LESSONS I LEARNED FROM FAISING A PROFOUNDLY GIFTED CHILD: PART 2

In my previous post, I shared five lessons I learned from raising my profoundly gifted daughter. In this post, I’ll share five more lessons I learned. I am an imperfect mom, and I certainly made my share of mistakes. I pray that you will benefit from hearing what they were and will be able to avoid making the same ones! So here we go…

1. While having a gifted child is certainly a blessing, raising that child can be very stressful.

Raising a profoundly gifted child means dealing with something Polish psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski identified as “overexcitabilities” or “supersensitivities.” These are five areas in which gifted children often exhibit intense behaviors: psychomotor, sensual, emotional, intellectual, and imaginational. Children with these overexcitabilities may exhibit a wide variety of behaviors, such as crying very easily, seeking out answers to the point of challenging teachers, often being lost in fantasy or magical thinking, experiencing intense anxiety, and more. Parents need an extra measure of understanding and patience to support a gifted child experiencing one or more of these overexcitabilities. I’m sure I didn’t always fully understand these supersensitivies in my daughter or know fully how to support her!

When raising my daughter, I also had to keep in mind that her development, like the development of most profoundly gifted children, was asynchronous. In other words, she didn’t develop at the same rate in all areas. For example, while she was able to understand multiplication by two digits at age five, her motor skills were not yet developed enough to easily and neatly write out the problems. When she was reading high-school novels in school, she still enjoyed playing with her dolls.

This asynchronous development is not always understood by school personnel, who will point to things like a lack of advanced motor skills as a reason not to accelerate a child intellectually. I needed to do a lot of advocating for my daughter because of this. Sometimes I was successful; other times I wasn’t, such as when I failed to convince the teachers at my daughter’s high school that she shouldn’t be expected to take physical education classes alongside older and much larger, stronger students. (She ended up in the emergency room after the second class as a result—I should have been more insistent!) Parents need to strongly advocate/fight for their child’s needs to be met, and that can be very stressful!

2. Focus on your child as a child, not a genius.

If your child is profoundly gifted, that may become his or her identity throughout the school years. Your child will probably be referred to as “the brainy one” or “the genius,” and possibly something less complimentary, such as “the bookworm,” “the nerd,” or “the dork.” As a parent, you need to be the one who doesn’t exclusively focus on your child’s intelligence. Yes, you will need to spend a lot of time searching for solutions to meet your child’s needs and advocating for your child, as I did. But I tried to make sure that I didn’t always emphasize my daughter’s intelligence when talking with her. I would try to compliment her on other things more often—her kind acts, her funny jokes, and the like. And I tried to make sure she knew that she was valuable and loved not because of her intellect, but because of who she is as a person and as a beloved child of God.

This isn’t always easy. Sometimes you’ll need to talk with grandparents who like to ask and brag about grades but don’t seem to notice other great things about your child. You’ll need to encourage siblings not to compare themselves to your gifted child and judge themselves more harshly as a result. You may also need to protect your child from excessive publicity so that he or she can have a better chance to enjoy childhood. It can be tough when television and news outlets want to do a story about your “genius” child, and I’m not here to judge parents who allow that. But for our part, we made the conscious decision not to allow that type of publicity, and I believe our daughter is thankful for that.

3. Let go of your hopes that high school memories for your child will be similar to your high school memories.

If your child starts high school at a young age, like my daughter did, his or her high school experience is not going to be typical. For example, my daughter did not learn to drive until the end of high school, when she was old enough to get a learner’s permit. I needed to give her rides to all her activities. She also was not able to get a job because she was too young throughout most of high school to get a work permit. She didn’t really date in high school, again, because she was so much younger than her classmates. And she didn’t fit in with a large group or “clique” of peers, again, because she was younger and thought differently.

And all of that was ok.

It was a bit hard for me, feeling like my daughter was missing out on a “normal” high school experience. But her expectations were different than mine. I needed to learn that “normal” is overrated. She enjoyed her high school years and benefited from them. She didn’t need anything more.

4. You may need to “let go” of your child at an earlier age than is the norm.

My daughter went away to college at age 16, two years earlier than most students do. That, too, was hard—I felt as if I were missing out on two years of getting to raise her. I talked openly about that with her at the time and let her know that, because she still was only 16, I was going to be more of an involved parent during those first two years of college than was normal. Her college was about 90 minutes away, and I asked that she still come home most weekends. I asked for more frequent phone calls than normal—a couple of times a week—until she reached age 18. And since she was under age 18, we parents made sure we were still able to view her progress at college, and we still needed to make medical decisions for her and help manage her finances.

My daughter understood the importance of these requests and respected them, and we in turn respected the fact that she was taking on college responsibilities early. In fact, she ended up living at the college during the summer after her freshman year to hold down a job there, still coming home on weekends so that we could visit with her and help her learn to drive! I think it was helpful to have a serious talk with her about how college might need to be a bit different when a student begins it at a younger age. If your child is going to college early, I encourage you to discuss in advance with him or her how much communication will be necessary to help both parents and child feel comfortable with the situation.

5. Finally, recognize that your child’s gifts are from God.

God in his wisdom gave my daughter the gifts she had. I pointed that out to her often, as it was important to accept herself just the way she was, in spite of her differences from most children. I also wanted her to realize that the gifts she had weren’t hers to brag about, but they were and are gifts to credit to God and his goodness. Most importantly, since God had given her those gifts, I encouraged her to use them for his glory, and she has always found ways to do that.

If you are raising a profoundly gifted child, you and your child will have unique challenges to face, but also unique blessings to enjoy. Accept your child just the way he or she is, and encourage your child to do the same. Urge your child to use his or her gifts in ways that serve God and give him glory. And most of all, pray for wisdom as you navigate the waters of raising this unique individual. Remember that God entrusted your child to you, and he will help you through the parenting process—mistakes and all!