Happy belated Mother’s Day to all the moms. I hope you have found a special moment just for yourself, and a lovely day with family. This time last year, we were all still trying to understand and adopt to the realities of lives in pandemic. Schools cancelled, working from home, senior shopping hours, and predicting the peak (over and over again). So much have changed since then, yet some important changes remained.

Moms are now working more jobs, their personal and professional boundary lines have been blurred to none, and they have less time for themselves. In addition to the roles prior to the pandemic – working, parenting and domestic duties, most moms are also taking on some versions of homeschooling for their children. For parents of gifted and profoundly gifted children, it has become more challenging to “keep up” with their unmet needs from their virtual classroom.

We know there are a lot of parenting resources in gifted education, from programs to services, assessments to advocacy. This blog post, however, primarily focuses on the self-care for parents of gifted and highly gifted children, how you can take care of you while taking care of the family.

If you haven’t already, please check out IEA’s monthly Gifted Support Group. It’s a great place to start. Our monthly Gifted Support Group meetings feature experts on various aspects of 

gifted education. The goals are to support parents, build community, it’s a venue for shared discovery, and a space to exchange resources and ideas. Sharing experiences with other parents and educators who interact with gifted children has proven to be enormously helpful.

In this open letter titled “Dear Tired Mom of Gifted Kids,” Gifted Specialist Colleen Kessler from Raising Lifelong Learners reaffirmed that sharing experiences with other parents and building community is critical to bringing calm to everyday parenting life. 

In this podcast by Debbie Reber, who is the founder of TiLT, a parenting community for raising unconventionally wired children, Debbie shared twelve strategies and ideas for creating a sustainable, doable self-care practice.

Taking care of you paves a strong foundation for the wellbeing of the whole family. The journey of raising gifted and highly gifted children is long, joyous, tenuous and amazing all at the same time. Know that you have a community and are never alone! Best wishes and keep in touch![vc_single_image image=”10489″ img_size=”large” alignment=”center” qode_css_animation=””]

It has been a year since the pandemic caused havoc, chaos and culminating to eventual acceptance that this will be our norm for now, full of anxiety and stress. Most children and families have adjusted to our pandemic norm, from online learning, zoom meetings, parents/guardians turning into homeschool teachers whilst working from home, and having to adhere to safety protocols on a daily basis, whether taking a walk outside your neighborhood, or going into the grocery store.

Because of such added stress and anxiety, parents and children need some type of support, activity or other types of de-stressors to be able to cope.

Below are some articles, podcasts, reading materials to help parents and their children on how to cope and maintain a healthier social, emotional and mental well being: from tuning in to funny and silly podcasts to alleviate or ease the tension and sadness, to hearing and learning how children can be supported emotionally. These resources are found on our Gifted Resource Center webpage.

Raising Life Long Learners

This is a podcast about raising kids who love learning. Listen to how others help inspire kids to view their world with play, passion and fascination. Podcasts such as WHY SELF-CARE IS IMPORTANT FOR OUR CHILDREN TOO talks about self-care and that parents must take care of themselves in order to take care of their children. But what about our kids, especially those who are gifted and twice exceptional? How do we help them learn coping skills and emotional regulation? How do we help them identify what they need to take care of their own bodies and souls?

The Deep End

The Deep End is a blog written by Stephanie Tolan, which she hopes will help create a space to discuss the needs and challenges of being a gifted child. A recent blog post “Wellbeing – A No Limits Approach”, talks about what does wellbeing mean to children with non-ordinary minds and non-ordinary needs, and more than that—children living, suddenly, like the rest of us, in utterly non-ordinary times

The Fringy Bit

The Fringy Bit is a website started by the parents of three “fringy” kids. They use this term to describe children who are gifted and those who experience other forms of neuro-diversity. Through their website, they have created a blog and podcast, focusing on creating a community for the parents of gifted children. Heather Boorman has a background in clinical social work, and her husband Jonathan is a licensed marriage and family therapist. Enjoy their bonus podcast episodes on “Quarantine Quips”, that include short episodes talking about strategies, support, silliness and whatever else comes of Heather and Jon’s mouths and minds.

“The Gifted Kids Workbook: Mindfulness Skills to Help Children Reduce Stress, Balance Emotions, and Build Confidence”

Help your gifted child embrace their uniqueness. In this workbook, a therapist offers fun activities and strategies to help children ages 7 to 12 boost self-confidence, reduce stress and overwhelm, and balance emotions.

Emotional Intensity in Gifted Students: Helping Kids Cope with Explosive Feelings

Designed to provide support for the difficult job of parenting and teaching gifted children, “Emotional Intensity in Gifted Students: Helping Kids Cope With Explosive Feelings” provides the resource parents and teachers need to not only understand why gifted children are so extreme in their behavior, but also learn specific strategies to teach gifted children how to live with their intensity.

Living the Life Fantastic

This blog provides resources for gifted children who struggle with anxiety. In addition to posts and discussions specific to giftedness and anxiety, the site also offers a purchasable “Taking Time for Me” journal to help children manage their anxiety through mindfulness and gratitude.

Tilt Parenting

TiLT Parenting was founded in 2016 by Debbie Reber as a podcast and community aimed at helping parents raising differently-wired kids do so from a place of confidence, connection, and joy. Debbie is passionate about the idea that being differently wired isn’t a deficit —it’s a difference. She hopes to change the way difference is perceived and experienced in the world so these exceptional kids, and the parents raising them, can thrive in their schools, in their families, and in their lives. Check out the podcast with Dr. Michele Borba on “How to Help Kids Thrive in an Anxious World”.

Understood

Understood is dedicated to shaping a world where millions of people who learn and think differently can thrive at home, at school, and at work. Several featured resources are available such as “How to help your child manage a fear, 6 signs your child is resilient”.

Why Smart Kids Worry: And What Parents Can Do to Help

This book by Allison Edwards guides readers through the mental and emotional process of where children’s fears come from and why they are so hard to move past. Edwards focuses on how to parent a child who is both smart and anxious. She brings her years of experience as a therapist to offer fifteen specially designed tools for helping smart kids manage their fears.

Additional Resources:

CDC Resources Page on Stress and Coping

CDC’s Stress and Coping webpage provides resources and information on how to deal and cope with stress, such as coping with job stress, adults experiencing stress from Covid-19, responding to loss, and coping and support for children.

CDC developed the COVID-19 Parental Resource Kit: Ensuring Children and Young People’s Social, Emotional, and Mental Well-being to help support parents, caregivers, and other adults serving children and young people in recognizing children and young people’s social, emotional, and mental health challenges and helping to ensure their well-being.

One of the questions we routinely ask applicants during an interview for a position with IEA is: “How do you deal with stress?”

If one were to ask me that, I would have several answers—take deep breaths, go for a walk, or listen to music, for example—but the answer that would describe the tactic that is first and most effective for me would be, “Journal about the situation.”

My good friend’s father is a very wise, very prominent businessman. One piece of advice I will always remember from him is, “If you are mad, write a letter. Don’t mail it. Put it in your desk drawer and sleep on it. If you are still mad the next day, then you can mail it, but usually by then, you won’t want to.”

Writing things down is a way to get situations and feelings out and to express them, to see them in a new light. The very act of writing is cathartic. In an article in the New York Times, Mary Gordon says:

Writing by hand is laborious, and that is why typewriters were invented. But I believe that the labor has virtue, because of its very physicality. For one thing it involves flesh, blood and the thingness of pen and paper, those anchors that remind us that, however thoroughly we lose ourselves in the vortex of our invention, we inhabit a corporeal world.

There are many ways to journal; travel-writing, write on a topic, describe yesterday, scribble thoughts of your future goals, aspirations, hopes and fears. One of the most effective ways for me to journal is free-writing. One example of this is the Morning Pages, made popular by Julia Cameron in her seminal book, The Artist’s Way (1992). In it, she says, “Put simply, the morning pages are three pages of longhand writing, strictly steam-of-consciousness: ‘Oh, god, another morning. I have NOTHING to say. I need to wash the curtains. Did I get my laundry yesterday? Blah-blah-blah…’”

Cameron assures us, “There is no wrong way to do morning pages. These daily morning meanderings are not meant to be art. Or even writing. I stress that point to reassure the nonwriters…Pages are meant to be, simply, the act of moving the hand across the page and writing down whatever comes to mind. Nothing is too petty, too silly, too stupid, or too weird to be included.”

One key to getting the most out of Morning Pages is that they do not need to “sound smart”, and they are not meant to be read. By anyone. Including you. You shouldn’t read them yourself for at least two months, if ever. The point is to get the thoughts out, not to analyze them.

It doesn’t matter whether you are a writer or a carpenter, there is something useful in journaling. As Brenda Ueland said, “writing is talking, thinking, on paper. And the more impulsive and immediate the writing the closer it is to the thinking, which it should be….It has shown me more and more what I am – what to discard in myself and what to respect and love” (If You Want to Write, 1938).

So, as a method of meditation or stress-management or introspection, I invite you to write. As Julia says, “Just write three pages, and stick them into an envelope. Or write three pages in a spiral notebook and don’t leaf back through. Just write three pages…and write three more pages the next day.” And please, let me know as it helps you create peace in your day.

Like this post? Sign up for our e-newsletter to get articles and resources pertaining to gifted youth in your inbox.

This post is part of the Hoagies’ Gifted Education Page November Blog Hop on Gifted Self-Care. Check out all of the other great blogs participating in Hoagies’ November Blog Hop!