Relationship advice to give smart girls

I have a confession.  I really don’t know how to raise smart teenaged girls.

I have been filled with no small amount of anxiety over my daughters’ future fates – the burning questions I have is:  Will my daughters find intellectual challenge AND have room for love and a family?  Does it have to be either/or?

I had no adequate mentoring in my life as a highly intense, highly ambitious, smart girl.  I know I was internally driven to achieve, found my passion in science, but was grossly misinformed about relationships.  My mother’s bit of ‘wisdom’ with regards to relationships was this:  “All men are assholes.”   I heard that a lot growing up.  My mother, married twice and divorced once but nearly twice, was most definitely a man-hater.

I’m glad I didn’t believe her.  Through a lot of youthful experimentation (against my mother’s wishes), I discovered on my own that all men are not assholes, only some of them are.  Others are warm, generous, sensitive, and caring.  One of them in my youth imparted this few nuggets of wisdom: Shakespeare’s “To Thine Own Self Be True” and Nietzsche’s “Whatever does not kill us makes us stronger”, both of which became mantras I clung to when I struggled to proceed with my ambitions in a hostile atmosphere that didn’t support them.

I married one of the warm, generous, sensitive and caring men.  And we had three beautiful and smart girls.

So when it’s my turn to impart my wisdom on ambition and relationships (and yes, I realize I’m WAY early, since my oldest is just newly 10), I am glad to have found some really great advice in a few books about raising girls (and I hope to highlight my new resources in the next few posts).

I’ve been winging it, and have tried to steer clear of the gender issue, tried to include both toys and activities that encourage math, science and critical thinking skills as well as, dolls, play kitchens and dress-up that allow my daughters to practice their nurturing, social/ emotional and caretaking skills.

I’ve steered clear women’s studies out of an irrational fear of becoming a man-hater, and  creating man-haters.  But I shouldn’t have.  I missed out on a lot of really thoughtful advice and mentorship on how to couple intellectual challenge and relationships.

I just finished Barbara Kerr’s Smart Girls: A New Psychology of Girls, Women and Giftedness.   I wish I hadn’t waited so long to focus specifically on girls’ development.

She writes about not compromising love for work, or giving up intellectual ambitions for love, but finding love through work.  She writes,

An early feminist of Georgia O’Keeffe’s youth said, “First you must find your work, then you will find your love”.  This axiom held for most of these women [that is, the ones studied in her book].  For many, their romantic lives were so entwined with their intellectual lives that the two were inseparable.  Margaret Mead chose all three of her primary relationships because the partner fit her work at that period….The intensity of the relationship of Pierre and Marie Curie was that of mind touching mind as well as heart touching heart.  And without her work, Gertrude Stein would not have attracted Alice B. Toklas, who exclaimed that a “bell rang”, telling her that she was in the presence of genius when she met Gertrude, evoking intense feelings and making her want to stay by her side.”

For the record, I have no qualms about same-sex relationships.  I know that it’s not my personal choice, but I’m not about to restrict my daughters choices based on gender.  I have known two sets of same-sex relationships with two very highly respected women in my field.  They were very, very fulfilled and I would never want to limit who my daughters might find future happiness with.

I’m collecting nuggets of wisdom, and I’m inviting you to share yours.

What do you wish you heard growing up?

What do you plan to pass on to your daughters?

What I’ve learned – Part II

(For part I – please see this post – What I’ve learned-Part I)

I must say, resourceful or not, motherhood knocked me on my ass.

I can look back now with compassion for myself.

Due to my own very difficult family upbringing, I was ambivalent about having children.  I was ambivalent about what to do about my career when children came, so much so that I didn’t start having them until I was 31. I was TOTALLY unprepared for having 3 daughters in 3. 5 years.  That was such a drain on my physical and emotional resources.

Today I was responding to a comment on my page The Highly Sensitive Child.   I realized how I am in such a very, very good place right now.  But I have a confession to make (for my new readers anyway).

For the first 5 years of parenting my three girls, I totally sucked at it.  I didn’t know how to attach to my firstborn, who couldn’t nurse well, was extremely fussy, who NEVER SLEPT the first 4 months of her life (and after that became the best sleeper of them all). I was grateful to slink off to work while my then laid off husband took care of her.  When daughter number two came along, I was slightly better prepared – I was more aware of the challenges and having discovered Dr. Sears “The Fussy Baby” book, I adjusted my expectations, which helped some.  But then I decided to quit my job because it was still too much for me to handle.  It was the best decision I made, because I was no longer split between two very strong desires (my career and my daughters).  My career could wait, because it was killing me anyway.  Then I got pregnant with daughter number three, and that tipped the balance again.

The first 3 years after my youngest was born were extremely bleak as my husband worked a new job with a swing shift and could not help with the nighttime routine (and the girls had a very difficult time falling asleep).

The following year is when I discovered my middle daughter was selectively mute.  Things just weren’t getting any easier, but at least I had a good REASON for all of her struggles, and all of my insecurities,my anxieties and my depressions were at least understandable.  I certainly could not turn to my mother for help…though in a strange twist of fate, she’s the one who actually suggested my daughter had selective mutism, as she sat on a school board for 2o years and had seen a lot of kids issues in the school, including one who was selectively mute.

And now, with my oldest being 9.5, my middle being 8, and my youngest 6, and with this blogging opportunity to meet other mothers with highly sensitive children and mothers with selectively mute children, I am quite aware of one thing:  I feel GOOD right now as a mother.

I have grown exponentially in experience AND confidence.  My daughters have grown in the emotional and intellectual arenas.  There are many more calm, easy, enjoyable days.

We no longer have banshee-like screaming, wailing and gnashing of teeth (we still have some bad days like any ordinary family).  I am no longer frazzled, angry, confused, adrift, and terrified that I can handle the challenges anymore and guilty that I’m a horrible mom.   It wasn’t so long ago that I frequently broke down in tears, or yelled, or threw one of my own tantrums, or daydreamed of running off to Tahiti.

My husband too, has grown and his frustration level has been dramatically reduced as he has been working on some of his childhood issues.  For him, John Bradshaw’s Healing the Shame That Binds You, David Deida’s The Way of the Superior Man and Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know by Margaret Meeker, MD has been instrumental in catalyzing change in him.  I’m quite relieved about that.

Right now I feel so much more capable of handling this difficult task of raising children (it only took me 10 years).  Sure, I can’t be sure how to navigate the emotional storms of adolescence, but I’m sure I’ll find the resources I need when the time comes.  And hopefully, with all the emotional work we’ve done now, we might have planted some seeds that will help them when they are in the thick of new change.

I guess I wanted to tell younger mothers (and fathers) who are struggling with their highly sensitive, highly spirited, intense children, it does get better.  Our challenging children are a gift for us to dig beneath the surface of their behavior and also to dig beneath the surface of our responses.

Wherever you are bumping heads with your child, chances are there are some unresolved issues you’ve brought from your own childhood.  Inasmuch as it seems like the issue at hand seems to be only about them, chances are the conflict is also about you, and you experienced something similar but your own parents had handled it poorly.

If you think about it, your child is not the only one growing through developmental stages.  You are being called to grow right along with them.   Every conflict is an opportunity to discover a part of your own humanness, every emotional outburst and breakdown of is a light being shined on areas that need compassionate examination.  In some cases, we need to re-parent ourselves as we parent our children, and be our own nurturing parent that we may not have gotten as a child.

Our job as parents is not to create children that achieve great things.  Our job as parents is to teach our children to face our humanness with grace.  How to acknowledge and communicate the dark emotions of anger, hate, jealousy and frustration without resorting to destructive behaviors.

Feelings don’t hurt people, destructive actions that result from those feelings do.

When someone has an outbursts, they are communicating a need or a frustration or a violation of boundaries.

Depending on their age they may not initially be able to identify and articulate exactly what they need or are frustrated about, but they have something that they are trying to tell you about. Our sensitivity and empathy come into play and as parents we can help them recognize the signals their bodies give them, which are guides telling THEM something is amiss. It’s your role to help them figure out how best to identify and articulate before they get to the boiling point.

Sadly, my parents didn’t teach me how to deal with the darker emotions I had.  They didn’t know how because they were never shown how.  But I, along with my children and my husband, are all learning how to communicate needs in constructive ways.

I feel really good about our family right now.

I wanted to share that feeling and the lessons we’ve learned with you.

Have a Peaceful Tuesday.

What I’ve learned – Part I

[Due to an obnoxiously long word count, I decided to make this a two-parter]

When I started this job almost 10 years ago, I was extremely unprepared for mothering.

I’d like you talk about my own mother for a moment, who was, for better or for worse, the most significant template I had for what mothering looked like.  My mother was always a force to be reckoned with.  My mother never went to college, but she somehow picked up very shrewd business skills.  Maybe it was because she learned a lot by watching my grandfather, who was a probate lawyer, a general contractor, and very strict patriarch of our family.

My mother, now 69, is probably a gifted woman, despite never having gone to college.  She is gifted with a strong sense of 1) entitlement 2) pride and 3) persuasion and a weak sense of 1) respect for others, 2) boundaries and 3) compassion and some sort of intelligence to make it all work for her.

I respect my mother, but only after a long painful road of learning to make peace with her abusive ways.  I believe my mother thought she was doing the right thing by strong-arming her daughters.  I believe my mother was a feminist to the nth degree.  NOT because she believe in equality for women, but because it suited her diabolical plan – which was to have whatever it is she wanted in life, even at the expense of other people.

“Men are assholes” was her constant mantra, though she has conveniently forgotten all the myriad ways she was a bitch to the men who loved her and how she connived to get what she wanted.

The funny thing is, her way of being has worked for her.  She has reaped a lot of rewards from being the dominating way she was.  She always managed to get what she wanted, eventually.

My mother used to work in home sales for clothing companies.  In the 70s and 80s, two companies she worked at were Queens Way to Fashion and Beeline.  These were the Tupperware and Mary Kay of fashion.  It used to be you didn’t HAVE to go to a department store to buy clothes, reps from these companies could host parties right in your home.

My mother was a top seller.  It was something she thrived at.  She got free clothes, free houseware items and free trips to places like Florida and Hawaii.  She was THAT good.  THAT determined to be an alpha female.

Of course, I remember many nights eating TV dinners (the precursor to microwave dinners) with my oldest sister babysitting us (and finding diabolical ways to torture me) while mom galavanted off to her bookings.

After some number of years doing that, she switched careers.  It is rumored that my Italian step-father taught my mother how to cook.  Apparently she frequently used tomato soup as a good substitute for spaghetti sauce.  He must have done something right because she ended up learning a LOT about how to cook, and she did enjoy it so much that she made homemade Polish and Italian sausage and Italian beef that was so good she ended up seeing an opportunity to set up food booths at local festivals.  Her homemade foods were so appealing that she ended up with standing orders to local restaurants, and soon her little mom and pop business expanded enough that she was catering out of her home.

Not long after, her reputation as a caterer grew, and she eventually opened up her own delicatessen and catering business.  But being the cheapskate that she was, saw in her own oldest three daughters cheap labor.  She demanded we work for the family business.  We had no choice.  Sometimes she paid us on time, most times she did not.

It was an alright job.  I made sandwiches, I cleaned up the bathrooms, I never was asked to cook anything but I always served the catered parties with a smile and I had a short stint at cashiering.  I was terrible as a cashier.  I had such bad math anxiety that if I had to make change because I didn’t key it in right, I couldn’t do it on the spot.  My brain simply froze and I stood there while the customer looked at me funny.  Some customers were kind and helped me, others were a little impatient.  Pretty soon I was taken off cashiering duties, but not without snottiness from my oldest sister, who of course was perfect in Every Way, including making change. Humiliated but relieved too, I conceded my cashiering days were over.

I think one of the most difficult  aspects of working with my mother was the extra enmeshment it created.  I worked my fanny off, and maybe I got paid at the end of the time period.  Usually it was given at her whim.   Any time I was dating anyone, my boyfriends were the hot topic du jour, and if there were any arguments to be had about whomever I was seeing, my mother would castigate them to me in between customers. Anytime I needed to talk to my mother about something, my sisters were always listening.  My oldest sister was looking for ammunition to use against me in future battles.  At home I got to listen to their diatribes about me or my boyfriends and the arguments would continue when I got to work.

My mother forbade me from getting a job outside the family business.  The ONLY way I was able to do so, was by moving out of my house when I was 21.  No, I hadn’t even finished college yet.  Things had gotten so bad that I couldn’t wait.  I went on strike one day when my mother was yelling at me at how much my boyfriend was a twit and how she couldn’t stand him and didn’t want me dating him.

I got so angry, I walked out of the deli and made the decision to move out.   I went to the bank to retrieve my $1100 that I earned, only to find out there was only $50 left.  I went back to the deli and by some miracle, was able to demand that she return my money.  She actually wrote me a check, which I immediately took and deposited into a new account in my own name.  I moved out within 24 hours, to my boyfriends parents house.  He was away in the Marines, but they took me in and I stayed there two months, and managed to not only stay in school, but procure my first laboratory job on my own.

After two months, lots of hostile phone calls and one letter disowning me from the family, I decided to go home.  Not because of the psychological pressure they put on me, but because my boyfriends father got laid off and began drinking in the middle of the night, which scared me worse.  I felt the devil I knew was better than the devil I didn’t know.

The long story made even longer, my mother was NOT a good example of unconditional love.  My mother was NOT a good example of cooperative love.  My mother was NOT a good example of how to  help your gifted daughter navigate life’s challenges.  Though, I do wholeheartedly believe the obstacles she placed in my way forced my own resourcefulness to surface.

I am resourceful, that is for sure.

(continued in the next post)

An interview with author Susan Casey on Kids Inventing!

I was contacted not to long ago by the Provato marketing firm that an author was interested in being interviewed for the Raising Smart Girls blog.  I was both honored and very, very pleased when I found out about what Susan Casey published.

Susan Casey is the author of Kids Inventing! A Handbook for Young Inventors and Women Invent! Two Centuries of Discoveries That Have Shaped Our World. She is also a journalist and her articles and photographs have appeared in Family Circle, Americana, USAir, Women’s Sports, Soap Opera Digest, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner, Inventors Digest, Electrical Contractor and many other publications. When she was a girl, she loved reading and writing and through the efforts of a teacher, her first magazine article was published when she was in the seventh grade. After graduating with a degree in history from Santa Clara University, she spent a summer doing volunteer work in a small village in rural Mexico. It was a trip to Africa that prompted her writing career.*

Today I am interviewing Ms. Casey about her book Kids Inventing! A Handbook for Young Inventors.

Raising Smart Girls (RSG): What made you decide to write a handbook on how kids could make their own inventions? 

Susan Casey (SC):  When I was talking to school groups about the inventors featured in Women Invent!, the kids were especially interested in the girl inventors I included in the book.  For example, Wendy Johnecheck invented a new type of jumprope and Becky Schroeder invented a way to write in the dark.  Once I saw how interested the kids were in their stories, I decided to write about both girl and boy inventors.  As I started writing
I realized that I needed to include information about the inventing process as well.  That resulted in Kids Inventing! A Handbook for Young Inventors.

RSG:  Your book is wonderfully detailed and informational, what age group of children did you have in mind when you wrote the book? 
SC: The book is aimed at students in grades 4-8 but it is a good reference for anyone interested in invention.  Many adults have told me they used it to find out about the invention process.  And many teachers have told me they use it to teach inventing to their students.

RSG: Could you give my readers give a brief overview of the invention process?

SC:  Inventions start with an idea.  Inventors make notes and sketches of their invention ideas in a journal or log then use the notes to try to make a model of their invention.  Naming the invention is another step as is doing a survey to find out if people are interested in the idea and what they would pay for it.  Doing a patent search to see if someone else has already invented the idea is important and interesting.  Making a video
commercial about an invention can be fun.  Approaching a company about licensing the invention can be interesting as can entering a contest or competition.

On my website I have included a number of activity sheets that can help any young inventor with the invention process.  Kids can use the activities to understand the various steps of inventing.

http://susancaseybooks.com/invention_activities.html

A LIST OF THE ACTIVITY SHEETS ON THE LINK ABOVE:
Young Inventors Worksheet
Inventor’s Log
Be an Inventor, Inventing is Fun!
Getting an Idea
Thinking of Ideas For Inventions!
Improve Something You Use!
Thinking of Ideas for Inventions!
Combine Things to Make Something New!
Is Your Idea an Invention?
Naming Your Invention
All About Patents  (Use this activity sheet to discover the patents of Abe
Lincoln and Michael Jackson!)
Survey Others About Your Invention
Manufacturing and Selling Your Invention
Create an Ad Campaign and Present Your Invention
Do a Commercial About Your Invention

RSG: How did you research the process from selecting an idea through
manufacturing and selling an invention?

SC:  I read a lot of books, visited the patent depository at the Los Angeles Public Library, talked to a lot of experts and was able to have the experts review my work before it was published.

RSG:  What advice would you give a parent to help them encourage and
support a child’s creativity and imagination which are important aspects
of inventing?

Kids are natural inventors since they don’t know what can’t be done.  Let kids have fun thinking of inventions and don’t discourage any of their ideas.  Even if their ideas are wild, there might be a germ of a good idea within the wild idea.  To help them focus on concrete ideas, let them start in the kitchen.  It is a great place for them to start thinking of ideas for inventions.  Ask them how they would improve different kitchen tools.  Or ask them to think of 20 items in the house and then to try to combine some of those things to make something new.  For example, a ladder with wheels or a key with a light.  Or ask them to try to improve a common item, i.e. the toothbrush. All those activities can be creative and fun.

RSG: Since these are ideas coming from children, how difficult is it for them to market an idea for manufacturing?

To manufacture an invention, an inventor’s parents have to become involved.  That’s of interest to some parents.  Since most parents are not inclined to do that, I suggest to students that they enter contests or competitions.  It’s something they can do themselves.  They are often helped in that process by a parent or teacher but entering a contest is
far less complicated than the process of manufacturing.

RSG: How often do children’s inventions actually reach the manufacturing
and selling stage?

SC: Not very often.  However, many kids benefit from entering contests and competitions.  They can win from $100 to $5,000 to $10,000 cash prizes or scholarships.  Check out the invention contests or competitions listed on the link below from my website:

http://susancaseybooks.com/PDF/COMPETITIONS%20FOR%20YOUNG%20INVENTORS%202011.pdf

RSG: Do you personally know of children who have used your book and taken
an idea from the brainstorming stage to a marketed product?

I don’t. However, after interviewing one of the kids for the book, a girl who had
been recognized in the Invent Iowa invention program, I suggested that she
enter a national contest.  She did and won a $10,000 scholarship.  That
was exciting.

RSG: The Ladybug Game, produced by Zobmondo Entertainment, was a popular game in the RSG household. It was designed by a first grader, and has been sold in stores all over the United States.  Do you know of other popular
marketed products designed by children?

SC:  Chris Haas invented Hands-On Basketball when he was 9.  He’s now in his 20s and his basketball with handprints—that show kids where to put their hands to shoot a basket—sells worldwide.  Profits from it have paid for college for Chris, his brother and his sister.

Abbey Fleck came up with the idea of Makin’ Bacon.  It’s a tray for making
bacon in a microwave.  It’s sold nationwide. Kaitlan Fairweather sold a device to use in practicing Lacrosse—a device that returns the ball the player—to Brine Inc., a nationwide company that sells sports equipment.

(*short biography of Susan Casey provided by Provato Marketing)

***

Susan, this was an amazing and fun interview. This is the kind of book that would be a fantastic addition to any school or family library.  Christmas is just around the corner.  I can think of a few parents whose curious kids would benefit from this book and I will definitely share the word.  I also think I have an idea for my daughter’s 4th grade merit class teacher’s gift (if she doesn’t already have one).

If you are still interested…I would love love love to host a book giveaway.  I think my readers might be very interested as well.  Readers, I would love to host a book giveaway, so leaving a comment on my blog if you are interested in participating would be very, very appreciated.  Thanks so much!

Thanks again to Susan Casey for appearing, courtesy of Provato Marketing, for other stops on the tour please check www.provatoevents.com.

Surprise…we have an interview…

I just have to thank all of you  who may have thought of us and wished us well in that last post.

A week after posting, Mr. RSG got contacted from a recruiter who had seen his resume on Monster.com.  He had a telephone interview and he was called back to set up a face-to face interview, which happens today at 1pm C.S.T.

Coincidence?  Maybe.  But I don’t think so.

The company seems to be in a hurry to here someone ASAP.  And it all happened quite suddenly.

Please keep Mr.  RSG in your thoughts and prayers.  If he gets this job, we’d be so relieved of a year of unemployment, we’d have insurance,  he would be local and not have to fight city traffic.

Thanks so much.

 

 

 

Joblessness woes – in which I start freaking out

We have been bitten by the jobless bug over here in the RSG household.

Mr. RSG was laid off from his panic attack-inducing job as a mechanical engineer last October.  His severance was pretty decent:  8  weeks pay plus his company agreed to continue to pay our health insurance for the sum total of one year.  We weren’t too sad, at the time, to hear of his layoff.   He was, quite literally, popping Xanax twice a day to deal with his frustrating boss and the work stress related to his company, which was struggling after some sales person in his division messed up big time by buying scrap metal at over double the cost they could resell it at.

We were eager to have Mr.  RSG home and more relaxed.  We weren’t too worried about finances at the time.  Our home, a smaller, older one, was very affordable and we didn’t over-extend ourselves when we bought it.  The property taxes are low too.   In addition, I had some help from my family.

Mr. RSG went to massage school, and he’s midway through it.  If he hadn’t been laid off, it’s doubtful he would have found the time to do it.

But now, the year has gone by and he’s still unemployed.   In the past few weeks, we discovered little E (6) needs glasses, and I need mine replaced too.  This time, in addition to being blind as a bat severely nearsighted and having astigmatism, I can’t read the small print on medicine bottles so I need bifocals.  Which means, in addition to the extra cost of special lenses to reduce the weight, the rolled and polished edges, all of which is so it won’t look like I have coke-bottle lenses, I need to drop an extra $400 for progressive bifocals.  I about nearly puked.

I come home, dejected, almost afraid to tell my husband of my total shame at having such horrible eyesight that it costs $800 for a pair of glasses.  He said, well, it’s about that much when I get my glasses and contacts, so don’t worry about it.

But then, the next day he tells me, “oh, yeah, we got our notification in the mail that we will have to start paying Cobra to keep our insurance…which is $1600 a month and we have to pay it by November 1st”.  Ugh!

And then later I came across our property tax bill.  It’s ALWAYS been due by the 30th.  This year, it’s due November 10th.  Not that those extra twenty days will make much difference, but at least I can delay the bite.

Oh, yeah, have I mentioned we are STILL paying on middle daughter’s braces following her palate expander?

Argh!  Damn it.  I have a pretty decent financial cushion, but it will soon be decimated.

Yes, I’m done with my resume.  Yes, I’ve even started putting it ‘out there’.

I have one resume sent out to one of my old companies I worked for.  I sent it out last Wednesday, and I hope I get a bite.

A friend told me about a recruiter she uses for her scientific field.  She gushed about this person.  I actually submitted my resume, only to be told I have a glaring almost 8 year absence from the STEM field that does strike against me.

Sigh.  I knew that was coming.

I wrote about it in this post about Female attrition in the STEM field.  I know WHY I was happy with my choice to leave work in the first place for my daughters.  I’m glad I did.  I even wrote a post about Why Being Happy As a Stay At Home Parent is Truly Rebellious.  For the record, I stand by my statement.

I am the BEST caretaker for my children.   I had fun being their first teacher and teaching them some cool science experiments.

No one could have done what I have done better.

Given the same decision, knowing what I know now, I STILL would have made the SAME choice.

Even though I am FREAKING OUT a tiny bit about the bills coming due.

What I want to know is WHERE IS THE ON RAMP back into the STEM field?

I’m about ready to beg any local laboratories to give me some job training of ANY kind.  Even washing glassware in exchange for a little bit of money but more importantly MEDICAL INSURANCE.  Yes, despite the fact I was a supervisor of medical genetics laboratory that diagnosed orphan genetic diseases at a private university hospital, I will start at sub-basement level just to get back in the field.

I hope it doesn’t come to that.

Any job re-entry into the STEM field advice would be GREATLY appreciated here in the RSG household.

If you know of anyone willing to re-train individuals with very rusty microbiology or DNA analysis skills, please let me know.

It’s okay to be weird – raising independent thinkers

Two of my daughters have come to me in recent weeks in tears telling me that they are upset because “I’m weird, mommy.”

I would ask them, “why are you weird?”

And they would reply, “I am weird because…” and give me a reply.

One time my youngest told me, “I am weird because my brain is the smallest in the family because I’m the youngest”.  (Although, interestingly enough, when asked to write a sentence about why she liked a particular book read on tape, she said, “Because the girl read it fluintly” – yes, my 6 year old daughter used the word fluently in a sentence.  That was weird and awesome).

So, I’ve had to do some self-esteem building lately.  And reinforce the message that it’s okay to be weird.

That weird is AWESOME FUN! (Yes, Rick, I did think of you when I wrote that…).

Like ice cream with sprinkles Awesome!

I still need to help them with that.

I’ve always been weird.

When I was about 10, while my sisters were playing with their Barbies, or their little girl friends, I was hanging out with my next door neighbor Barry chasing lizards and walking on our cinder block fences with him.

(I’m not sure why cinder blocks were used as fences in Alburquerque, but they were awesome to walk on.)

While my sisters hated to read, I read everything I could get my hands on…the dictionary, the Encyclopedia Brittanica, the National Geographics, the Hardy Boys books (the originals), We were Five – The Dionne Quintuplets story, and my mother’s copy of The Happy Hooker (what can I say, it was the 70s, my mother was stoned half the time, and didn’t think to move that one off the family room bookshelf).

I am reading a book called Creating Love: The Next Great Stage of Growth by John Bradshaw.  I came across a paragraph that struck me:

I was brought up to believe that love is rooted in blood relationships.  You naturally loved anyone in your family.  Love was not a choice.  The love I learned about was bound by duty and obligation.  You could never not love your parents or relatives, and loving them meant you couldn’t ever disagree with them or want something they disapproved of.

Yep, this is a pretty standard upbringing.  If you want to be accepted into the fold, obedience to familial, cultural, religious and societal rules is pretty much drilled into the children at a young age.  Why is that?  Well, because that’s what’s ALWAYS been done.  The price of acceptance and protection by your herd family was your individuality, or for some in severely dysfunctional families, the price was your very soul.

My great-grandparents did it to my grandparents.  My grandparents did it to my parents.
My mother tried to do it to her children.  It worked on 4 of 5 of her children.

Bradshaw goes on to say,

To question any of these teachings was to risk being labeled a ‘black sheep’ or just plain crazy.  To actually go against them was to feel cellular guilt, the price of breaking a sacred promise you never knew you made.

I know all about that.  I’ve been the black sheep of my family ever since way back when.  I was threatened to be written out of the family a few times…including once IN WRITING by my grandfather.  I had the letter for the longest time.  I’d like to find it and have it framed.  Yeah, I know, that’s weird.  But I’m proud of that, now (even if it did scare me way back when).

I became weirder and weirder by default NOT by design.  Over the years, I became hardened (at least on the outside) to the insults of being seen as weird and crazy by my family.  But I really couldn’t figure out why.  I never ran with the wrong crowd (I had no crowd to run with).  I never got anything other than my ears pierced and never cared to get a tattoo.  I never experimented with smoking or drugs or sex in high school.  I never expressed my individuality by becoming Goth.

I just went my own way, kept mostly quiet and to myself (I had a few other quiet, nice friends), until I reached the age I wanted to go away to college.  And since I didn’t get to go where I got accepted, but had to go where they wanted me to, I stopped being civil.  And suffice it to say, it got ugly.

I was into books.

I got along better with boys than with girls  so I never knew how to be ‘girly’.

I daydreamed an awful lot.

I loved science.

I chose a career path that involved what I was passionate about – biotech.

I have been trying to do things differently with my daughters than my family had with me.

They have a weird mom who used to be in science and a weird dad who was a mechanical engineer-turned-massage therapy student.

I did science experiments with my kids when they were younger.

Instead of taking our kids to the movies (yawn), we take them to historical re-enactments and storytelling fairs.

I like taking pictures of (among other things) bugs.

I BLOG.  That, in itself is weird.

I have four blogs.

That’s weirder.

I want them to know it’s okay to question authority and their peers.

I want them to know it’s okay to disagree with mom and dad sometimes.

I want them to know they don’t have to love their siblings.  They really don’t even have to love me and Mr. RSG.  My job is only to make sure they get to adulthood with the tools necessary to make sound decisions for themselves.  Loving me and dad is optional.

This has been difficult, because Mr. RSG had been fairly certain, up til recently, that conformity to family rules is necessary.

Yes, we kind of disagree on parenting.  I’m way more permissive and he’s a little bit more authoritarian.  We clash from time to time.  We are meeting a little more in the middle these days.  It helps that I sent him to a gifted parents meeting on PERFECTIONISM (and yes, he’s going to guest post on it for me).

And my own daughters tell me to STOP being weird when I get up to climb on walls or curbs and sing in the car when the radio is on.

And even when you are a nonconforming parent, simply by sending your kids out into the world, they tend to want to conform so they find friends.

Social conditioning SUCKS.

I want them to love themselves.

I want them to LIKE themselves.

I want them to love being weird.

Even if that means they will take the road less traveled and fellow sojourners are hard to find.

I think that’s the best gift I can bestow on them.

But how do I more actively teach my kids that it’s okay to be weird?

To celebrate weirdness.

To revel in the joys of nonconformity (a little anyway).

How do YOU teach your kids that it’s okay to be weird?

Blast from the past…and gifted chat

Ever since the Borders closed down, I’ve been spending more time at the library.  I am now officially glad I am.

Today, I ran into an old friend of mine, someone I dated and worked with almost 20 years ago.  He was in the chemistry department of my lab and I was in microbiology at the time.  He was on the way out, I was on the way in with the girls.  I recognized him immediately, AND, what’s more, I even remembered his name (if you knew me, you’d know I’m a flake when it comes to people’s names). He was someone I hadn’t seen in gosh, 10 years or so, when I ran into him at a store.  So much had changed since then for both of us.

He had time before he had to leave, so he came back inside the library and we talked for a while while the girls did homework and looked at books.  Turns out not only did he get married, he has an almost 8 year old boy.   My middle daughter just turned 8.  I don’t know why, but that just tickled me that we each had a child  the same age.

More than that, his son, a second grader, is in the gifted program at their school.  Bonus! I don’t know about you, but I’ve always found it difficult it is to find other parents of gifted kidlets?

His second grader is reading at a 7th grade level…just like my oldest was in second grade.  And he likes the TV series Monk.  Which I think is pretty neat.  I remember watching the old mystery programs on TV…like Quincy, M.E. and old Agatha Christie mysteries on PBS.  (Hmm…wonder if the library has them)

It was interesting (and slightly frustrating) to find out that while our district has gifted programs starting in 4th grade (though they might expand it to third grade next year), his school district, the one right next to ours, start the gifted program second grade. This information is good to know because we are thinking of relocating, but I had no idea what gifted programs are out there in other districts.

I have to say I’m disappointed that my daughter had to wait so long to get into the gifted program.  I shouldn’t complain too much, some states don’t even have accommodations for gifted kids in public school.  Our state has decent programs.

His wife wants to write a book for children, and I told him the little bit I knew about writing.   I shared my other blogs with him to show his wife.   We talked about the Young Author’s Conference my oldest daughter attended and the group I led.  He told me that his son attended it as a first grader.  It was good to know that I might be able to get my younger daughter’s involved (I thought our district only allowed third graders but maybe not).

I’m thrilled to have run into him because he seems really, really happy and he seems like a a great father.   His life seems to be really going well.  I liked to hear that.

I am beginning to realize I like genuinely happy people.

I realized I’ve been around unhappy people for far too long.  My family was never happy unless they were complaining about something.

I understand unhappy…I have been there enough times myself.  But I tend to reflect the mood of those around me.

Oftentimes it’s like this (that’s Mr. RSG).  I hate to say it…but parenting our kids isn’t always sunshine.  It’s tough work.  Throw in their perfectionism and sensitivity and children who are keenly adept at finding flaws in our parenting logic and it’s really, really tough.

Mr. RSG…you love it when I smile…but sometimes it’s hard to smile when I see a frowny face on you more than I’d like.  Okay, granted that’s not much of a frowny face…but I think your mustache makes it look more frowny than it is.  Hm…time for a trim, maybe?

What a great chat I had.  It lasted maybe 15 minutes…but it was fantastic.  And yeah, I had to blog about it.   Mr. RSG is in class tonight (massage school) and I am just chomping at the bit to tell someone.

How to help our kids with depression and sadness

Part and parcel with my middle daughter’s high sensitivity comes emotional storms, great highs and devastating lows. I have always worried about this child, most often because she’s a lot like me. Like me,  she intelligently (and sometimes frustratingly) questions everything. Like me, she is highly creative. Like me, she is highly sensitive. Like me, she is highly emotional. Like me, she is highly demanding and somewhat of a perfectionist. Unfortunately, like me, she is also melancholic at times.

Because I struggle with low-grade depression, due to a very abusive and damaging childhood, I struggle with mothering my daughters. I am quite the opposite of sunny sometimes. I brood, I cry, I get overwhelmed, sometimes with simple decision-making as to how to spend my time while the kids are in school (such as cleaning the house or getting my intellectual or creative fix for the day), or more complex long-term planning (such as, job re-entry into the STEM field after being home for 8 years).

Needless to say, just a few  weeks ago, I was absolutely scared and saddened to hear that my few-days-shy-of-being-8 year old daughter told her father when she was frustrated and attempting to rip the curtains in half, “I want to hit my head on the window, maybe I’ll die and I’ll stop being so sad.”   I didn’t hear about this until after she had gone to bed, because I was on a mommy-and-me date with my oldest daughter.

I immediately thought, “this is somehow our fault” (husband and I have been struggling  with unemployment and some personal discord).   Then I thought, “maybe she inherited my depression, or just picked it up from being around me”.

I talked with her about it the next day.  I made sure to spend extra cuddle time and one-on-one art time with her.   But I still really have had no idea how to handle these negative emotions, especially since I struggle with my own.

The topic of self-harm or suicidal talk is not the kind of material talked about in most mother’s groups, or the coffee klatches of church bible studies, or at with other mothers during play dates.  I think many mothers are afraid to bring it up, and afraid to be stigmatized.  Consequently, we are left to grapple with these issues alone, further isolating one in this quagmire of uncertainty and sadness.  I struggle with overwhelming sadness and suicidal ideation sometimes too.  Because it tends to freak out others, I find it difficult to talk about.

I suspect, particularly within the subset of individuals who possess high sensitivity, creativity, or giftedness (or some combination thereof), there is a higher prevalence of thoughts of self-harm, but very little being of these things are actually being addressed out loud.  Due to the sensitive nature of the subject, society tends to discourage open, honest communication about self-harming thoughts and the emotional pain that precedes them.

I grappled with the question of how to talk to my kids about sadness and anger.  In my home, I try to instill the idea that “Happy is not the only acceptable emotion”, yet still come up short with how to handle eruptions of anger and the torrent of tears that flow pretty heavily in this house.

This is why I really, REALLY appreciated this post called Helping Our Kids When Clouds Are Gathering from the Mansted Family Project, hosted by an Australian mother – a homeschooler to her gifted daughters, and former counselor with many years of experience dealing with suicidal and self-harming clients.

She wrote a post on the subject of suicide and self-harm in children, following a television show about a teenage girl who committed suicide.  She wrote the post to help other parents recognize the early signs of depression and anxiety, along with tips to communicate with your children about these very difficult things.

She explains

“I want to die” is often the way of saying “I want the pain to stop”… try, if you can, to respond as though you heard the second statement rather than get caught up in the horror of the first statement. Don’t be afraid to reflect the feelings of your child – “I can hear when you say that, that you are feeling really overwhelmed about…”

Make an available space in your lives for this big stuff to be talked about – washing up, hanging the washing out, cooking together etc where busy hands help loosen tongues rather than “I want to talk to you…” formality.

And encourages

Resilience is the number 1 survival tool for kids (indeed, everyone).  Accentuate the positive, but also when you are through the negative – “whew – we got through that!”.

Being “good enough” is to be real, and flexible, and forgiving of self and others.

A thought about depression: some believe that it is “old, frozen anger”. In my experience, this is quite a helpful way to look at it, as working on ways to express the anger/frustration usually attendant in depression can really move it along.

I encourage my readers to read her entire post. If it helps you, leave this wonderful mom a note of thanks.  Perhaps if you blog about your family experiences, you might share it on your blog, because I think the message she gives needs to be spread.

Research project on raising gifted children.

I just finished participating in an online research survey project from a clinical psychology Ph.D student in Australia who is conducting research on what it’s like to be a parent with one or more gifted children.  I thought I’d pass it along to my readers.

From her website (which I obtained through Hoagies’ Gifted Education), Natalie Rimlinger’s research is “about the everyday experience of raising gifted children” and says,

This survey has been designed to ask questions that haven’t been asked of parents/caregivers of gifted children before. It aims to explore various aspects of raising your gifted child such as your experience of being a parent/caregiver, your interactions with your child’s school, your worries or concerns, and your social support network.

As of August 16th, she had collected 197 responses from 9 countries. I have no idea when they will stop taking submissions, but if you are interested in participating and have at least one child identified as cognitively gifted and homeschooling parents of gifted students are able to participate.  You find out more information and can participate at Parents of Gifted Children.

I’m pretty excited about the project. I’m also interested in the results when they are complete, so if all goes well, I’ll be contacted with the results when they are completed.

On another note, sometimes I get contacted by the most interesting people through my blogs.  I was recently contacted by a TV production company about a new cable TV series about raising gifted/talented kids.

Do you pride yourself on being heavily involved in your child’s activities? Do you feel that your children are gifted with superior abilities in sports and/or the performing arts? Are you, without question, your child’s biggest cheerleader? Will you go above and beyond to make sure that your child can achieve his or her dreams? Have you and your friends bonded over a shared passion for your children’s activities?

.

If this sounds like you, and you have elementary and/or middle school-aged children, we want to hear from you!

.

A new television docuseries is seeking a passionate, dynamic group of Moms that we can follow in their pursuit of their children’s excellence! Raising an exceptional kid is hard work, and this series aims to capture the ups and downs, the triumphs and the losses, and the camaraderie that passionate and extremely involved mothers of gifted children share.

While at first blush it seemed like a great opportunity…after really reading what they were focusing on (the extreme involvement) and after I pondered it, it sounded more like they were looking for extreme parenting of the gifted and talented variety.  Not my cuppa tea (though it might be yours).

I’m so not that. While I might be slightly anxious about my own daughters development, I let them take the initiative and wait for them to come to me to ask if they can try out their interests (some of which are passing fancies).  Yes, I am concerned about my children’s education and opportunities, but our relatively laid-back approach will HOPEFULLY not create kids that are solely focused on achievement, but on developing into caring, compassionate, emotionally-grounded adults, regardless of what they achieve.

Though, with both me and my husband STILL unemployed, it was almost tempting. But nah, we are not so desperate for money that we’d sell ourselves out to be national television entertainment fodder.

I’m not entirely sure they are still doing casting for this series, but if you are seriously interested, you could email me at raisingsmartgirls@yahoo.com.  I’d forward you the email.  And come back and let me know if you got selected because then we’d look for you on TV.