Embracing Gifted Me

I didn't have any idea about giftedness until I had my first baby and I read about the signs of giftedness in a book and started noticing these signs in my firstborn child. As I read more literature on the topic and attended seminars about it, slowly, it dawned on me that I am also gifted just like my son. I began to consider this when I heard in a seminar that giftedness is hereditary. I reviewed the traits of gifted people again and I realized that I possessed many of them. It was an AHA experience for me.

 

I'm grateful that we discovered that our son is gifted while he was young. This discovery helped me to discover a part of myself I never knew before. In my search for more information about giftedness so I would learn more how to parent my gifted child, I also learned many things about myself.

 

Let me share a few things I am most grateful to discover about giftedness and myself.

 

1. Perfectionist tendencies - One of the stories I most vividly remember about my perfectionist tendency was told by my mom. She said that when I was in Grade 1, I cried very hard over an exam wherein I had one mistake. They tried very hard to comfort me but I was so affected by the exam's result. She said that I got the highest score in our class but I was not content with that. I was still disappointed that I did not get all the answers right.

 

Every now and then, I would hear my mom (ever since I was young) telling me that I should stop being a perfectionist. That I can't always get everything right or make things happen according to my plan.

 

The truth is, I just can't help but strive for excellence in all that I choose to get involve in. And I get easily disappointed when things fall short of my expectations or do not happen according to plan.

 

I have tried over the years to curb this perfectionist tendency. I think I have improved a lot over the years. But it still surfaces many times.

 

When I learned that it's one of the traits of gifted individuals, I felt happy and relieved. My initial reaction was, "Oh! That's why!" I was very happy with my discovery. Finally, I felt relieved because all along I thought that something is wrong with me... why I can't easily move on when I get disappointed over things that fall short of my plans and when it's simply my default to strive to make things perfect.

 

When I learned that gifted people are wired this way, I grew to accept this trait more. Recognizing this in myself helped me to give myself permission to strive for excellence most of the time in the things I am involved in.

 

 

2. Ability to remember a lot of things/things that had a big impact on me - I remember many times when I was chided by my parents and some friends for remembering negative things that happened to me even after a very long time. Many people believe the cliché "To forgive is to forget." For a long time, I felt pressured to forget those painful experiences thinking that I am sinning or still harboring resentment because I can still vividly remember many of those hurtful experiences. It was a good thing that I once read a book about forgiveness and the author said that we should not equate forgiveness with the ability to forget certain events. The author said that when you remember and you feel the ill feelings resurface, you can choose to forgive that person again anyway. Moreover, the author said that one advantage of remembering the incident is that we get to remember the lessons as well from those experiences.

 

When I learned more about giftedness, I realized that it is also part of being gifted that I am extra sensitive and therefore it should not be a surprise to me that events or experiences which had a big impact on me (especially painful ones) would be very hard for me to forget.

 

Knowing this helped me to accept that I simply cannot forget or erase from my memory those experiences that I had. My brain was wired this way and so no matter how hard I try to forget, it would be putting unnecessary pressure on myself to forget those experiences. Because of this, I was also able to let go of feelings of guilt over remembering so many things in the past that many people tell me I should already forget.

 

3. Multipotentiality - I just learned about this recently when I read another blog post. Just like when I discovered about the two traits I mentioned earlier, I felt happy and relieved to learn about multipotentiality. I've been hearing from a number of people that I should learn to focus on accomplishing only one thing at a time and that I should choose to be an expert at only one thing instead of dabbling in a number of things.

 

I find it frustrating to limit myself to only one field. I just can't help but be interested in pursuing more than one thing and there are times when I want to pursue these things simultaneously. I'm really glad to learn that there are other people like me and that in this group, I am normal!

 

Those are just some of the traits I discovered recently about myself in my quest to learn more about giftedness. Discovering these things allowed me to embrace the giftedness in me. And as I embrace these traits in myself, I'm also learning to accept and embrace these traits as I see them manifested in my son.

This post is part of the Gifted Homeschoolers Forum Blog Hop. Check out the other posts here.