Our Gifted Kids Podcast

Latest Episodes:

#024 Sexuality & Gender – Tips for parents with Dr Matt Zakreski May 30, 2021

Show notes

Today is Part 2 of a conversation about sex education for parents of gifted kids that we started earlier this year with Dr Matt Zakreski. In this episode, we talk about gender and sexuality as they relate to the gifted population.

As parents of gifted kids, we especially, need to be open to accepting, knowing and understanding sexuality and gender issues and we talk about why.

We define sexuality, gender, CIS gender, gender fluid, transgender and all the letters in LGBTQ+ and why it is important to understand this language.

We provide tips for parents if your child starts talking about sexuality, or questioning gender, or comes out to you, or wants to talk about sex. Not to mention, how to talk about consent as an ongoing conversation.

This podcast is full of tips and how-to's for parents to navigate what can be uncomfortable and complex conversations.

Continue the conversation in our Facebook Group or check out our NEW 'What is Gifted' page with a huge FREEBIE - Part 1 of Parent effectively by learning about the gifted brain. 🤩

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Memorable Quote

"What we're doing is, we are normalizing these conversations. We are taking this out of the bedroom, out of the closet, and shining the light of day on it. And, to those of you who are out there, who are engaging with this, keep engaging with it." – Dr Matt Zakreski

"What we want is to create an environment where it's safe for people to come out and share all aspects of ourselves. And that starts very much with the language we use…we want to use gender neutral terms as best we can." – Dr Matt Zakreski

"So the number one thing you say when someone comes out to you is thank you because they are choosing to do a brave thing and they have identified you as a brave person." – Dr Matt Zakreski

Resources

Dr Matt Zakreski Bio

Psychologist, Gifted Expert, International Speaker

Matthew Zakreski, PsyD is a high-energy, creative clinician who utilizes an eclectic approach to meet the specific needs of his clients. He specializes in working with children and adolescents, as well as their families, in providing therapy and conducting psychological evaluations. Dr. Matt is proud to serve as a consultant to schools, a professor at the university level, and a researcher and author on his specialty, Giftedness.

Dr. Matt thrives in supporting young people in understanding, developing, and celebrating their unique brains and ways of operating in their world. He is best known for his work with Gifted individuals and in being an advocate for implementing high-level supports and understanding of Gifted needs. He is a board member of the Pennsylvania Association for Gifted Education and active in multiple Gifted organizations around the country.

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If you enjoyed this episode and it inspired you in some way, I'd love to hear about your biggest takeaway in the comments.

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You can find show notes and more resources at www.ourgiftedkids.com

See you in the same place next week.

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#023 Gifted Assessments & IQ Tests with Psychologist Kate Plum May 21, 2021

Show notes

Today I'm speaking with psychologist Kate Plum about the assessment journey for gifted kids.

In this episode we talk about when an IQ Test is helpful, what steps are involved, the pros and cons of assessment, the nuances of cognitive tests for gifted kids, the components of the test and much more.

If you're a parent considering whether you need to get your child assessed, this is the episode for you!

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Memorable Quotes

"It's very important that, that the parents. Get what they came for really? It's not a yes or no scenario. Are they gifted? Yes or no? It's yes, but, or no, but there's always a, but, and, and that's where that, that value, I think in the assessment lies." – Kate Plum

"The assessment is the beginning. It's not the end. A lot of parents think let's get an assessment and find out once and for all. The assessments, just the beginning, the assessment is where we all know what that next step is. And then I provide what that next step is." – Kate Plum

"We're all highly trained in psychometric assessment. I think there is, a widespread lack of understanding when it comes to how nuanced giftedness can be. It's not just an IQ score. It's part of it, but it's not all of it that just tells us what that baseline potential is. It doesn't show us what the child's actually doing." – Kate Plum

Resources

Kid Psychology

Bio

Kate Plumb has extensive experience in the assessment and treatment of a variety of issues in children and combines her dual qualifications of psychologist and teacher to develop specific and individualised intervention plans based on each child's unique need.

Kate conducts a range of assessments for ADHD, Autism (including the ADOS), psychometrics (IQ) & learning difficulties (dyslexia) for any age. Kate provides support for kids and families of primary school age.

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If you enjoyed this episode and it inspired you in some way, I'd love to hear about your biggest takeaway in the comments.

For more episodes, you can subscribe and to help others find our podcast please leave a review.

You can find show notes and more resources at www.ourgiftedkids.com

See you in the same place next week.

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#022 Lessons from CTY Ireland with Dr Colm O'Reilly May 11, 2021

Show notes

Today I'm speaking with Dr Colm O'Reilly, Director of the Centre of Talented You at Ireland's Dublin City University, about their awesome program.

In the episode, you'll hear all about the program CTYI offer, why they offer it and who get's to attend. We also talk at length about tips for parents of gifted kids. The CTYI engages about 6000 and has operated for 30 years so I was keen to know what Dr Colm O'Reilly has learned about gifted kids and parenting gifted kids during this time!

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Dr Colm O'Reilly

"Sometimes with bright kids. You need to relax that a little bit because they're obviously doing quite well up to now. Sometimes you can be overly focused on what they're getting in scores and exams and tests and stuff, because we're constantly using that as a metric to judge them as to how well they're doing when the passion and the interest and what they believe and what they like is very important, too." – Dr Colm O'Reilly

Dr Colm O'Reilly has worked in the area of gifted education for decades, is a published academic and Director of the CTYI. Dr O'Reilly engages internationally with gifted education and is a wealth of knowledge and experience.

Resources

Centre for Talented Youth, Ireland

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If you enjoyed this episode and it inspired you in some way, I'd love to hear about your biggest takeaway in the comments.

For more episodes, you can subscribe and to help others find our podcast please leave a review.

You can find show notes and more resources at www.ourgiftedkids.com

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#021 Parenting Gifted Kids Words of Wisdom from the first 20 Episodes! May 03, 2021

Show notes

Welcome to our new series of the Our Gifted Kids Podcast!

We're starting this series by reflecting on our first 20 episodes. I've managed to select 12 of my biggest parenting aha moments and themes that have come from all of the words of wisdom of our guests.

It's been such a privilege to talk to such generous and knowledgeable people, so committed to gifted kids that, out of respect and in thanks, I wanted to pause and reflect on some of the personal lessons I took away from our first series.

Thank you, sincerely, to all of our guests so far and we're really looking forward to getting into this new series with many more awesome guests! Stay tuned!

Hit play and let's get started!

Resources

You can find all the episodes at ourgiftedkids.com

Subscribe & Review

If you enjoyed this episode and it inspired you in some way, I'd love to hear about your biggest takeaway in the comments.

For more episodes, you can subscribe and to help others find our podcast please leave a review.

You can find show notes and more resources at www.ourgiftedkids.com

See you in the same place next week.

Connect

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#020 A Journey of Perfectionism Apr 09, 2021

Show notes

A holiday replay of our most popular episodes!

This holidays we have replayed our most popular episodes so it's a great chance to catch up on any you've missed before we return with new episodes next week!

In this episode I talk to Samantha, mum of a number of gifted kids and a big part of their journey is perfectionism.

For more info about how you can help your gifted child with perfectionism, check out these other episodes as well:

More blogs and podcasts at www.ourgiftedkids.com and subscribe so you don't miss out!

Find show notes at:
https://ourgiftedkids.com/blog/perfectionism/

#018 Looking at Giftedness & Autism with Kate Donohue Apr 07, 2021

Show notes

Today I'm speaking with Kate Donohue from Dynamic Parenting about the intersection of giftedness and autism.

In the episode, we talk about highly and profoundly gifted children, what autism looks like in gifted children, the intersection of giftedness and autism, and what we need to look out for.

Kate has been working in the disability sector for more than 20 years. She has been a DIR Floortime therapist, kindergarten and schoolteacher, service leader mentor, support worker, and workshop presenter.

Kate's learning journey really began when she became a parent to 2 neurodivergent girls.

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Memorable Quotes

"They need to be able to comprehend our children. Some people just cannot comprehend how diverse our kids are because the giftedness skews all of the disability. So, the disabilities don't present the way they're doing the textbooks. .. the clinician needs to have an understanding of the interplay between the disability and the giftedness and sometimes multiple disabilities and giftedness. So, it's this really unique profile." - Kate

"It's not about the behaviours on the outside. It's not about somebody who looks autistic or doesn't look autistic. It's about what the gaps in development are, or what their sensory system is doing, what they need to know to understand other people, and then supporting them to get the supports that they need." – Kate

"While they're concentrating so hard on fitting in and understanding others and not making mistakes and not being found out and not being ridiculed. There's so much anxiety going on. It's really hard for them to learn. And it's really hard to have joy and freedom and expression and to become that authentic version of themselves. So masking does have a high cost to people who do mask." - Kate

Resources

Dynamic Parenting

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If you enjoyed this episode and it inspired you in some way, I'd love to hear about your biggest takeaway in the comments.

For more episodes, you can subscribe and to help others find our podcast please leave a review.

You can find show notes and more resources at www.ourgiftedkids.com

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#017 What is a Gifted Assessment? & other Quirks of Giftedness with Amanda Drury Mar 29, 2021

Show notes

Today I'm speaking with Amanda Drury from Gifted 2E Support Australia as we delve into what is in a gifted assessment and a bunch of other quirks of giftedness. In this episode you'll hear:

The different subsections of WISC (one type of IQ assessment)
The hidden messages in IQ assessments
3 types of masking
2 types of ADHD
Red flags that help identify gifted & 2E kids in the classroom and at home
2 types of perfectionism, and
What is a melt-down?

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Memorable Quotes

"Dysfunctional perfectionism comes up a lot in twice-exceptional children that, that essentially that refusal to do any work because you're too scared to fail." - Amanda

"When I asked her, how is he reading novels he can't when he can't phonetically spell?... She said because he's remembering the shape of the word. He's remembering them as pictures." - Amanda

"They might be distressed or ashamed of their anxiety or their depression, or maybe they're scared of it…They will spend the whole day masking their anxiety putting up a persona… over the top of their anxiety because they don't want anyone to know that they're anxious and then they go home and they completely lose it. And it's bad, it's back to back meltdowns for the whole afternoon." - Amanda

Resources

Gifted 2E Support Australia

Subscribe & Review

If you enjoyed this episode and it inspired you in some way, I'd love to hear about your biggest takeaway in the comments.

For more episodes, you can subscribe and to help others find our podcast please leave a review.

You can find show notes and more resources at www.ourgiftedkids.com

See you in the same place next week.

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#016 Exploring the Gifted Identity with Marc Smolowitz, the filmmaker behind The G Word Film Mar 22, 2021

Show notes

Today I'm speaking with filmmaker Marc Smolowitz about his upcoming documentary, The G Word Film. The film is currently in post-production with an expected release date in early 2022.

The G Word Film is the first major documentary on giftedness and asks the question, Who Gets to be Gifted In America? The shorts released so far describe a scenario that is seen globally.

In the episode, we talk about trauma, hope, and empowerment, gender and sexuality, identity, and more!

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Memorable Quote

"Trauma is a huge theme in every story. But I'm not here to beat you up. That's just not my, I don't believe that's my job. I believe my job is actually more about giving you hope or leaving you with a sense of possibilities, prospects for change prospects, for making things better. I've dealt with, all kinds of traumatic stories and, trauma is, one side of the story. The other side is empowerment." – Marc

"I had a sense of being other in the world." -Marc

Resources

Subscribe & Review

If you enjoyed this episode and it inspired you in some way, I'd love to hear about your biggest takeaway in the comments.

For more episodes, you can subscribe, and to help others find our podcast please leave a review.

You can find show notes and more resources at www.ourgiftedkids.com

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Introducing Marc Smolowitz

Marc Smolowitz is a multi-award-winning independent filmmaker based in San Francisco.

With three decades of experience in the film and media business, Smolowitz is a director, producer, and executive producer who has been significantly involved in 50+ successful independent films wearing many hats across the entertainment industry.

The combined footprint of his works has touched 200+ film festivals and markets on 5 continents, yielding substantial worldwide sales to theatrical, television, and VOD outlets, notable box office receipts, and numerous awards and nominations. His long list of credits includes films that have screened at top-tier festivals such as Sundance, Berlin, Venice, Chicago, Palm Springs, AFI Docs, IDFA, DOC NYC, CPH: DOX, Tokyo, Melbourne, Viennale, Krakow, Jerusalem, among others.

His film company -- 13th Gen -- works with a dynamic range of independent film partners globally to oversee the financing, production, post-production, marketing, sales, and distribution efforts of a vibrant portfolio of films and filmmakers. Founded in 2009, the company is known widely for being active on some 10-15 concurrent projects, both independent and inside Hollywood, and it has successfully advanced Smolowitz's career-long focus on powerful social issue films and filmmaking across all genres.

In 2016, he received one of the prestigious IFP Fellowships to attend the Cannes Film Festival's Producers Network and Marche du Film marking him as one of USA's most influential independent film producers.

Join in the social media campaign! #MyGiftedStory

#015 How do I talk to my gifted child about sex? With Dr Matt Zakreski Mar 15, 2021

Show notes

Today I'm speaking with Dr Matt Zakreski about sex education for gifted kids. Dr Matt uses a lifespan sex education model with a gifted education lens to talk about sex to our gifted kids.

In the episode you'll hear:

Looking at sex education through the gifted perspective.
What gifted traits you need to consider during the sex education talks and puberty.
What to talk about during each phase of your child growing up.
3 Biggest tips for parents – own the awkward, it's a series of conversations, you don't have to go it alone!

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Memorable Quote

"Most schools, if they have sex ed at all is in eighth grade right before they go to high school. And at that point, you're probably at least two years into puberty, maybe three… So can you imagine… let's use driving the car. You start driving the car and three years later, I'm going to teach you how to do it." – Dr. Matt

"We're going to change, start wearing deodorant, or we start having to shave, maybe wearing makeup, wearing a bra, does a bra have underwire, right? These are all sensory things that we have to consider." Dr. Matt

"Then we get to that emotional overexcitability... All those emotions are going to be felt to like 14, on a one to 10 scale, which means when our kids crush. They're going to crush hard and they might get a little obsessive. They might have their hearts broken and that is something we need to anticipate as adults." – Dr. Matt

Resources

Subscribe & Review

If you enjoyed this episode and it inspired you in some way, I'd love to hear about your biggest takeaway in the comments.

For more episodes, you can subscribe and to help others find our podcast please leave a review.

You can find show notes and more resources at www.ourgiftedkids.com

See you in the same place next week.

Connect

Connect with me on LinkedIn Instagram & Facebook!