Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion The Gifted Mother

So I had an interesting conversation with my middle schooler recently about growing up with giftedness and intellectual intensity and what it means for middle school and high school. Long story short he asked a question that, while I came up with the "right" answer for him, I am not sure I truly know the answer. For those moms who passed down their gifted and intellectual intensity gene..what do you do as an adult that fuels your giftedness and intellectual intensity while also balancing the time and energy needs of the curriculum development, teaching, driving etc. that your intellectually intense and gifted child(ren) need?

Read

Volunteer

Music, both playing and listening

Homeschool.

All of the above (advocate, read, volunteer, music) plus research (about giftedness, etc) games, sports, puzzles. I'll admit, I like it when the gifted teacher gives the girls a new logic puzzle or sheet of perplexors to figure out because I like working them out too.

I still enjoy learning new things and now I can learn new things along-side my daughters. In the last year, we've taken up geology and entomology as a family. DD10 has always loved fossils, rocks, and insects, and DD8 has followed in her footsteps. Now we are taking a more educational approach to their obsession. They have learned that it takes effort and some research to actually figure out what the pretty rock is and how it was formed, or which family an insect belongs to, etc. I took a ton of science classes in college for my minor (including geology), but at that time I was more interested in biology and botany. So I've learned a thing or two since we started these projects. DH just sort of rolls with it, but boy-howdy you should have seen how excited he was when he found his first shark tooth (Ptychodus mortoni)!

A lot, by most people's definition of this term.

I'm a classic Jill-of-All-Trades. But both of my parents were like this as well, so it doesn't seem odd to me until my friends comment on it with surprise.

I help to run a message board (much like this one), read voraciously, listen to and play music, knit, sew, and spin, (and I design my own patterns as well), garden, volunteer, homeschool, etc. etc.

I'm a scientist and am creating a free online tool for diagnosing rare diseases. It uses a novel algorithm.

I also do math and theoretical physics on my own time.

I like Sci-Fi, too.

Oh I forgot...not only do I read, but I volunteer in the school library....and because I am not on the clock, I have the ability to stop and read a picture book if it catches my eye...and scan longer books...usually I am looking to see if my son might like the chapter book and the picture books are because I love children's lit...ds9 rarely reads picture books anymore.

I'm studying another graduate degree, starting a business, and taking care of DS full-time. In the last year, I've designed a national strategy around breastfeeding and human donor milk that could ensure that all Canadian very low birth weight babies have access to human milk cost free.

I've also written a children's book about a toddler who nurses, as our culture is heavily anti-full term breastfeeding. I'm going to donate half the proceeds to LLL and Dr. Jack Newman's International Breastfeeding Center, to provide free lactation consulting to low income families. I'm looking for a cause-motivated illustrator to partner with.

So, in a nutshell, social entrepreneurship.