Yesterday, I reflected upon the changes our family has made this year. Homeschooling a profoundly gifted and twice exceptional child is a daunting task, especially when you find yourself suddenly doing it. Fortunately, we have been blessed with open-minded family and friends, and they have been nothing but supportive of our decision. However, when we made our decision, we had yet to actually meet any other homeschoolers, let alone anyone homeschooling a twice-exceptional child. I felt completely overwhelmed and under-prepared for such an undertaking. Luckily, there is an abundance of online resources for families like ours. I soon discovered Gifted Homeschoolers Forum, Hoagies Gifted Education Page, and a few other online forums for parents of kids like Leo. I honestly do not know how I would be surviving this first year of homeschooling without these online connections.
(This brings me to a question I always find myself wondering: What did families like ours do before the internet? I imagine it must have felt like a very lonely and misunderstood endeavor. Those of you reading who were able to do it and come out smiling at the other end, I salute you!)
Whenever I have a question about giftedness, or homeschooling, or twice exceptional kids, or behavior, or quirkiness, or educational materials, or courses, or anything, I turn to these online communities, and I have learned an incredible amount from them. Along the way, I’ve been blogging about the good, the bad, the ugly, and the funny of figuring out this whole homeschooling thing. If you had told me eighteen months ago that I would soon be homeschooling and blogging about it, I would have erupted into incredulous laughter. Today, I sit here doing both of those things and I am enjoying the journey more than I ever would have expected. I consider it a privilege to be a GHF blogger; I am honored to be blogging alongside folks who have taught me so much in short time. Blogging has allowed for me to connect with many other parents and educators of twice exceptional children, and I have learned a remarkable amount from them already.
I’ve found my community, and I’m a better person for it. I am learning from these communities and growing, as both a parent and a homeschooler, by the day. The problem is… what about Leo? How do I help him find his community? This is something Schizz and I grapple with all the time because Leo is so different. He thinks differently, he views the world differently, he experiences the world differently.
 I’m building my community, but what about his? |
Thinking about all of this, I am reminded of one day last spring when I took the kids to one of our favorite breakfast places with a few other moms from my village and their kiddos. All of our kids got along wonderfully and everyone had a fantastic time. When we were leaving the restaurant, Leo looked at the lattice-work and arched trellis in the garden adjacent to the restaurant and exclaimed, “Hey! You guys! Look at that right there- isn’t it beautiful? Doesn’t it look like a portcullis but with flowers?” Some of his friends simply ignored him while some looked where he was pointing and smiled. I went back to my car and Googled the word portcullis. The garden’s trellis and arch did resemble a portcullis with flowers, and it was beautiful. And, not for the first time, I was awed by his view of the world. I also felt a sense of foreboding because five-year-olds are very forgiving of each others’ quirkiness. They ignore it, or roll with it, but they do not yet reject it. As kids get older, they can be cruel to each other. Differences are often not celebrated until after you’ve survived your teen years. There have been many other portcullis-type conversations in the last few years and I know they will continue in the years to come. Right now, Leo has friends now who love him and appreciate him, but will he always? And, how do Schizz and I, as his parents, help him find his people?
There is a saying in the gifted community: “If you’ve met one PG kid, you’ve met one PG kid.” How do these kids, kids who are so different from the norm and so different from each other, find their tribe? The question is not an easy one to solve. Thankfully, I have these new communities to help me as we wrestle with these, and other, concerns. And because of these new communities, I have a few leads. I’ve learned that there are opportunities for PG kids: gatherings, classes, camps. The difficulty is, these opportunities can be costly and infrequent; they don’t solve the day-to-day issue of finding your tribe. Another online mom explained it to me this way: her asynchronous, gifted son has his soccer friends, and he also has his chess friends, his Minecraft friends, and his homeschool co-op friends. He is a kid who, like many asynchronous gifted kids, is “many ages at once” and so he has friends for each of these levels of development.
Now I turn to you, my readers and another newfound community for which I am grateful, how have you helped your child(ren) to find friendships? Please share your story here. I have a lot to learn!
Wondering if your child is gifted/2e?
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Caitlin Fitzpatrick Curley
Cait co-hosts The Homeschool Sisters Podcast and is co-founder of Raising Poppies, a community for parents of gifted and twice-exceptional children. Cait is also founder of the Family Book Club at My Little Poppies, a fantastic community of book-loving parents and the Gameschool Community at My Little Poppies, a vibrant community of gameschoolers.
Cait is a contributing writer for Simple Homeschool. Her work has also appeared on The Huffington Post, The Mighty, Scary Mommy, GeekMom, and many others. You can find her on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram
and G+.
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Hurrah for profound giftedness! I sometimes call it significant and astonishing.
I agree, “If you’ve met one PG kid, you’ve met one PG kid.”
Except that I’ve met dozens.
Significant and astonishing it is indeed! Thanks for reading!
I was advised that it would be important for my kiddo to make friends at a young age bc others are so forgiving of differences. Then maybe one of those first young friendships will last thru the teen years, despite the increasing quirkiness. Do you have any good books about the give-and-take/changing/difficult-to-understand nature of friendship that you can recommend? I just picked up “Bob and Otto” and it is a good start for my five year old but I know we’ll need more.
Julie, you bring up a great point about early friendships. I know that I have maintained some childhood friendships with people extremely different than myself. I hope this can be true for our children, too.
I’ve been mulling over your question about the books. I don’t have any that spring to mind but I’m going to post your question over at Gifted Homeschoolers Forum because they are a great source for stuff like this. I’ll have to check out Bob and Otto, too, as I’m unfamiliar with that one. Thanks for the recommendation, and thank you so much for reading!
Hi Julie. I haven’t received a lot of recommendations but apparently the American Girls books cover these topics. I’ll keep looking 🙂
Hey I know this is an old question, but just wanted to mention the website A Mighty Girl which has tons of book recommendations, all summarized and organized by topic.
LOVE that site, Melissa!
I can definitely relate with a 2e/pg child. Yes, there are specific pg camps, courses, and so on – if you’ve got oodles of money. Still, it is possible as you and I are finding to cobble together things and others. Thanks so much for the post.
Thanks so much for reading! Good luck cobbling… I’ll be reading and learning from you!
I am raising one prodigy and one PG kid and we have yet to find too many like minded peers for them but I have found my peeps online. If it weren’t for the internet, I would be pretty lonely. I think social media is the single best unifier for parents on this incredibly journey of raising gifted children who don’t fiti into the mainstream school paradigm.
Social media has been instrumental, that’s for sure. Thanks for reading, Amy!
It is my fear as well, how do I help my kids find their people? I must admit, my solution thus far has been most like the line from ‘Field of Dreams’, “If you build it, they will come.”
I love it, Kathleen! I’m trying my darndest to build it! 🙂
(This brings me to a question I always find myself wondering: What did families like ours do before the internet? I imagine it must have felt like a very lonely and misunderstood endeavor. Those of you reading who were able to do it and come out smiling at the other end, I salute you!)
LOL, I wonder about this often too. Glad I don’t have to worry about not being connected too.
Thank goodness we can all muddle through it together!
Social media has bridged many divides for so many families. I wonder what the future holds? Great post.
It will be interesting to watch it all unfold. Thanks for reading!
Helping PG children to find their tribe is not easy but I like the advice your friend gave about having different groups for various interests and activities and maybe, just maybe, there will be someone in one of those groups who will become a close friend and be able to relate at a deeper level.
Thanks so much for reading, Jo! I recall the summer that Leo was five… we had enrolled him in a multi-age art class. He was by far the youngest student there, but art is his thing. Anyway, he connected with a girl who was twice his age. I was in awe of their conversation together and it left me wondering how often that will happen for him. Your comment reminded me of that moment. Thanks for stopping by!
I can really relate to this, having just come back from and afternoon at the beach with a group of wonderful friends where, once again, my amazing 7 year old son just couldn’t seem to play in the same way as any of the others. They always seem to tolerate him but not much more than that. Living in a small town in New Zealand our pool of potential community for him is already pretty small, and he is such an extrovert that this is a real problem for us. I’m thinking of helping him find email friends who he can “talk” to on his level about those things that he is passionate about.
Hi Jo,
First, I am insanely jealous that you were at the beach as we are getting another foot of snow at the moment – to add to the four we already have on the ground! 🙂
I highly recommend pen pals. We have had great luck connecting with others in that way. Hoagies occasionally will post about pen pals and have folks connect. It’s so tough to find the right connections!
For girls, there is New Moon Girls to connect safely over social media. Anything like that for boys? For minecraft aficionados, you could get pen pals to build servers to share. 🙂 Or, to hear each other, there is xbox live.
I’ve never heard of New Moon and I’ll have to check it out. Thank you. We tried Minecraft for a couple of weeks and he was so obsessed and cranky post that we haven’t used it since. 🙂 We do have lots of old-fashioned pen pals and that has helped, plus the DYS community. Thanks for your feedback!
After my gifted daughter came out of public school at age 9 due to severe emotional bullying, I searched desperately for a support group or place for her to find other kids like her, kids that would understand her, accept her, just “get her.” After 2 years of searching for local resources and finding none, we started our own Meetup group, Riverside County (CA) Gifted Children Meetups & Parent Support. It took about a year to get off the ground, but soon other gifted families were showing up at our Meetups. It was apparent, and amazing to me, from day one that these kids belonged together, the almost immediate ease and understanding of each other, lots of heads nodding up and down and even finishing of each others sentences. These were kids who had similar interests, and a similar (but not identical) way of looking at the world. They had the same issues too, sensitivities, intensities, and even though, yes, sometimes these caused a little rif, with just a little parental help and communication, soon they were back to understanding each other again. Starting our gifted support/Meetup group has been everything we hoped for, a place for my daughter to find true peers, true friends. We have a Gifted Tweens & Teens Meetup and Support group now too, and a FB page for both. So I would encourage others, if you can’t find socializing opportunities for your gifted child in your area, consider starting a Meetup or other support group yourself. I had never done anything like this before, but my earnest desire to find friends for my daughter, and my new found passion to support other gifted families, has made all the work incredibly satisfying and rewarding.
Hi Julie!
Sorry for the delayed response- sick kids and then a busy weekend. I am so sorry to hear that your daughter was bullied but I’m relieved to hear that you’ve found her tribe. I, too, started a group although we are in the very beginning stages. We are meeting today, actually! It’s amazing to watch these kids together!
Thanks for reading and sharing your story!
Cait 🙂
I know this is an old post, but I’ve been following links like mad! Growing up as a gifted kid, I never was part of a group of friends at school. I made individual, disparate friendships with folks of every age imaginable. It made lunches very lonely if my best friend wasn’t at school, but these varied types of friendships were more meaningful and true to the adult life I would eventually lead. So… Sometimes the right “tribe” is really a bunch of warriors from different tribes?
“… a bunch of warriors from different tribes” <---- YES! I love this!