So excited! We are travelling again and will be speaking at the Gifted World Experience Conference in Athens in late October. As we will be out of Australia for much of October please bear with us regarding variable access to internet to answer emails. Gifted Minds will be back to normal in November.
Fiona and Dominic
Chapters, Articles & Talks by Fiona & Dominic:
Chapter 6: On Boredom and Bullying: How being gifted, bored, and frustrated in the classroom can lead to being bullied or being a bully at school. In Identifying, Preventing, and Combating Bullying in Gifted Education, pages 97-112. A volume in Contemporary Perspectives on Multicultural Gifted Education. Eds Fernando Hellen Ribeiro Piske & Kristina Henry Collins, Information Age Publishing, Inc. Charlotte, NC. 2022 - www.infoagepub.com.
An Australian Mensa Initiative - 2017 Australian Mensa Inc. mensa.org.au - Celebrating your gifted child's sensitivity (available on the Mensa website)
Patrilineal Ability: Nurturing Giftedness in Grandfathers, Fathers and Sons - Parenting for High Potential Fall 2015, Vol 5, Issue 1, pp 8-12
Mindful Measurement – Identification practices and their impact on the creative-divergent child.
Walking in Another’s Shoes and Getting Blisters: A Personal Account of the Blessing and Curse of Intense Empathy - ADVANCED DEVELOPMENT A Journal on Adult Giftedness Vol 15, 2016, pp 96-106.
Dominic Westbrook's Speech - part of The Frustration Inferno Presentation at the 22nd Biennial WCGTC World Conference held at UNSW July 2017
"As a child, I could have easily been diagnosed with an attention disorder, maybe even ADHD, and looking back I can recognise that throughout a lot of my childhood I truly was an over-excited, attention diverted kid. My mind wandered and my fingers itched to hold and play with something new and more interesting than the last. My mother didn’t even consider diagnosis and medication as I seemed normal to her. Instead she imbued my home life with myriad imaginative and creative activities for my over-active mind to grasp when I got home. Seeing this distraction as an intellectual and creative platform to work from, instead something to be fixed with meds, allowed my perception of my own learning issues to be positive.
My high school days of timid steps towards individuality were marred through my often adverse relationships with teachers. As I did not learn like the rest of the class, I was often seen as apart from the rest of the class, a nuisance, a distraction for the other students. Much of the time I was absolutely and utterly bored. This boredom led to frustration, this frustration led to anger and the anger led to an egotism and disdain for the system I was in.
There simply were not enough outlets that allowed me to learn and discover through my own volition and using my own style and technique. As a fifteen-year old fledgling, discovering all manner of things and timidly testing and moulding the edges of a malleable and fluctuating individuality and character, to have avenues for self-expression and systems designed catered to individual needs was paramount. I was lucky in that I went to a performing arts school, and those hours of drama in the afternoons were the cathartic river into which I flooded all my pent-up frustration, boredom and anxiety.
SUGGESTED BOOKS
Re-Forming Gifted Education: How Parents and Teachers Can Match the Program to the Child by Karen B Rogers
The Optimistic Child by Martin Seligman
Raising Topsy-Turvy Kids: Successfully Parenting Your Visual-Spatial Child by Linda Kreger Silverman and Alexandra Shires Golon
Raising Your Spirited Child: A Guide for Parents Whose Child Is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, Persistent, Energetic by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka
The Highly Sensitive Child: Helping Our Children Thrive When the World Overwhelms Them by Elaine Aron
High IQ Kids: Collected Insights, Information, and Personal Stories from the Experts by Kiesa Kay, Deborah Robson and Judy Fort Brenneman
Please note that Gifted Minds does not have any affiliation with the publishers of these texts
"This world is but a canvas for our imaginations." Thoreau
News Flash! We are re-introducing our art workshops which we trialled before the CoVid outbreak. Jane Cavanough will head up the first workshop exploring expressive self portraits inspired by Alexander Calder and made from wire.
Jane & Dom will run the small group workshop here at Coogee on Saturday July 8th, 10-1pm - with morning tea included. Please let us know if you are interested.
