YMB #81 Morning Time with Gifted Kids: A Conversation with Colleen Kessler

Pam: This is Your Morning Basket, where we help you bring truth, goodness and beauty to your homeschool day. Hi, everyone, and welcome to Episode 81 of the Your Morning Basket Podcast. I’m Pam Barnhill, your host, and I’m so happy that you are joining me here today. Well, in today’s episode of the podcast, I am joined by my very good friend, Colleen Kessler. Colleen is a mom of four, twice-exceptional kiddos, and she is also a gifted specialist. Today on the podcast, she’s coming to talk to us all about Morning Basket with gifted kids. Now, on this episode, we talk about the benefits of doing a Morning Basket with your gifted kiddos. What can you gain from this? Then we also talk about some of the unique challenges that might come up from either having a gifted kid in Your Morning Basket with the rest of your family, or doing a Morning Basket with a whole gifted family as happens a lot of times. So buckle your seat belt. It’s a really fun conversation, and we’ll get on with it right after this word from our sponsor.

This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Your Morning Basket Plus. Okay, I’m so excited, guys. New in Your Morning Basket Plus subscription is our Morning Basket Explorers Club. Now, this club features our brand new Morning Basket Explorations Kits. Each month, we present a new themed set of explorations on kid-favorite themes. Coming up in the next year, each month we will be exploring a new theme; themes like flowers, apples, the farm, gratitude, Christmas Around the World, Arctic animals, George Washington Carver- who is a favorite Alabama son- the solar system, the Holy land, gardening, the flag, and charts.
Oh boy, we are just getting started. We have so many other ideas. Each month we will put out an Exploration Guide for moms to set up these explorations. These will include a Do It section of things to do during your Morning Time, a Strew It section with ideas to strew for your kids that they can explore on their own, a Further Exploration section with ideas that your family can do outside of Morning Time, like something you can do in the kitchen or a field trip. We’re also going to have Level Up ideas that are going to help you bring your older students, your middle school students into the exploration with the rest of the family. It’s going to be age-appropriate for them.
Now, the guides also feature memorization and music to go with each theme, and we’re going to include MP3 audios of the memory work and the songs just to make it super easy for your family to memorize or sing along. But the Explorers Club doesn’t stop with the guides. Each month, we’re also going to have two live events with your favorite Morning Time teachers that go along with these explorations. If you can’t make it to the events live, you’re going to have access to the replays. Plus, your family is going to be able to submit your findings and activities at the end of each month, and receive a special tracking form and monthly stickers in the mail to document your family’s journey as Morning Basket Explorers.
Your kids are going to love this. It’s going to be so much fun. We are so excited about this new journey we get to share it with your family. The Explorers Club is part of the Your Morning Basket Plus subscription, along with the over 40 sets of done-for-you Morning Time plans that are also in the subscription. So, you can join today and get more information by heading to a pambarnhill.com/subscription for monthly and annual options. We cannot wait to see you there.
Now, on with the podcast.
Pam: Colleen Kessler is an author, speaker, and educational consultant with a master’s degree in Gifted Education. She is a passionate advocate for the needs of differently-wired kids and their parents. She’s also a homeschool mom of four gifted/twice-exceptional kids of her own. Colleen is the founder of the popular podcast and website, Raising Lifelong Learners and Raising Puppies; a community of support for parents of differently-wired kids on Facebook. She has authored more than a dozen books, like Raising Creative Kids: A Collection of Simple Creativity Prompts for Children, and her soon to be released; Raising Resilient Sons: A Boy Mom’s Guide to Building a Strong, Confident, and Emotionally Intelligent Family.
Colleen, welcome to the podcast.
Colleen: Thank you, Pam. It’s great to be here.
Pam: Okay, so I read all of that like I had no idea who you are, but we have to tell everybody you and I are like besties.
Colleen: Yes, I love you so much.
Pam: I love you, too. Everybody’s at home going like, “Oh my gosh, what a love fest.” Colleen and I know each other very, very well. What did Facebook tell us the other day? We’d been friends for six years?
Colleen: Yes, we’ve been Facebook friends for six years. It was our friendiversary; Pamela and Colleen day. It was so lovely.
Pam: I love how they stick us in the canoe, like you and I would ever be in a canoe.
Colleen: Exactly.
Colleen: Yes, but we’ve been friends for a long time.
Pam: Yes, so probably a little over six years. We met at a blogging conference and then we’ve just been friends for a number of years. Now, we go on the road and speak together at the Great Homeschool Conventions when they have them.
Colleen: Right, when there’s no pandemic.
Pam: -and there’s no pandemic, and we just have a lot of fun doing that together. So, yes, Colleen and I go way back. It wasn’t all that long ago that you and I were chatting on the phone and I said, “You know what? We’re planning a new podcast season, and we have never talked about Morning Time with gifted and twice-exceptional children.”
Colleen: Yes, and we’ve been friends for long enough that you should have. That should have been on your radar.
Pam: I’m feeling really bad now.
Colleen: I’m just kidding.
Pam: Goodness. Well, sometimes we have to save the best for last.
Colleen: There you go.
Pam: For the people who don’t know you, can you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and about your family?
Colleen: Yes. Okay, so I’m Colleen Kessler. I write over at Raising Lifelong Learners, and I have a podcast by the same name going into- I think I’m approaching the end of my second year, so I’m about a year and a half in. It’s been a lot of fun. Pam was kind of my kick in the pants to get on air and it’s been a blast.
I, actually, am kind of a reluctant homeschooler originally. I came into it kicking and screaming. My background, as Pam said, I have a master’s degree in Gifted Education, and I taught for a little bit over a decade. Mostly elementary kids who were gifted and are twice-exceptional, which I know we’ll talk about in a little bit. I left teaching originally to write full-time. I was writing books for teachers, books for kids, and I left to do that so I could be home with my kids, and get them off the bus after school and make brownies and things.
Then my oldest entered school and it was just not a good fit. The whole idea of like the shoemaker’s kids going shoeless; I had this master’s degree in Gifted Education and I did not recognize at the time that my oldest was profoundly gifted. I recognized the behaviors that were happening in the classroom and from all the calls that I was getting; that he was falling out of his chair, distracting everybody, pushing the envelope, correcting the teacher and just generally being a disruption in class. So, we sought all sorts of help, including a psychologist, who at one point looked at me after all of the testing and said, “You do realize that he is profoundly gifted, right?” And I hadn’t. I had just been focused on getting him to comply.
So my education finally caught up with me. We started looking at what we could do to meet his intellectual needs because we knew then that once we met those, his behaviors, theoretically, should come back in check. But the district that we were in at the time did not start gifted programming until third grade with no exceptions. Then they said it would be doubtful he’d be eligible anyway because he’s such a disruption to class; that he needed to be better behaved before he could even be considered for the programs.
So under duress and kicking and screaming, I- freelancer at home, figuring out how to build my own business- brought my son home at the same time that I had a nursing baby and a toddler, and we just got thrown into homeschooling and figured it out from there. I now have four kids. All of them are somewhere along the gifted spectrum. If you talk to them for any length of time, you get that picture right away. They just think a little bit differently than most people their age and around them, but they all have other quirks along with them. Some are just very highly intelligent and pretty organized and easy to get along with. Then there’s a couple who are very quirky in their own way. So, I started writing about what we were doing at home. Because I was writing from the perspective of a gifted educator and a parent of gifted kids, it resonated with other people who had fallen into the same kind of, I don’t know, adventure as I did. That’s where we are now.
My oldest, that first grader I pulled out reluctantly, is a rising senior, and 17-and-a-half, he’s building his own freelance business. He’s going to be starting college classes in the fall, and basically taking his freshman year of college concurrently with his senior year of high school. That’s where we’re at now.
Pam: This is so funny to me because knowing your oldest as well as I do now, I’m like, “How did you not? I could see this. How did you not see?”
Colleen: I know. You know that thing, though? When you’re in the midst of it with your own kids, you see the problems, you’re trying to fix them. Just the way that he thinks, it is obvious. When you talk to him for any length of time, it’s very obvious he thinks differently, but that’s all I was used to. He was my first, and I was teaching gifted and had been teaching gifted, so those were the kids I worked with. It’s the only thing I can think of. I was just so used to working with those kinds of brains that it was just natural that he would have that kind of brain.
Pam: Well, I think this is one of the things that makes you such a great advocate for parents of gifted kids; is you, having been in that place, you know what it’s like when the school or somebody else comes and tells you, “This child has a problem. This child is different. We have a challenge here,” and your immediate response is, “Let’s get this fixed so that this child can do what he needs to do in the classroom,” not realizing it’s like you immediately go to the fix.
I think all parents do that. They immediately go to the fix when really what they need to do is advocate for their child.
Colleen: Right, exactly.
Pam: So, you know that. You can empathize-
Colleen: Totally, I can validate their feelings.
Pam: -and totally understand what those parents are going through. Let’s just back up for just a little bit. For those people who maybe aren’t aware; what is gifted and twice-exceptional? And those are two different terms, I realize that, so can you tell me just briefly what those mean, and what’s the difference between the two?
Colleen: Yes, so a gifted child, clinically, is a child who, if we were to administer an IQ test, would fall two standard deviations above average. Just to put that into perspective for listeners who might not be familiar with the terms. When we’re talking about students who have learning disabilities or challenges with learning, they tend to fall two standard deviations or more below the national average.
Gifted kids are equally discrepant from average kiddos intellectually, as the same kids who are getting special education. In the classroom, they’re just on the opposite end of it. Where learning comes a little bit more quickly, or they’re understanding complex issues and topics at an earlier age, they need fewer repetitions, historically, to get something. Whereas most kids need like four or five repetitions, and kids who have special needs need maybe 10 to 20 repetitions, a gifted kid needs one maybe two. They’re starting to turn off and get bored because things that they’ve already mastered are being presented again and again, perhaps in a spiral format or other formats like that.
That said, not all giftedness shows with academic subjects; Math, Reading, Language, Arts, Writing, whatever, because it’s a way of thinking. Just like a kid with special needs sees the world differently and can do some things more easily than others, a gifted kid is the same. Their intelligence may show up more in creativity or cognitive functions in overall perspective of how the world works, as opposed to a straight academic area.
There’s a lot of nuances in it, but clinically, it’s an IQ score. Anecdotally, it’s a way of thinking and being. They develop in an asynchronous fashion where they’re kind of many ages at once. They might be behaviorally very young, academically right on grade level, and then cognitively where they’re having conversations way higher. So, they’re kind of all over the place. Then twice-exceptional kids are kids who are gifted and also have an underlying, or an additional, or comorbid- as psychologists call it- challenge to go along with it.
I love Dianne Craft is a speaker I saw years ago and I’ve met a few times. She talks about it as gifted with a glitch. There’s something else going on. It’s usually psychological, or neurological, or academic, or intellectual, or sometimes even physical. A kid who is twice-exceptional might be gifted and have clinical anxiety, or ADHD, or a learning disability.
One of my kids has dyslexia, sensory processing disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder, but she’s very creatively gifted. When you talk to her for a while and let her go down her rabbit trails of storytelling, it’s not a typical nine, 10, 11-year-old’s kind of stories that she’s telling. She can’t get it on paper. She’s way behind in her Reading and her Writing. Her Math is right on grade level. Her conversations are above grade level.
Twice-exceptional kids are even more all over the place than gifted kids are, if that makes any sense.
Pam: Yes. Sometimes parents feel like, “Oh, my kid is gifted. I’ve hit the jackpot.” We’re not talking about kids who are necessarily academic achievers. That’s usually a different kid. That’s usually like a firstborn academic achiever or even the second-born academic achiever, but that’s not necessarily what giftedness means.
Colleen: Right, and that’s actually one of the biggest myths or misconceptions. My professor in school– And I don’t know when this is going to air, but if it airs, we’ll have to give you a link. I just had this conversation with him for a podcast episode that’s coming up. There’s like an optimal range of giftedness. It’s just enough past that IQ cut-off, where they still get along with and understand everybody in the general population and think normally, but they get things super easily.
Even that is a little bit different because they don’t need the repetitions. Whereas like an academic achiever, someone who’s very smart, maybe just before the cut-off, very high IQ but not quite in the gifted range; they get things easily, they understand. The best description I ever saw that was; an academic achiever asks what and how, and a gifted kid asks why and what next. So, they’re looking for more. Whereas the achiever just wants the answer and wants to know how to get to the answer so they can get it right and move on to the next thing. A gifted kid may never want to move on to the next thing. They might want to perseverate on every nuance of that one topic.
Pam: Yes, that’s a great description. Now that we know- we’ve got a great baseline definition of what a gifted kid is and then twice-exceptional, let’s talk about Morning Time. We’re going to really dig into, because I know you’re going to have a lot of adjustments that need to be made to the standard Morning Time and where gifted and twice-exceptional kids are going to struggle, but let’s start with the benefits. What are some of the benefits of having a gifted and twice-exceptional kid in a Morning Time setting where the entire family is coming together, learning together for at least a brief period of time each day?
Colleen: I think the biggest benefit is there’s an anchoring for them. A lot of times, our gifted kids struggle with anxiety, and so we want to give them a really safe, strong base. So coming together as a family and doing those beautiful and engaging, enlightening kind of artistic things. If we’re talking about the things that we can do with all of our kids at various levels, we can do picture study, artist study, we can read books and Read-alouds together. We can do nature study. We could do all those things that everybody is going to come up with a different product based on the same prompt, but it gives them that space of anchoring and that sense of belonging.
I think that one of the hardest things that kids, especially with anxiety or differences, face is that feeling of; there’s nobody else like them. So it gives them a place to always be, every day, a part of others who have the same values and the same feelings, and they’re on this team together. I think that that’s the biggest benefit; is it just gives them that safe port and structure to build their day off of.
Pam: Okay, yes, I love that and I could totally see that. I was hoping you would give me more than one before we jumped off into the challenges.
Colleen: I can do more. You want more?
Pam: Yes, give me a couple more because I know the challenges are going to stack up, and so we want to– You know?
Colleen: Yes. The other thing is- another big one is gifted kids- and this is going to fall into the challenges- but they tend to hyper-focus on their own interests, and they can go down rabbit trails and they can be really sunk into a topic. That’s great because they get to be experts in something, but oftentimes, they’re hard to push out of the things they want to do and like to do. So this gives you a chance to really introduce them to a lot of different things so that they can pick their passions or find their strengths and interests. It also gives you, the parent, a touchpoint so you can figure out what they’re getting interested in. You can watch them.
We’ve got some mutual friends. We’ve got Cindy West who does Nature Study, and Nana and Trish who do Chalk Pastel Art, but people who do something like that really can spread. Let’s use Cindy, for example. We just recently did a nature study with all of my kids, except my oldest. Sometimes, those teens are going to be outliers where you can’t pull them in once they get…
Pam: At 17-and-a-half, probably so, yes. Not getting them to the table for nature study.
Colleen: Exactly, and then you shouldn’t. He’s got other things. So, we’re sitting down and the seven-year-old is just focusing on the animal, and he’s talking about it, and his drawing is very rough and he’s done in two seconds. Whereas my oldest is drawing very intricate designs, and she’s getting into it, and she’s got the Chromebook next to her and she’s finding other examples or other facts to go along with it because it’s not enough to just write those few things that we were talking about in a general form. She doesn’t do that very often, so I’m noticing that something piqued her interest about this particular topic so I can revisit it later.
Whereas the middle one of those bottom three is starting to show me perfectionism that I haven’t seen before. She’s now ripped up three different pages because the rabbit and the burrow doesn’t look like the rabbit and the burrow on the page or that her sister is making, and so she’s getting in her own head. I can see that and address that later, while encouraging on the spot to just keep going and whatever I’m going to do on the spot, but I can file those things away.
When you and I are on the road speaking, I talk often about keeping a notebook or jotting mental notes. I talk about physical notes. Keep a journal that has a page for each of your kids and jot down some of those things so you can go back to them. Because their brains are so quirky and you never know what’s going to either set them off or light them up, this gives you a great place and opportunity to see something that you wouldn’t have seen otherwise.
Right there in the moment while you’re sitting there with them, jot down that note to revisit later, or remind yourself when you’re at the library or in a bookstore and you see something, to pick it up because it might be something that can fuel a different interest later. Or you can pull that into your next Morning Time, like, “Hey, I was really interested in this. Maybe you were, too, when we watched that nature study video. So why don’t we try reading this poem that ties into it?” It gives you a chance to pull other things in, give them other opportunities for learning, notice where those sticking points are so you can really focus on those one-on-one later. Then give them chances to either move on from a topic that they’re clearly not interested in or dive deeper into something. Does that help?
Pam: Yes, I love it. Okay, so we have anchor point in the day, which is so important. Take a kid who might normally hyper-focus on something and spread. We’re just going to go all Charlotte Mason on you guys for a minute. We’re going to spread this wide feast of ideas because if they’re never exposed to this thing, we don’t know what they’re going to hyper-focus on next.
I think, me as a person myself, I can get so involved in one thing, I don’t necessarily look at other things. So, I could totally see how this would work for any child and the gifted child, especially. Then also it gives you the opportunity to observe as the parent, and see where the perfectionism or other things might be rearing their heads; what interests they might have and how you can then further guide things. I love it.
Let’s start talking about some of those challenges. Colleen is dealing with four gifted kids. Even if you’re dealing with maybe three neurotypical kids and one gifted kid, I have a feeling that there are points of Morning Time and families learning together where there are going to be issues and sticking points. Let’s talk a little bit about those unique challenges that moms of gifted kids might face with this kind of learning situation.
Colleen: Yes. First, it’s just the catchphrase. People ask all the time, what you asked in the beginning, what’s a gifted kid? And there are lots of general characteristics. The truth of the matter is if you’ve met one gifted kid, you’ve met one gifted kid. They are as different from one another as they are from the neurotypical population. Because the way that their brains work is they’re thinking qualitatively differently about their world, but something is going to pique their interest that might not be an age-typical or a peer-typical thing, and they’ve got no use for everybody else around them who doesn’t find interest in that, or they’re going to tell you about it even if you don’t want to hear it.
So, they dominate conversations. They think that what you’re trying to get them to do is stupid, and they’re very verbal about letting you know that. We’ve got kids who have overexcitabilities, which I can share with you some articles if people want to read more about that because that’s a whole another podcast episode. If they have an overexcitability that keeps them moving all the time, that looks like ADHD or has true ADHD; they’re on the table and under it, and walking around and getting 72 drinks of water, and they’re not sitting still. Then they’re poking their sister because their sister is there and someone else is making noises and that’s hurting the ears of someone who is sensitive.
So, you’ve got all these weird things that can be happening, and you’re just ready to be done because it’s easier. It’s way easier. Moms of gifted kids; don’t feel badly if you think this all the time. It’s way easier to let them go off on their own and focus on their own projects and work with them individually. It’s beneficial to have your kids be together because they have that sense of teamwork and family cohesiveness that they need- again, back to the anchor point- but it is really easy and peaceful to send them off in their own direction. So the biggest challenge, really, is making yourself do it because it’s hard.
Pam: Okay, so let me just ask; is it worth it? Is it worth it to set aside even just a few minutes a day? Is it worth it?
Colleen: I think so. Absolutely, because you’re building memories and you’re building shared stories. Yes, it’s beneficial for them to have that. I tell my kids often. We get together and we do things like nature studies, and we do things together, but whenever we do things together, we don’t do it now– Especially with a 17, almost 13, almost 11 and seven; because of the nature of my kids’ quirks, we don’t do whole group multiple subjects or multiple activities or topics. But we are coming back together periodically throughout the day so that we have those shared stories.
We eat all of our meals together and while we’re eating meals together, we’re talking about what we’re doing and bringing in elements of a Morning Time situation into that. I tell my kids, “You’ve got these shared stories. We’re going to be gone one day, and you’re going to be sitting around Christmas with aunts and uncles and cousins and your kids with their cousins, you’re going to be remembering these times together. Where we played this game, or built this puzzle or watched this video together, and you’re going to have that history.”
They already do because when they were younger and we were really first diving into it, we did a lot of stuff together. My kids; we started every day with Bible study, and back then we were using Grapevine Bible study because the stick figures were really easy for everybody, and we did every day. The way I got them to the table, you sing a song– I got them to the table with hot cocoa and Graham crackers.
It was in between breakfast and lunch, so it was like around 10 o’clock in the morning. We would come together. We would do our Grapevine study and have hot cocoa and Graham crackers. Then they would do some of their table work. We’d do some artist study or music study. Then the bigger ones would start to go off, and I’d do more with the little kids because they were still strapped in and it was peaceful that way. But they remember that and they talk about that. Every once in awhile, they’ll be like, “Well, could we have hot cocoa and Graham crackers and do something together?”
It’s worth it because you’re giving them shared stories and touchpoints with each other. Isn’t one of the reasons we homeschool to bring our families together? I think about my friends who stayed the course of public schooling after we pulled out. Their kids, while they’re siblings and have relationships together, they wouldn’t choose to be together above being with their friends. Whereas, sometimes, my kids do. Sometimes, they choose to get off the roadblocks with their friends, or animal crossing where they’re talking to each other and a friend from down the road. They’ll choose to get off of that and go be with each other and do something.
So, you’re building those opportunities for them. Then beyond that, like we said, you’re exposing them to different things. You’re learning where their struggles are. I know that my one kid I was going to have trouble test taking because she breaks down when we’re focused on something that has weight. I can watch her and I can give her strategies and little baby steps to do some of that in a Morning Time situation because it’s fun. We’re all together, we’re all trying something new, and so you can give them opportunities and experiences with things that might be a little bit challenging later on.
Pam: Yes, that was my next question; is can you use Morning Time as a training ground for– Let’s think about conversation, and a lot of times gifted kids want to dominate the conversation or they want to tell you how dumb they think this is. Is it possible to use Morning Time as a training ground for what’s appropriate and what’s not appropriate?
Colleen: Absolutely. True story. We were asked years ago- I know this won’t shock you because you do know my oldest- but we were asked not to come back to the Natural History Museum classes for a year because my son was very into Science when he was young. Our first couple of years of homeschooling, since we didn’t know what the heck we were doing, we did a lot of Science.
We went to these museum classes, and those poor volunteers who were teaching the classes, oftentimes, made mistakes. My son told them what they were saying wrong about the different topics because he really wanted to launch into a discussion about the nuances of it, and they just wanted to get on with the lesson plans. He would become a disruption. So, we were asked, after a couple of times of this happening, to come back when he was ready to sit still and listen and raise his hand and not be called on when it wasn’t time to get into that.
Pam: Remind me to tell him the next time I see him about me being kicked out of Sunday School when I was in 10th grade; for the exact same reason, too. So, I can totally feel his pain, and I was much older than he was.
Colleen: That was an interesting time in our life, but pulling together all of us at the table doing things, I was able to model for him when it was okay to share your opinion, how to do it constructively. Because his younger siblings did not know as much as he did about certain topics, and he reacted to them in the same way he did to these other teachers. So, I was able to, in a really safe way, help him understand how and when to do those things. It gives you those opportunities.
Then from a practical standpoint, if we’re dealing with kids who have sensory processing disorder, or anxiety disorder, or other big challenges, it gives us opportunities to help them develop the tools to cope when they’re outside of our home. My 10-year-old who has anxiety, she draws to step away from the big feelings when she’s having them. That strategy was taught to her in Morning Time because we read a book about feelings, and drew what colors were in those feelings, then what they looked like and things like that. I used that to teach a strategy, but it was really a fun art lesson for everybody else. She’s now able, a couple of years later, to use that as a tool for coping when things get tough.
It’s a great way to not single out one kid, do something fun that can be very, very applicable and practical at a later time.
Pam: I love that. Love, love, love that. That’s a great use for Morning Time. If we have families of gifted kids who are like, “Okay, you’ve convinced me. Maybe I should dip my toes in the water a little bit,” are there– And you’re familiar. You’ve heard me talk about Morning Time enough and you’ve done it yourself. You’re familiar with what some of your standard Morning Time subjects are. What topics do you think are particularly great for gifted kids in Morning Time? Are there any that are particularly great, or is it just pretty much your standard fair raise to their level?
Colleen: Yes. I think, especially until they get into high school- well, even after they get into high school, depending on where their interests and their passions lie- if we’re talking specifically content areas, you can easily do History and Science, and then the specials like Arts and Music and stuff for a long, long time. Because we can watch a video on CuriosityStream, or watch CNN 10 News and talk about current events, and apply those to what’s happened in history and how those things correlate and go along or don’t and are repeating themselves or whatever your thoughts are, but you can get into some really great, critical thinking discussions.
Then if you happen to have a kid who is taking off in Science and they no longer want those kinds of conversations, they want to dive deep into Quantum Physics or something, you can let them go and not do those subjects anymore. Then you focus on the arts, and Poetry appreciation and Music appreciation and stuff like that.
We’ve been using Art History Kids. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that membership?
Pam: Yes.
Colleen: It’s really wonderful. Every once in a while, my 17-year-old, well, projects are beneath him now. He’ll still come down, and he’ll kind of be interested in what we’re talking about. He might pick up some of the material, he might not but at least he’s engaging in the conversation of it, but it’s exposing the other kids to a lot more. Arts and Music, things like that, histories and sciences until you see that one of them or more of them are above.
Then it’s okay to do the other stuff and then let one of them go. Then do some more stuff and then let another one go. Then do some more stuff. It’s okay to scaffold your Morning Time like that, but then the stuff that works forever, really, are the social and emotional things; the feelings and the empathy, like you alluded to earlier. You can talk about feelings with your kids. You can talk about current events and how that’s affecting your own situation versus your neighbors.
In light of this pandemic when, especially in the beginning, we couldn’t see aunts and uncles. I’m talking great-aunts- my kids’ grandparents or their great-aunts. They couldn’t see like great-aunt Judy because she just went through radiation a couple of months before. So, we were being cautious, but we were able to talk about those things. “How are you feeling about it? What could you do? Okay. Well, let’s do some of our art projects and send those over to her.” Then she was able to Skype in a few times or Zoom in, and they showed some of the stuff that they were doing. Then she, I don’t know, bought a craft kit on one of her trips out and sent that over for them to do to show her.
So there’s things you can bring in that work on the affect once some of the academic stuff starts to separate a little bit too much for you to have the kids together.
Pam: Yes, I like that idea. We’re talking about Morning Time with gifted kids right now, but they are still kids and you still have the whole situation where; whereas Morning Time, some of the subjects in Morning Time, especially some of the beautiful subjects, some of the Poetry, some of the art, whatever it is you might be doing, Music appreciation is good for mom. Unless you have a child who’s a music prodigy, who just absolutely could tell you a million different things about music, it’s good for that child, too.
A lot of the things that we do in Morning Time are not Mathematics where they might be advanced. They can appreciate– It’s appreciation, so they can learn to appreciate as well.
Colleen: Right, and we do a lot of the Reading together, and the Poetry together and things like that. Whereas one of my kids has been- I think she came out of the womb writing. I mean, she’s a very good, good writer. There’ve been a couple of times she’s shown me novels she’s working at, and at first I don’t believe her that she’s actually written them. So it is very tedious for her to write Poetry with her younger sister or brother, or even in some cases, to discuss Poetry.
Those are the things I do with the younger two and move her on, but she stays with us for Art projects and Music, and we listen to things. She’s a very good singer and she does theater, but she sits with us when we’re talking about musical theater or songs, or the evolution of, I don’t know, how different movements of music have happened over the course of the years. She can get just as much out of that. So, yes, those subjects are perfect, and like you said, they’re great for me because I haven’t studied them in that way, sometimes ever and sometimes in a long time, so it’s nice to have those connections with my kids.
Pam: Do you ever have any of your kids teach something to the other kids during Morning Time?
Colleen: I don’t because for my particular kids, that tends to cause problems. It gets a little bit of bossiness. We’ve tried and our personalities aren’t such that they learn well from each other. They learn well together, but they don’t learn well from one another. So, I don’t, but if they want to learn something from each other, they will seek each other out. When it’s their choice, they’re able to be okay with it a little bit.
One of my kids sought out my oldest to teach her how to use Filmora because she wanted to edit some videos and iMovie wasn’t doing enough for her. Because it was on her terms, on her timeline and it was something she really wanted to understand, he felt good because he felt like the expert, but she also felt confident asking him because it was her. If I had said, “Hey, come down and teach the kids how to do some video editing because you’re really good at it and I know they’d like to do it,” it would have caused contention and problems.
That’s knowing your kids and knowing their personalities. I think that could be valuable for some, if you have a younger sibling that looks up to an older sibling for some specific reason.
Pam: Interesting. What encouragement do you have for the mom who has gifted and/or twice-exceptional children? Really, a lot of times, I have found moms fall in love with the idea of Morning Time. It’s mom falls in love with this picture. While we encourage moms to stay grounded and down to earth, there’s also this appeal of, “Oh my gosh, I can get all my kids together, and we can get some stuff done without everybody having to go their separate ways, so I would like to do this.” What encouragement do you have for them?
Colleen: First, you’re not alone. There’s a lot of people out there. It seems when you’re dealing with gifted or twice-exceptional kids, you’re dealing with a small percentage of the population, so it feels like there’s nobody else around you who has kids who are quirky like this. If there’s one thing that I would want everybody listening to go away from this conversation with is you’re not alone and there are other people like you, and your kids are not broken or wrong. They’re just kids and themselves and who they’re supposed to be. Remember that as you’re going about doing it.
Then, to piggyback off of that, know that your Morning Time just might have to look a little bit different. It might not be something that you can do specific subject areas like we talked about. You just might need to do some more of the Arts- the fine arts and the actual art- and then Music, and social and emotional, Reading-aloud. Listening to audiobooks while you’re snacking on something and drawing, or creating out of polymer clay because somebody was interested in that.
I mean, that’s actually the kind of thing you’re going to end up doing with your gifted kids. You’re going to put on an audiobook or you’re going to read aloud, and they’re not going to sit still because their minds are going, still. You’re going to want to pull out playdough or blocks, if they’re little, or polymer clay. We did polymer clay recently because it’s a really cool medium, and it gives them something to do with their hands.
Gifted brains are different. If your kids are gifted, chances are one or both of their parents are gifted as well. I know that this is something that I’ve struggled with. It’s always funny because people are more easily able to say my kid is gifted or my kid has this challenge or whatever than they are themselves, but I’ll say this. I was identified as gifted. I am gifted. When I’m working on a project or I have to focus on something, I have to have something else going on either in the background or with my hands or I can’t focus.
I just finished writing a book, as Pam said in the beginning with my bio. While I was in the heart of the writing, I had a movie that I’ve seen a million times on in the background because my brain would wander if there wasn’t something for the wandering part to focus on. A lot of our gifted kids are that same way, so if they’re moving around or doing stuff, it’s not that they’re not focused and listening. They just need to listen in a different way.
Don’t get discouraged if it seems like they’re not bought into it. They might be bought into it, but their bodies show you something different, and so be creative and try a bunch of different things. You can do it. The benefits are really incredible, and give you a connection with your kids that you wouldn’t have otherwise. Especially, if you sent them all off on their merry way in the morning after your morning coffee and their breakfast. Pull them together and do these things, and see what makes them tick and what helps them focus.
I bet you’ll be surprised later; some of the conversations you have that you didn’t think they even heard or understood that they’re bringing up because they did get it and they absorbed a lot more than you gave them credit for.
Pam: I love that. A lot of times when we have kids who are capable of doing things on their own, especially their own particular little thing, we might miss some of those opportunities for connection. So Morning Time is a great place to build some of those connections with our kids, for sure. Colleen, is there anything else you want to add, like you’re sitting there going, “Pam totally missed the ball on this one. She missed this question”?
Colleen: No, I think this was good. I think that the only thing that I would want to add is that you know your kid. No matter what anybody says or what you’ve read, you are the best person to teach your kids. If there is something in you that is saying that Morning Time is a great thing for you to implement, trust that and trust yourself. Don’t worry if it doesn’t look like your best friend at co-ops who does Morning Time, too. Yours is supposed to look different because your kids are different kids.
There is no prescriptive way to do it. It’s all about who you are and who your kids are. That’s perfect. God doesn’t make mistakes. You have the exact kids you’re supposed to have. You are the exact parent they’re supposed to have. So, your Morning Time and your homeschool, in general, and your parenting, overall, is supposed to look the way it’s supposed to look because it’s you; it’s unique.
Pam: Yes, I love that. We say that to parents of neurotypical kids all the time. It’s like, “You’re Morning Time is going to look differently for your family than any other family and it’s supposed to. Nobody can tell you that you’re doing it right or you’re doing it wrong.” So, yes, exactly.
Well, Colleen, thank you so much for coming on and chatting about Morning Time with gifted kids. Don’t know what took us so long. It was totally my fault, I admit it. Tell everybody where they can find you online.
Colleen: Yes, best place is raisinglifelonglearners.com. My podcast is there. All the things that I’m working on; that’s all there. You’ll be able to find information about the book that’s coming out and sign up for updates there. Everything is there and, yes, head over. Hopefully, I’ll see you and ask questions. There’s a contact form there, too, along with a voicemail widget. You can ask me any questions that you have about gifted kids. I will admit, I don’t get back right away because life with gifted kids, but we get back to everybody who asks the question.
So if you have specific questions about giftedness that you can’t find on my site, then let me know.
Pam: Yes, always a great resource. Colleen always has a good answer and always inspires me, too, so thanks so much.
Colleen: Thank you.
Pam: There you have it. Now, if you would like links to any of the resources that Colleen and I chatted about on today’s episode of the podcast, you can find them on the Show Notes. Those are at pambarnhill.com/YMB81. Now, also on the Show Notes is a link to Colleen’s brand new Learner’s Lab at raisinglifelonglearners.com. At the Learner’s Lab, Colleen is now offering monthly live lessons, safe conversation space for teens, and also social and emotional skill challenges for your differently-wired kids. So, I encourage you to go check out the Learner’s Lab at Raising Lifelong Learners, and we’ve got a link for you to do that on the Show Notes.
Now, I’ll be back again in a couple of weeks with another great Morning Basket interview. Until then, keep seeking truth, goodness and beauty in your homeschool day.