Flamingos

As I began to try to meet the needs of my gifted older daughter, I quickly realized that the topic of giftedness is charged with emotion and connotations that are not part of my reality. It left me curiously adrift and alone --it was so hard for people to understand that having a gifted child isn't all a bowl of cherries.

I hadn't actually planned on debuting this column yet but there are forces stronger than me at work. This column is written for the parents of gifted kids. It details my personal experiences trying to find unique educational solutions for my children, and my own learning curve as the mother of a flamingo.

There are just some facets to having a profoundly gifted child that can only be understood by another parent of a gifted kid. That it's not all good. That I'm panicked trying to meet her needs. That I'm not BRAGGING --which is my biggest pet peeve. And that I'm NOT, by GOD, saying my kid is better or superior or anything else. What I'm saying is that I have this flamingo and she deserves to have an enriching and wonderful educational experience and that it's hard to know how best to foster that.

But parents of PG kids need a place where they can be open and talk about their kids' gifts without censure and the general public is not that place. Because you can't explain to most people that your child can actually be HARMED by being put into a classroom for seven and a half hours a day with kids who don't understand why she thinks the way she does or why it's a problem for your kid when everyone else knows that the answer to "What do doctors do" is "They help sick people" when your kid thinks it's that they do research and surgery and psychiatry. So I needed an outlet for what I was discovering. I hope this is it.

Here's the very first, rough column, still in the development stage: [A Rare Sighting], from July of 2003