The Bloggy Bit
Spiritual anxiety is not, in and of itself, bad. It is essential. For those of us thoughtful, reflective, questioning, sensitive souls, we often find it at one or more times in our lives. And when we’re in it, it is difficult. It is hard. Our whole world is flipped upside down, spinning, and standing still all at the same time. It is a time of insecurity and uncertainty. And it is good.
On those days, when you really don’t care why your child is crying, you just want them to stop, please be gentle with yourself. You are already empty. Throwing some sludge of guilt and shame into the well isn’t going to fill it up with anything helpful. Be gentle. Take it as a sign that you need some time. Time to refresh. Time to be quiet. Time to fill yourself up again.
The motivation and character of our gifted kids is often doubted and questioned. The motivation and character of us as parents of gifted kids is often doubted and questioned. And why are gifted kids and parents doubted? Because anti-intellectualism keeps us from talking about the multiple factors of giftedness.
Whether we are talking about baseball or spelling bees or STEM, large segments of our society maintain archaic beliefs that girls are somehow less than, or can only be good at certain things. Our society continues to be surprised when a female shows gifted leadership abilities or chooses to study engineering or surpasses a male in any area other than the arts or “soft sciences”.
We have never before parented our young amongst so much information and advice. It used to be the irritating next door neighbor or great aunt Mildred were the only advice givers, and we could choose to just avoid them. Now, we have article after article, website after website, giving us advice on how to successfully raise our kids. As far as I can tell, all that this information has done, is create anxious parents, not necessarily better parents.
For some reason, we’ve grown accustomed to thinking that chronological age provides some sort of magical compass that imparts our children with direction and skills. In truth, however, I don’t know many neurotypical children who follow all the age criteria for development, and neurodiverse kiddos often aren’t even in the ballpark.
