Review! Gifted, Bullied, Resilient: A Brief Guide for Smart Families by Pamela Price

The first thing to say is that I did receive a copy of this book for review purposes. However, given that the author is on my auto-buy list (which means I'd have been buying it as soon as I heard of its release), and the subject matter, it was going to end up in my hands sooner rather than later anyway.

Now. Given Skeeve's, my, and Mad Natter's struggles with bullying, this was a huge book for me. I've been anxiously awaiting its release for at least the last six to eight months, and that's all I can reasonably remember - it might have been a lot longer. The digital copy arrived in my
inbox this afternoon, and I promptly dropped everything, picked up paper and a pen, and immersed myself in the book.  Mad Natter was out playing with the neighborhood kids, I had some time...  I'm sad that I finished reading before I started dinner, and only partly because dinner's about half an hour late. Mostly because I want more.

Learning About Giftedness

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I wish I had started blogging long ago, keeping better track of the things I thought were odd. I wish I'd kept tabs on that moment I had the OMG, GIFTED epiphany. It seemed at the time like something I'd remember forever, but now we're three years down the road, and it's all so blurry looking back.

Resource Review: All About Spelling!

This post contains affiliate links to materials discussed. Purchases via these links help support our family at no additional cost to you. Thank you for choosing to support my little blog. Read my full disclosure statement here. 

Something I realize I haven't talked much about has been Spelling.  We all talk about language arts, but somehow spelling gets forgotten in that.  At our house, that's less because spelling is a non-starter, but because it, like science, is one of the few subjects that gets done with very little fuss.  And for that?  I completely credit All About Spelling. Mad Natter, who absolutely hates review, will ask me if we can do spelling work. Mad Natter, whose handwriting is years behind his mind, will ask me to do spelling.  This is astounding to me.

Inside Out!

So, I'm late to jump on the Inside Out train. However, Mad Natter and I went to see the movie with Hammie this week, and it honestly deserves a post of its own.  You see, it's a Pixar film, which means it's going to be amazing, that's just because it's Pixar. But, it was more than that.  Even though the Vat O' Fruit Punch Mad Natter got before the movie meant we had to leave to pee three times between the middle and the end, the film was still so astounding as to absolutely merit talking about it. And honestly, the number one reason is because of Mad Natter's first comment after it was over: "You know, Mama, I think I have all those characters from the movie inside ME!"  SOLD.

Makin' It Work!

In the course of talking about gifted education, we often criticize pull-out programs, because you know, gifted children aren't only gifted one hour per day, or one day per week. But the thing that gets less attention is a continuation of that same fact – gifted people aren't only gifted when they're children, and they aren't only gifted when they're in an academic setting.  So, how do three gifted people with varying overexcitabilities, needs, and degrees of introversion manage to live in a house together – without killing each other?

Recovery!

Hiatus.  It is finally ending.  Entries might be a bit sporadic yet, but I'm hoping to be back with at least some regularity now. Almost three weeks ago, I had day surgery. My team was excellent, and I was home and in a very minimal amount of pain within about eight hours from when we left. But, the surgery was a surprise, so everything has been all out of whack because I wasn't able to prepare. Then add in coaching and general chauffeur duties, and it's been... chaotic would be understating.

Intersections

The recent kerfuffle about bullying gifted children in the mainstream media has a lot of people talking. And some of what they're saying is reasonable and level-headed - things like

@TODAYshow highly gifted and profoundly gifted are not jokes they are actual psychological terms for people in the top 2% of IQ #Gifted

— Becky Lichucki (@rlichucki) May 24, 2015

and

There's no way to defend mocking #gifted kids. Mocking Parents of Gifted Kids Isn’t Funny http://t.co/qJv9hn2iHO @TODAYshow @SWilderTaylor

— Celi Trépanier (@CeliCeliC) May 24, 2015

Twice Exceptional Hatters

I've written before about what having a twice-exceptional child looks like here in our Mooselandia home. Of course, by now that snapshot is two years old, and as with everything else, changed with time, experience, and the work and care of people we can trust. Let me bring you up to speed.  If you've never heard the term "2E" before, it means "twice exceptional." This is commonly a child who is gifted with some form of learning disability - ADHD, SPD, ASD, really anything. These kids are often overlooked in the school system, as either their increased ability masks their disability, or the school's penchant for treating the disability first means the ability is never recognized. But, being homeschoolers means that I get to see the full spectrum of my child - his good moments, his bad ones, and what is more "normal" for him than not.

Ages and Stages of Being Gifted

We see so much about giftedness through our own lenses. But for this hop, I wanted to branch out a little, and get some perspective from other people - even those who don't necessarily feel connected or part of the Gifted Community. Since there are so many different ages and stages this could cover, I wanted to hit on as many as possible. As such, I took to interviewing, and today I get to share my results with you.

The Parenting Conundrum.

To medicate, or not to medicate: that is the question many parents of children with issues that present as ADHD face. You have society screaming at you that ADHD is overdiagnosed, and you'll medicate your child into zombie-hood. Your support systems are leery at best, as they primarily hear the same things society is screaming. You and your spouse are wound tighter than clock springs waiting for the time your child either realizes they are seen as "lesser" or "undesirable" by other children, or the time they dash off into the street after a ball and never come home again. Your child... Sometimes you know what they think, sometimes you don't. In rare moments of lucidity, Mad Natter would say "I like being sick, mama..." while he was fevered and lethargic, continuing on to say, "my brain slows down so I can think..."

A Day In The Life

One of the first things I learned as I grew up was that there are as many different ways to do things as there are people doing them. People stop and wonder "homeschooling? how does that work?" and each person the question is posed to will have a different answer. Even within the same nuclear family. Crazy, right? Well, Gifted Homeschoolers' Forum has come to the rescue on that one! This month, get a look into how many different families homeschool, and how they answer the question of "What's a day in the life of a gifted homeschooler like?"

I spent several years before Mad Natter was born on a forum. We used to do occasional DITL (Day In The Life) posts, and in keeping with how I've always done, below the jump will be an extremely picture heavy look at a day in our lives - lucky you, it happened to be tax return day!

Labels Without Testing

Everyone has an opinion on labels. Whether pro or anti, both sides have to admit that labels, at their heart, describe a specific set of characteristics, which make them useful in specific settings. The question becomes whether or not one can, or even should, use those labels in their appropriate settings without the testing to back them up.

Learning Something New

I do love learning new things. It's a wonderful feeling, and I get to feel like I'm doing something to help Mad Natter, even if all I'm doing is thinking up new things to bring up to his doctor when we go in for his med review. This week, though, learning has created a bit of an issue for me. I learned some new things about Mad Natter, and I learned a few things about how his care has been horribly wrong despite best efforts, and while I do love learning new things, it's made me stop and think and try to reconcile.

Finding our Joy

A quick bit of history for those not in the know: Mad Natter started preschool at 3. It was about three weeks in (at two days per week) that we started hearing rumblings about perhaps ADHD. Skeeve and I knew there was something amiss, but we didn't know precisely what. All we knew was that our child, from the age of 2.5, no longer seemed to meet a certain subset of developmental milestones - anything doing with delayed gratification, impulse control of any kind. Once he got into preschool, and things needed to be done on a schedule that wasn't 100% his own making, we learned that he had a distinct inability to follow directions on top of the impulse control.

Book Review! If This is a Gift, Can I Send it Back? Surviving in the Land of the Gifted and Twice Exceptional by Jen Merrill

Deciding to keep with last week's review, I've got another review this week! Honestly, I'm not sure how well I can review If This is a Gift, Can I Send it Back, but I'm going to give it a go anyway.

The hardest part for me is truly the fact that I have no clue what the best part of it is. I picked up the book not long after its release, in ebook format. I was so excited to read it that I wasn't about to wait for it to be delivered. I got the book and devoured it, again in one sitting. It's a hazard of reading quickly as well as reading good books