The comfortable closets we live in

Sometimes advocating for something you believe in can mean stepping out of a very comfortable closet that you’ve spent much of your life in. In my case, I was so comfortable, I didn’t even notice that I’d locked myself in the closet till I had children. My particular closet is the one that we hide in when we’re afraid of pointing out our own differences from the norm. It’s a very, very comfortable closet, but usually a solitary one.

Since the sixties, however, understanding has been growing that people sometimes need to seek others who share some aspect of their life experiences in order to learn more about themselves.

Here I am in paragraph three, and I’m still enjoying the comfort of my closet, so I guess I should just out with it! Once I had children, I started to notice how parenting, education, and healthcare resources were all set up to satisfy the needs of the many, but there was a group of few whose needs were not being served well: that group of kids who have been given the unfortunate label of “gifted.”

My discomfort with the word, and with even pointing out differences in intellectual ability, is deeply ingrained, pounded into my psyche by years of cultural pressure. If a mom says they’re choosing a new school because their daughter is an avid volleyball player and the new school has a good coach, we think that’s completely reasonable. If a mom says they’re choosing a new school because the current one doesn’t offer advanced enough education, suddenly she’s a) bragging, b) being pushy, and c) probably deluded about her son’s intellectual ability in the first place.

That’s how it was when I was growing up in the 70’s midwest, and that’s pretty much how it is for kids across the US now. There are some positive changes. For one, I stuck my neck out and typed the dreaded word “gifted” into Google and found out that I share my closet with all sorts of parents I’d never noticed. They, too, are wondering if they can figure out a way to save their kids from the boredom and self-hatred that our emphasis on not pointing out differences in intellectual needs has led to. We parents have come up with a variety of solutions, from educating teachers, to fixing our local schools, to joining national organizations, to homeschooling. But the thing we have in common is that we have reluctantly come out of the closet in order to advocate for our kids.

Parenting is a balancing act between supporting our children and also letting them go to soar or fall as they need to.
Parenting is a balancing act between supporting our children and also letting them go to soar or fall as they need to.

Pretty much the only time I feel like writing on this subject is when someone asks me to; in this case, I’m joining other bloggers in Hoagies’ Gifted Blog Hop. Hoagies’ is one of the first stops that parents new to giftedness make on the Internet. Carolyn K, who runs the site, is one of the pioneers of online gifted advocacy. She’s one of those people who decided to throw open the closet door while the rest of us were just trying to get comfortable and not make waves.

Like all minorities, gifted kids need their advocates. Schools are not set up to fulfill the needs of unusual learners. Parenting manuals get it all wrong when it comes to parenting intense, unusual children. Doctors, therapists, and other professionals get no training in the needs of their gifted patients. Pretty much everyone assumes that if your child taught herself to read and is quick in math, you’ve got nothing to worry about. But of course, just like everyone else, gifted children have their own challenges that, while sometimes different from the norm, still deserve the attention and support of the adults around them.

We parents are drawn to trying to fulfill our own children’s needs, but everything we do to make their lives better helps advocate for the wider community. I am deeply indebted to Hoagies‘, SENG, my gifted homeschooling group, Great Potential Press, my state and national advocacy groups, and probably other organizations I am forgetting to name. All of us who have stepped tentatively out of our comfortable closet improve the lives of gifted children everywhere.


giftedadvocacyThis post is part of the Hoagies’ Gifted blog hop. Gifted advocacy takes place in many places. From schools to homeschool groups, from our houses of worship to the YMCA and JCC, from the grocery store to the family gatherings… we are Gifted Advocates everywhere, and at every age.

A grown-up Harry Potter for me and you

Some years ago my husband was reading a book he’d bought on the basis of a good review. He was sitting in his chair chuckling, and occasionally he would say, “You have to read this!” and then “I mean it, you’ve really got to read this!”

“OK, dear,” I said, and back to my own book.

Then I did. The book was The Magicians by Lev Grossman. After I finished it I was hanging out with my sister and she said something like, “Oh, my book club read the greatest book!” and I answered, “I just read the greatest book, too!” And it turned out to be one and the same.

Harry Potter for grownups! Put the kids to bed early and enjoy.
Harry Potter for grownups! Put the kids to bed early and enjoy.

The Magicians has now morphed into a trilogy, the final episode published last month, and it’s one that I think every parent who was jealous of their kids for having Harry Potter just has to read. Remember how reading Harry Potter with your kids (or in my case, listening to the wonderful audiobooks) made you wistful for how the Narnia series really didn’t cut it once you put them side-by-side? Harry Potter let kids be real kids. They did real stuff that was not in the least allegorical. They lived in a world that was tactile and dirty and complex.

All we got as kids was weak Christian allegory. (Apologies if you still love Narnia, but reading it as an adult killed all my affection for it!)

The disappointing thing about Harry Potter, from the adult point of view, is that because it’s a series for kids, it does have to stay within the kids’ world experiences. There are no great revelations, no deep learning that happens in that series. The kids have adventures and eventually they overcome the evil.

The end happily ever after et cetera.

The Magicians is Harry Potter for grown-ups. It opens when our “hero” (rather less heroic than Harry, even) stumbles his way into a college for magicians. He doesn’t even know that magic exists. He’s never done anything the least bit magical, yet they’ve been watching him and they want him. Why?

In Harry Potter that question gets answered, but Grossman’s books are for grown-ups. Questions don’t get answered; they just balloon and get overwhelming, then subside and let you get on with your life. Quentin, Grossman’s protagonist, stumbles through young adult life in an endearing and somewhat scary way. Quentin’s a thinker, and he lets you know why he makes the decisions he makes, but unlike in a children’s novel, it doesn’t all come together to make sense. It ends, but the ending is just the beginning of the rest of his life.

These are not books for kids, or even your teenagers. In fact, don’t let your teens read these books. They’re yours. I mean it. I think you have to have lived long enough to realize that you don’t really know what the hell you’re doing in life in order to appreciate these books.

I love this piece by Grossman on how he found himself as a writer. I think Grossman does a great job of summing up why his books are so great to read:

“Fantasy is sometimes dismissed as childish, or escapist, but I take what I am doing very, very seriously. For me fantasy isn’t about escaping from reality, it’s about re-encountering the challenges of the real world, but externalized and transformed. It’s an emotionally raw genre — it forces you to lay yourself open on the page. It doesn’t traffic in ironies and caveats. When you cast a spell you can’t be kidding, you have to mean it.”

It’s clear that Lev Grossman means it. Go read these books. Ignore your children for a while. Really. And don’t let them read over your shoulder, as my 11-year-old attempted to do last night. She could see I had a good read, and she was jealous.

Let them be jealous. Let them have Harry.

We have Quentin.

Teach your children well

I joined an auditorium full of parents and teachers last week to hear psychologist Madeline Levine talk about where we’re going wrong in our education and our parenting.

For me personally, the auditorium full of people was like a village meeting. I saw and spoke to parents from almost every school my children have been to, from preschool on up to high school. And though we think of Santa Cruz County as a relatively populous place, when it comes to parents we’re truly a small town. My son’s current homeschool program teacher knew the preschool parents who in turn knew the mom from the private school who in turn knew other homeschooling friends.

Homeschoolers ahead of the curve?

Teach your children wellBut on to Levine’s talk: As I sat listening in my little pod of homeschoolers, I thought, we are definitely not her target audience. Everything she said was part of why we are homeschoolers. For example, she pointed out that our education system forces students to think that in order to be successful adults, they have to be good at everything. On the contrary, she pointed out, “You don’t have to be good at everything, you go to your strong side,” illustrating it with the fact that she always has to ask for help from the audience when figuring out percentages. This is a fact of human development that drives many a student to homeschooling: our educational system makes them feel like failures for their weaknesses, and doesn’t offer them the opportunity to build on their strengths.

Another thing Levine pointed out is that plenty of parents are dissatisfied with their local schools, but they always say there is no community support. But, she says, when she’s signing books, “Everybody in line says I’m the only one in my community.” Again, we homeschoolers have found each other largely because homeschooling is nearly impossible to do well without community. School parents are given a pre-formed community, but they are seldom forced to take advantage of it the way we are.

Another point Levine made was allowing children to have “successful failures”—failures that teach them to reach higher to attain their goals. She points out that today’s “helicopter parents” try to pad their children’s lives so that all they do is succeed. The problem is, those children eventually leave home, and are often devastated by their first small failure because they have no experience in it. This is a situation that is much easier to bring about in homeschooling. In school, if a child fails the consequences can be relatively severe (from their point of view), such as a bad grade or in some schools, losing privileges like recess. In homeschool, we can allow failure in a more natural way. My son, for example, had a bad experience with an online class where he didn’t pay enough attention to the way the grades were being calculated. He ended up doing pretty poorly, even though he’d turned in good work. He learned, with no longterm consequences, to pay more attention to things like due dates and late penalties.

She also spoke about how public education has not kept up with our changing workforce. Our public education system was designed to produce dependable factory workers, people who can follow directions and produce consistent results. Our current work world is quite different; factory workers have lost their jobs to automation. Levine points out, “Every school should have project based learning because it’s collaborative – in the real world we’re collaborating all the time.” Again, this is something that homeschoolers are able to do so much more readily. Since there are no grades and it’s all about enjoyment while learning, collaborative projects are natural to incorporate.

What we really want for our kids

Levine reminded the audience that when she asks parents what they want for their kids, they almost never mention income or status. “We want to raise people who are happy and find meaning in life,” Levine reminds us. And our educational system simply is not geared to do that. As a psychologist, she is seeing more kids who are stressed out about school. In the past, she said, kids would suffer from other life stresses—a divorce or bullying, for example. But now she gets kids who get a B and worry that they won’t get into Harvard and their lives will be ruined.

Many homeschoolers are what we call “public school refugees,” people who didn’t come to homeschooling on principle but instead because they were saving their children. I have known former school children who came to homeschooling after attempted suicide, devastating bullying from peers, debilitating pressure from schools to raise their test scores, and absolute loss of motivation and love of learning.

I always hold out hope that the homeschooling movement will get serious attention from people who make educational decisions in our country, but I know that often we are dismissed as ignorant or worse. It’s heartening to know that people like Levine are coming at it from the opposite direction, giving legitimacy to basic principals that homeschoolers have been acting on for years.

Further reading:

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