Time slips by - its a blog birthday!

Photo credit Stuart Miles Free Digital Photos

Suddenly, it is 3 years since I started this blog.
Sometimes I have posted regularly, other times it has been a bit patchy, mostly because life gets in the way, but this is post number 97. Time slips by and it is amazing how things which seemed incredible at one point, are common place before long.

I remember when I was first running holiday programs for gifted children 10 years ago, the sign up forms had to be returned by post, I didn’t have a dedicated domain name for my website, nor the technology for online submission of registrations. Hard to imagine now when those things are so easy to organise. Those who enrolled were born in the 1990’s, the youngest was born in 1998. Of course before long all that changed, I obtained a domain name, built a new website, enrolment forms could be emailed to me and there were children who attended who were born in or after 2000. That was hard to believe at the time.

A few years after I moved to Perth when I started consulting to families most of the children I saw seemed to be around 7 years of age, with a scattering of older primary school age children. Year 2 seemed to be the point where the school experience faltered and families needed help to make sense of what was going on (and it continues to be for many families now too). A year or so later families contacted me about 5 years olds, then not long after I saw a whole bunch of children who were only 4 and whose parents were proactive enough to act early, before they ran into problems. This seemed young, until I had a call from a parent of twins who were just 20 months old……….

Over time technology has raced ahead and I have tried to embrace the changes as best I can. I set up forms that could be completed and submitted online for the holiday programs and other events, along with a facility for online payments. It its early form it was much more cumbersome than the Paypal system I changed to a couple of years ago, but it was quicker and easier to manage than the manual system of entering details from paper forms. Consultations were conducted via Skype for families in the country, and newsletters were sent out by mail merge rather than via BCC.

In the 3 years since I started this blog, the newsletters have moved between a couple of different email management services, and can now be scheduled to go at preset times, with follow up messages scheduled to go automatically at various intervals. Consultations are now booked using an online scheduling service saving a lot of time and paperwork. My books can be purchased online using 'Buy Now' buttons and electronic versions are delivered automatically.

The growth of Facebook and social media has been a boon, not only for keeping up with what is happening in the ‘world of giftedness’ – literally keeping in touch around the globe – but also because with the many groups and pages, parents can find a place of connection and support in between the challenges of household schedules, work and distance. The isolation of families in the country as well as those scattered about the city is vastly reduced. That is a big change in the last few years. I am a little envious really having lived so many years in the country in the days before the internet made information readily available.

The blog posts here over the last few years have touched on topics of current interest, or questions raised by parents and I have a fat folder full of notes and ideas just waiting for me to write new posts. Over the years those topics have been wide ranging, from how our gifted students compared to a wider pool, to acceleration, testing, our assumptions about education, what we can learn from eminence, the dangers of over protecting our children, how our expectations affect what we see, perfectionism, skills for the future, happiness, gifted girls, handwriting, programs for our gifted or for our talented students, the selection process for special programs, qualities of effective teachers, the dangers of coasting, advocacy, learning difficulties and many more topics.

As I was reflecting on the last few years of blogging I went back to my very first post. It is titled ‘What is it that parents want for their gifted child?’ Funnily enough I was talking about this very topic at a bookshop talk I gave last week. A parent contacted me after the talk to say it was refreshing to find a focus on a happy child rather than a gifted child simply being expected to be achieve highly. I think the question I asked back in 2009 is as relevant now as it did 3 years ago. I still wonder, as I did then, why is it that parents of gifted children feel somewhat embarrassed if their wish is for a happy child, one who sparkles and finds connection, rather than simply for a stellar student.

I wonder if it is because parents themselves long for the same thing – a sense of wholeness and connection, somewhere safe to talk about their child, to share the successes and highs just as much as the lows with other parents on the same journey.

Despite the rapid changes in technology, some things don’t change very much after all.

Or maybe they do.
Perhaps now we feel more comfortable with the idea that happiness and connection matters above all else.