Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Parents of GT kids are isolated, too

Sometimes I think I am barely holding on to my sanity here. I am part of the sandwich generation and sometimes my sandwich is a little too much for me to chew. The top slice of bread is my mother who was probably gifted (the jeopardy contestant kind of gifted) whose IQ plummeted in one day during routine surgery, probably due to mini-strokes that also left her with extreme memory loss and dementia. The bottom slice is my son whom I am trying to homeschool because he is twice exceptional and our state does not require an appropriate education for twice exceptional kids. There is not one day that I don't think about my mother. I can't help but imagine what it would be like to be able to think and learn easily in the morning and later that evening be unable to remember what happened 30 seconds before so that reading or even following what is happening on television is impossible and there is nothing that can be done about it--for the rest of her life. My son and I visit her every day but she doesn't remember us. We know that these visits are really for my dad. We understand the stress of isolation and the effect it has on mental health.

The isolation I feel is hard to deal with and I think my son wonders if it is his fault since our community is not very "geek" friendly. He calls himself a geek, has no problem with other people thinking he is a geek, and I have heard some of his friends refer to themselves as geeks. They don't fit in with our sports obsessed community with no library, but a very nice football field, because instead of sports, they like to read, play musical instruments and do musical theater and play video games, and they seem much more knowledgable about computers than most of the adults where we live. My son's friends' parents are all teachers and engineers and he likes talking to them too. My son has more friends than I ever did.

But there is only one person in my community other than my husband that I feel I can really talk to and she is the mom of two of my son's gifted friends. She also happens to be a special ed teacher, so she understands both my son's giftedness and his disabilities and it is really weird that she seems more like me than my own sisters.

My son wonders if we are shunned by members of our community because of him--especially the homeschool group we belonged to for a short time. Yesterday, he referred to himself as my "NSDS" and when I asked what that was he said "not so dear son." He had been teasing me, as he often does, but he has been doing this a little too much lately. Everyone is telling me it is common for kids to tease each other and since he isn't in school he doesn't have anyone to tease except me or his sister who lives in another state who can just hang up on him.