Category: Health

News from the convention, Day 2

Posted on by Suki

Following are my notes about the National Assn. for the Gifted Conference in Denver from this weekend. Click here for Day 1.

My first workshop of the day was about asynchronous development and featured Linda Silverman (her list of accomplishments is long; the latest is a book called Giftedness 101 that is no doubt worth buying if you are just starting to explore giftedness), Jim Delisle (master teacher whom I later heard give a fabulous talk about teaching middle schoolers to write), and Stephanie Tolan (writer about giftedness and also novelist whose books feature gifted children and sometimes homeschoolers). Because of my schedule I couldn’t stay the whole time, but I got to hear Silverman discuss various views of what asynchronous development is and how various thinkers about giftedness have characterized it over the years. The most moving image she gave was from Australia, where they talk about the “tall poppy syndrome.” Silverman pointed out that the imagery is rather disturbing: in a field full of beautiful flowers, some are taller in their thirst for sun. But in order to maintain a field full of sameness and fairness, the tall poppies are literally beheaded. Think about how schools often treat kids who are ahead in light of that image.

The next talk I went to was about twice-exceptional learners. I will have to look up who gave the talk because I forgot to write it down and I am presently typing this on an airplane. [Ed: Beverly Trail and Claire Hughes] For those of you who don’t know this terminology, 2e learners are gifted learners with disabilities [read my blog post about this]. They present an even more difficult case for integration into a general classroom than “regular” gifted kids because it’s so hard to address both their deficits and strengths at one time. The speakers emphasized, as I’ve heard a lot lately, the research shows that kids with disabilities do better if you teach to their strengths and don’t focus too much on their deficits. It’s really easy for these kids to become fixated on their shortcomings because in school that’s all that gets talked about. Because the kids’ deficits often make producing work harder, they shine in situations where they develop their critical thinking and conceptual skills while not having to depend on skills that they struggle with, such as writing or calculation.

Sylvia Rimm gave a talk called “My top 10 for preventing and reversing underachievement.” Just glance at sylviarimm.com to see the breadth of her important career. This talk was a fast-paced trip through what she has learned about kids and parents in her many years in the field. I especially appreciated her comments about united parenting, which is something we always struggle with. In a family full of intense people, it’s really hard for the parents to step aside and support each other. Yet Rimm highlighted this as one of the keys she has seen to producing functional adults on the other side of the journey. Just so she didn’t leave any parent in the room not feeling uncomfortable, she also talked about other common parental foibles, such as overpraising young children so they come crashing down when a sibling appears or when they go to school and don’t get praised constantly. She also talked about how parents can set up and nurture competitive, difficult relationships between siblings by comparing their kids and unwittingly pitting them against each other. She also acknowledged something I have always suspected to be true: two children families are the worst for sibling rivalry and difficult sibling relationships. Those of us with two have to work even harder than the rest in this regard.

There was so much meat in her talk, I’m just going to have to go buy her books! Also, she promised lots of articles available for download at her website.

An absolute standout session I went to was about Young Adult books by Bob Seney. [I couldn’t find any primary website about him but lots of hits on his name and “book list” – he releases a yearly book list that I highly recommend.] Seney is a retired professor who adores YA literature. For years he has given the same presentation at NAGC: knowing that the rest of us parents and teachers don’t have time to read all the new novels that come out in order to guide our kids to the best ones and the ones most suited to gifted readers, he does it for us. To think that I almost walked out of his talk because there was another one I was torn about missing! For your information, his standout YA novel of the year was by Kenneth Oppel, writer of the truly excellent Airborn series. The latest is a retelling of the Frankenstein story, and you can be sure that it will be on our household’s reading list this year. Given how busy I am, I felt so deeply grateful for what he’s doing. By reading and vetting for a specific type of reader, he offers parents and teachers a way through the jungle of new books published each year. (If you are interested in the topic of gifted readers and what they “need,” check out Halsted’s “Some of my Best Friends are Books.”)

The day was finished with a keynote by Robert Sternberg, whose interest is creativity. Now, I’ve been to a few conferences, and I can say that keynote speakers are not always the highlights. Often they are chosen more for their star power than for how well their message works for the conference audience. But NAGC outdid themselves this year with speakers who don’t necessarily have much to do with gifted ed per se, but have great messages for this audience. Sternberg talked about how creativity is a choice, and then he went on to detail the results of having made the choice to lead a creative life. He did this both through examples from his own life and also with famous examples of companies and people who came up against obstacles in the path of creativity and either overcame them or fell flat. Sternberg is a very funny speaker but also offers a lot of food for thought about what a life well lived is. I’m not familiar with his work, but if he has a book for young adults, every teen should read it. “Choosing creativity,” he said, “creates its own obstacles” but is also its own reward. A very fulfilling way to end the day.

Perpetually a day behind, I spent the evening in my hotel room catching up on Friday, watched the end of A Color Purple and had a good cry with Whoopie, then collapsed in bed to prepare for another day of cognitive overstimulation.

News from the convention, Day 1

Posted on by Suki

I am at the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) convention in Denver, CO, and it is NOT the evening of the first day of the convention. Yesterday evening I came back to my hotel room to write and I sat in panic in front of my smartphone: “I have way too much STUFF in my head to write!” Instead, I went through the program and planned the rest of my days here, ate chocolate, and went to bed early.

So here I am at Day 2, ready to write about yesterday.

First a note: Why am I here? Why “gifted”? To answer those questions, please click “About Suki” above to learn about all my various pursuits, my feelings about the incredibly stupid word, “gifted,” and other interesting (or not) trivia.

—

On the way to the conference I read a wonderful book that anyone with a frustrated teen should check out: Forging Paths by Wes Beach. Here’s the review I wrote that will appear on Amazon.com once I can figure out how to post reviews on my phone…. or more likely when I get home!

In my recently published book, From School to Homeschool, I lamented that the stories of gifted homeschoolers had not really been told yet. That was before I read Forging Paths. Though the “kids” in this book are almost grown when they start on their paths, and what they do isn’t what most people would call “homeschooling,” each one of these unique stories adds to our collected understanding of what is possible when it comes to getting the education we need. Wes Beach’s book centers around the stories of individuals who chose unusual paths, but even in their individuality, they offer us new templates for the way education can happen. Inflexible, one-size-fits-all education is a thing of the past. Books like this one are starting to write the story of the future, in which all kids and adults are able to forge the path that is right for them in seeking the education they need and crave.

—

NAGC is to your local gifted conference as a meta-study is to a small-scale experiment, or whiskey is to wine, or Proust is to Brian Selznick. Different beasts, all worthy in their own way. (OK, I must admit that the only time I ever drank whiskey I threw up, so I have my opinions in that regard.)

I started my day yesterday with Temple Grandin and thousands of other adoring audience members. If you don’t know her, Google her and learn what she has to say. She’s our first (as far as I know) autistic motivational speaker, and she deserves all the applause she gets.

I got much from her talk, but here’s what I came away with: “Making kids do the same thing: absolutely beyond rubbish!”

Grandin has no patience for sweet-talk — she tells it like she sees it, which is rather differently than the mainstream. But on this point I share her point of view completely. Our schools are completely misguided — not just for the diagnosably different child that she was, but for all children. Why do we make the poor souls learn the same thing at the same time? Who ever thought that was a good educational approach for two children, much less a nation of hundreds of millions?

—

Frank Wang is “the math guy” — you can apparently see his funny videos on Youtube. I’d never heard of him, but one hour with him sold me on his approach to math. He was a self-described “dumb kid” who found his own way of making it through the world. He explains advanced math concepts in fun ways that any kid would enjoy. Although he no longer runs a for-profit company, he says his games, and more invented by a buddy of his, are available at mathfun.com and kaidy.com. Enjoy!

—-

Layne Kalbfleisch from Kidlab has lots to say about brain research, and much of it would conflict with what you hear in the popular press and in popular books about learning and the brain.

First of all: There are no “right brain” and “left brain” learners. We all use both sides of our brains unless our brains are physically damaged. Interestingly, those people whose IQ test scores put them in “gifted” show more symmetry when they are using their brains for tasks. Even more interestingly, the higher the IQ, the less of the brain gets activated in difficult tasks. Definitely food for thought.

I loved this talk. If you’re a brain research junkie, or if you previously thought you should take everything Malcolm Gladwell writes as fact, check out what she has to say.

—

After that talk, my own feeble brain went into overload mode (someday they will be able to tell me what my brain looks like when this happens) and I needed a glass of wine and a quiet room to digest.

More later when I get to Day 2. I apologize in advance for typos and weird formatting and lack of hyperlinks. [I’ve now added a few – Ed.] This is my first conference without a laptop. I’m using my smartphone and a cool Bluetooth keyboard that my husband gave me and which I have apparently wrecked one of the keys of and yes, I know that is quite dreadful grammar but as I said….. This Is My Brain on Overload! More later.

This is exhausted me in my hotel room!

image

Crisis healthcare

Posted on by Suki

I’m getting to know our healthcare system a little more up close and personal than I’d like this week. My brother got hit by a car when he was out bicycling and had to be helicoptered to a trauma care facility. He’s doing better and may be moving out of the hospital and in with my parents tomorrow, but it was a weeklong lesson in how to get good healthcare in modern America.

1) Make sure you have insurance

Of course, hospitals are required to save the lives of anyone, regardless of their insurance status. But as important as that is, the lifesaving aspect of healthcare is just the beginning. I have to admit, I actually didn’t know if my bro had health insurance, and that was one of the first questions I asked his fiancee, who was with him when he was hit and has been at his side for every allowable minute since then. If he hadn’t had insurance, yes, they would have saved his life. But the first thing we would have started to do was worry about how it was going to be paid for. There are many more important things to worry about, such as making sure he gets good care, making sure we do everything possible to help him along, and setting things up so he’ll get care once he is out of the hospital. We have the luxury of knowing that he’s not going to spend every cent he has on this accident, but millions of Americans don’t have that luxury… yet.

2) Make sure you have a loving family and caring friends

When you’re spending a lot of time in a hospital, you start noticing the other patients, and the other patients’ families…or lack of family. For part of his stay my brother was next to another head-trauma patient. No one came to visit that young man. No one made sure he was comfortable outside of the few things hectic nurses can do for their patients. No one questioned his doctors on their decisions. No one brought him drinkable coffee from the Vietnamese cafe across the street. From the important decisions on down to getting your favorite snacks delivered, having your family around is extremely important. And it has to be family: Friends were not allowed in the ICU.

3) Corollary to #2: Make sure your loved ones are close by and can spend time with you

We have a family joke that we have contributed greatly to the population growth in California. I came here in the 80’s for college, and my entire family followed: 4 siblings with their eventual children, parents, cats, and dogs. So when my brother was hospitalized, we had enough people close enough to make sure someone was available at all times. Of course, none of us lives anywhere close to the trauma center where he ended up, but we could drive to get there. And a few of us had flexible enough schedules that we’d go to the hospital with our computers and smartphones and spell each other so we could get a little work done. But what if we’d lived across the country, or in another country? What if none of us had the ability to skip work? In my brother’s case, he wasn’t able to sign documents so he had to have a family member nearby at all times for the first few days. Though the staff at the ICU were kind in ignoring the fact that his fiancee wasn’t technically allowed to be there, they had to have a signature from an actual relative.

4) Make sure you have advocates

This is why #2 and #3 are so very important: when you’re in the hospital and not able to stand up for yourself, you need an advocate. This can be a close friend, but for legal reasons (see above) it helps to have family members (or a legal representative) who are there to sign for you. You never know when your job as an advocate will change from legal to something much more important. When my dad was admitted to the hospital a few years ago with extreme abdominal pain, my mother patiently explained to each person who took his health history that he only had one kidney. They all seemed to think this was not urgent. Finally the surgeon showed up. My mother asked him whether he’d noted on my dad’s charts that he only had one kidney—the surgeon was the first person who knew how important this information was and took it seriously.

5) Prepare ahead of time for disaster

I have found out in the last few years how few of my friends, most of whom are parents somewhere in my age range, have advanced directives or wills. Though paying a lawyer is, of course, the very best way to get this done, Nolo Press has done a great job of providing those of us who can’t afford a lawyer with instructions for putting together these very important documents. In case of disaster, does your family really know what you want done regarding healthcare and, in the worst circumstances, death? If both you and your spouse died at once, what will happen to your children? If someone has to make healthcare decisions for you, who do you want it to be? If you don’t have family, or if you are not close to your family, who do you want to be able to make decisions for you? All of these questions can be answered ahead of time, and they make it so much easier for the people you love to deal with a catastrophic health crisis.

We have been by and large impressed with the care my brother has received. The staff seems completely on top of things—computers have gotten rid of the many errors that came of scrawled charts hung on the ends of beds. And they are generally helpful and caring. But still, hospitals are places where lots of things can go wrong. If you want your family to get the best care, you have to be there, and be vigilant.

Book Review: A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Children

Posted on by Suki

A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Children
James T. Webb, Janet L. Gore, Edward R. Amend, Arlene R. DeVries
Great Potential Press, 2007

Parents often wish their children came with an owner’s manual. If there is anything that comes close to being an owner’s manual for parents of gifted children, this book is it.

The authors comprise a who’s who of experts on gifted children. James T. Webb, the lead author, is perhaps the best-known writer and speaker on gifted issues in the United States. His more recent book, Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children and Adults (also written with a team of experts), outlines the specific psychological pitfalls gifted children face. The other three authors, Janet L. Gore, Edward R. Amend, and Arlene R. DeVries, add both depth and breadth to Webb’s solid credentials. Together, the authors have worked with gifted children in almost all capacities.

The book serves first as a very good primer for a parent who is facing questions about raising a gifted child. The first two chapters define giftedness and explore common characteristics of gifted children. In doing so, they answer two questions that often accompany a parent’s first forays into the gifted literature: First, is my child gifted?, and second, how is my child different from other children?

The authors point out that the diagnosis itself can cause problems for gifted kids and their parents. From dismissive comments by other parents such as “all children are gifted,” to misunderstandings from educators like “bright children don’t need any special help,” gifted children and their parents face a lot of opposition as soon as their children are identified.

The second goal of the book is to teach parenting and educational approaches that work as an approach to all children, but are even more important when working with the needs and intensities of gifted children. Chapters on communication, motivation, and discipline outline an approach that takes into account both the child’s age-appropriate emotional needs as well as respecting the child’s unusual ability to process and understand information.

The parenting sections of the book expand into gifted-specific problems: How do the parents of gifted children help them in relationships with their peers? How does having a gifted child affect the relationships of siblings? How can a family’s values support a gifted child? And most importantly, how can a marriage survive the complexities of parenting a gifted child?

A Parent’s Guide only touches upon aspects of aspects of raising a gifted child with twice-exceptionalities such as learning disabilities, mood disorders, and ADD/ADHD. Parents who suspect that their gifted child may suffer from concurrent problems will do well to read Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children and Adults after getting an introduction to the issues in this book.

Finally, the book devotes chapters to the educational needs of gifted children, as well as working with other professionals. The educational section gives a blueprint for looking at schools — what to expect in traditional schools, private schools, gifted programs, and gifted schools. There is a short section on homeschooling, a popular choice for parents of gifted children. More useful is the information offered about teacher training for gifted issues (most teachers receive no training), gifted programs in schools (which may or may not serve a gifted child’s needs), how to work with the school administration, and how to advocate for your gifted child.

A Parent’s Guide is a great starting point for educating yourself about the needs of your gifted child and the possible pitfalls you may face as you raise and educate him or her. However, more important than the actual information in the book are the pointers to how to learn more about giftedness, schools, and your child’s emotional health and educational success. If you’re just starting down the road to helping your gifted child, especially a younger child, this book offers a straightforward “owner’s manual” that will guide you through the challenges you and your child will face.

Successful on their own terms

Posted on by Suki

I once heard a brave workshop leader say something that caused multiple mom faces around the room to fall with an almost audible thunk:

“How many of you have exactly the same values and beliefs as your parents?” the workshop leader had asked. Three moms out of perhaps 50 had raised their hands.

“Well,” she said. “That’s how many of your kids are going to have the same values and beliefs as you.”

Many of the parents in the room seemed shocked that she would suggest that their children — how could this be? — had their own minds.

Personally, I appreciated her candor, because this is something I think that parents in our day and age forget all too often (and I’m including myself here!). We consult the latest research, we follow our favorite child-rearing manual faithfully, we research schools or try to have the perfect homeschool, we’re involved with our kids, we’re committed to being better parents… But we forget that in the end our kids are themselves, and all of our engineering may get them to the right schools with the right peers and the right skills for the 21st century, but it won’t get past the fact that our kids are humans, complex inside and interacting with a complex world.

Are we doing our very best to give them what they will need in life? Of course.

Will we succeed? Probably not.

That’s not to say that our kids won’t figure out how to make their lives into a success. But they will do that on their own terms, and they will often be terms that we disagree with.

I remember a young man in college who made the agonizing decision to quit ROTC and the military career his father had planned for him. This young man was taking a huge gamble: his father had set him up for success in every way he knew. But it wasn’t on his son’s terms.

I know a man who became a scientist because he was told he was good at it. One day, he threw away that career to become a potter.

I know people who stuck with spouses their families didn’t like, who live in places their parents hate to visit, and who become vegan in spite of their meat and potatoes upbringing.

I know a lot of people who have very smart kids, kids who seem destined for success. But really, do we understand how one smart kid goes on to be Steve Jobs and another ends up picking food out of trash bins? We think we have the answers, but really, all we have is the best we can do.

I think that “the best we can do” is to offer our children tools they can use to fulfill their potential. But when we give our kids tools like a good education, they may end up using them much differently than we expected. The best we can hope is that our kids are happy with their choices in the end. Banking on your kids growing up to do exactly what you prepared them to do is not a great investment. But I hope that I do a good enough job that I’d be willing to bank on my kids being successful… on their own terms.

Now available