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Gifted & Talented
To understand my daughters particular gifts, and generally to see that she gets an education commensurate with her abilities, I have looked where ever I could. Though my daughter had been in her elementary school's gifted program, she barely identified herself with that label, and often wondered what her 'gifts' were. For most of her young life she hasn't felt comfortable to share her particular talents, so they almost became no talents at all.
I am aware that my own lifelong search for 'meaning' that has led me through years of reading in spirituality and consciousness has been my guide; I hadn't a clue that it was going to have required every last ounce of it to raise one child. I have taken 'each day at it comes' and it has certainly been helpful to have the friendship of those who've spent their lives in professional research. The following sources have provided a wonderful platform (and please see other links and resources on these pages):
TAGFAM and TAGMAX and other Gifted resources:
(Families of the Talented and Gifted http://www.tagfam.org/)
includes very helpful e-mailing lists
I’ve come to realize that the issues, personalities, sensitivities etc. of gifted children seem to be the same list of characteristics as I’ve experienced with my highly psychic daughter and other friends’ children who share her experiences -
There is even some indication from other researchers that Psi ability and academic giftedness do go together, whether it is identified as such or not (often because of the tendency for visual-spatial thinking processes not to test well in our overly sequential schooling methods and tests.)
So regardless of whether a child displays academic giftedness in their school, I would like to recommend that any parent or mentors will find appropriate coping strategies for raising an intuitively gifted child from the academic gifted literature. And the best place we have found is:
http://www.hoagiesgifted.org
Dr. Catherine (Kay) Bruch, Ed.D. now retired from the University of Georgia and still writing, taught teachers for the gifted and does research on the nature of creativity and consciousness - coming to the conclusion, I believe, that intelligence is positively linked with consciousness. ( I had taken her creative problem-solving course as an elective, out of my area of Landscape Architecture). As she has watched my daughter grow, she occasionally comments on the work of various researchers, suggesting readings in transpersonal psychology and so on.
Dr. Linda Silverman, Ph.D., a practicing psychologist and author, working in research and testing of the highly gifted and most especially on the nature of the visual-spatial learner was introduced to me by Kay. Dr. Silverman says,
"I have had a long-standing interest in the psychic abilities of gifted children. While we have assessed over 2,500 children at the Gifted Development Center (Denver) over the last 18 years, only a small number of families have shared psychic experiences of their children. "I did discover psychic abilities among some highly gifted children and among some gifted children with learning disabilities. I have also noted some psychic abilities in young gifted children under the age of 5 which they seemed to "forget" by the time they were 7.
One boy remembered a former life in Egypt in which he wove mats to sleep on. Another remembered looking down on her mother before she was born.
Yet another envisioned clearly his parents' dog getting hit by a car--an event that occurred before he was born.
One girl knew that her mother was going to have twins before her mother even realized she was pregnant. And she did, indeed, have twins. An 11-year-old boy asked his father what his ethical responsibility was when he read other people's minds.
"Several children demonstrated telepathic abilities when they were preschoolers, such as responding to their mothers' unspoken thoughts. For example, a mother was riding in the car with her 4-year-old daughter, wondering what she should make for dinner. Her daughter piped up, "I think you should make hamburgers." "By the age of 7, these same children not only seemed to lose these abilities, they didn't believe they had ever had them. This makes me wonder if many more children have psychic experiences, but do not receive the support for them that L.E.M. has had, and so distrust their own experiences. I hope this website helps other children to receive support for their psychic talents."
To learn more about Linda's truly wonderful work, including her discoveries about VISUAL-SPATIAL Learners (the style of most psychics) check her website at: www.gifteddevelopment.com
Stephanie Tolan, author
Linda Silverman highly recommended Stephanie Tolan's work to L.E.M. and me, with suggestions for books that highlight children with these extended abilities such as L.E.M. has. Stephanie Tolan, is the author of many books about & for gifted children, including the truly wonderful fiction, "Welcome to the Ark" . L.E.M. and I couldn't put it down and read it aloud to each other - it was so captivating.
She has a website at: http://www.stephanietolan.com/
Stephanie has also written a brilliant metaphor to understand the qualities of differentness in the short story, "Is it a Cheetah?"
It is very heartwarming and encouraging and and though it was written for the general gifted community, I feel it can be particularly helpful for young psychic children. It can be found at:
http://www.stephanietolan.com/is_it_a_cheetah.htm
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