The Parent Challenge

New Zealand celebrates Gifted Awareness Week from 17th to 23rd June this year and we are delighted to join in their blog tour in anticipation.Ours is a very small contribution, but during the week there will be many more posts looking at giftedness from all sorts of angles. We hope our readers will have a look at the blog tour page or follow #NZGAW on Twitter, and be inspired. 

Parenting a gifted child can be a very lonely and frightening role to play. Our kids most certainly do not come with an instruction booklet and, at times, it can seem that no one knows how to help us figure things out.

Courtesy of Kidspot.com.au

All too often, we defer to the wisdom of professional experts. Yes, there are many wonderful experts out there, advancing the fields of gifted education and psychology, and we must be grateful and supportive of them. (Does it ever strike you how many of these people are either gifted or parents of gifted children themselves?) However, the vast majority professionals with whom we come into contact, do not have training or expertise in giftedness and are liable to misinterpret and misdiagnose. Don't ever forget, there is no one more expert in your child than you! We live with these kids 24/7. We see them in all sorts of situations and moods. We know what makes them tick....well, sometimes!

Parents of gifted children come from diverse backgrounds, educationally, financially, and culturally, but we all have one thing in common: No matter what life throws at us, we will always love and support our children unconditionally. Regardless of career opportunities and politics, we will always look for what is best for our children and we will be relentless in our quest.

As a group, we include educators, psychologists, paediatricians and psychiatrists. Others are great leaders and motivators; some make great coffee; some are wonderful listeners; some provide the much-needed light relief when the going gets tough! Each and every one of us has something to bring to the party.

As a group, we have so much to offer and our challenge must be to find each other, to use each others strengths to support each other, to learn from each other and to develop a loud and powerful voice on behalf of our children.

As individuals, we may often feel swamped, unsure and inadequate. As a group, we have the passion, the skills and the expertise to really make a difference. We should not wait about for others to do this for us. Join your local support group and get stuck in. If there isn’t one, start one. We urge you to rise to the challenge.

Many thanks to Kidspot.com.au for permission to use the above cartoon.

New Centre for Gifted Research Gives Hope to Irish Parents

DCU and the CTYI programme is a refuge for my son every Saturday and, last Friday night, I met my knight in shining armour there at the launch of the new DCU Centre for Gifted Research. 

Professor Tracy Cross, from the Center for Gifted Education at the College of William and Mary in the US, was there to speak at the launch and, more importantly, to us parents who were invited to attend. He is one of the world's leading experts in gifted kids and, as a parent of gifted kids himself, an absolute lifeline to someone like me, who was called into school twice last week because of my seven-year-old son's behaviour!

I know the benefit of talking to other parents in the same position as myself and, to talk to a parent with so much knowledge and experience in this field, was absolutely invaluable. He is such a warm and approachable man and clearly his kids are his best work because he is so obviously proud of them. For someone like myself starting out on this journey of trying to navigate my child through a hostile education system, he is absolutely inspirational. After our chat, I felt hope for the first time - that maybe it's not me failing my child, but instead it is our educational system.

The Centre for Gifted Research is an exciting and long-overdue development and a step forward for our kids. Speaking at the launch, Dr Colm O'Reilly, Director of CTYI, said: 

"We are increasingly expanding the work of CTYI and we believe research plays an important role in providing evidence for the need for gifted programmes and in helping people to understand the academic and social needs of high ability students. We are currently involved in a couple of research projects, including social coping and self concept of gifted students, a study of principals and school policy around academically talented students and an international study around what it is like to be a gifted student."

Two CTYI staff members, Dr Eleanor Healion and Dr Catriona Ledwith, have recently completed PhDs in this field and Eleanor talked about how a number of local schools in disadvantaged areas, selected their brightest students to attend special CTYI programmes. The effect it had on these kids, their families and school friends, was incredible.

CTYI will collaborate with the DCU School of Education Studies in setting up the Centre for Gifted Research to address the needs for research in this area. There are important topics to examine, including online learning, gifted disadvantaged students and STEM related topics. CTYI will need our help in the future, with possible participants in this research and, if you work in an institution that would be interested in collaborating with them in this regard, please get in touch with Colm. 

In the meantime, if you would like to get in touch with Professor Tracy Cross, his email is TLCross@wm.edu. Professor Cross, an endowed chair at the College of William and Mary in Virginia and a leading expert in gifted education, was recently appointed an adjunct professor at DCU to help CTYI in the area of research.

Organising the Gifted but Scatty

Do you have one of those kids who lives in a world of their own much of the time, completely oblivious to the passage of time; who needs constant reminding to "put the other sock on and finish getting dressed"; to "never mind that the dog's water bowl is empty, you have five minutes to eat your breakfast and get out to school"?

Does the start of the day go something like the version on the right below?

llustration by Buck Jones, used with the kind permission of Allie Golon of Visual-Spatial Learners

You finally get them out the door and are just recovering when you spot the Irish homework that was slaved over for hours the night before, sitting on the table. Or the text arrives to say "I've forgotten my maths book", "forgotten my lunch", "forgot there was P.E. today"...and so begins that inner battle: if you constantly bail them out they'll never learn, so you should let them suffer the consequences of not planning ahead and paying attention, versus the gut feeling that they really can't help it and will be devastated to turn up in class without all the right things.

In my experience there are some kids who, by suffering the consequences of their actions or lack of them, will quickly learn to be better organised. However, there are some who really do have genuine organisational difficulties related to what are known as executive skills deficits. No matter how hard they try, they always struggle to be organised. They know this and it frustrates them, causes them distress and makes them feel useless.

Sometimes the issue is just delayed development of executive skills, sometimes it’s ADHD, sometimes it’s that your kid is a visual-spatial learner. Whatever the reason, recognising for themselves the tasks with which they struggle and learning how to best to work around the problem is something that will stand to them forever. Plenty of scatty, disorganised people go on to lead productive, creative and fulfilled lives. For them to be left to constantly mess up or to have you forever picking up the pieces for them is hugely damaging to their self esteem and will delay their independence. The trick is to get the balance right between being supportive and allowing to learn by failure.

As a parent, I have found it helpful to avoid comparison of my children's progress in this area with that of other children of the same age. My goal is to ensure that, by the time they reach adulthood, they have learned to be as independent and self-sufficient as possible and are ready to leave the nest. In the meantime, they may need a little more support than their peers, but it's not a competition. It can also be helpful to discuss the problem with your child's teachers so that they understand and can work with you. It is absolutely vital that your child is included in the process so that they take responsibility for their own progress and learn to advocate for themselves as they get older.

Here are some tricks which help them to cope better.

Getting out in the morning:

1. Mornings are usually hectic and full of distractions, so pack your schoolbag and look out all your clothes before going to bed the night before. Use the school timetable to check off what is needed.

2. Set a timer in your bedroom to go off when it really is time to be dressed and ready to go for breakfast. (To begin with, mum may need to pop her head around the door at intervals to make sure progress is being made. Don’t bite it off!)

3. Follow a routine and do everything in the same order so you don’t leave anything out.

4. No TV or other distractions!

5. Have a mental checklist of the essentials and go through it before you leave. Schoolbag, lunch, money, bus ticket...whatever you need, but keep it short or you’ll forget items. My own list, which I automatically recite on my way out the door, is “keys, money, phone”.

In school:

6. If you have a homework journal, USE IT. If you don’t have one, get one. Write in, not just the homework given, but when it is due and any other special announcements. eg If the teacher tells you there is a test or you must bring in a particular item next Wednesday, write a note in next Tuesday’s slot to remind you

7. Colour code your books. You can buy sheets of coloured stickers in various shapes and allocate one to each subject eg red circles to maths, blue squares to English etc. Stick these to the spine of all your books, copybooks included. Then, when you look into you locker, you will see quickly which books you need for each class...provided you take the time to keep your locker tidy.

8. Colour code your timetable to match the book system.

9. Make lots of timetables. Stick one where you do your homework, one in the kitchen, one inside your locker. Make a small one, laminate it and keep it in your pocket.

Most importantly:

10. Accept that this is not your fault and, once you are doing your best, don't be too hard on yourself. If you keep working at it, after a while, these habits become automatic and you will find life much easier. Some of us spend our whole lives using to-do lists and little tricks to keep us on track.

Further reading for the frazzled:

Getting Your Kids Out The Door - With Their Shoes! by Allie Golon

Smart But Scattered Peg Dawson and Richard Guare

Visual Spatial Learners Gifted Development Centre

Visual Spatial Resource

Executive Function, What Is This Anyway? Chris A. Zeigler Dendy

Executive Function Issues

Parenting Your Gifted Child With ADHD Davidson Institute for Talent Development

For my next trick, I will be bringing you some homework tips for the easily distracted.

Back to School. Back to Reality.

For many gifted children and their families, the school holidays are a time of great relief. As we brace ourselves to re-enter the fray, we would do well to remember a few of those issues which can make school particularly difficult for gifted children. They are perfectly normal kids, just different, and we need to understand and make allowances for those differences so that we don't end up causing more stress than is necessary: 

• Gifted children learn faster in some areas than their classmates and often have interests not shared by children of the same age or taken to the same depth. They may find it difficult to find true peers in school and may feel isolated or somehow "out of sync". For further reading, take a look at Social Skills of Gifted Children by Louise Porter.


• A gifted child may "suffer" from oversensitivities and may find stimuli which other children take in their stride, to be overwhelming. School is full of loud noises, bright lights, pungent smells, odd textures, not to mention emotional encounters which they often take very much to heart. Check out Dabrowski's Over-excitabilities. A Layman's Explanation by Stephanie Tolan.


• While 60% to 75% of the general population are extroverts, about 60% of the gifted population are introverts. An extrovert is energised by being around others but an introvert finds their energy drained by others. After a period of time in other people's company, they need some time alone to recharge. A very worthwhile read for teachers and parents of gifted children is Introversion: The Often Forgotten Factor Impacting the Gifted by Jill Burruss and Lisa Kaenzig.

Considering that at least one of the points above may apply, which of the following do you think your gifted child would most welcome at the end of a school day:

A. To be whisked off on a playdate with a couple of their classmates? 

B. To be greeted by you with a string of twenty questions about the details of their school day? (My own personal specialty!) 

C. To be left alone to escape into a world of their own for a while to process and "re-centre" themselves?

This doesn't apply to all gifted children, of course; some arrive home raring to go. But it's worth bearing in mind that many are exhausted, drained, frustrated, have had just about enough, thank you very much, and simply want some time alone. It's nothing personal!

Parenting the Gifted in the Land of Saints and Scholars!

It is an honour to be a part of the SENG National Parenting Gifted Children Week blogtour. Little did we think when we tentatively launched our blog last year, that we would be celebrating our first birthday in such prestigious company! We hope our contribution will offer a different perspective and give some food for thought among our international friends.

To celebrate NPGC week, SENG has published a free e-book The Joy and the Challenge: Parenting Gifted Children.

For a nation which makes national sports of both put-downs and self-deprecation, being the parent of gifted children in Ireland can be like negotiating a minefield. Unless you tread very carefully, something is bound to blow up on you! First port of call after the suggestion of exceptional ability is usually the internet where most of the references are to programmes and research far away from our shores. It can be difficult to relate to discussion of GATE programmes, GT school coordinators and specialist teachers, AP programmes, G&T registers, One-day schools, acceleration or cluster-grouping when we have no such options available to us. Provision for gifted learners in Irish schools is largely a function of what individual schools and teachers can do within the confines of their classroom, their time and the school budget. As there is almost no teacher-training in giftedness, there is little real understanding of the issues involved in providing for these children. In addition, our Education Act of 1998 ensures that schools cannot enrol on the basis of a child’s ability, which leads to an emphasis on mixed-ability in all classrooms. This was underpinned by research from our Economic and Social Research Institute which found that streamed classrooms “do not boost the performance of the top group”.* We would love to know if any parents of gifted learners were consulted for that little bit of research!

What is universal however, is the experience of parenting gifted children. There we find we have much in common with our friends throughout the globe as we stumble through our parenting years as best we can. If there is no roadmap handed out in the delivery suite to any parents, it seems as if someone has actually tampered with the sat-nav of parents of gifted offspring. We are sent off on side-roads, dead-ends, even to the edge of cliffs at times before we start to find our way. Granted, it is a fascinating journey, but it can also be draining and exhausting. That’s where sharing our experiences with others can be a huge help. The thing is, there is no destination here, no neat platform to tell you you’ve arrived. So sharing with other parents is a way of making sure that you really are moving forward even when it feels as though you’re standing still, or heaven forbid, hurtling backwards!

So what’s different about doing this job in Ireland? Well, we admit to being somewhat envious when we read of parents “looking for a good school fit” in their district. Here, we have no school provision of programmes for exceptionally able children, so school choice on that basis is non-existent. Early enrolment in kindergarten or university is impossible in Ireland as children must be four years old to enrol in school and sixteen to enter third level education. In fact many parents hold off sending their little ones to school until they are at least five, sometimes very close to six because there is such an emphasis on the perceived advantage of being among the oldest in the class. This has a similar effect at the other end of the system where it is very unusual for sixteen year olds to go to university.

While trying to cope with all the usual issues of parenting a gifted child, in Ireland we must do this against a background where the education system barely recognises that our children have needs somewhat different to those of other children. It can be a heavy burden to bear and we find engagement with our global gifted friends through social networking provides us with support, inspiration and motivation to keep going. We hope that by encouraging other Irish parents and educators to join this community, we will eventually bring about positive change for our children.

*One of the ESRI researchers answers questions on Mixed Ability vs Streaming: What the Research Says, How Can Schools Make a Difference (02.29)