I agree-- books may be helpful, but
can under some circumstances, be less than helpful or even make you feel worse.
I liked Ellen Winner's
Gifted Children, but mostly because it served as a huge wake-up call that we weren't dealing with garden-variety gifted, but something much more unusual. In other words, the sorts of kids that are served by Davidson. In our family's case, this was important because this is what we were dealing with, and we were pretty deep in denial and fear, given that we live in an area with a lot of kids who are bright-but-not-gifted, push-parented, and garden variety gifted. There is an assumption that if you "want" more than that, you're being a special snowflake, because everything is ideal for such children in Pleasantville, thank you very much. We
had worried that there might be some kind of-- well, pathology-- under it all, but nothing that we'd read really seemed to fit the profoundly functional little girl that we lived with. She was FINE when she could be who she really was, and was able to blend in for short periods of time among adults and other children-- as long as they didn't pay too much attention to the details (what she was reading), or do anything that was so interesting that she started blurting questions. (
)
We needed the shock, in other words. We also needed to realize that we might
have to color outside the lines, even as fortunate as our surroundings might be. That is, the enrichment opportunities were there, but the way we would use them would probably be unconventional. So it turned out to be.
It wasn't that it was parenting advice. It wasn't. But that wasn't what I needed. I needed permission for reality to be what it is for my family.
Lisa Rivero's Homeschooling book (originally with the more apt title that probably made it less appealing outside of the niche, thus the retitling in the second and subsequent editions)-- this was a very very basic roadmap of what homeschooling can look like with such children. I was
terrified to homeschool.
Like Val, I seem to prefer resources that don't tell me "this is how everyone should do this. Here's a procedure--" but instead offer a personal narrative of "this is what worked/didn't for us, and here are my thoughts about why/not."
That kind of narrative respects the fact that when you are dealing with children (really, people) who are HG+, one is by definition working with certain extremes, and with outliers. Singularities.
That said, I'm not sure that there can ever be any one true source of all parenting wisdom for raising such a child. They are singularities by virtue of asynchronous development, and few of them have an identical profile throughout that developmental arc. It's best to respect the limitations imposed by the child's own development, and to also respect the idiosyncratic needs that are imposed as a result, too.
My DD learned to tie her own shoes and ride a bicycle
after she'd seen two Shakespearean plays-- and believe me, she understood every word-- and decided that she most emphatically preferred the MoMA to, um-- Disneyland. Should we have parented her as though she were a "bright" 6yo?
Easier said than done, believe me. Trying to follow someone else's road map with a child like this is like fighting a force of nature. Their innate development WILL NOT be thwarted, and woe to anyone who tries.
