Parents with gifted children have perhaps an even more challenging journey than some other parents. The regular parenting manuals don’t provide a lot of helpful information or comfort for the parent of a baby who only naps in the day time and whose night time sleep needs are far less than others the same age, or the child who is stacking a dozen blocks in a tower at 12 months of age, or the child who is holding conversations with strangers at 18 months of age. There is no doubt that life would be more straight forward if we knew what to expect, where to turn for help or if we had something to tell us the ‘right’ way to proceed when our child threw the next challenge at us.
However parenting seems to demand that we remain flexible, that we brainstorm and analyse options, that we think creatively, problem solve and investigate options. It demands we shift from the safe mindset of a ‘Knower’ (who would have absorbed the manual) to the less certain one of a ‘Learner’ (in many ways just like our child). Young children are inveterate learners, interacting with the world around them, persisting and trying out ideas. They are investigators, questioners and problem solvers.
Perhaps then parenting is Nature’s way of making sure we remain learners, that we model the process of learning for our children. Perhaps the reason it is more challenging than we might have chosen is that life will be challenging for our children and they need us to model managing the challenges.
For them to have the best resources in order to grow into healthy, happy people who feel at home in the world and who can face what life throws at them intelligently and cheerfully, they need to see us continue to learn as well.
One of the best things we can do is to articulate the process of not knowing and how we navigate it.
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