Susan Daniels and Dan Peters of Summit Center are well-known in the world of gifted psychology. Daniels is co-editor of the wonderful compilation of essays, Living With Intensity, which tackled the joys and pitfalls of raising, educating, and being intense, gifted people.
In this new book, Daniels and Peters move over slightly to feature thoughts on parenting, educating, and nurturing creative kids, a group with a large overlap into the world of intensity. The authors show that understanding and raising highly creative children can be just as much a challenge as raising intense children.
Raising Creative Kids opens by making sure the readers are “on the same page” regarding what creativity is and who has it. The answer, of course, is that everyone can have it, but that our society, especially in our numbers-obsessed schools, works hard to squelch creativity in the name of order and quantifiable learning. Daniels and Peters argue that in this time it is especially important to recognize creativity, whether it expresses itself as award-winning visual art or, perhaps more often, as incessant talking at inappropriate times, inability to focus on rote learning, lack of organizational and scheduling skills, and other hallmarks of the creative soul.
Much of the book centers on defining creativity and offers suggestions on nurturing it. But in the last three chapters, the authors get to the heart of the question: how to parent creative kids, how to teach them organizational skills, and how to prepare them for a successful life in the 21st century.
This part of the book focuses on solving the problems that arise from the “dark side” of the creative personality. Creative kids may be difficult to parent, given that their tendency is to explore rather than follow rules. They often have trouble at school because the creative mind can sometimes coincide with slower development of executive function—the part of the brain that governs decision-making and prioritization. And being highly creative doesn’t necessarily lead to being able to develop that creativity into what the authors call “Big C” creativity—moving from unfocused creativity to focused, purposeful creativity.
This book succeeds in digesting a lot of information from studies and technical journals into a clear, helpful guide for parenting creative kids. Daniels and Peters offer advice on nurturing vs. permissive parenting, teaching organizational skills, and encouraging children to keep developing their creativity in a world that often seems to promote following rules and getting the “right” answer over all else.
For many years, the word “tracking” has been taboo in American education. The general consensus has been that separating the “Bluebirds” from the “Meadowlarks” imposes a class system in the classroom. Everyone points out that kids know what the groups are, whether or not euphemisms are used: the smart kids and the stupid kids. The rich kids and the poor kids. The white kids and the black kids.
But recently, lots of people—including pretty much everyone who advocates for gifted education—have been revisiting the idea of ability grouping. The writer of Should it be OK to place students in ability groups? points out that ability grouping today doesn’t have to be what it was in the past. I agree—as always, I think that the best education is the most flexible.
My son was in a public charter school for first and second grade where he was in a mixed-grade classroom. This type of classroom is definitely harder for the teacher—she could never just relax and give all the kids the same assignments. The great thing about it was that because all the kids started the year knowing that they were at different levels, there was no animosity to being put into separate groups based on their abilities.
At the beginning of the first year, my son was a novice reader. By the middle of that year, he was reading Harry Potter. As a novice reader, he really appreciated the fact that the teacher read aloud (to all the students, reading and pre-reading) and that he was never made to feel like there was something “wrong” with him because he couldn’t read. As an advanced reader only a short time later, he was thrilled to be put with the more advanced readers so that they could read a book together that challenged and interested them.
Because being at different levels was a reality in the classroom, there was never any idea that a) the kids in the advanced group were better in any way, or b) that kids were destined to stay in the group they were in. Most of the first graders were reading an easy book for their reading group, but none of them assumed that they’d still be in that group by third grade. That idea wouldn’t make sense.
This is where traditional schooling ideas clash with the reality of what’s good for kids’ education: Most kids in our country are age-segregated, making fluid ability-grouping harder. When you do leveled reading groups in segregated classes, there’s a much higher possibility that the students are going to see the grouping as “tracking”—sticking them in with the slow kids or the smart kids “forever.”
Although I agree that this is a problem, I don’t agree that because this is a problem, there should be no ability grouping. Kids who are voracious readers when young shouldn’t be tortured into reading JEasy books because it makes their classmates feel better. This is simply not a choice that is any fairer than making slower readers feel dumb.
So how can a traditional school fulfill the needs of its different readers? First of all, the teachers can work hard not to convey even a hint that slower readers are in any way “less smart” than their fast-reading compadres. Any adult can tell you that the age at which they learned to read had no bearing on whether they became a functional, successful adult. But adults who were made to feel stupid because they didn’t learn to read on someone else’s schedule can certainly tell you that they felt the attitude of the teacher, which bled over into the students and their parents. Everyone knew who the “stupid kids” were.
The next thing teachers can do is to construct more fluid classrooms. If they do ability grouping for reading, they could make sure to mix the groups up for an activity that doesn’t need to be differentiated, or is in some way naturally differentiated. For example, elementary school science projects can involve kids of different levels if the project is open-ended enough so that the more advanced students are able to — and encouraged to — do more.
Another thing the teacher can do is to devote some time each day to reading out loud. This allows the children who are still stuck in stiflingly boring leveled readers to hear good writing and good stories. (Now, we could also argue about using stiflingly boring leveled readers at all, but that’s another argument altogether.) I have actually never been with a group of students of any age who didn’t appreciate a good book read out loud, but teachers often leave reading out loud for kindergarten only, as if they’d never heard of the bustling market for audiobooks for adults. On top of that, if teachers encouraged students to write in their notebooks or doodle during reading out loud time, the kids who need to fidget would get as much out of it as the kids who need to need to keep their brains busy.
Finally, ability grouping works best when the schools themselves are more fluid. For some reason, it’s assumed that younger kids can’t deal with more fluid classrooms, moving from one space to another or in with different groups of children. But of course they can—we already stigmatize the gifted kids and the kids who are behind in some subject areas by doing “pull-out” programs. So what if every student were in a pull-out program? Ability grouping doesn’t have to stop at separating out only the outliers.
This article in Education Week sums up the pro’s and con’s of ability grouping. “Emerging research suggests that, in some cases, flexible ability grouping can in fact benefit students.”
The key here is flexible: All children’s needs can be served as long as the system is flexible enough to accommodate those needs. The past bad reputation that ability grouping got was because of its inflexibility: it was used to track low-performing students permanently into another educational sub-class. But that is not a permanent feature of ability grouping, but rather a predictable result of inflexible education.
Last week I went on a fieldtrip with our homeschool group that was a real eye opener. I’d always been told that taking your kids on a fieldtrip to the dump is a great experience, and now I know why.
To set the stage, I should describe our family’s relationship to garbage: We are, I would guess, on the more vigilant side when it comes to recycling. We recycle everything that we can, and try to keep up with what our garbage collection facility will take. We are careful to dispose of potentially hazardous waste, like batteries and used electronics, in the best manner. When we go shopping for food, I point out to the kids when something they want to buy is overpackaged in a wasteful way.
I would say, however, that I’m a bigger fan of reusing and using renewable resources than recycling. Although some recycling makes a lot of sense, we could make even bigger changes that would have a much more beneficial effect on the world. In our family, we buy a lot of what we eat in bulk using reusable containers. We started using reusable grocery bags years ago, before our local bag laws were even being debated. It took a little bit of forced reprogramming, because I kept forgetting the bags that I was keeping in the car, but at this point, grabbing bags on the way into a store is so second-nature I don’t even think about it. I even buy clothing and hardware with reusable bags.
But despite the preceding two paragraphs, I’ve always known that my family could do better. I have never entertained the idea of living completely waste-free as some friends of mine are attempting, but I have watched our habits and considered what we how we could improve what we’re doing.
Our kids lined up in front of a few day’s worth of aluminum cans used by residents of the City of Santa Cruz (and this is outside of tourist season).
Here’s where a trip to the dump—or rather, as they call it, “the recovery facility”—came in.
Workers at the dump no longer see their job as hiding away society’s garbage. Our guide was first in line to show us that. We met in a nice, clean building surrounded by pleasant gardens which included a demonstration composter. She showed the kids various types of “garbage” and explained whether they could be reused, recycled, or just thrown away. Her big displays were a huge pile of the ubiquitous single-use plastic shopping bag, a bin of different recyclable and non-recyclable containers, and an aluminum water canteen.
Our kids are generally a tough crowd when it comes to teaching this stuff—they already knew what everything was and some even debated why one type of item was recyclable in their district when it wasn’t in another. So the real learning came in when we donned our hard hats and orange vests and trouped into the recycling facility.
Many things could have hit me as impressive, but here are the big things I learned:
First of all, when you throw stuff in your recycling bin, it doesn’t just go off into machines and magically turn into a new bottle, some toilet paper, or playground matting. Actual individual people get their [gloved] hands on a lot all of it. Our recycling starts by getting dumped by the truck into a huge pile, then it gets pushed by a person driving a frontloader, machine-sorted with magnets, jigglers, and blowers, and then finds its way back to humans again for the final sort. I was very conscious as I watched these hard-working people sorting our crap of whether my actions were making this job any harder. And I had to admit that they were.
We commit various recycling faux pas:
I will admit that I don’t always check whether our garbage collection service actually takes some of the things I throw in the recycling. I know that everyone in my family has been guilty of the “it’s better to put it in if you think they might be able to use it” mentality. Well, no, it’s not better to put it in. The people working at the facility have two major jobs: One is making sure that the machines did their job, grabbing various items out of the stream that should have been sorted before. The other is to separate out the things that machines have no concept of: garbage that has made its way into the recycling stream. So first of all, I have made a pledge to myself to check when we have a question about whether our facility can handle something. (And often, if your facility can’t use it you can drop it by a facility like Grey Bears sometime when you’re passing by and they can take it.)
I asked our guide about cleaning out containers. I’ve heard conflicting reports about whether containers in the recycling bin should be clean or not. She said that they prefer that people rinse them, because they have problems with vermin that just love the last of our spaghetti sauce or yogurt. However, since most of us are using pure drinking water for everything from cooking to washing our cars, this is actually not a great use of water in areas prone to drought. People who have done the analysis say that it’s really best in places where water is scarce not to rinse them, since the final destination facility will be using grey water for that purpose. However, I do know that I can do a better job of striking a balance. My biggest fault is in not doing the dirty
UCSC students created beautiful and thought-provoking sculptures from things they found at the dump.
work when I find a container in the back of the fridge half filled with moldy something-or-another. More often than I should admit to, I put the whole container, moldy stuff and all, into the recycling. But I am now going to remind myself that I’m making my problem someone else’s problem, and I’ll be scraping out those yucky containers.
Two small bad habits: I tend to screw metal jar tops back on because of the smell factor. But when the recycling facility gets a glass jar with a metal or plastic top, someone has to deal with that. And although I know that containers made of different materials should be broken apart, I don’t always do that. But if the recovery facility gets a paperboard container with an aluminum bottom glued on, it will probably have to go in the landfill.
As we walked up the road, past sculptures made by UCSC students (see photo) and to the top of the landfill, our guide told us a recycling success story. Twenty years ago, this landfill was given 50 years before it would be exhausted. Today, they still are predicting 50 years, all due to diverting recyclables from the landfill. Off in the distance, she pointed to the most successful part of the recycling effort: a mountain of yard waste slowly composting itself into the beautiful, rich soil that built our county’s huge agricultural business.
Two thumbs up for taking this fieldtrip with your kids. It’s important that we not push important issues like where our garbage goes aside. All of us share the responsibility of making our community healthy for now and for the future.
Last year, as San Francisco’s wonderful science museum, the Exploratorium, was preparing to move to their new space, a friend and I exchanged dire predictions. The Exploratorium has long been a favorite of science-loving families. In their funky cavern of a museum they made it cool to be inquisitive and exciting to take part in activities that might be deemed boring or just plain gross in the wider world. But as they started to promote the move to Pier 15—just down the line from the very stupidest part of San Francisco (as in, the part where all the tourists go)—longtime fans got worried.
Would they become yet another “children’s museum” that presents cool activities but with all the science stripped out of it?
Would they cater to the quick-stop tourist who’d want to be entertained with trite and shallow content?
I decided I would keep my membership for one reason: So we could attend the members-only preview which was held Saturday.
I forgot my phone, so I don’t have a lot of photos. This is the Bay Observatory with the map tables in the foreground.
I’m pleased to let you know that none of our dire predictions came true, and there are many charming surprises to be had at the new Exploratorium. First, the location: Yes, it’s right down the street from the part of San Francisco no local wants to be found dead in, but it’s much more accessible to both out-of-towners and car-free city dwellers. The new site is as different from the old as possible: light and airy, part of the general bustle of the waterfront, the sort of place someone could wander into and be totally taken by surprise. There is more floor space and the elongated layout makes a visit there like a stroll through the history and future of science.
“This is like a Lamborghini versus a Volkswagen…that’s missing a cylinder,” says Chuck Mignacco, Building Operations Manager, in a video on their website. The new building is a “net zero” building that uses no fossil fuels in heating or cooling.
Many of the Exploratorium’s best features made the move intact. My daughter, of course, was thrilled to see the toilet drinking fountain right in the first lobby. Oldie-but-goody displays were scattered throughout, some updated but all with a new sheen in their new location. Like the old Exploratorium, the workshops and labs are open for view, but now they seem more accessible, more a part of what’s going on.
The new building is bigger, and they have started to make use of the space in true Exploratorium fashion. Another museum might have a slice of a large redwood trunk on display; the Exploratorium has much of the lower part of an enormous tree, including the root ball. My very favorite part of the museum is all new: the Bay Observatory. This is a lovely room upstairs that opens to a courtyard overlooking the Bay with gorgeous views of the Bay Bridge. A couple of large tables hold piles of facsimiles of old maps of California. We spent a good amount of time shuffling through the maps and talking about California past and present. The other side of the room presents a view of the Bay through displays and interactive exhibits (some of them still not finished).
This mix of old and new continued to surprise us right until the end. My daughter noticed the old “tornado maker” which we had somehow missed when we went back downstairs. She positively dragged me back up to see it, though I’d seen it enough times to know that there was no point in making a special trip for it. But right next to it was an exhibit we’d never seen before. Though she was momentarily thrilled to see her old tornado friend, our attention was grabbed for some time by the “Arp” shape maker, a device containing a pan of “oobleck” (cornstarch and water). When the pan is jiggled vigorously, the non-Newtonian fluid in the pan rises up in fascinating sculptures reminiscent of the work of Jean Arp. (By the way, if you don’t know oobleck, here is my daughter’s favorite oobleck video!)
In our two-and-a-half hours at the new building, we didn’t have enough time to see half of what’s there. But what we did see was a great taste of what’s to come—we’ll definitely be going back.
I just found out that it’s Brain Awareness Week, and brain awareness – a 21st century awareness if ever there was one – has its own Facebook page.
And just in time for BAW, a little bit of the gifted community squeaked into mainstream psychology with Allen Frances’s post entitled “Giftedness Should Not Be Confused With Mental Disorder.” Those of you who don’t know much about the politics of giftedness probably think that it would be, ahem, crazy to think that a brainy person would be confused with an insane one. However, research shows that gifted children are at a great disadvantage – they are more likely to be diagnosed with disorders they don’t have, and less likely to be diagnosed with disorders they actually do have.
The important book, Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnoses of Gifted Children and Adults, by Webb et al offers a detailed analysis of how this happens, but check out Frances’s blog for Marianne Kuzujanakis’s shorthand version of why this happens. Kuzujanakis is a pediatrician and a Director of SENG (Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted), an amazing organization that is fighting for the mental health of gifted children and adults. Since by definition gifted children are a minority (depending on where you draw the line, from 1 to 10% of the population), it’s not surprising that they don’t get much attention from mainstream psychology and psychiatry.
But what attention they do get is quite shocking: Gifted children are more likely to be misdiagnosed with such disorders as ADHD, bipolar disorder, and autism because of the unusual characteristics that may accompany their giftedness. A gifted child, for example, might become belligerent when bored… and might be bored often in our modern test-obsessed educational system. Or a gifted child might exhibit what gifted psychologists call psychomotor overexcitability – in other words, the need to move around when they are intellectually stimulated. In both cases, teachers and administrators might push parents to pursue a diagnosis of pathology, when the child’s behaviors are actually indicative of a positive trait.
Recognition of the traits of gifted children is a low priority in the mental health field – few psychologists and fewer psychiatrists have any training in giftedness. It may be an even lower priority in mainstream education, where any child who acts differently from the norm might be tagged as ADHD by overstressed teachers, who, not coincidentally, are unlikely to have training in giftedness.
I have the greatest respect and appreciation for Kuzujanakis and SENG and all the others who are trying to get this message out: Different doesn’t mean wrong. Different doesn’t mean bad. Different doesn’t always have to be fixed or medicated.
During Brain Awareness Week, let’s express our appreciation and affection for all the different brains that made our world the way it is: Einstein, Ghandi, Mozart. Charles Schultz, Gary Larson, Art Spiegelman. Margaret Sanger, Emma Goldman, Louisa May Alcott. Mary Shelley, Boris Karloff, Ann Rice. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Abraham Lincoln, Socrates. Johann Sebastian Bach and his son, Felix Mendelssohn and his sister, Ann Landers and her sister. How about Steve Jobs, Hedy Lamarr, Nicolas Tesla? Heck, if we’re celebrating different brains, I’d like to include my childhood friend Sharon who knew the entire history of the British Royal Family, the entire team of men who remodeled our house and each of whom, it turned out, had diverse skills in poetry, philosophy, or art, and pretty much every homeschooler I’ve ever met.
None of us is “normal” or “typical” and the human race is stronger for this. This week, let’s give thanks for different brains.
If nothing else, be thankful that Nicolas Tesla isn’t in charge of the Federal Reserve, Emma Goldman isn’t charged with making sure our garbage gets taken out on time, and I am not in charge of enforcing brevity in blog posts…
have fun. learn stuff. grow. (And that’s from yet another different brain I know…)
In this new book, Daniels and Peters move over slightly to feature thoughts on parenting, educating, and nurturing creative kids, a group with a large overlap into the world of intensity. The authors show that understanding and raising highly creative children can be just as much a challenge as raising intense children.
