Part 5 of the Davidson Institute series, “How do We Find Good Information?”
- Part 1: Why Finding Good Information Feels So Hard
- Part 2: Where are you already getting information and what’s your goal?
- Part 3: Making Sense of Conflicting Information and Trusting Your Role as a Parent
- Part 4: Accepting Uncertainty and Learning How to Evaluate Information
- Part 5: Finding Support, Setting Boundaries, and Moving Forward
Where can I find good information in real life?
These days, it’s about who you talk to and what they say. Start with organizations that you trust and move out from there.
The National Association of Gifted Children (NAGC) has a page where you can locate your state gifted organization. Once you’ve tapped into your state gifted organization, you can locate local resources like homeschool groups, IEP advocates, educational consultants, and others.
Professionals and individuals with special interests or amateur experience in a subject are often reliable sources of information. Connecting with interest-based groups that share your Young Scholars interests can also be a bridge to building community! If you find someone who has a neurodivergent special interest in your topic, consider yourself lucky!
Other parents of PG/2e children who have similar goals to you can be reliable sources of information.
How do I tap out of conversations that aren’t aligning with me anymore?
This can be difficult when you’re in the thick of it, but it’s not impossible. Take a step back, re-align with yourself and your child, and start asking yourself some deeper questions.
In America, parenting is often treated like a business, and businesses rely on the assumption of scarcity. A lot of parenting materials, professionals, and messaging is centered around messaging that you’re not doing enough. But, in reality, most parents are giving 110% for their children. Hearing that message again and again can be harmful. That messaging leads you to think, “What more can I do?” Their product swoops in, claiming to give actionable steps but only reinforces that your child and you are the problem. You start to get into a spiral of feeling like your behaviors, research, time, and emotions that you invest don’t matter.
When you get into one of those spirals, take a step back to re-regulate yourself. Recenter your love for your child by spending some quality time with them.
When you’re ready, you can reflect more on what about the story you’re telling yourself about a specific conversation that does not serve you. When you’re thinking about a resources or conversation that is causing you to feel doubt, discouragement, or overwhelm, how are you replying in your head?
- “Yeah, I hear you, but…” This is a common thinking pattern. It’s often associated with fortune-telling, one of those tricksy cognitive distortions. This cognitive distortion leads you to jump to a conclusion; it makes it seem like you can assume exactly what will happen and influence the outcome—which the distortion says will be negative. On the other hand, sometimes, people also start “yeah, but”-ing when they have tried many things that haven’t worked. In those cases, the pushback is coming from personal experience that something is going to go wrong. If you find yourself in this mindset, first ask yourself: Why? Are you trying to predict the future, or are you looking to the past to inform you? At the end of the day, you know your child and what’s best for them. At the same time, collaboration does require an open mind and hopefulness about a situation working out. Sometimes, our Young Scholars really do surprise us in the most wonderful ways!
- “I felt more lost after that conversation.” One of the things that may be happening is that the conversations that you’re involved in aren’t actionable. Sometimes we do just need space to vent. Other times, we’re looking for an action plan to help us improve our situation. If you’re feeling lost, you may be looking for the latter.
- “I left that conversation feeling even worse than before somehow.” If you find yourself saying something like this, it might be helpful to ask yourself if that conversation is punching up or punching down. In other words, is this conversation enhancing your understanding and actions in service of your values? Or is this conversation blaming people/forces that actually aren’t at fault here? Think deeply about whether the conversations you’re talking about are in service of co-regulation or commiseration. Co-regulation can sometimes involve critique, constructive criticism, or being uncomfortable intentionally. Commiseration involves critique for the sake of critique, beating oneself up, and/or trying to deflect uncomfortable feelings by blaming someone or something with less agency in the situation.
Before we dig deeper into how to find more meaningful conversations in the next question, it’s important to state outright that you are allowed to set boundaries and limit your exposure to conversations that don’t serve you. The purpose of boundaries is to help us act in alignment with our values, so setting boundaries is a respectful way of turning towards the things that you and your family value. Sometimes boundaries are silent (like unfollowing someone on social media), but other times setting boundaries can be an uncomfortable process. It’s probably not going to be a one-time conversation with the extended family who misunderstand, or even your Young Scholar’s other parent who is on a different page than you are.
Read This: Setting boundaries (especially with people we’re close to) can be difficult. Thinking about how other people have instituted boundaries in their lives might help you to see a path forward for yourself. While boundaries aren’t always easy, they can help to align actions with values.
How do I tap into the conversations that I want to have?
Start slowly and build from where you are.
Remember at the beginning of this conversation when we discussed some of the ways that you likely already get your information? Those are the places where you can start to tap in. Let’s use a scenario to paint a picture:
You attend a Parent Consulting Circle event. At that event, you hear the Family Services team speaking highly of the book Self Care for Autistic People by Dr. Megan Neff. You decide to google her, and you see that she is very active on social media. You decide to follow her on Instagram and sign up for her newsletter. After a few weeks of seeing her content (and maybe making a comment or two on her posts), you decide that you do like her. You decide to ask the library to get a copy of her book. You maybe also decide that you want to sign up for a class that she teaches or a coaching program that she runs. Suddenly you’re steeped in this world and hearing the names of other similar thinkers, hopefully repeating the cycle!
As you can see, tapping into the conversations about neurodiversity, profound giftedness, and twice-exceptionality don’t have to start with anything major. You don’t have to jump straight to 1-1 contact with any professionals. Being a lurker is a valuable part of conversation! “Lurking” in internet spaces can be thought of similarly to listeners to a conversation. Using your parent gut and your relationship with your child like a compass, over time you can drift towards conversations that affirm and uplift your family.
Do This: If you’ve already found some professionals in this space, follow their social media accounts (if they are public) or sign up for their newsletter. If you’re totally new here, keep your ear to the ground and explore the websites of some of the organizations and professionals mentioned by the Family Services team or by other parents here on DMC.
Conclusion: Advocacy and Being Proactive
Like anything else, learning how to consume information is a skill like anything else in life. Learning about parenting might be different for you than how you learn other things in your life. Once you have a child, you might not have as much time to read books as you once did. So, you might begin to turn to podcasts. Your child isn’t going to learn the same way their whole life, so why would you?
Much of our conversation today was about how to scrub your mental feed from harmful narratives and how to begin seeking out narratives that align with your family. Starting now and starting small can be beneficial even if you don’t need any specific information right now. If you establish roots now and begin to form relationships, then in the future, when you will need something, you’re already set up for support.
This is a process; you don’t know something until you do. If you’ve spent any time deeply immersed in a subject, you’ll likely agree that the more you learn about something, the less you feel like you actually know. Sometimes, information gathering is like a dance, it can be a bit awkward at first, but eventually you find your rhythm and can groove along. Knowledge seeking and curiosity don’t have a destination–the point is the journey. There’s no way for one human to know everything, but the things that you’re curious about can help to inform what you know deeply to be true.
Just like your child is growing, maturing, and learning each day, so are you. The process of raising a child is simultaneously the process of growing right alongside them.
Next Steps and Additional Information
Stop and take a break.
Your child is already giving you lots of information. Go spend some time with them. Go give them a hug (or show them love in their preferred way). Your kid is your biggest source of information, and time isn’t going to stop while you’re researching elsewhere.
Permission Statement
This article is provided as a service of the Davidson Institute for Talent Development, a 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to supporting profoundly gifted young people 18 and under. To learn more about the Davidson Institute’s programs, please visit www.DavidsonGifted.org.
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