Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion The Gifted Mother

I'd love to get another graduate degree (the original one was in business and decision science) but even if I found a way to finance it, which at this point is only in my dreams, none of what I'd like to study is fully available online and that is the only way I could do it.

You could work on advocacy on gifted issues at the national level! Gifties everywhere could use the intelligent support of folks like you!!

Great responses everyone, thank you!

MsFriz…I think I may be in a similar situation from you. I have always had to research, problem solve etc. all the educational aspects for everyone--while its not perfect, I feel like I know what I need to know for my kids. So what's next?

I work for a major corporation, currently in a position which is new to me and the division, lightly resourced and thus taking up a lot of my intellectual and emotional energy. It's one of the few jobs I've held that have sustained my interest being the initial learning period, perhaps because there is always more to learn/do/try/revise.

Beyond that, I read (rather, listen to books between work and home), research various topics (whatever isn't making sense to me at the moment) and crash into bed after a few hours with the kids each evening.

Someday, perhaps there may be more to me...

This is such an important question because you know that if the next generation produces a child, the whole scenario plays out again.

Your gifted son should think about how a future partner and hypothetical child would work out these gifted issues.

The highly gifted parent has to be interactive with the highly gifted child. There is no one else to fill that need.

It is a waiting game until the gifted child is old enough to be with the other gifted children in their town, region, country.

Our child is still young, so we are both very hands on.

Gifted people are in every field, just at a high level. The gifted parents pursue every passion, talent, gift, they have and encourage their child to do the same.

Gifted parents advocate all the time and watch to make sure the child does not get too confused being in situations geared for the average-IQ child.

There are always a lot of questions being asked. We are always balancing our goals with our day-to-day choices.

We have verbal giftedness, too, so there is much discussion and debate.

We take in every bit of information we can from all available sources.

The gifted people are always busy and are usually moving / talking very quickly.

That's great to discuss with your child, because the choice of having a life partner or not is a major decision. Thinking about how a gifted family makes it all work is very interesting to say the least.

Gifted people are in every field, just at a high level. The gifted parents pursue every passion, talent, gift, they have and encourage their child to do the same.

Gifted parents advocate all the time and watch to make sure the child does not get too confused being in situations geared for the average-IQ child.

There are always a lot of questions being asked. We are always balancing our goals with our day-to-day choices.

We have verbal giftedness, too, so there is much discussion and debate.

We take in every bit of information we can from all available sources.

The gifted people are always busy and are usually moving / talking very quickly.

That's great to discuss with your child, because the choice of having a life partner or not is a major decision. Thinking about how a gifted family makes it all work is very interesting to say the least. [/quote]

Gifted people are also at low levels too. Those who were failed by the education system often end up with problems that limit their options. They are then is not as good position to support their children and so on.

A father answering here. As your children get older, they can discuss things with you at an adult level, and reading material you select for them may interest you as well. Since my 10yo is an avid programmer who wants an Apple computer (maybe this summer), I bought the biography of Steve Jobs by Isaacson. We both read it and have discussed it, and now we are both reading a biography of Bill Gates by Manes and Andrews.

Adding onto Bostonian's observations-- ANY area of passion may turn out to be a shared (innate? nurtured? hard to say) interest with a HG+ child and parent pair.

In our household, between DD and I this is social justice and ethics/moral relativism, as well as metaphysics, for lack of a more concise term.

With her dad, the conversations are just as intense-- but on different subjects. Physics, optics, zombies, Monty Python,, bees, materials science and engineering; not necessarily in any particular order.

It's been lovely to have someone to SHARE some really out there and unusual intellectual passions with as DD has gotten into adult thinking and reasoning. She's always been thinking about this stuff, though-- so I'm not sure that those conversations were all that less intriguing for her being only 4-7yo. She always made me think about things in novel and surprising ways. As an adult, in fact, I found her musings to be capable of getting me to see things that I had heretofore overlooked completely simply because her perspective is so unusual. She sees things that others don't-- and maybe can't. It's great.

Those are what I call her "PG moments"-- like wondering at four if people are reading disabled if they don't follow posted rules... or is it 'ethically impaired' and if so-- are they really "bad" if they are truly impaired, or is that more like a disability... through her first in depth exposure to Romeo & Juliet, which seemed dysfunctional and a story (mostly) about a very spoilt and manipulative girl, maybe a cautionary tale for adolescents to listen to their parents (because she wasn't yet old enough to understand the 'pull' of first love)... right up to this past week's example with the AP stats problem referencing Duke TIP statistics.

Her observations are usually truth-tested and rather insightful. Just-- unusual.

So being her parent is interesting. SHE is interesting, intellectually speaking. I've been around enough other children now to understand better that I'm mostly bored to tears by children under 15 or so, but DD is different. I used to think that was simply because she's mine-- but she actually seems to be that interesting to other adults, as well.

She observes things and asks interesting and non-trivial questions.

This is a great thread and I love hearing all the parent answers (moms and dads)!

I've got a great career that I enjoy and that challenges me intellectually and socially. I am currently studying for an important certification exam and it's more memorization than I've done since high school! I can feel my brain stretching.

I also read a lot, both fiction and non, and DD and I have an occasional book club (we'll read the same book and then discuss). Last time it was her turn to pick (A Mysterious Benedict Society book -- easy read, but a lot there to dig into) and next up I get to choose (Watership Down). I have a BA in English, so these conversations let me sneak in various literary analysis techniques and schools of critical theory.

Before I had DD I wrote a book of my own and found it a publisher. It was nonfiction and not a huge bestseller, but it was a great experience.

And I have a list of hobbies that use my hands and exercise my more feminine side: knitting, spinning, baking, making soap, and so on.

I'm reporting out from the pre-school parent perspective, so it's a bit different. At this point we both have intellectually stimulating (and highly analytic) careers that luckily, give us great flexibility.

So, when we aren't working we read, watch documentaries, go to museums, play board games, design science experiments for out DD4, we write fiction together, we both will take random classes for certifications or degrees or just via coursera (or the like) to learn new things. Since DD4 is an only child we involve her in A LOT of these activities (and what we can't we do after bed-time).

We travel, we cook, we spend time with our friends who are similarly minded and our DD4 gets to play with their older kids. They all seem to learn from each other, which is really cool!

I'm sure these things will change as she starts to bore with her parents incessant need to watch Discovery Channel movies with her, and read excerpts from books we dub "science for the masses", but we integrate teaching into the every day. We take an interest in her interests and learn more to accommodate (I really did not know anything about dinosaurs until DD took an interest and I started reading DH's paleontology texts).

I'm not sure how this model will hold up in middle school and beyond, but I'm hoping she appreciates having parents who understand what it's like to be different than everyone else your age!