Going on Vacation…

I’m leaving in a few days for vacation through Thanksgiving.  I will be working a bit on the blog while I’m gone…so be sure to check out things in December…including a little contest to help build readership.

In the meantime, I am reposting my request for help…as I will be working on the new book as well.  HAPPY HOLIDAYS!  See you in December!

CALLING ALL GIFTED KIDS AND PARENTS

As you guys know from the past few weeks, I recently sold my book Emotionally Intense! to Prufrock Press (2011).  So, it is time to get serious about this next project, Growing Up Gifted.  This is a self-help book for kids, with the leading advice coming kid-to-kid. 

So, I am seeking gifted children in grades four through college, and their parents to answer a few questions and help me out.  The questions are things like:

• What does it mean to be gifted?  What is the hardest part?  What is the easiest part?
• What are your favorite school experiences?  What are the hardest?

And so forth.  If you are interested in participating in this exciting project, please email me at Christine.Fonseca.Musings@gmail.com.  And be sure to tell you friends.  I need LOTS and LOTS of information!!!

 

 

Building Creativity

Last year my daughter’s school started an Odyssey of the Mind group.  For those of you unfamiliar with OOM, this is an organization built on the premise that creativity can be taught.  Teams are developed with the goal of solving various “problems” in the most creative manner imaginable.  Disciplines including the classics, engineering, architecture, and physics, present a problem that a team must solve.  Last year my daughter’s team had to recreate one of the labor of Hercules and create a new trial.  In the performance that followed, they had to explain why the lost labor was forgotten in history.  These problems have a prescribed rubric for scoring, must include various tasks related to the problem, stay within a very small budget for materials.  The clincher – the teams are REQUIRED to solve the problems with NO adult assistance.  None.  Considering my daughter was 8 last year, that was quite a task.

Additionally, teams are required to perform spontaneous creative problem-solving tasks.  These can be everything from having to verbally name everything they can think of that is “red” (think creatively here – not just the color red, but things that are read).  Or it can be more like building the tallest structure possible out of toothpicks, straws and mini marshmallows.  Oh, and completing it without talking and within 2 minutes.

Definitely a creative endeavor.

So what does this have to do with a blog about gifted children?

Well, I think this program is a fantastic opportunity for gifted kids.  The type of thinking works naturally with gifted kids.  And like sporting events, it provides a creative outlet for gifted kids in an environment that fosters positive social skills, creative thinking, and team spirit. 

If you are looking for an activity for your kids – check this one out.  And then tell you school about it.  Maybe you guys can come up with a team.  you won’t be sorry.  It has been a fantastic experience for us!

 

Calling all Gifted Kids and Parents: I need your help!

As you guys know from the past few weeks, I recently sold my book Emotionally Intense! to Prufrock Press (2011).  So, it is time to get serious about this next project, Growing Up Gifted.  This is a self-help book for kids, with the leading advice coming kid-to-kid. 

So, I am seeking gifted children in grades four through college, and their parents to answer a few questions and help me out.  The questions are things like:

• What does it mean to be gifted?  What is the hardest part?  What is the easiest part?
• What are your favorite school experiences?  What are the hardest?

And so forth.  If you are interested in participating in this exciting project, please email me at Christine.Fonseca.Musings@gmail.com.  And be sure to tell you friends.  I need LOTS and LOTS of information!!!

 

Building Relationship Skills – part 3: The Art of Listening.

Relationship skills can be complex.  As I stated in the first of this series, there are four skills we can develop that will build personal intelligences – empathy, nonverbal communication, listening, and conflict resolution skills.  This post focuses on listening skills.

Listening skill are one of the cornerstones needed to build empathy, learn to manage emotions, and build social competencies.  Yet, despite the true need for strong listening skills, most people do not think of it as a taught skill.  Children and adults learn good listening through random experiences.  As a result, most research in this area shows that the majority of children and adults do not listen attentively for any length of time. 

Personally, I think this has become even more true over the last decade, as we become more used to communication in 140 characters or less, texting, and other abbreviated types of activities.  Our attention spans dwindle and we become less able to listen – truly listen –  to one another.  I can only speculate what that will mean in a few decades as we reshape our brains and change our capacity for meaningful communication.

But I digress.

Listening is a learned skill.  And as such, there is a lot we can do to enhance a child’s – and our own – listening abilities.

I am fortunate enough to be friends with several very gifted Speech and Language Pathologists.  Their job, among the huge array of things they do, is to help improve the listening comprehension skills of children with language processing deficits.  Watching them accomplish this has been great for me.  Using strategies including listening for the main idea, drawing visual pictures of the spoken words, and learning to sustain auditory attention, I have watched children transform in terms of their listening skills.  Their improvement has had the residual effect of improved self-esteem and improved social competencies as well.  Their Emotional Intelligence has been raised.

So, what does this have to do with gifted kids and emotional intelligence?

Gifted kids typically have good listening skills.  But they are not always good at active or sustained listening.  Their minds, often traveling at the speed of light from idea to idea, pull at their attention, making sustained auditory attention challenging at times.

It is important to teach them to slow down, and focus on what they are doing…and only what they are doing.  Not the nine million things they may want to do in the next few hours. 

I wrote a post on my author’s blog about being in the moment, and focusing 100% of my energy and presence into whatever I am doing at the moment.  True, active listening requires the same level of diligence.  Giving children the gift of presence, focus and discernment – while also being present for them – is a gift that will pay forward for the rest of their lives!

We’ll end this series over the weekend with Conflict Resolution skills.

 

Building Relationship Skills – part 2: Nonverbal Communication.

Relationship skills can be complex.  As I stated in the first of this series, there are four skills we can develop that will build intelligences – empathy, nonverbal communication, listening, and conflict resolution skills.  This post focuses on nonverbal communication skills.

Most people recognize that human beings use nonverbal forms of communication for more than 70% of our communication…a fact that I became profoundly aware as I began to develop relationships online.   Words are the way our rational minds communicate.  But nonverbal messages convey our emotions and mood.  When someone says “I really like this”, the words convey pleasure.  However, if the phrase is spoken through hissed tones and the speaker has his hands balled in fists by his side, I think we can assume that he does NOT like whatever it is, despite his words.

And most people pay attention to our nonverbal signals, and not our words.

Teaching awareness and discernment of our moods and emotional context is a great way to build both inter and intra-personal intelligence.  Furthermore, teaching multiculturalism helps children and adults understand the cultural norms that influence nonverbal communication.

Acting and role-playing are one of the best ways to enhance nonverbal communication skills.  As is writing.  I know I have found myself watching how people communicate with their bodies while I drink my coffee at my favorite Starbuck’s.  Learning the ways in which people communicate nonverbally has enabled me to pay close attention to my own nonverbal signals.  And that has taught me how to keep things balanced.

Ideally we want ourselves, and our children, to have their facial expressions, body movements and words match in intent and mood.

Next time:  Listening skills.

 

Building Relationship Skills – part 1: Empathy.

This post is a build from the last post on Emotional Intelligence.  This time, we are looking at one component of emotional intelligence – relationship skills.  Howard Gardner developed the theory of multiple intelligences.  According to his work, two personal intelligences, intra- and inter-personal intelligences, are important aspects of a personal overall intellectual functioning. 

High intrapersonal intelligence refers to being able to access your own emotions, discern your feelings, and understand personal strengths and weaknesses.  It includes good self-knowledge and analysis, internal organization, impulse control and creativity.

Interpersonal intelligence refers to discerning the moods of people around you, and choosing an appropriate method of responding. Components of this intelligence includes social analytical skills, leadership skills, negotiating skills, and social connections.

Both forms of personal intelligence enable children to manage their own emotional workings – something that can be challenging for our gifted youth.  Strengths in this area form the basis of good problem solving skills, decision-making and discernment.

So how do we help nurture these forms of intelligence?  Most researchers in this field agree that there are four distinct skills utilized in the development of personal intelligences:  Empathy, Nonverbal Communication, Listening, and Conflict Resolution Skills.  Developing these areas is the best way to increase and develop personal intelligence.

Empathy:  This term refers to a person’s ability to see the world from someone’s perspective.  It is the foundation of all social skills.  When it develops naturally in a child, it is a direct outgrowth of self-awareness.  Toddlers begin to see the world from their kid-centered view and move into an understanding of those outside of them as they develop.  At this point is when parents can see the seeds of empathy take root, as a toddler will often seek to console someone in pain.  As childhood continues, children begin to understand the impact of social situations of others.

Empathy skills are not related to rational intelligence – it is something the is purely emotional.  And it can be developed through acts of perspective taking and “why care” kind of questioning.

I’ll give you an example in our house.  From the time the children were born, we have told them that part of our job as people on the planet is to learn how to get along with all the other people on the planet.  “We aren’t the only ones here,”  I often say.  “Our needs and rights do not supercede the needs and rights of others, just as their need and rights do not supercede ours.  The goal is to find what is common between us and go from there.”

Everything I do moves in the direction of those words.  When I get cut off on the freeway, I say “Wow, I guess that person forgot they weren’t the only ones on the road”, when someone treats me poorly I say something similar.  Every moment becomes an opportunity to teach empathy.

Perspective taking is something schools do as well.  Part of the language arts curriculum focuses on writing from different characters points of view.  Guess what – that is perspective taking.  And that builds empathy!

Next post…Nonverbal Communication Skills.

 

A Bit of Exciting News

I received an exciting piece of news today. What was it, you ask? It was the publishing contract for my nonfiction book, Emotionally Intense! That is right, I have signed with Prufrock Press, the leading publisher for books related to gifted education. It is scheduled for a fall 2011 release date. WOOT!!!

As I have more information regarding the actual date, I will let you all know.

In the meantime, a moment of thanks to Krista Goering, my agent, and Lacy Compton, my editor, as well as Joel McIntosh, the President of Prufrock Press!  Thanks for helping make this dream a reality!

 

Emotional Intelligence? What?

This has got to be one of my favorite topics – emotional intelligence. Anyone every heard of it? It’s the kind of intelligence that relates to the capacity of someone to acquire and apply emotional information. It is one aspect of something that has been coined as EQ. We will talk about some of the other aspects of EQ later this week.

Emotional Intelligence is a term developed by psychologist Daniel Goleman. He stated that strong emotions are a “call to action” if you will. He also helped to point out the link between emotion and motivation, indicating that the core attribute of a high EQ was the ability to manage and effectively utilize one’s emotional responses.

This is particularly true with gifted children – a population we have already described as being very emotionally intense. If we want these children to be as gifted in their emotional domain as they are in other cognitive areas of their lives, learning to manage emotional reactions is certainly a key.

The impact of a strong emotional intelligence on children is profound – as emotions themselves impact every single aspect of human life. Health, learning, behavior, relationships – every one of these domains are influenced by our emotional competencies. Children in environments that nurture emotional intelligence have been found to have a better frustration tolerance and engage in fewer self-destructive behaviors. Especially true for our intense kiddos.

How can parents and other adults assist in nurturing the emotional intelligence of our kids? Based on current research, as well as some research we will discuss in future posts, the following five domains hold the key to enhancing a person’s development of emotional competencies:

1. Self-awareness.  Dr Phil and others have constantly said “You can’t fix what you don’t know, or won’t acknowledge”.  This is particularly true in the emotional domain.  The first step towards really understanding and developing emotional maturity is being able to recognize one’s own emotions from moment to moment.
2. Self-monitoring.  Once you, or a child, can recognize the moment-to-moment feelings, the next step is managing the emotions.  This includes being able to diffuse and recover from things that are upsetting.
3. Self-motivation.  Emotions are always a call to action in one way or another – a signal that some type of movement or behavior is needed.  Building strong emotional intelligence means being able to harness that power – that call for action – and using it to achieve goals.  Self-motivation requires self-control.  And self-discipline.
4. Empathy.  This refers to the ability to not only understand what another person may be feelings, but to really feel what the other person feels.  For children to development empathy, a critical aspect of emotional intelligence, they need to be at a developmental stage of being able to see the world as separate from themselves.
5. Relationships.  Human beings are social creatures by definition.  Strong EQ requires the ability to empathize.  And, to take that one notch further – to be able to manage the emotions in others through social skills and leadership.  To be able to inspire others.

Over the next few weeks we will explore these five domains more fully – in the hopes of creating a path towards building the emotional intelligence of ourselves and out children.

 

Enrichment…NaNo style

By now, you have guys have figured out that I was identified as gifted in my youth.  Well, my husband is too.  So, you can probably guess what that means about my children.  Yep, that’s right – gifted.  Everything I write about – every piece of advice I give has not only been tried on the countless families I work with, but also on my own children!!!.

When it comes to keeping them busy, my girls love similar things…and like their Mom, they enjoy writing.  So, since I participate in an activity called NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November – so do they.  Only they participate in a NaNoWriMo’s Young Writer’s Program.  

To prepare, my beautiful kids did something even many seasoned writers don’t do – they outlined, plotted and prepared.  See the pictures below…this is what my wonderful kids do for fun!

 

 

 

My youngest likes to use a web to get her ideas on paper

 

 

 

 

While my oldest uses a plot line and then does some research – A LOT of research!!!

 

 

 

And you know what, I wouldn’t have it any other way.  Besides, when they write – I get to write.  Truly a win-win for all of us.

If your kids like creative writing, give the NaNo for Young People a try.  You won’t be sorry.

 

Taking a little break…

I am only writing one post this week.  This one.  You see, professional life has a lot going on at the moment.  I will be back November 1, with new posts, newly constructed pages and lots of fun information to share.  And hopefully, updates on my nonfiction and fiction projects. 

While I am gone, please take a moment to complete this survey – and let me know what I can do to make this site a true resource for you:

 

Until then, have a fantastic week!!!