Parents+of+GT+Kids

Please see the March 9, 2009 Newsweek "My Turn" article by Stephanie Lindsley, a parent of both an autistic and a gifted child. [|Autism and Education-- Who should we focus on--my disabled son or my gifted girl?]

Some of our friends and neighbors think that if your kid is "gifted" then life is just like a bowl of cherries--we don't have any problems!

I know kids who curse their own brainpower--who wish they weren't so smart, who imagine it would be much easier to just follow along with the laughtrack instead of wondering why some people think the drivel on TV is funny. Some really bright kids feel so different from everyone around them that it is very hard to make friends. Some feel like they have to learn to pretend to care about the topics that absorb others' interests--sports, fashion, cars, money, TV shows--in order to have a chance at having a conversation with someone with whom they imagine they might like to be friends. Some withdraw from peer interactions after being repeatedly treated as some kind of freak because their passionate interests are of absolutely no interest to their age-peers.

Please see http://giftededucation.ning.com/video