MyGiftedLife.org

Yes, I would imagine with severe health issues, your focus is quite different than most mainstream parents. And...I could see how a 'glib' statement like that would not sit right.

I guess I don't personally think she was trying to be insulting, but it was oversimplifying a very complicated matter. I didn't take offense to it. My role as a mother HASN'T completely fulfilled me. It's probably a combination of genetics, social conditioning, and simple personality development born out of a hostile family environment.

I was born without a biological clock. I never had the itch to have babies. I was 31 when I had my first, and it may never have happened on purpose. If it were up to me, I would have postponed mothering until it was too late.

I didn't 'teach' my kids the A-B-Cs or even teach them how to read. But I did find it rather difficult because they had to stay busy otherwise they'd be obnoxious to each other. My selectively mute/SPD daughter is also the most "noticeably" gifted, the squeakiest wheel, and the most likely to 'stir up trouble'. I'm pretty sure SHE's not challenged enough either. But at 6, also doesn't have the greatest attention span for things she doesn't want to do.

I have to say...I'm so grateful for the reprieve I'm going to get when they are in school 6.5 hours a day. I'll miss them, I'm sure...but they'll for once be gone long enough to miss.

I hope I don't come across too heartless.

I'm really an introvert too, so downtime has been essential. It's hard to get that with the three of them so young and needing so much attention.

I've just struggled with depression and stress for too long and instead of an extended break at a mental health facility, I'd rather send them to school to regroup and reconnect with myself...hopefully find my Zen. It's not going to be flipping burgers or in folding socks that's for sure.

Maybe in other things around here. But that's what I aim to discover.

Expectations, achievement, isolation/lack of support and depression tend to be core issues in the experience of being gifted. They can show up in a range of different ways depending on individual experience. But they're usually part of what we have in common with each other.

It seems to me that, painful as these experiences are, we're more whole as gifted adults when we connect with each other. Maybe all of us are broken, in our various ways, but when we communicate (give and receive) we make something that transcends a collection of stories about brokenness. It can become support/recognition, a source of knowledge/wisdom from others' experience and a way to gain perspective, laugh and engage creativity.

I struggle with depression, too and with recovery from PTSD. Earlier in my life, engaging a career path that involved achievement was about survival. Now that I'm no longer on it, I'm still working through some issues around not having a "real career." But I'm so much less stressed now that I'm not constantly being a breadwinner, playing the survival game without much of a net. It was very hard on me physically and emotionally.

I chose not to bring children of my own into that situation--also because I helped raise my siblings so I'd already had that kind of responsibility earlier in life--but I don't consider my choice to be a reflection on anyone else's. If I had children now I'd probably endeavor to home-school them for as long as it made sense for any given child. For some gifted kids, at some times, the normally-available schooling amounts to outright abuse, and for others and at other times it doesn't, and can even work for them. "It all depends."

And for some gifted adults, being a parent makes sense and for others it can be overwhelming in varying degrees (my own parents come to mind, there.) I think for anyone raising kids it's overwhelming at times. When there's so much intensity on all sides, though, that really ups the ante. OTOH, having a "normal" parent could be pretty frustrating in its own way too!

For raising kids, being there and being what's needed the best you can, is what I think counts for the most. You just have to do your best with what you have. I reflect on what happened to my siblings as they grew up and sometimes I feel guilty about not having been able to "do a better job." But I did the best I could with the resources I had, and I gave up things I wanted to do, to be there when they needed somebody to be at home for them while our parents struggled to support the family. We've now all lived to be over 50, which beats the odds for our old neighborhood. They're both earning a living, being of use to themselves and society, and that's something!

I recognize that I view this through my own expectations, too, seeing the potential that all of us had and making judgments about how it "should have been" supported. To a very large degree it wasn't, and in that way we were certainly no different from most of the kids we grew up with. That was the way it was, but having different needs meant getting even fewer of them met. I can't appropriately judge what that was like for anyone else, even for somebody I helped to raise. So I step away from judging myself, too, even though part of me really wants to think I had more control over all that than I actually did have.

Life is good for me most days. Living well (living consciously, making the best choices I can figure out) is turning out to be the best revenge on myself.