Homeschooling a Gifted Child: A Podcast Interview

If you’re homeschooling an academically gifted child, you probably have had moments when you feel like you don’t quite fit in to the homeschooling community. When the convention speakers are assuring you it’s okay if you don’t finish subjects this school year, and all the other homeschool moms are nodding in assent and camaraderie and applauding, you just quietly sit there.

When your friends all connect over subjects which always get skipped week after week, you are hoping no one asks you  — wishing your child could let you get away with skipping school — because your child is on her second science curriculum book, and it’s only November.

Maybe you have one of those kids who actually cries on the weekend because you put your foot down and say no, we are not doing school on Saturday. But you could never say any of this in public — and certainly not on Facebook — because if you’re not in these strange trenches yourself, it just sounds an awful lot like obnoxious bragging.

But you know giftedness doesn’t mean bragging rights. It means intensity. It means a whole different neurological wiring.

Maybe you feel alone because your struggles just don’t match up with the struggles everyone else seems to be facing. No one else seems to understand how your child, who can comprehend things to such an incredible level, succumbs to meltdowns over very insignificant matters. (And oh! The meltdowns. No one sees the insanity of the meltdowns.)

If your world seems a little bit ridiculous sometimes, well, that’s because it is. Someone once said raising a gifted child is like being stapled to a cheetah. I concur. Toss homeschooling into the mix, and you have the perfect storm of intensity, curiosity, and yes, exhaustion.

So if you, like me, are hanging on for dear life, hand your child an encyclopedia, pour yourself a cup of caffeine, and listen to Episode 057 of Pam Barnhill’s Homeschool Snapshots Podcast. Colleen Kessler — author, gifted specialist, blogger at Raising Lifelong Learners, and co-founder of the online support community Raising Poppies — is co-hosting this season of Homeschool Snapshots. In this episode, she and I sit down and chat about the crazy world of homeschooling gifted kids.

As you listen to this peek into my normal, I hope you feel encouraged, and I hope you know this truth: you are not alone.

(Want to join The Oaxacaborn Homeschool Community? It’s a closed Facebook group, celebrating work as worship, and the outliers of the homeschool community. I’d love to get to know you!)