Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy does parenting a PG child have to be expensive?

Sadly I agree. School time is getting to be more for social skills than actual academic learning.

Thank you, Tallulah, but I have Shakespeare, I just want the cute graphic novel or picture book versions that DD especially enjoys. She really got into Midsummer last summer, but that's the only one well represented at the library. But I found some good stuff by searching a lot ( lots of collected stories that the library hasn't catalogued all that well!). I don't want to push too much... She's begging for Much Ado but as an English teacher it's easy for me to go overboard

book depository used to have some nice childrens Shakespeare that wasn't too expensive.

There are plenty of free resources on the internet that you can find to supplement your DD or DS's need for creativity and stimulation. You don't need whole books or anything else expensive. A library card is 1.00 and the books are free. Check out education.com for lots of activities you can do to teach your children all of the core subjects he or she would like at whatever level they are currently learning at all for free. 90% require just common household objects.

Never underestimate the power of Google.

I feel there is an important resource that often costs nothing that people tend to overlook....people in the field of your child's interest, mentors. I know that one adult outside of school made a huge difference in in our eldest DS's life, a gentleman who was working on his doctorate in Organic Chem. He not only took the time to discuss my son's interests in the field of chemistry but toured him around the Univ. lab., did some experiments with him, and inspired him.

Most of us know people who are professionals in a wide variety of fields. A good many of them are likely willing to spend at least an hour or two if not meet on a regular basis with a young person who shows interest in their field sharing not only their knowledge but the path they took to get to where they ended up. People are usually more inspiring than books and media and they provide real world examples of what our children aspire to become.

Gee, Minecraft beta only cost $15 a few years ago, and I'm sure our DS wouldn't care if that was all we ever let him do.

Seriously, though, there are ways to do things cheaply, but it's easier if there are public schools that cater to HG kids. Then the enrichment/etc. is no different than what most parents spend on afterschool activities/sports/camps. I think there is some amount of extra that comes up when you don't have the free decent school available to you, no matter how creative you are. And being creative finding some of the low cost/free alternatives sometimes takes its toll in the amount of time spent. So sometimes it's cheaper to just pay for stuff.

I should say that I had a serious book buying problem when DS was little. I love, love books, and I loved to buy them for DS. When he started tearing through books like candy, we made the switch to the public library. I think most libraries these days have partnerships with other library systems, so if your library doesn't have what you're looking for, you can order it from somewhere else. Very handy. And free.

Oh, SPG, I am with you there on the book buying issue. I had to establish rules in my head of what books were worth buying and what were library worthy - and then there is my extensive relationship with ILL!!! And don't forgt the magazines!!! And even with the attempts to put limits, DS 7's room is overrun with books - especially the murderous Maths, horrible sciences, horrible geographies and just started the histories. The only good thing is for the most part I guess right and you can see how much he enjoys them with the rereading!

When DS was in pre-k the school director said we were going to go broke trying to keep up with him. And considering they were really not serving him at the time, I was a little offended. But I now see it more clearly - with the insatiable appetite for learning we want to take advantage of all sorts of opportunities and often they cost - but hopefully without going broke!!!

DeHe

I just bought a pile of chapter books for DD from better world books (sale time!) because she's actually running out of appropriate books from the library. She had a big breakthrough with reading but still isn't quite ready for really involved longer reading between the lines type novels. Though she will read Shakespeare Anyway, between needing that sweet spot of not very easy but not full on upper elementary novels and almost only accepting girl-focused fantasy, we needed some more books for summer. She started a new 130pg book last night and came into our room at 6am declaring she'd finished it. I sometimes curse the library's cataloging because I'll find a great book that's not listed in a subject I've searched for, even though it fits. But mostly I'm happy to find anything good for DD!