Month: January 2008

Note: What follows is a loose sorting of thoughts on the subject of giftedness. All opinions expressed in this post are subject to change upon receipt of further information. Today’s ideas may be tossed by tomorrow.

As part of my resolve to focus more on the needs of the kids, I have borrowed some books to read. I have long resisted doing any research into the special needs of gifted kids because I believe that all children have special needs. It seemed irrelevant to study about giftedness when I just needed to pay attention to my kids and figure out what they needed. I continued in this opinion even when Kiki’s teachers kept trying to give me literature, or send me to seminars, or show me websites. I was quite stubborn. I did not want to subscribe to the idea that some kids are gifted while others are not. This week I caved and did some reading. The first thing I figured out is that “gifted” is merely a category descriptor for a set of behaviors and needs. “Gifted” does not mean better. A gifted child may actually cause far more chaos than joy in a family that doesn’t know how to deal with their behaviors.

I wish they would pick a different term than “gifted.” It’s as if this small subset of the population has been given a super special present that no one else gets to have. The fact that I am part of the subset makes me alternately glad and guilty. I resolve the feelings by making sure that I use my abilities to make the world a better place. Another part of me has a hard time believing in the whole concept of giftedness because it doesn’t seem rare. My whole family is highly intelligent. Howard’s whole family went through gifted programs. And now I am a parent and I have to discern the needs of my kids. As I was reading about the characteristics of gifted kids it was like browsing the behaviors of my children. Gleek has that. Patches and Gleek both do that. Oh there’s Kiki. This one is Link. On and on. These are supposedly diagnostic descriptions of gifted behaviors but I find myself thinking “doesn’t every kid do that?” Am I so accustomed to oddness that it seems normal to me? Am I weird? Rare? I don’t feel like I am. I don’t feel like my kids are. It all seems…normal.

In order to meet the educational needs of my kids, I may have to endure putting them in gifted programs. We did that with Kiki and it was miserable. On the other hand, if I’d listened to her teachers and studied more about typical gifted behaviors, perhaps it would have been a better experience. Assuming I already know the answers is typical for gifted people. Apparently I’m susceptible to the faults of the category as well.

Have I mentioned that I dislike categories? I don’t like thinking that I fit into one. I don’t like thinking that my kids fit into one. Categories seem limiting, confining. They are like little boxes. Labels and descriptors are better. They attach without impeding movement.

Ack. All this is me spinning my wheels to no point. Tomorrow I read the book about actually managing the problem behaviors typical in “gifted” children. That one may have some useful applications rather than just high theory that makes my head hurt with contradictory emotions.

Running running all day long without a stop to rest. I hope that soon I will settle into this year and this shifted schedule. I hope I will soon dig out from under the unending pile of beginning of the year accounting. I hope that sometime I’ll have a day that is empty of urgent tasks. I don’t want all my days that way. I like being busy. But all busy all the time is exhausting.

I think it was the broken dishwasher that threw the morning out of kilter right from the start. I discovered the dysfunction when I went to unload clean dishes and discovered that they were not in fact clean. This meant that I not only had breakfast dishes to hand wash, but also the dishes from last nights company-for-dinner event as well. That piled on top of all the other looming tasks of the day made me want to sit down and cry. And then the kids were not cooperative about getting ready for school.

It wasn’t a good start for the day. Things got much better when Howard sent me out of the kitchen because he had figured out a dish system that worked best if no one else was in his way. They improved further when my kids were glad to see me after school despite the fact that I’d not been nice in the morning. Gleek and I had another quiet snuggle time where I read her a story and then she read one to me. I had a nice long talk with my backyard neighbor in which we conspired to help both our kids. It is so nice to have a friend who knows my kids well enough that she sees everything I see, but she sees it all from a slightly different perspective. She had some excellent ideas for new approaches to some of the interpersonal problems I’ve been wrestling with.

Our family has a good strong foundation. We all love and depend on each other, but all of us have been distracted lately and it is time to do some maintenance work. It is time for me to pay attention to my interactions with the kids. I need to see the unintended lessons I’ve been teaching in my hurry to get things done. I need to change my behaviors and attitudes to make sure that I am building up my kids rather than undermining them. I never meant to hurt them, but after enough times being told “Not now, I’m working” they decide that they aren’t as important as work. I need to fix that since the point of working so hard is to maintain the family and the life we’ve created together.

Today I looked at my calendar for this month. There aren’t many events written on it, and yet my days are still full. My days are full of things which are too small or too regular to make it onto the calendar. I don’t write down “get kids ready for school” or “Pick kids up from school” because those things happen every weekday. Instead the calendar is devoted to reminding me about the less regular events. Unfortunately this means that an empty calendar day does not mean I have nothing to do.

My things to do list comes in layers. There are things to do for the businesss. There are things to do for the house. There are things to do for Howard. There are things to do for the kids. There are things to do for me. There are things to do for my faith. There are things to do to build friendships. I can’t work all the time, but frequently I take a break from one list by doing things on a different list. This works particularly well for the kid list because mostly what the kids want me to do is sit still and pay attention to their things. But some days I reach the end of the day and feel like there has never been a break at all. The lists feel unending, but they can’t be abandoned because all the things are important.

At those moments, when the lists of things to do seem to rule my life, I need to remember that I am the creator of the lists. I have the power to edit or discard them. I won’t pitch the lists, because the things on them are important to me, but it feels good to know that I could if I so choose.

We took the kids to a book release party this evening. It was for The Red Dragon Codex from Mirrorstone books. Howard and I had never met the author before, but we received an invite via a friend and decided to go. Part of our attendance was selfish. We wanted the chance to see how someone else ran a book release party. We’ve done three now and I was curious to see if our idea of a book release was at all traditional. Since this book is a Young Adult title the party was aimed for kids as well as adults. There were coloring pages and activities for all ages. Our kids had fun, though part of the fun they had was running around like hoodlums. Fortunately they fit right into the crowd of other kids, so I did not have to turn into mean mommy and make them stop.

The party was very enjoyable. We got to see some friends from the Salt Lake area that we don’t often run into. I wish we’d been more prepared though. We forgot to bring a book that we’d promised to one friend. We neglected to bring cash with which to buy a book. And mere hours before our departure we determined conclusively that Howard is completely out of business cards. Naturally all of the thing we did not bring would have been useful. Oh well. I guess I was thinking “family outing” rather than “business contacting opportunity.”

In the end it was a good event for all of us. Now I need to sit down and read the book we bought.

Today I scooped Gleek into my lap for a snuggle and she stayed in my lap. Usually these random snuggles are met by squirms to get free and run back to what she was doing. Sometimes I get a few minutes of snuggle time before she is off and running again. Today she stayed in my lap for an hour. I’m glad I had the quiet afternoon hour to spend. We talked some about her nightmare last night. She’s been having frequent nightmares lately. I always treat nightmares as red flags. They usually mean that something is unsettling or worrying the child during the day time hours. Sometimes the connection is easy to see, like a nightmare about skeletons after watching Pirates of the Carribean. Other times the imagery of the dream is not diagnostic and I just have to listen to the shape of the dream to see if I can make connections. I love it when I can find the source of the frightening emotions and dispell it.

Today it was not so simple. It took a lot of questions to pull the content of the dream out of Gleek. She had trouble putting it into words. But the fact that she stayed in my lap and continued to remain focused on the conversation demonstrates the level of import these dreams carry for her. In the end I think her dreams are about safety and security. She had to defend herself in the dreams because no one would help her. In classic nightmare form, her efforts to defend herself were insufficient. I think that the answer is more security and affirmation from her family. I need to spend more time snuggling her, talking to her, being there for her. I also need to figure out ways to encourage Kiki to be kinder to Gleek. Kiki constantly treats Gleek like an annoyance which is barely tolerated. I know this is typical behavior for an older sibling to a younger one, but it breaks my heart to see it. Gleek is hurt and Kiki is full of negative emotions and their relationship could be so much better than that. Perhaps I need to make Kiki write lists of nice things about Gleek. That worked before when they were younger.

After the talk about dreams, Gleek wanted to talk about mummies. So we pulled out a book on mummies and read through it. Gleek is like a little sponge soaking up knowledge. I need to read more non-fiction books to her. The talking is good for us both. Even after the book was done, Gleek lingered in my lap. She’d had an hour of mommy all to herself and was loath to have it end. But it could not last forever. Patches and Kiki both arrived simultaneously with requests. The hour was done. Somehow I do not think it a coincidence that Gleek was not fearful at bedtime tonight. I don’t know if I can give her a solo hour out of every day, but I can certainly give her more than I have been doing. She needs the snuggles and attention even if she doesn’t always want to sit still for them.

As part of the new schedule, Howard and I decided to make exercise a priority. We’ve been intending to do that for years, but this time we studied the finances and decided to try joining a gym. It isn’t cheap, but if we get the results we want the money will be well spent. Howard and I have both belonged to gyms before. When Howard worked at Novell, he made regular use of the gym they had on site. I last bought a gym membership right after Patches was born. It was my sanity time to drop the kids into the childcare and have an hour when no one required anything of me. But then Howard quit Novell and money was incredibly tight, so I gave it up. A part of me has missed it ever since.

I walked in today and noticed all the changes the gym had made since I was there last. Some remodeling had been done and machines had been moved around. Things were different, and yet they weren’t. The place was still full of people focused on fitness. Some guys who seemed to drip testosterone. Some women who were toned and perfectly made up for their workouts. Some people who were obviously out of shape, but determined to change that. The gym does feel a little exposed. A couple of times I felt like guys were staring at me and I was suddenly aware that for young singles the gym is a place to meet prospective dates. It made me feel self conscious. Odds are they weren’t even looking at me anyway.

Always before the gym has been a solitary pursuit. It was a place I went to be alone. This time Howard and I are going together. That changes things. It is going to take us awhile to get comfortable with exercising together, but I think it will be good for both of us. We’ll be healthier and have more energy for the other things that we want to do.

I feel like the rest of the new schedule is beginning to settle in as well. It isn’t habit yet, but I’m liking the new patterns I can see beginning to form. Howard spent all day yesterday at home, then in the evening we had a scheduled hour where the focus was on doing something together as a family. It was really good for all of us. Bedtime is working much more smoothly. I’m still sitting in the hallway every night while kids fall asleep. I sit where both Patches and Gleek can see me as they fall asleep. This also positions me to guard against kids getting out of bed or playing in bed. I’m focusing the time on teaching the kids how to lie still long enough to fall asleep. So far so good. They have started falling asleep in their own beds and they’ve even started sleeping there all night long rather than climbing into bed with us. Even better, the nightmares that both Gleek and Patches were complaining about seem to have tapered off. A few more weeks of stability and I think they’ll be back to only happy dreams.

The more I look at the house and family stuff, the more I see that I was letting slide, and the more I am convinced that this shift in priorities/emphasis is the right thing for all of us.