![]() ![]() All I can say is this: I have some ideas on what might have helped a kid like me, who grew into an adult who is still determined to Do The Thing.Īnd I can sum up the theme in one word: empowerment. On the other hand, I suspect these proposals may fit a much broader circle of kids, dubbed “gifted” or not. This encompasses the creatives, ideators, and idealists who like to sail along 30,000 feet above everyday reality and who live, breathe, and do with intensity. ![]() My musings here are in line with my proposed neutral term for “gifted,” abstract-intensive. It bears repeating that giftedness is a nebulous concept, and even once we agree on a definition, the people within its circle will still be diverse. This incident came back to my mind as I pondered the topic for this month’s Hoagies’ Gifted Blog Hop: What should we teach gifted children, other than academics? My pondering is, of course, from the perspective of an adult who’s trying her hardest to Do The Thing that she’s always wanted to do: to bring one of her many ideas to fruition, to create something of valuable and get it out there into the world. I remember sitting there on our porch swing, listening to them having fun around the block and knowing that I was not allowed to join them, wholly confused as to why I had been deemed bad, and certainly learning the lesson that I should never try something like that again. This had the effect of my being excluded from all neighborhood play, as the friend was more popular than I was. I was clearly the ideating leader of the enterprise, so the less-than-angelic investors told my mom that they had actually wanted more change back from the twenty than they received-a detail my friend had wholly failed to convey to me and which horrified me to hear after the fact-and my friend’s dad punished “her” by forbidding her to play with me for a week. Or, more technically-and here’s the rub!-she pooled her parents’ money, which we then all marched four blocks to the store on our own (“free-range” parenting was not a crime in the 1990s) to invest in our supplies. A couple friends did-including one whose contribution of $20 was impressive enough to reach the status of angel investor, if that had been in my vocabulary in 1992. It all started when I invited a few friends to pool some of their savings to buy supplies for our planned artisan trinket shop, to be launched at the craft shows that frequented the local rec center. My crime, essentially, was trying to start a business. When I was about ten years old, I got in trouble with a friend’s parent for something that now, twenty five years later, still cranks up my blood pressure as I reflect on it with the perspective of an adult. ![]()
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