I was ready…ready to be a mom. I had worked with children and their families for years. I knew what to expect, how children should and would act…I was an early childhood teacher – I knew young children. I was the one that other parents turned to for the answers. That in itself was my occupational hazard! – because I had NO answers for myself.
There are many professions that have occupational hazards, maybe yours is one. I, however, never envisioned mine to have hazards. The hazard I come across is raising my own children. As an early childhood professional, I am in tune to what benchmarks children accomplishing at different milestones in their young lives. We all do it as parents; but as a teacher of young children it is a little different. We KNOW what they should be doing and when they should be doing it – to the point where you begin to stress yourself out over it.
When my 1st child was born (let’s call him SS) I knew there were some differences about him. Little things that as a parent you just learned to deal with. I call it picking a choosing my battles. Things like riding in the car and him screaming when the sunlight hit his face (we taught him to put his burp cloth over his eyes). Or when he would only sleep for 15 minutes at a time – almost the whole first year of his life (we didn’t know what to assume on this one other than we were very tired).
At the same time my husband and I saw him accomplishing things “ahead of schedule” both physically and cognitively. On the back burner, we knew this and thought things would eventually level out. Things still have not leveled out nearly 5 years later…to the point where I found myself not participating int he typical parental game of “when did your child…walk, talk, etc.
Like many other children who are gifted, SS also had areas of “opportunity” (as we teachers so politely say). SS’s were his emotions. His emotions were SO off – it caused a great deal of disagreement between my husband and myself as to how to appropriately deal with melt down boy. Here was a child who could carry on very intellectual deep conversations, but would cry, kick scream because garlic was served at the table. The wife / teacher would informed her dear hubby how things should be worded, phrased…he interpurted this as me telling him what to do (thus occupational hazard #2 – wife is the teacher). Not to mentioned he (husband) had the patience of a flea (at the time – Dabrowski has since helped him as well).
At this point I sought outside references (school district / gifted coordinator) who introduce me to the man what saved my marriage – Dabrowski. I would then email my husband articles and links about how to appropriately help children like ours – children with uneven development.
In a nut shell, knowing about development didn’t help me, my child or my family. I was lost, as many of you are…thus your internet search. My friend and I have been great refuge to each other. Our thought is by our sharing our trials and tribulations about living with giftedness, you hopefully relate and help us make some sence of this all. Our joke is that God thinks we are rock stars. God only gives us what we can handle and apparently he thinks a great deal of us. Sometimes we are flattered and other times we seriously question his judgement.
We had a 2nd child (call her DD) and you will hear all about our 3 gifted children and “touched” husbands between our 2 families. Stay tuned…life on this block moves fast, changes like the wind and is never boring.
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So 'Over' Everything 