Living With Live Wires

Susan Daniels and Michael Peichowski, in Living with Intensity, state that:

Our highly excitable children’s drive for perfect performance is where their intellectual intensity intersects with their emotional development. The field of gifted education is replete with means to accommodate children’s intellectual needs, but a child’s intellectual overexcitability signals a need for more holistic supportive responses form parents and teachers – ones that encompass and nurture their affective and emotional development, self-concept, self-esteem, and self-discipline as well.

Perfectionism in the pursuit of excellence can be a valuable driving force. A healthy pursuit of excellence means doing the best you can with the time and tools you have, and then moving on. Unhealthy perfectionism leaves one continually dissatisfied, as the work is never “good enough.”

A significant number of gifted children, perhaps as many as 20% suffer from perfectionism to the degree that is creates problems for them.

Also important to promote creative thinking are strategies that impact the development of emotional, social and motivational skills in gifted children.

It is important to note that with children who are experiencing crises, an overall action plan is advised and professional help may be required.

What I am suggesting  here, are not interventions to use when there are severe problems, but rather, creative strategies that have an impact on the modulation of challenges with gifted children that can be integrated into the current curriculum and classroom structure.

This may sound unusual at first, to use strategies designed to enhance creativity to modulate social, emotional and motivational challenges of gifted children, but I think you will see that it makes sense.  With all the competing needs on your time, I think it is best to multi-task when you can.

Among these challenges are:  Perfectionism, Intensity, and Stress

What would happen if teachers were aware of the scientific finding that how a person reflects internally will shape how one treats both onesself and others? If teachers became aware that attuning to the self- – being mindful – can alter the brain’s ability to create flexibility and self-observation, empathy, and morality, wouldn’t it be worth the time to teach such reflective skills first to teachers and then, in age-appropriate ways, to the students themselves?
Reflection is the skill that embeds self-knowing and empathy in the curriculum.

I wanted to introduce you to a landmark book by Dr. Daniel Siegel, who has done extensive research on the science of the brain and how greater awareness of ourselves and our relationships actually affects the functioning of our brain. It is a book for anyone wanting to develop reflective skills and includes a special section for parents, teachers and counselors. This book is an excellent resource for personal growth and professional applications.

He draws our attention to examine whether we are living mindlessly or mindfully. He states:

For some people, this “living on automatic” is a routine way of life. If our attention is on something other than what we are doing for most of our lives we can come to feel empty and numb. As automatic thinking dominates our subjective sense of the world, life becomes repetitive and dull….we come to feel dead inside.

Living on automatic also places us at risk of mindlessly reacting to situations without reflecting on various options of response. The result can often be knee-jerk reactions that in turn initiate similar mindless reflexes in others. A cascade of reinforcing mindlessness can create a world of thoughtless interactions, cruelty, and destruction.

Being mindful opens the doors not only to being aware of the moment in a fuller way, but by bringing the individual closer to a deep sense of his or her own inner world, it offers the opportunity to enhance compassion and empathy. Mindfulness is not “self-indulgent,” it is actually a set of skills that enhances the capacity for caring relationships with others.

We engage with ourselves and with others, making a more authentic connection, with more reflection and consideration. Life becomes more enriched as we are aware of the extraordinary experience of being, of being alive, of living in this moment.

Mindfulness, and the development of keener observation are the most important skills you must acquire if you are going to embark on a path of greater creativity.

Once you have made the decision to develop more creativity in your life, you must also realize that the most powerful way for teachers to develop creativity in children is to role model creativity.

There are many ways teachers and parents can provide an environment that fosters creativity.  Children develop creativity not when they are told to, but when they are shown how.

The teachers most people remember from their school days are not those who crammed the most content into their lectures. The teachers most people remember are those whose thoughts and actions served as a role model. Most likely they balanced teaching content with teaching children how to think with and about that content.

Share your ideas about how to model creativity by leaving a comment.

For all of us, being more creative starts with a personal decision

Robert Sternberg, one of the foremost experts on Intelligence and Creativity, proposes an Investment Theory of Creativity.  

The investment theory, it is based on the notion that creative people decide to buy low and sell high in the world of ideas – that is, they generate ideas that tend to “defy the crowd” (buy low), and then, when they have persuaded many people, they sell high, meaning they move on to the next unpopular idea.

He states that creativity is a decision with three parts: the decision to be creative, the decision of how to be creative, and implementation of these decisions. The view of creativity as a decision suggests that creativity can be developed.

In his book, Sternberg proposes twenty-one ways to develop creativity as a decision.  (Sternberg, Robert J. (2003) Wisdom, Intelligence, and Creativity Synthesized. Cambridge University Press. New York.)