


Click on
Shop Hoagies' Page before you visit your favorite on-line stores
including Amazon
and many more of your favorite stores. Thanks for
making Hoagies' Gifted community possible!
Donations
Your donations help keep Hoagies' Gifted Education Page on-line.
Support Hoagies' Page!

| |
Hoagies' Blog Hop August 2014: Gifted Friendships
Friendship. One word that has many meanings. For most kids,
friends are those they play with. But for the gifted child,
friendship is often far more than that. Gifted friendships can be
more complex, more deep, and more difficult to find.
Don't miss our previous Blog Hops, May:
The "G" Word,
June:
Gifted @Play and July:
Summer Reading.
If you'd like to join our next Blog Hop, visit
Gifted Blog Hops.
Special thanks to Pamela S. Ryan for our Blog Hop graphics!
Find more on the social and emotional needs of gifted children
and adults on Hoagies' Social /
Emotional Aspects of Giftedness, and read research and articles
including Factors in the
Social Adjustment and Social Acceptability of Extremely Gifted Children
by Miraca Gross, and
Gifted Kids at Risk:
Who's Listening?
by Pat Schuler, plus more!
-
5 Tips for Helping
Gifted Children Make Friends by Colleen on
Raising Lifelong Learners
- Making friends can be hard for any child, but for socially awkward gifted
children or twice-exceptional kiddos, the challenge is only multiplied.
While their brains are working on overdrive, and they can have an
intelligent conversation with an adult expert in the field in which they are
interested, put them in the same room with kids their own age, and all bets
are off...
-
How school policy affects gifted children’s friendships (and what you can do
about it) by
Gail Post in
Gifted Challenges
- When my children were in middle school, almost all classes based on
ability grouping were eliminated. Besides the educational rationale for this
policy, it was designed, in part, to encourage children of all abilities to
interact, "learn from each other" and develop friendships. Of course,
this experiment in match-making failed miserably...
-
Friendship Among Gifted Students in High School, College, and Beyond by
Amy in
GetTheeToCollege
- After years of working with (and once being labeled as) a gifted student,
I've noticed certain qualities among what could be considered a good
"friendship" emerge both in others and in my own life: But first, we have to
expand our definition of "friend" beyond what's considered conventional...
-
Making friends as a newly-minted adult by
Shannon R, guest
blogger for Discover Your Awesome
- When you're a gifted adult, how do you find friends? Even if you found
your tribe in college, what do you do when they're far away and you suddenly
have a busy work schedule and no idea how to find people off-campus? Here
are some practical things and some bigger picture ideas to keep in mind,
both of which may help you along the way to finding new friends...
-
Gifted Friendships: You Are Not Alone! by
Carolyn K., in
Hoagies' Nibbles and Bits
- 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?...
-
Friendship
and the Gifted Child by
Institute for
Educational Advancement
- Does your gifted child like to spend recess alone? Does she only have one
or two friends? Does he have one very intense friendship? Does she only have
friends that are significantly older or younger than she is? Does he only
make friends in his extracurricular activities rather than at school? These
are common behaviors of gifted children, and it is not unusual that parents
of gifted children have concerns about their child’s friendships. Gifted
individuals possess a unique combination of characteristics that can
influence how and why they establish friendships...
-
Friends (Enemies) Forever by
Braver than you believe
- "I'm never gonna play with you ever again!" This is generally followed by
loud, agonized sobs on the part of the recipient and a smug, seemingly
unfeeling look on the part of the speaker. How many times have you heard one
of your kids say that to the other (or your child/his friend)...
-
The Gifted Teen Has Found His Peeps…er…Peers by
Crushing Tall Poppies
- My teenage son is highly gifted. He can talk a blue streak about
technology, current events, physical science - really anything that doesn’t
have to do with cooking, cleaning or personal hygiene. He can hold any
listener captive for hours, and not just with mindless chattering, but
talking about real-life, in-depth, advanced topics using words that I don’t
even know or use. His favorite
audience listeners?
Adults...
-
Overexcitabilities and Finding Tribe by
Jayde Piltser, Discover Your Awesome
- Reach out. Ask for help. Offer help. Initiate. Feel awkward. Collect
rejections. Repeat. Cry or scream or eat chocolate or retreat for a while or
meditate or write or move. Find your tribe. It is better than you can
possibly imagine, even when it is still clunky and awkward...
-
Retiring Special Friends in
Everyday
Learning by Hand-in-Hand
Homeschool
- As parents, we strive to nurture our children into confident people who
can find their comfortable niche in society. It can be painful to let our
kids make decisions – like carrying a stuffed animal around in public – that
may ultimately lead to teasing. (Or, is it the disapproving looks from other
parents we fear?)...
-
Finding True Peers by
Elgarmummy
- I feel bad that El does not have peers with similar interests and mental
age, but I am glad that he does not dwell on what he does not have. I never
felt I truly belonged to any cliques when I was younger, but I had always
managed to find a small group of friends eventually. I hope he will be able
to form meaningful friendships in the future, but in the meantime, I will
just have to read up on whatever he is interested at the moment, and go deep
into the topics, so that he has somebody to talk to. Thank goodness for the
internet and the library...
-
Lonely Find Your Pips and
Find Your Pips, Part Two by Paula Prober,
Your Rainforest Mind
- You weren’t popular. You still aren’t. You were too excited by Jane
Austen. You were too curious about black holes and sea anemones. You were
too emotional when you were teased. You were too incensed when teachers were
unfair. You were too disappointed when the world let you down. You still
are.
But maybe you don’t care about being popular now. It no longer matters. But
you do need community. Your tribe. Or a friend. One good friend. So what do
you do?...
-
Connected Yet
Disconnected? by
Aurora Remember
- Last weekend I went to a conference on meeting the social emotional needs
of the gifted (SENG). I found it rather funny to observe that in a
conference full of self identified outsiders, I still felt like an outsider.
This may surprise some because I am an extrovert and I enjoy social
connection immensely, but in the vast majority of settings there is often a
small part of me that feels a little on the fringe...
-
The Search for Friends: Part 2 by Mrs. Warde,
Sceleratus
Classical Academy
- Early Bird and Builder Boy spent every morning for a week at our church's
Vacation Bible School. Early Bird came out of it with another friend;
Builder Boy didn't. I asked Builder Boy about it, and he said that the other
boys (there were so many kids that they were divided by grade and gender)
were "stinking and annoying." I asked him what he meant about that, and he
did not like that they were "pushing and kicking and cutting [in line]"
while he was the only one following the rules. On one hand I was proud of
him for being discerning, and not following the crowd in bad behavior. On
the other hand I was sad for my isolated son in whom I saw so much of my
own, lonely childhood self...
-
-
Donkeys live a long time 4: Gifted Friendships
by Jo on Sprite's Site
- Sprite was obviously disturbed that she did not know where she fitted into
the world of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. In fact Sprite often has a problem
with working out exactly how she fits in. Sprite has always found making and
keeping friends quite a challenge!...
-
In Search of Friendship and Finding Peers
by Lisa Conrad on
Gifted Parenting Support
- Many theories have been posited and research papers written about gifted
children and how they approach friendship; but it’s not rocket science. They
seek out their peers. People who are most like them. They might be the same
age; or not. They almost certainly share common interests and enjoy each
other’s company...
-
Friendship Algorithm by
Diane Hale, in Schooling the Gifted
- In an episode of The Big Bang Theory, "Sheldon" thinks he has isolated the
algorithm for making a friend... The irony of the episode to me, however, is
that Sheldon HAS friends. He has found his "people." He struggles making new
friends perhaps because there aren't many people like him.
-
- This is a reality for many of our gifted children. Their peer group
narrows simply because of their intellectual ability and often their
asynchronous development. In other words, they have a hard time finding
other kids that read the same books as they do and they don't necessarily
develop social skills at the same rapid rate as they develop other skills.
Below are friendship Do's and Don'ts for parents of gifted children....
-
Like-Mindedness and Finding Your “Peeps” by
Gift-Ed Connections
- Sometimes we do everything we can to help them “fit in” and “make
friends”. If instead we encouraged them to claim their “uniqueness”,
celebrate their difference and build on their strengths, we set them on the
path to authenticity where their comfort with themselves allows them to be
comfortable with the differences in others…even if they’re not like-minded
mathematicians, bookworms or philosophers. Sure, it may take time to find
that elusive “soul-mate” but then again, I have found some of my “peeps” in
the most unexpected places!
-
Friendship
101 for Smart Kids and Their Parents by
Planet Smarty Pants
- In addition to being choosy about which activities to join, she is also
choosy about her partners. A magical “click” happens only with certain type
of kids – mostly with those who are a little dreamy and goofy at the same
time. Not surprisingly, her best friends are also intelligent, articulate,
and willing to engage in negotiations when deciding on what to do together.
She strongly prefers 1:1 time with either of her three best friends rather
than playing in a group...
-
Lasting Weirdness by
A Voracious Mind
- For my ten year old, Liam, friendships work best if the other children are
creative and imaginative. We have given up on finding intellectual age peers
because they simply do not exist for him. Fortunately, there is one family
in particular where all four boys get along beautifully as do the parents
and I...
-
Invisible
Friends by
Suki Wessling in Avant Parenting
- Imagination is one of the most wonderful things about childhood – before
children are self-conscious enough to hide it, they can create the
friendships they need, play out social scenarios, and incorporate
fascinating details from the wider world into their own little lives...
Updated
December 01, 2020
|