Holiday Traditions!

Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as... as... as a Fiddler on the Roof!

What traditions will your kids remember next year, in 20 years, for a lifetime? Will he remember the piles of presents, or that Grammy and Grandfather took all the grandkids to the theater every holiday? Will she recall that "perfect gift" you bought for her when she was 3, or 10, or 16, or will she remember the year Daddy's gingerbread house was a train station with the town clock on top (it's always 5 o'clock somewhere!), or the year she created a wonderland gingerbread castle that looked a little like Hogwarts, in red and black on a shimmering lake of silver nonpareils?

Traditions create memories.

What are your holiday traditions?

Ours are simple. Every year, on the Saturday before Christmas, Grammy and Grandfather take all the grandchildren to the matinee of the Holiday Panto at our local theater. Each year, the kids search excitedly to see what this year's Panto will be, and what role their favorite actor will play. They have to see Mark Lazar!

Then when they return, we have the family traditional dinner in the oven: Hot Cheese Monkey. One of the kids is sent down to the "dungeon" to catch the Monkey, and we all enjoy this traditional egg, cheese, bread and sausage or ham casserole, served with cooked and raw carrots for the veggie, and pickles on the side, because... well, because it's a tradition, this one passed down from my husband's grandmother, Gran. For some reason, no one seems to need dessert.

And we decorate gingerbread houses. This tradition is old enough to have taken on a life of it's own. The extended family, and now boyfriends and girlfriends, all join us for gingerbread houses, each with his own house and her own theme. And each year their Dad creates his "secret" project. No one knows what it will be until he's done. Grandfather helps the little ones, while Grammy creates amazing snowmen and other hand-built decorations for whoever wants them. As the kids are growing up, sometimes she even decorates her own house!

We collect the decorations for weeks beforehand. There are always graham crackers for constructing add-on porch roofs or school bell towers, ice cream cones for church steeples, and Necco wafers, Christmas colored nonpareils or frosted shredded wheat for roofing materials. There are gummy lifesavers to turn into wreathes, and licorice allsorts that become stepping stones or window candles, roofing materials or presents under Peeps Christmas trees.

And then there are this year's unique candy finds, those special decorations that we've never seen before. These new decorations delight and inspire! A few years ago, it was chocolate "rocks." They turned into a rocky hillside a garden path, and a rock garden for the turtle. No one knows what new surprises are in store for this year!

One year, we had a Jewish gingerbread house and a Muslim gingerbread house. The kids researched to be certain to provide thoughtful decorations, and they learned about different cultures in the process. Gingerbread as social studies!

Another year, we had a spring house with beautiful spring flowers, a lake and a garden path. And another saw a Halloween masterpiece. One year was a "foil" theme - kisses wrapped in various colored foils were stripped and the foil used to roof and decorate. Last year included an attached garage with a lift-opening door and a candy car stowed inside, at the end of the gingerbread house's driveway. I'm told a black-and-white theme might be featured on one house this year; I can't wait to see it!

Like most traditions, this one isn't quite so simple. We collect candies for months before, making certain we have fruit-striped gum and gummy bears to become sleds and their passengers, holiday M&Ms, and plenty of coconut and mini marshmallows, so everyone can have their "snow of choice."

The gingerbread must be made in advance, and even that's another fun family tradition. We've discovered new gingerbread house molds over the years, including last year's coup thanks to a new boyfriend: a gingerbread train mold! eBay is our friend, for buying out-of-print gingerbread molds. We've mastered forming the dough and then peeling it out onto baking trays to speed the process, but baking 12+ houses is still a two-day adventure. We have egg-white powder to make Royal Icing, and we assemble all the houses at least a day in advance of decorating. We learned the hard way that Rome was not built in a day, and Royal Icing needs a day to set firm!

It's worth every minute of the prep to watch our kids and their cousins, and parents, too, sitting around the tables, passing candies back and forth, sharing ideas and keeping secrets until the big "reveal," and making tons of great memories.

And year after year, the question is always the same... not when will we shop, or what am I getting, but what day is the Panto and Gingerbread Houses?

Traditions!

If you still need a little something to wrap, visit Hoagies' Gifted: Smart Toys and Games. You'll find tons of toys and games for gifted kids and families, all reviewed by gifted kids for gifted kids. These are the toys and games that last more than one day or even one play, bringing years of joy, without driving gifted parents completely batty.

Click Next Blog to continue to the next blog in this month's loop, all featuring wonderful ideas for holiday "giving"... Let's say Bye-Bye to Buy-Buy this holiday season, and make memories our kids will remember for a lifetime!

This blog is part of Hoagies' Gifted Blog Hop on Holiday Gifts: Bye-Bye to Buy-Buy. Click here to visit the Blog Hop page, and find all the blogs PLUS a bonus Pinterest Link! And from here, you can visit all the great past Blog Hops, including Gifted Advocacy, Gifted Friendships, The "G" Word, and lots more...

You are not alone! Finding gifted community

In last week's Hoagies' Gifted Blog Hop: Gifted Friendships I shared the research on the importance of gifted friendships in Gifted Friendships: You Are Not Alone!. This week, I'll help you find community!

One of the earliest things gifted parents discover is the sense that they are alone. If you're not in a gifted community, you learn quickly that while other parents can share and brag about their kids developmental, sports, and even academic accomplishments, gifted parents may NOT. For other parents, it's just normal, everyday parent conversation, but for us... so many parents think we're bragging, or worse, just making it up. We learn early that everyone can share about their kids... except us.

We are alone.

If parents lucky enough to land in a gifted community early and often, we may be lucky enough to have a place to share about our gifted kids, too. But even there, there are things we can't talk about. Have a kid who's not as perfect as the rest of the kids in the very gifted community? Better not talk about it, or we may be "blamed" for somehow causing their uniqueness. Or worse, we fear we'll be drummed out of the community, the one place where we feel comfortable sharing all the great things our child is doing.

We are alone, even in our own crowd.

The most important thing that gifted parents need to know, and be reminded of early and often, is that you are not alone! Got a gifted kid? There are many of us out here just like you! Live in a rural area, where it seems none of us are nearby? We might not live next door, but we are in equally rural (or urban, or suburban) communities, feeling similar isolation. Have an exceptionally or profoundly gifted child who is still far different from the "pleasantly" gifted child, a child for whom the normal gifted program is like giving individuals blades of grass to a hungry dinosaur... it's good, but not enough for the dinosaur to know you're feeding it. You are still not alone, even if you feel alone in the local gifted parents group. Or you have a wildly diverse gifted child, who is extraordinary good at some things, but extraordinarily weak at others? You, most of all, are not alone. Even if there is no other child exactly like yours (and there likely is someone, somewhere), there are many other parents struggling with Twice Exceptional (2e, dually identified) kids like yours.

Gifted community is the lifeline for all of us. It's the place we can talk about parenting these wonderful kids. We can share the struggles of education, or the resources of homeschooling. We can commiserate on the lack of programs at early ages, and create our own programs with our critical mass and our unswerving need. We can find a place to brag and to beg, to share the past and consider the future. But how can we find these amazing, amusing, accepting gifted communities?

There are public and private, open and closed communities. We share on Facebook and mailing lists, blogs and boards, behind firewalls and in real life. We meet at formal conferences and casual gatherings across the country and around the world. No matter who or where you are, you are not alone!

Electronic communities are a great way to get started. For open communities with tons of participants, sure to be folks who live near you, start with the major mailing list communities. TAGFAM and GT-Families offer mailing lists for general gifted topics for families and teachers, on lists of the same names. If you're homeschooling your gifted kids, TAGMAX is the list for you, with nearly a thousand other subscribers who share resources and ideas for homeschooling, unschooling, deschooling and more. GT-Special is the list for parents of those tricky-to-parent, challenging-to-educate twice exceptional (or 2e) kids. And TAGPDQ is the community for you if you're the parent of a "more than just plain gifted" child, those exceptionally and profoundly gifted kids who often require more extreme educational options.

Visit Hoagies' Gifted Online Communities: Mailing Lists for subscription instructions and links for these plus hundreds of other more specialized mailing lists, organized by population, country, state, and district or locality. There is a mailing list for everyone!

Looking for a casual community you can just "drop into" when you need a little support? Though they are more public, check out any one of the great Facebook communities for gifted: Hoagies' Gifted Education Page, SENG (Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted), and Gifted Homeschoolers Forum are three popular Facebook gifted forums. And there are plenty more. Just search for Gifted and your other interests (your town, your school district, homeschool, etc.) on Facebook.

Looking for something less electronic and more real-life? Check out the U.S. and International organizations listed in Hoagies' Gifted: Organizations. Many offer conferences, summer programs, meetings and more!

If you have testing and your kids qualify, one of the best U.S. gifted communities is the Davidson Young Scholars program. It costs nothing to join, and offers a wide slate of support options, including electronic and real-lie gatherings. Even if you use nothing else in the program, be sure to join your local DIG mailing list, and attend some of the DIGs (Davidson Informal Gatherings) to meet and enjoy others in the Davidson gifted community!

Whatever means you choose, be sure to explore the online and real-life gifted communities so that both you and your kids learn that You are NOT alone!
 

Don't miss the rest of last week's Gifted Friendship Blog Hop. With nearly two dozen blogs on gifted kids, teens, young adults and adults, plus a couple blogs on the value of "invisible friends," there's something for everyone!

Gifted Friendships: You Are Not Alone!

Gifted friendships are hard to define, and often even harder to find. Gifted kids in a classroom full of kids who want to play with them and invite them to parties, may feel alone and crave this rare commodity.  Gifted adults may feel alone in spite of lots of acquaintances at work and in other activities. There are lots of people around us every day, yet we feel strange and isolated. What are we missing?

"When gifted children are asked what they most desire, the answer is often 'a friend'.   The children's experience of school is completely colored by the presence or absence of relationships with peers." (Silverman, 1993).

Miraca Gross has researched gifted friendships, not only in children, but over the lives of young and now middle-aged adults through her longitudinal studies.  And I am lucky to count Miraca among my acquaintances, one who I would very much love to get to know better, who could easily become a friend... if only she didn't live on the other side of the world.

"This difficulty of the gifted child in forming friendships is largely a result of the infrequency of persons who are like-minded.  The more intelligent a person is, regardless of age, the less often can he find a truly congenial companion.  The average child finds playmates in plenty who can think and act on a level congenial to him, because there are so many average children."  (Hollingworth, 1936)

But what makes the gifted child less able to find friendship among all the other students in her age/grade classroom?  Is the student somehow biased towards kids identified as gifted?  No. Are the student's parents influencing her to befriend only the gifted kids?  Not at all.  Miraca's research shows...

Gifted children were beginning to look for friends with whom they could develop close and trusting friendships, at ages when their age-peers of average ability were looking for play partners.  (Gross, SENG article)

Gifted kids feel differently, and seek friendships among those who feel similarly!

Gross's and other research shows other factors influence friendships.  Gender plays a role: boys are, at some point, 2 or more years behind girls in their concepts of friendship, which accounts for the elementary years cliquishness of girls not being mimicked in boys until early middle school.  Age plays a role.  Levels of giftedness are also key to finding gifted friendships.

The years between four and nine are probably the most likely to be beset with problems. (Hollingworth, 1936)

The question is, what can we do to help our gifted children find friendships?

Ability grouping and grade advancement can be of invaluable assistance in the early years of school to young gifted children whose accelerated conceptions of firendship are urging htem to see the sure shelter of a relationsihp of trust, fidelity and authenticity, at ages when tehir age-peers are seeking playmates or casual conversation.  In the case of exceptionally and profoundly gifted child, it is difficult to justify, either educationally or socially, the inclusion of these children in classes comprised of age-peers whose conceptions of firendship are so radically different than theirs. (Gross, SENG article)

The most important thing we can do for our kids is to help them find this "community" they seek, and let them know and experience that they are not alone!

For a quick summary of Miraca's research, read SENG's "Play Partner" or "Sure Shelter": What Gifted Children Look For in Friendship. For her full presentation, visit Hoagies' Gifted: "Play Partner" or "Sure Shelter"? Why gifted children prefer older friends..

This blog is part of Hoagies' Gifted Blog Hop: Gifted Friendships.  Visit the other great blogs in this month's Hop by clicking here.