Tina is the mother of three from Olmsted Falls.
What do you do to relax?
Read, collect craft supplies that I never use, and clean (just kidding-I hate to clean).
What else would you like to tell us about yourself?
I have three gifted children. Having a gifted child is not like winning the parenting lottery. Gifted children are intense, have strong emotions, and do not necessarily do well in school. Many are 2E (twice-exceptional) and struggle with anxiety, attention, and all of the other diagnoses that bring us all to Connecting for Kids. Having a high IQ does not mean that your life is easy. It simply means that your brain is wired differently than most.
What benefits has Connecting for Kids brought to you and your family?
Education and support.
Which have been your favorite Connecting for Kids resources?
The annual Meet and Greet. It is like one-stop shopping for every resource I could want.
My greatest lesson learned was...
Picking my battles. I used to think I could control everything. When my first born was a baby, he went through a period of time where he would only look at things to his right. He would look up at me during feedings and turn towards a sudden sound, but then go back to looking to his right. Then one day he just stopped. All of sudden he would be just as likely to be looking left as he was to be looking right. Who knows why? I have realized that I am no match for that kind of single-minded determination and that I had better save my energy for the things that really matter, like wearing pants to the grocery store.
The area where I have grown the most...
Advocating for my children. No one knows better than I do who my children are and what they are capable of achieving. Before we decided to send our son to Kindergarten early we asked his preschool teacher her opinion. She recommended against early entrance based on my son’s emotional outbursts and anxiety. My gut told me that keeping my child from doing the school work that his brain craved was not going to help his intense emotions or feelings of anxiety. In my experience, most people expect gifted children to be bright, high achieving students, not the quirky, intense, sometimes pain-in-the-butt people they actually are.
The bad habit I picked up...
When I tell someone that my children are gifted I immediately list things that they don’t do well. I have had so many experiences where people reacted badly, as if I was insulting their child by saying mine is gifted, that I want to let them know that I am not bragging. So I’ll say something like, “Yes, my son is nine years old and taking Geometry, but he can’t ride a bicycle.”
Do you have any recommended resources such as blogs, websites, or books that we can share?
