I was typing a long post on a different e-list, and I liked it so much I thought I bring it over here to see if this shoe fits some of us.
I'm trying to understand how things got to be the way they are, in general. One of the moms on the other list is doing a talk to parents of HG kids, about how to get in the mood for advocacy. She asked us what we had learned, and this is what I wrote:
I would say that most of the Highly Gifted Children have highly gifted parents who once were children and probably didn't like elementary school either. When children are small, and in a situation where it is clear to them there isn't a good fit, this will be painful for some of them. The ones for whom this is painful have 2 choices - decide that there is something wrong with school or that there is something wrong with themselves!
For the parents who were children who decided 'school is bad' the challenge not 'throw the baby out with the bathwater' and gently, firmly, and repeatedly summon the school to live up to its fancy motto and take the time to figure out the child's current readiness level and brainstorm what is the most straightforward way to get the child spending most of their day within their readiness level. Here the general advice is to use program components that are already in existence, whenever possible because human nature is such that creating a whole new program is a lot of work and takes tremendous dedication, more really than can be expected.
For parents who decided that there was something wrong with themselves, the challenge is to overcome the early conditioning. One way to do this is to spend time with other highly gifted parents who are facing the same thing. Online forums are convenient and effective, such as Davidson's Public Forum:
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/forum_summary.htmlAnother way is face-to-face, through Davidson YSP, talent search family activities, or weekend conferences - check out
http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/conferences.htm for ones more local to you.
Then there are the parents who were in a bad fit but weren't bothered by it. They might have kids who aren't bothered either, in which case giftedness isn't even a topic of interest. On the other hand, they may have children who are bothered, in which case they are much more likely have sought out some contact with the gifted world. This group always has to fight the niggling feeling that the child is making the whole thing up. The best thing one can do for this group is to help them get an authority figure to tell them 'Yes, even though you were able to thrive in a poor fit academic environment, personality matters, and your kid isn't. You are the lucky exception, not your child. It's normal for Highly Gifted kids to be very unhappy in regular classrooms.' The authority person could be a psychoeducational evaluator, the gifted coordinator, an experienced parent, therapist or speaker at a gifted event. When someone from this group asks for proof, ask them how things went for their extended family members. There is almost always an 'Uncle Johnny' or grandparent in the bunch who was a severe underachiever and did some spectacular acting out. Connecting the dots between High IQ running in families and not all family members having enough EQ (emotional intelligence, self mastery, compliance, drive, whatever) to thrive in a poor academic fit situation usually does the trick in helping this parent momentarily see that there is nothing wrong with their child, but that the environment needs to change. But I've noticed that these moments are usually followed by long periods of self-doubt, and it's also helpful for this group to spend time with other parents of highly gifted children, online and face to face, as with the 2nd group, such as Davidson's Public Forum:
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/forum_summary.htmlor face-to-face, through Davidson YSP, talent search family activities, or weekend conferences - check out
http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/conferences.htm for ones more local to you.
It's my observation that some of the ones in the 3rd group were truly 'born that way.' Others who find themselves in the 3rd group were helped by unseen forces, such as having a warm, healthy gifted sibling or extended family group at home, which I call the 'home cluster model,' happening to be born in school districts with excellent school gifted programs and above average numbers of gifted and highly gifted children, a family tradition of picking particular private schools that 'get' HG kids, or very skillful behind the scenes advocacy by parents or 'gaurdian principals.' The rest of the 3rd groupers, and the 1st groupers, I speculate, did at one time blame themselves for the lack of fit they found when they attended school, but migrated into groups 1 and 3 over time. What I've noticed is that when these folks can 'make friends' with their early 'group 2' memories then their family life and their advocacy goes much better.
Love and More Love,
Grinity
