings of despair. I hate googling for information about this, because first I have to wade through the layer of stuff about "you probably think your kid is gifted but you're probably wrong" to get to the people I can relate to, who are more like "Listen, it's more helpful to think of my kid as someone with a disability who requires accommodation" than people who are happily sharing the information that their kid is very smart. So naturally I came back here to read what other people are going through, and saw this thread had floated back up.
My son is 5 now. The short version is that nothing has really changed, only intensified further. I have learned more coping and self-care skills in the intervening years, but as I've learned to cope more, so has his intensity increased (in fact, I think that my improved ability to remain calm in the face of his emotional intensity has slowly taught him that it's safe to let that stuff run - hoo, boy, mixed blessing), so that overall I feel that I'm emotionally in a sort of holding pattern. I level up, he levels up, etc. Very Red Queen. I feel that my central challenge has been to accept that he is the way he is, no matter what label gets put on that way of being, and I increasingly have. Other parenting opinions are less important to me now, because I can see that they just don't really apply to someone who is the way he is. Great, you think that the key to parenting is to be "firm and consistent"? Meet my child, who has been brushing his teeth every night for years and who resists like SPARTAAAAAA every single night with novel arguments. His father is a successful lawyer with extremely powerful arguing skills and he still gets argued into the ground. (Which is the kind of thing where if you don't have that same experience, will sound like... "but the parents obviously just need to put their foot down", I know.)
It made me laugh to read in this post that he was, at three, interested in taking out window screens, because I had forgotten, but right now he's going through another phase of that. (Apparently he had an idea that if he could take one out, it would make a great pretend giant screen computer ala Star Trek or something.) So his behavior and intensity has not really changed, but now I talk to him like he's an adult, basically, about why it doesn't work to take out window screens. It still takes many, MANY repetitions, because his drive to do things he wants/needs to do to satisfy curiosity is so intensely powerful. What has changed is that I am more able to accept that this is a fundamental trait in him that is not helped by being authoritarian. So it's more that I am able to remain calm in the face of the totally insane things he does and less that he does saner things.
In a lot of ways, my family/domestic life revolves around managing his intensity. The way our home is decorated (nothing can hang on walls - all furniture is chosen to be safe for people who need to parkour around the room), the way I feed him (yes, it's great that your child is eventually convinced to join in what everyone else is eating - thanks for your opinion that I could easily make this happen with my child if I tried harder), the way I run errands (without him whenever possible). Our family life is essentially designed, at this point, to be the path of least resistance for dealing with someone who is extremely driven, extremely intense, extremely emotional, extremely physical, extremely curious. Other families have "screentime limits", ours has conversations about how marketers try to manipulate children into desiring their products using narrative and cute characters they recognize. The forbidden fascinates him. I have learned the hard way to not forbid ("Because I said so" does not work with him. Trust me, I've tried. It doesn't.) and instead to talk to him about listening to your own brain's instincts about safety, emotional safety, etc.
My bottom line at this point is that I have a radical child-rearing approach that makes it often really hard for me to relate to or talk with other parents in a genuine way. (I think it's easy for the way I parent to seem "permissive" to others, which makes me feel sad, defensive and isolated.) My home life feels not very similar to other peoples' home life. Mom and dad are still the ultimate authority here, but our lives are also set up so that he can make as many of his own choices as possible. It just feels like he isn't like other kids so dramatically that I've had to piece together a child-rearing system that looks very little like other peoples'. That often makes me feel like I'm alone in the universe, as a mother.
He's in his last year of a progressive preschool program and will go to their elementary program next year. It's a very non-traditional child-led program, which is (I hope) a good fit for him, because he shuts down in the face of direct instruction. I went through a short phase of encouraging him to learn to read (for probably obvious reasons) and all that happened was that he would dig in, get extremely resistant, and then when I wasn't paying attention do math on his own or whatever. He is not a person who generally benefits from direct instruction unless he has come to you asking for it. Answering unasked questions, with him, is counterproductive. I went through something similar with trying to potty-train: it was totally pointless, a power struggle that went nowhere. Once I backed off completely and was able to genuinely say "You'll figure this out when you're ready. It's okay to wait until you're ready", he potty-trained (including overnight) from literally one day to the next, without my "help".
My best metaphor for thinking about parenting him is to think that he's a visiting alien dignitary I have been assigned to show around the planet. Thinking that I'm here to teach him how things are, how to behave, how to do things, backfires almost every single time. Thinking, instead, that I am here to facilitate growth that emerges from within him, is the only way to make things work moderately well for both of us.
For us as parents, this trait of resisting direct instruction tends to feed our "Is he actually "gifted"? Are we crazy?" because there isn't something specific and academic to point to to bolster our suspicions. He isn't reading Shakespeare. (He sight-reads certain words but aggressively resists phonics or direct reading instruction.) He has an enormous and ever-increasing vocabulary, but we can never tell if that's an indication of anything. He self-generates math for himself, but it's just addition and subtraction and some multiplication. He has broad, intense interests. He has extremely grandiose ideas that far, far outstrip his ability to execute those ideas in physical reality, which is very frustrating for him - this is a major issue that is hard for me to figure out how to support. The gap between where he is (can build a circuit in his Snap Circuits) and where his ideas are (autonomous robot that will pick up his toys) is enormous and very disappointing to him. Starting at three, he's had moments of having very intense feelings about things like the infinity of the universe or the finite nature of biological life. He had a series of spiritual/existential "crises" (I don't know what else to call them) starting at around the time I wrote this first post. They were really hard for me to cope with, because talking to someone who is three about whether or not there is a consciousness that persists after death feels very complicated. I've had conversations about spirituality with him that are more difficult and complex than most conversations I've had with adults. (I'm not saying that to brag - if anything, I'm saying this because OH GOD HELP ME.)
I still find parenting him very challenging. I feel even more than I once did that he isn't much like most other kids. I still wrestle with "is this giftedness? or is this... something else?" His father and I repeatedly cycle through wondering if he has some kind of mild developmental disorder that causes Difficult Personality Syndrome or if this is all part of the way in which his brain is an uncommon one.
His emotional intensity has been hardest for me to deal with. I've gotten some use out of Dabrowski's theory of overexcitabilities here, but fundamentally I am still in the position where I have to live with/parent someone who can have very deep sadness or anger over things like there not being more milk in the fridge, or be sad for days that a house he built in Minecraft burned down. It's very easy to find myself tiptoeing around him. I often feel unqualified. Like maybe my kid needs a group of gurus/therapists to follow him around and buffer the world for him, but instead what he's got is me. I could at least use an 800 number for emergencies, you know?
Re: sleep, it took a long time to get him to be able to sleep apart from me. He now spends part of the night in his own room and part of the night next to my side of the bed. I'd like to get to a place where I no longer have to sit next to him as he falls asleep, but path of least resistance. I try to remember the lesson of potty training, which is that his development tends to be invisible, invisible, invisible, BOOM, total radical change you didn't see coming.
I've learned, in terms of self-care, to use the time he's in preschool to meditate and do yoga and take care of myself instead of trying to work. It's been a tough journey for me: I defined myself in terms of my work (which I LOVED and was the center of my life before becoming a mother) but for right now, the sanity that becomes possible when I take care of myself is more important than my work. (But I really miss it.)
Right now, my husband and I are trying to figure out whether or not have him evaluated. I feel quite fearful of what I worry will be an initial gauntlet of "All parents think their children are geniuses" headpatting, because I find raising him to be so exhausting and overwhelming - I don't want bragging rights, I want help, insight, and support!
