This might well be nothing new, but here goes.... The most important advice I have about parenting is that parents need to earn their authority - being older doesn't cut it, and neither does owning the house - and this is important with every kid, but with gifted kids it becomes ten times as important five years earlier. Earning authority as a parent means respecting the child, being willing to engage in discussions about rules, and never exercising power just for the hell of it (which, unfortunately, a LOT of parents do). If I were you, I'd skip the parenting books and go read Locke and Jefferson - it's all about "just powers derived from the consent of the governed".
Zhain....this is exactly how I felt in my 20s and 30s and I tried my darndest to raise DS14 exactly this way. I'm not at all impressed with how that went. I think that each child needs slightly different emphasis and each parent needs to face slightly different challenges.
shrugs
grinity
