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I am an older mom and I worry that I will develop more health problems because of my anxiety which increases my blood pressure. The blood pressure medication I take makes me very tired and I need all the energy I can get to homeschool my son and help take care of my dad. I just don't know how to be calm when my son has to deal with so much pain and isolation because of the scoliosis brace and then it is extremely stressful knowing that if the brace doesn't work the doctor will recommend risky surgery. I spent so many hours looking up information about this online and it is very scary. My son knows that there are risks with any surgery and those risks can include death (he asked about this) or worse disability so he is willing to go through the pain, but every day is hard. It makes me so sad that in addition to all the pain he won't be around any other kids at all this summer because he couldn't be out of the brace long enough each day for musical theater rehearsals. He begs me almost daily to find a way for us to move to a place where we would fit in better, like the college town about 40 miles away, but we need to stay here for my dad. I wish I could do something to make life easier for him but people keep telling me he will be stronger because of what he is going through now.

We try to buy him things to keep him busy and hopefully keep his mind off his difficulties. For his 14th birthday he wanted Rosetta Stone Japanese. He has been steadily working on learning Japanese and doing well. He also wanted a midi keyboard so he can use synthesia online. We bought that too. Surprisingly he doesn't play video games all the time even thought he has plenty of those. He still chooses to read a lot and keep up with the latest news even in the summer. He still loves to learn, but I worry that he won't have the opportunity to learn everything he needs to learn.

We tell him that life will be easier for him as an adult. I hope this is true. I hope that my husband and I can stay healthy enough so that I can keep homeschooling my son through high school. I hope we can send him to college. That is all I can think about now.

Not that anybody asked, but my kids are not bilingual.  Almost everybody they know is bilingual except for me.  My husband thinks I should learn Spanish and teach them since I teach them everything else.  I say why should I be the one to teach them Spanish when everybody here speaks Spanish somebody else should teach them.  Actually I have the CAPS brand 3rd grade Spanish grammar program sitting on my bookshelf for later.  All of my in laws and neighbors use Spanish and English every day.   There is nothing I can say in Spanish that I can't say better in English but everybody who grew up here would just as soon say some things in English and somethings in Spanish depending on which phrase suits their story.  They can still use my Spanish grammar books later same as English grammar but if I did like my husband said and taught my kids Spanish then they'd go to school and correct little kids Spanish whose parents are native speakers or they'll think they were wrong and the other kids were right.  Let them learn locally and then I'll teach them to read Spanish.  
I also bought Chinese cartoons.  My kids have always heard Spanish being used everyday even if everybody speaks to them specifically in English.  I thought if I bought them Chinese cartoons then if they wanted to take up a third language later on it wouldn't be so foreign.  I should have picked Japanese because I didn't know I friend of the family in Japan.  Oh well.  

In reply to "I have nothing to show and did nothing spectacular", I love this. So much of what is truly important is invisible, intangible anyway.

Often times I know I'm just piddling around without wanting to hear angel trumpets or God's voice or experience anything intensely glorious - like I normally do. Sometimes it just feels good to just sit down and just flip through a magazine - like I'm in a dentist's or doctor's waiting room, just making myself as comfortable as possible.

Doesn't it feel sometimes like you're just making yourself comfortable until it's your turn for something to happen to you? Sort of like being in some sort of limbo? Almost boring but not quite. Just comfortably waiting?

I used to feel a hoard of ants in my pants enduring those almost cruel-like pauses and inbetween moments in my life. But I've grown to cherish them and feel healed by them as an older adult. I've flexibly switched to a slower pace and I am happier for deciding to do this. I'm not feeling as driven, or dissatisfied, or as intense - and I'm not scaring or bowling people over like I used to. Maybe its because I'm post menopausal. I can stand in line, wait at a traffic light, stop what I am doing, listen to someone talk about anything and not feel annoyed or impatient. Its like everything can be interesting - even just piddling around.

I have settled down and not because I've settled for less. I settled down because there is so much more to gain in letting go of believing I need to be in control all the time, and that I am the only one that can Save the World! Like I can really do that anyway! Humpfh. How arrogant I was! To believe that I was the only one who could handle things. How dumb can a smart person be? Ha!

So herein here lies one more challenge of being 'gifted'. Because of my mistrust and experience with 'less smart' people, I did not ask for help from others hardly at all, nor did I delegate and intrust others enough to take of things -- because I believed I could do things better -- which is actually true in many incidences -- but I am humbler and do ask for help from others more now - like I do ask strangers, and neighbors and family for help - who I am surprised to see are happy to help me -- and without strings attached.

I am often amazed at how geniunely friendly and truly helpful people can be! As a result, I do feel safer in the world, less isolated, less alone. And more like a geninue and normal and common human being -- who has needs, feelings and problems like other regular folk. Being "gifted" doesn't mean being exempt from these things. Oh shucks


And hey Schaps are you still here? What if anything are you getting out of this thread that you wonderfully started?

I should probably learn Spanish so that I can do the translation for the (not my) clients while my assistant does my administrative work for my clients.

Then it would give me the added bonus that I could speak Spanish to my assistant and annoy the rest of the non-Spanish speaking office.

In fact, I might do that. Just talk to my assistant in Spanish only.

How much longer does your son have to wear the brace?

I would not worry about your health. My heart failure was a fluke. Most older parents do very well.

Sounds like your son is managing fairly well by finding things to learn.

I think you misunderstood what I was saying.

I wasn't referring to how you described the way you think. I was referring to your descriptions of how you express yourself.

From the second link: "I work in a place where most of my co-workers are gifted, if not all. Software and hardware engineering tends to attract people like that." HA! I wish. I've heard that places like Google, IBM, and Apple attract that sort of talent, but from my view of the rest of the IT world, it's not that different from any other world of employment... a number of competent but not exceptional individuals, a surprising number of incompetent posers, and a handful of outliers that everyone seeks out. There may be a higher volume of outliers in IT than the general population, but that's not really saying much.

When I was in the Navy, we tech-types used an automotive analogy to describe these groups. We described people as axles (if these people broke, you were going nowhere), wheels (people who carried their own weight), and nubs (decorative features that contributed nothing of value). The fun thing about that environment is that everyone was a nub on day one, because there was just too much to learn.

I have that problem a little bit.  If you read the beginning of this thread you'll notice at least i'm not the only one who doesn't always take what other people are saying as seriously as they do.  One exception, when someone is being seriously serious I'll take them serious but when it's a little less serious I take other people less seriously than they take themselves.   That's kind of a rude move, i guess.  **

Grinnity has mentioned a kind of peer counseling program that teaches you to listen with your heart (I used to, but I'm out of practice. Got tired of being alone.  Quitting that didn't help).  But it's a couple hundred dollars and you have to have a partner and the closest class to me is two hours away.  I think I'll still try it but maybe after at least one of the kids are in school full time.  I still haven't made up my mind wether to try and go with my hubby or a Sahm friend.  I had thought of a meditation recently connecting brain to heart.  Now that I've typed this I think maybe I need to meditate on using my ears and my heart together.   I tell you I'm having a full scale Dabrowski's moment.. But this one's going in slow-mo and I'm actively participating.  It's a little spookier in slow-mo and I'm still a little blind in the corners.  

**that sentence sounded seriously cheesy and I wonder if it meant what I thought I said.

Not to change the subject but I was just uploading probably the last few pictures to my preschool mommy brag blog and I saw this opinion I wrote awhile back so I'm going to go cut and paste it to share with the OP. It's about the book called Smart Boys written by Barbra A Kerr.

I so highly recommend this book for the new gifted parent as well as for the gifted kid who wants to learn about common gifted issues.  It just covers a lot of ground with real-life stories illustrating many aspects of gifted life.  It discusses ambivilance about being gifted and the need to choose between excellence and normalcy.  It tells the stories and findings of researcher into the gifted psychology from the 1920's on.  It tells the stories of grown gifted men from the 1960 who qualified and were accepted into an elite school for the gifted to be educated as "the leaders of tommorow."  Surprisingly they didn't become leaders but became mostly successful middle management who pursued contentment rather than greatness.  Statistically emminent  inventors and such are overwhelmingly from troubled lives and raised by single mothers.  There's a section full of insights into the young gifted boy, pre-school and early elementary.  There's stories about adolescent gifted boys, underachieving gifted boys, behavior and emotions, peer realtions, romantic relationships, special challenges for gifted boys, common stories of grown gifted men, the boy code, nerds, and parental relationships.  It doesn't go too far in depth into any topic, but gives a great overview of issues relating to gifted life for boys.  I definately got some new insight into the struggles of smart men. "Smart Boys" by Barbara A. Kerr Ph.D., & Sanford J. Cohn Ph.D.