Dear So and So - Vicarious Living

After reading mine, go read Kat's and the others.  Check her out at 3 Bedroom Bungalow.  




Dear Anonymous Commenter this week:

What's this mean?   "Hm hm.. that's very interessting but to be honest i have a hard time determining it... wonder what others have to say.. "

I'm all about leaving the anonymous option on - if you don't have the courage to put your name behind it yet, then have at it, but does this sentence mean something?  Considering I didn't ask a question in that post.

Signed,
Just lookin for answers but with no idea where to find them

Dear Tuesday's piano recital -

When Oldest walks up to play, my heart thuds, I hear whooshing in my ears and I tremble with fear.  What if, what if, what if . . .

Then she nails it and the relief is so strong, I want to weep.

Signed,
Do all parents do this and if so, what would our kids think if they knew?

Dear Youngest at Oldest's Piano recital

You rocked it girlie!  So proud of you and how quiet you were for your first recital as an audience member.  When you said, "Mommy, when I get older, can I do a panno cital like Oldest when I go to my panno lesson?"  I nearly melted.

Signed,
Yes Dear, you can, and hopefully mommy doesn't have an apoplectic fit having to stay calm while TWO children perform

Dear Follow Friday -

Head over to Hearts Make Families, One 2 Try or Midday Escapades for more new blogs!  All are welcome!

Signed,

I haven't had this much fun every Friday for 6 weeks straight since college!

Suzuki Piano Recitals = Sweet Music

My 6 word Saturday post told you someone had a recital that day.  Some of you, I think, believed it was my recital.  Alas, no.  Oldest had her first Suzuki Piano recital of the year. 

What do you know about the Suzuki method?  I didn't know much either when we started almost 2 years ago.  I just liked the idea that the lessons were one-on-one, rather than group.  When we started, we had all of these "rules:"

1. I attended alone for 2 months.
2. I was to attend and "participate" in the lesson.
3. Younger siblings stayed home unless they could play quietly or draw during the lesson.
4. I had to read a book about the method before starting. 
5. We had to observe another student before starting to see the method in action.

Stuff like that.  And let me tell ya - I almost didn't sign her up after we observed the other student (probably wouldn't have, but we'd already paid into it).  The student was like . . . brilliant.  A virtuoso.  A-M-A-Z-I-N-G.

She was also the same age as Oldest.  I went to my next (and last) personal lesson before Oldest started and said, "I am shocked.  She's so good."  When what I wanted to say was, "Why did you have me watch a virtuoso?  Why not have me watch one of your "regular kids," you know, like mine's going to be.  I just had her in a keyboarding group class and she did awful." 

The teacher just said, "She's been taking a little over a year now - that's where Oldest will be next year."  I didn't believe her.   

Then. 

Oldest lost TV all Memorial Day weekend, about 2 months after she started.  The only thing she could "think of" to do to entertain herself was play piano.  It was a major turn for both of us.  I started to see the method in action.

The Suzuki Method is not unlike the Montessori Method, assuming that every child, through hard work and concentration, has great potential.  Shinichi Suzuki strongly believed adults weren't born with raw "talent," that "talent" appears only through hard work and repetition.  And a nurturing environment.

He's right, of course, but you should hear people's reactions when they hear Oldest play something like Ecossaise, which was her Recital piece.  They are flabbergasted, frankly.  Like, "What talent!  What do you do!  She's amazing!" 

And I, knowing it's just the method at work, smile and tell them the Suzuki method of piano is the best choice we made with Oldest's music lessons.  That they should give it a try. 

But guess what?  When I hear the Older kids play things like Book 4, which she will get to when she's around 14, I am the one who is flabbergasted.  The boy (15) who plays ahead of us right now is SO GOOD!  I recently said this to the teacher - "My God!  He's so good!"  Because even I forget about the method when I listen to the older kids.  Her reply?  "Oh, well, that's where Oldest will be in about 6 years." 

So matter of fact about it.  But then again, she's been teaching for 30ish years, I think, so she's seen it many, many times. 

What's my point today? 

One - To tell you the Recital went great.   When you listen to kids ranging from 4 to 16 years old, you get a wonderful cross section of "where you've been" and "what you will become."  And we have become a little community of families who all share the same love of this method and the results we see in all of our children.

Two - The activities you enroll your child in really do make a big difference.  Had we stuck with the group keyboarding, we would have walked away thinking she had no "talent" and that she wasn't "meant" to be a piano player.  With some research and a bit of a leap of faith, though, she's in a program that fits her needs and personality "practically perfectly in every way." 

Three - Sometimes I love my children so much I could eat them - Saturday was one of those days.  But it doesn't matter how many times she attends these recitals (Saturday was her 4th), Husband and I are always so nervous we can hardly speak until she's done.  Oldest?  Not at all - which is one of the things I love most about children - they don't yet GET what a big deal it is to play alone in a room full of people. 

Four - Youngest will officially start when she turns 3.  THREE!  Can you believe it?  She already gets up on the bench and "does her practice," which already echoes the tempo of what she hears Oldest doing. 

Amazing.

Super Sunday Series - Looking Backward and Forward - All in One Post!

Welcome back to the Super Sunday Series - a little place where I talk about the terminology and educational aspects of raising gifted children and how it translates into day to day living with your gifted child(ren).  I'm SO excited for 2010 and what I have planned for the Series.  This week, however, I'm buying myself a little time to plan. 

I've put handy links to all of the 2009 Super Sunday Series posts this week, with subjects, in one handy place today, for your ease of handy reference.  No thanks necessary.  Just become a follower or subscribe to my RSS and we'll share the love that way.  Thanks.  Can't you just feel the love already?

Check it out and within each link you will find all of the references I've used, because Heaven knows I didn't come up with all of this intellectualism all by myself:

Birth of the Super Sunday Series - where I introduced the SSS.  Hence the zany birth reference in the title.

Why we IQ tested so young (not Super Sunday, but relevant) - Look for SSS this year with more information about IQ testing, including the importance of not thinking it's too important. 
IQ - Part I
IQ - Part II

Traits of the Gifted Child - It's a laundry list and it's not comprehensive, but it does get you started.
Verbal Skills, Curiosity and Memory - Where I delve a little deeper into these traits common to the gifted child.
Perfectionism - I - Perfectionism can be painful and difficult, especially when practically every member of your family suffers from it.  Part One of Two.
Perfectionism - II - Tips for keeping the ravaging claws of perfectionism at bay.  Part Two of Two. 
Asynchronous Development - One of the fascinating aspects of gifted to me - it's kinda like having a college major - at 5.  You are very strong in certain areas, but not across the board.


Overexcitabilities - Gifteds seem to be predisposed to overexcitabilities in one or more areas.  You can find an exploration of all of them below.  Once I started understanding these, life in our house started getting so much more manageable.

Sensual
Emotional
Imaginational
Psycho-Motor
Intellectual


Holidays and Your Gifted Child - Where I advised you on surviving the holidays with as much fun and as little upheaval as possible.  Then I didn't follow any of my own advice! 

Routine
Transitions
Sleep
Nutrition

The rest of 2010's Super Sunday Series will be more informative - I hope!  I have the whole year planned out, without an order yet, I'm still working out those kinks.  And if you have something you want to hear about, place an order!  I'm totally open to talking to you about what YOU want to hear, not just what I want to wax philosophic about.

Next week in the Series - cycles.  Do you have them?  Not THOSE - does your gifted child cycle through various behavior patterns on a regular basis?  I'll let you know what they're like here and then you can tell me. 

Tomorrow?  My own personal Happiness Project for 2010.  Can't WAIT!

Super Sunday Series - Week 2 - "You know your child is gifted when . . . "

Last week in the Super Sunday Series, I gave you the broad overview of "gifted kid traits." 

This week I promised to delve into some of the traits.  Bring it home a little, humanize it. 

Let's start with asynchronous development.  To me, this is one of the biggest hallmarks of gifted children, these huge GAPS in abilities.  In A Parent's Guide to Gifted Children, the authors say "intelligence and knowledge are simply not the same as emotional maturity, understanding, or wisdom."  Guide, pg. 122.  Further, they break it down into three categories:

1. Emotional and intellectual maturity - where you "have the intellect of an older child, adolescent, or even an adult, but have age-appropriate emotional development.
2. Asynchrony of abilities - saying the "brighter the child, the more widespread her abilities . . . it is common for a young gifted child to be frustrated that her fingers will not do what her mind wants them to do. 
3. Interpersonal asynchrony - where the child "doesn't fit into the world around her."

Guide, pages, 122-123. 

Carol Fertig goes on to say the following about asynchronous development:

Asynchronous development is uneven development academically, physically, and/or emotionally.  A student might be a whiz kid at science, but can't throw a ball; or she may read years ahead of her classmates, but perform at grade level in math.

Raising a Gifted Child, Carol Fertig, Prufrock Press, 2009, pg. 32.  She also notes that asynchronous development is particularly difficult at the K-3 grade levels because these ages are not "mature enough for independent work."  Id. 

Maybe this is why many gifted programs don't start until 4th grade in elementary school?  Just a thought.

In our house, the biggest asynchrony we see is in the abilities, or #2 above.  Oldest couldn't write, at all, until between 4 and 5.  At school, she had mastered the alphabet and was starting on Easy Reader Books, but when she was asked to write her name, sometimes the tantrums she had would be so forceful that at minimum she would lose playground time - sometimes I got a call from school.  The teacher thought she was being stubborn - the truth was she just couldn't do it.  And that, as you gifted parents WELL know, is unacceptable to a gifted kid - it makes them self-destruct when they think they can't do something they should be able to do - especially at 4 when they don't yet have emotional maturity to handle it better, even if just a little bit. 

Her conferences are in two weeks. I'm cuirious to see how her math level and reading level compare. Last year, at mid-year, she was at 5th grade for reading and 1st grade for math. HUGE difference. I can't imagine if we had her in a public school, trying to get her language needs met, and I feel so much empathy for those of you who do have this struggle.


The other big one we see here is academic "age" being so much more advanced than emotional age.  Oldest, as I have mentioned, was completely computer proficient by age 4.  She could navigate her way through Google to "her" sites and get anywhere in any particular site she wanted - even before she could really read the stuff, she just had a good instinct with it. 

I completely take this for granted, by the way.  Two nights ago, she came to me crying in the middle of the night because she'd discovered a "movie so scary I can't even talk about it, Mommy" on the Kiki Strike website and it was haunting her at 3am.  I just assumed if she was reading Kiki Strike at school, then it wouldn't have "keep you awake" stuff at night on the website.  Because if something's on a site that she's allowed to go on, she will find it.  Period. 

Though she has all of these abilities, she has the emotional maturity of a 7 year old (sometimes younger, too, I suspect, depending on what's going on in our lives, time of year, etc).  Things she can handle reading because she can are not necessarily going to be things she can handle emotionally. 

And finally, "interpersonal asynchrony," where the child doesn't fit into the world around her.  We see this in certain venues - a club we belong to tends to be very rough for her in the summer.   She thinks very differently from the kids there and ends up in tears or fighting quite often.  She has no CLUE how to "play the game" socially.  And a lot of these kids, while nice, have a different level of Social Savvy that she doesn't have.

Her school environment is great for her - Montessori - it truly does have the potential to change the world, one child at a time.  Plus her fellow Suzuki kids tend to be on the same playing field as her.  It's amazing to see how seamlessly they blend together at the recitals when they don't even know each other - all age levels!  So different from other places we go where she doesn't know people. 

So this is asynchronous development and it's longer than I thought.  I'm going to save my other planned "stuff" for down the road. 

Next week?  Perfectionism, though I've been avoiding it because I'm afraid I won't get it right. 

Get it?  Avoiding doing something for fear of failure?  Perfectionism in a nutshell.  We'll talk about the positives and negatives of it next week. 

See you! 

Un-Happy Hour

Does anyone else have a terrible time with your kids between 4 and 6pm?  I know for infants this time is the witching hour, but I'm finding it's lasted past infancy and into the twos (and apparently, sevens) in our house. 

Here is the scene.  Oldest gets picked up at 3:30 from school.  She's tired, she needs to wind down, chill out, veg on the couch a little bit.  She needs to destress.  Conversely, Youngest has just woken up from her afternoon nap and she is ready to go, with a capital G-O.  The dichotomy between these two needs is, well, distressing for all of us.

But it's not just the "one's tired and one's not" issue, I'm beginning to suspect.  I'd planned pretty well to get around that.  Letting Oldest watch a show, while I take Youngest in the back yard to burn it off, things like that.  Here's what I think it is:

Oldest has been away from Mommy all day and needs me back.  She needs to feel like she is my focus, that I want to hear about her day.  And I want that too.  I've missed her.  I want to know what happened at school.  We also need to do piano practice, though I try not to do it right after school because it usually has disastrous consequences.  Like yesterday, which resulted in them both having two sets of time outs, EACH.  But I won't bore you with those details today.  I'm SO over it.

And Youngest should be fine with this need of Oldest, right?  She should understand that she has had Mommy all to herself for 5 whole hours (nap's in there for 2 hours) and now it's "Oldest time" - kinda like Miller time. 

Are you all laughing yet?  She's TWO, of COURSE she doesn't understand that!  The personalized time with Mommy means she wants more, and in her "it's all about me" stage of development (which, let's just be honest here - some people never "grow" past that stage), the more Mommy time she gets, the more she thinks she's entitled to have.   I SO want to put it's like a crack addiction, but I can't, JUST CAN'T, compare my two year old's need for Mommy to a crack addiction (unless I just did?). 

So they fight with each other.  LITERALLY, every time I leave the room, Oldest is screaming at Youngest and Youngest is either taking something from Oldest or hauling off and smacking her.  I'm all about siblings solving their own differences, but I can't tolerate the hitting and I can't tolerate the bellowing.  NO ONE (except Mommy, when she's had ENOUGH) is allowed to bellow in THIS house.

So now that I've deciphered the WHY, let's move on to the HOW TO FIX.  Because it's driving me crazy.  Tips, tricks, HELP out there?????  What do you do?  How do you help your kids not make you nutty during Un-Happy Hour? 

Maybe that IS why cocktail hour was invented.  It had nothing to do with work, it had everything to do with parenting.  ;)