Light @ the End of the Tunnel: A Gifted Social Life

My son was awkward.  Correction . . . my son can still be awkward.  Particularly around people.  He has never really known how to “act his age.”  I blame the wonderful world of gifted asynchrony.

As a young child, he’d use words, language, idioms that other kids his age just didn’t understand.  Or he’d be interested in things that other kids just weren’t.  So, he’d try to act more similarly to these other kids and would err on the side of silly goofiness that just turned kids off.

He did always manage to play with other kids, but he never really found those close friendships with kids who truly “got” him.  And so, like any emotionally intense gifted mother, I worried.

I worried that he wouldn’t find his group.  I worried that he’d be lonely and isolated.  I worried that he’d spend so much time blending in with other kids that he’d lose his unique identity.

For many years he sought peers in sports.  He is talented in many a-thing, but athletics is not his gifting.  Nor is it really his interest.  He likes a good backyard kick-around of the ‘ole football, but given a choice, he’s always preferred creative play.  Even so, he repeatedly chose to be on the soccer team.  As he advanced, he chose to be on the soccer team over being involved in theater and other activities that we could tell he was more suited for.  He was friendly with his teammates and they were friendly with him, but they didn’t really connect because they weren’t really interested in the same things.  His teammates would beg to stay on the field longer to kick the ball around more.  Cub would saunter over to the van and be ready to head home.

We followed his lead, but behind closed doors, were concerned that he was trying to be someone he isn’t, that he was seeking friendships with nice guys, but not cut-from-the-same-cloth kinds of guys.

And then.  It happened.  A gaming store opened up in our small town and he started going.  We’re talking dungeons & dragons, magic the gathering, pokemon playing complete and utter nerd-dom.  He’d found his people.  It didn’t happen overnight.  Even after finding his people he chose one more season of soccer over being in a community theater production.  But, midway through the season, he was frustrated that he was having to miss time at the gaming store to go to soccer practice.  He would come up with reasons why he didn’t want to go to soccer.  And one night, he came and talked to us and said he felt really stuck, because he committed to the soccer team, and we’d paid for the season and the uniforms and the tournaments, but he really felt more himself playing magic and he hated having to miss it.

Admittedly, my husband and I went round and round about this until I realized my husband was right.  Sure he’d made a commitment, but at the end of the day, my son’s identity and social connections were more important.  He quit the team.  Started spending 2-3 nights at the gaming store, is taking leadership in starting a new D&D event, spent time at an acting camp, is regularly involved in theater productions and classes, participates in destination imagination and proudly claims his nerdy side. 

I know he’s only 12 and we have a long way to go.  But, for those of you with younger kiddos, know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.  Give them the proper encouragement, support, and freedom and they will find their way to embrace their identity.  They will find their fellow geeks.  It might not look the way you envisioned, but they will get there.

Still hard to see the light?  Find more inspiration and hope in this month's GHF bloghop!

What is this "sleep" thing of which you speak?

You know those parents who gently lift their sleeping child from the car, drape their ragdoll deep-sleeping child over their arms and quietly transfer them, still asleep, into warm and cozy beds?  Yeah, I kinda hate them a little.  OK.  Maybe that’s too strong.  I am just extremely jealous.  Never, ever has that been my experience in 12 years and 3 children of parenting.  And it wasn’t just that my kids would wake up if I lifted them out of the car, they would often not sleep in the first place!

Sleep has always been an issue in my home.  A few of my personal facebook posts from my children’s baby days prove this . . .

“With the exception of a couple 5 minute snoozes, my 6-week-old has now been awake for 12 ½ hours and counting.  He’s happy as can be, I’m old and it’s past my bedtime!” 

Or

“Argh . . . I have created a stubborn, crib-hating, sleep-defying monster.” 

Like so many other things for gifted people, sleep patterns tend to be atypical.  Many gifted kids and adults just don’t need as much sleep as others may.  My youngest stopped taking naps at the ripe old age of 1.  Sigh.

And add some other different wiring to the mix, as is the case with my twice-exceptional girl, and sleep can become even more elusive.  For literally 9 years of my adult life, I rarely experienced the bliss of uninterrupted sleep.  Of course, there were the infant years, and then there was my 2e daughter awake and unable to regulate or self soothe back to sleep, and my youngest waking me up in the middle of the night because he wanted to play or snuggle or talk.  All with a smile on his face.

But, this mama needs sleep.  We’d tried everything.  Melatonin.  Warm baths.  Essential oils.  Weighted blankets.  White noise.  Music.  Sleep stories.  Massage.  Lotion.  Special stuffed animals.  Living breathing real animals.  Short of prescribed sleep meds, we’ve tried it all.  And some things have made sleep a little easier, but there has been 1 approach that has made the biggest difference for us.

While my daughter was in the hospital for an overnight eeg to assess for epilepsy, a sleep doctor met with us.  She did many of the basics in terms of problem solving and gave us charts to track for potential sleep patterns.  And those were minimally helpful, but then . . . THEN . . . she gave me the best gift ever.

She spent about 5 minutes talking with my daughter about the need for adults to have sleep.  They talked about the activities that mom and dad do throughout the day and explored how safe and well those activities get done when mom and dad are tired.  She explained the dangers of mom or dad driving sleep deprived and asked my daughter to think about how many times we drive her around during a day.  The doctor encouraged my daughter that we’d help her find ways to sleep better, but in the meantime, she needs to let mom and dad sleep.  We made a list of all the things she could quietly do in her room if she wakes up in the middle of the night.  We made a list of the circumstances that would warrant waking parents. 

Prior to that conversation, my daughter was coming into my room at least twice a night, at the age of 7.  In the 2 ½ years since that conversation, my daughter has woken me up maybe 10 times, and usually because she was actually sick or scared.

Aside from helping with the overall sleep issues, that doctor gave me a ginormous gift.  In the midst of my sleep-deprived hazy thinking, she reminded me that my sleep is just as important as my child’s sleep.  She alleviated the mom-guilt which kept telling me that I should be able to “fix” my daughter’s sleep issues, or at the very least bring her comfort day or night.  That doctor helped me prioritize my own self-care and helped my daughter understand the importance of mom’s self-care, too.

We’ve recently had the same conversation with my youngest, who repeatedly sought our attention in the middle of the night, simply because he was happily awake.  We considered why mom and dad need sleep and we problem solved together.  We listed the quiet activities he could do in his room, and we created a “nest” on the floor in our room.  He knows he can come down to his nest any night, but that he needs to move into it quietly and only wake my husband or I if necessary.

I can’t say that my kids are sleeping any better.  But, my husband and I are.  And when we’re more well rested, we’re better parents and more patient during the day.

So, I give you the gift that sleep doctor gave me . . . it’s ok.  Give them tools, set the boundaries, and know that it’s ok to sleep through your child’s sleeplessness. 

This post is part of the Hoagies' monthly blog hop.  Check out other great sleep ideas across the ages!

High Achieving Schmigh Achieving

Brace yourself, parents. I’m about to let you in on one of the things I repeatedly say to the kids and youth you trust me to guide through their social, emotional, and mental health needs.  Ready?  Here goes:

I don’t care about grades.

Typically followed by:

I think grades are stupid.

“But, Heather!” some of you might be thinking, “how will we know how much our kids have learned if we don’t give them grades?!”

To which I say – grades don’t give us any indication regarding a student’s degree of learning.  I should know.  I graduated with straight A’s from High School, summa cum laude from undergrad, and with just under a 3.9-something or other from grad school.  Helping my 3rd grader with homework and teaching my 7th grader about history, physics, chemistry, and more, I can honestly tell you that I learned very little in all those subjects in school.  I tested well.  I knew how to remember information just long enough to spew it back on a piece of paper filled with beautifully number 2 pencil colored bubbles.  I got the A’s.  And then I forgot the knowledge.  I didn’t really learn anything.  And I’m not the only one with this skill.

“But, Heather!” some of you might be thinking, “how will they ever get into a good college and then get a good career if they don’t care about their grades?” 

To which I say – hiring personnel and college recruiters understand the limitations of grades.  Grades are an indication of how well a person knows how to jump through hoops and give other people what they want.  Solid, passion-filled careers, generally spark from more innovation than that.  They spark from thinking outside of the box and knowing how to create your own hoops to give people what they didn’t even know they wanted but now can’t live without.  Recruiters want problem-solvers, they want creative minds, they want innovators.  Grades do not assess these things.

“But, Heather!” some of you might be thinking, “they’re kids!  Their job is to do well in school and get good grades.”

To which I say – last time I looked, a kid’s job is to learn the skills needed to be functioning, contented adults.  Do grades really factor in?  Can’t think of a time when my grades mattered one iota in my family, friendships, or vocation.  Nobody has walked into my office and asked me my gpa from graduate school, let alone high school or 3rd grade.

“But, Heather!” some of you might be thinking, “you specialize in working with gifted families!  What do you mean you don’t care about grades?!  That’s part of being gifted!”

To which I shout – AHHHHHHHH!!!!  NO!!  High achievement can be a part of gifted, but it is not automatically a part of being gifted.  To be honest, following the expectations and striving for those sought after golden A’s actually stifled my giftedness.  I became more concerned about achieving some standard determined by others that I lost (or never learned) my own voice, my own passions, my own giftings and talents.  Grades enhanced my perfectionism.  Working for the A made me not trust my own writing style or best practices for my own learning.

I cannot count the number of gifted kids I’ve worked with who simply give up on school.  They see no point, and I don’t blame them.  They ask me what the point of homework is, and parents say, “to get a good grade,” or “because that’s what’s expected of you and sometimes you just have to do what you have to do.”  But, homework for the sake of homework is a waste of time, and many bright kids get that.  They don’t want to complete a worksheet about addition when they’ve been doing multiplication for the past 3 years.  They don’t want to read for 20 minutes every night because they read for 200 minutes over the weekend, when they actually have time to dive into the book.  They don’t want to make a diorama because there’s no real world value to it.  And these gifted kids get this early.  I admire them for bucking the system, and I wish I hadn’t waited until my 30s to do the same.

I feel sad for them, too.  They often have their gt classes stripped or threatened to be taken away because they aren’t performing and therefore must not be gifted.  Or they have teachers and parents focus so much on what they aren’t doing, neglecting to build on their strengths and give them the things that they can succeed at and will want to do. 

Giftedness is about seeing and experiencing the world differently than the norm.  It’s about intense emotions, intense thoughts, creative constructs, innovation, making connections, diving deep.  It isn’t synonymous with high academic achievement.  We need to be expanding our definition of success, especially for our brightest minds.  We need to embrace that giftedness is being differently wired, not higher achieving.  We need to question who actually gets to determine what high achievement looks like, anyway.

And so, I’ll stand firm . . . grades are stupid.

Find out other ways the thinkers of today are reinforcing that giftedness and achievement are two separate things by reading all the great posts in this month's GHF Blog Hop!