A Word of Advice from Skier -- Regarding the Raising of Gifted Children
May 29, 2004

Giftedness can be rough. For the lucky ones childhood will be smooth sailing and all will be well with the world. For the unlucky ones, giftedness can leave lasting scars that will never heal during this lifetime. A few thoughts.

• NEVER allow unsupervised TV access. Ever. Period. Gifted children can learn "lessons" and worldviews faster than you realize and may make connections and associations that you could never possibly imagine. TV is a wonderful tool and can provide access to things otherwise out of reach: TLC shows about monster machines, Discovery and Nova programs about this, that and the other and other educational shows can be fantastic. But keep in mind that the shows that are harmless to you can have profound influence on the gifted child in unpredictable ways. The gifted child is -different-.  Realize this and work around it.
   
• Expect, encourage and revel in spectacular, colossal failures. In some article once I read of an individual who, as a child, spilled milk all over the kitchen floor. The mother had an absolutely perfect response: instead of scolding the child she responded with something along the lines of "oh, what a wonderful mess you've made. Let's see what this can teach us" and proceeded to get down on the floor and play in the puddle before eventually cleaning it up. The child was then very receptive to a lesson about trying to pour liquids from containers that were too heavy to lift because there was no blame, no guilt, no punishment.
   
• Gifted children will be able to come up with things you can't possibly imagine - I set fire to my driveway. Teach the children how to respond to problems, encourage them to ask permission before trying something new - and be quick to say YES - and always let them know that there is no such thing as either failure on the first attempt (which is almost always to be expected) or failure on the 100th attempt. The mantra should be that failure is a lesson in what doesn't work out so well.
   
• From the earliest stages let the child know that he is to form his own relationship with the Universe and that what others think is not relevant.  With somewhat older children have them explain in their own words what "personal relationship with the universe" means and try to get them to understand that what others say/think/do is another variable - nothing more, nothing less - and has nothing to do with their own place in the grand scheme of things. The gifted can come up with some pretty strange ideas and, going back to point number two, will often be wrong. Or different.
   
• Self validation is absolutely critical and mandatory when one is going to blaze their own trail.