Know Yourself to Know Your Child

Few parents of the gifted were tested themselves as children. This leaves many parents feeling inadequate to raise a gifted child. But rest assured that your children were not accidentally delivered to the wrong parents! If you look back on your childhood, you will recognize that you had many of the same characteristics as your child: incessant questioning, intensity, extreme sensitivity, a preference for complexity, etc. To be the best parent you can be for gifted children, you need to acknowledge your giftedness. Embrace your delightful weirdness so that you can embrace your children’s. Then you will be the role model they need.

Linda Kreger Silverman, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist. She founded the Institute for the Study of Advanced Development (ISAD) and Gifted Development Center (GDC) [www.gifteddevelopment.com] in Westminster, Colorado. In the last 47 years, GDC has assessed more than 6,600 children, the largest data bank on this population. GDC has always endorsed homeschooling and supported gifted homeschoolers. Linda’s PhD is from the University of Southern California. She specializes in twice exceptional and exceptionally gifted children and gifted girls. Since 1961, she has written over 500 articles, chapters and books, including Counseling the Gifted and Talented, Upside-Down Brilliance: The Visual-Spatial Learner, Advanced Development:  A Collection of Works on Gifted Adults and Giftedness 101, which has been translated into Swedish, Korean, Japanese, and Portuguese.