Next week (July 21-27, 2013) marks National Parenting Gifted Children Week, a time of focused awareness and advocacy regarding the needs of gifted children. The week, which is listed on the National Special Events Registry, is sponsored by SENG (Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted) and coincides with SENG's annual conference, taking place this year July 19-21 in Orlando, Florida.
One feature of this year's celebration is an offering of four free webinars about parenting gifted children. (Each of the offered webinars certainly has helpful insights for teachers, administrators, counselors, and other education and mental health professionals, too.) Anyone parenting a gifted child knows all too well that it is often not the cakewalk the rest of the world assumes it to be. Whether it's the anxiety of watching a bright child shut down from lack of challenge, or the exhaustion of trying to keep up with a child whose intense thirst for learning never ceases, or the worry when one's ten-year-old is having a mid-life crisis, parents of gifted children can find themselves facing paradoxical conundrums that no one else seems to understand or take seriously.
