Comments on: Gifted child pre-occupation = gifted adult occupation

By: Raising Smart Girls

Raising Smart Girls — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 22:02:34 +0000

Hmmm…interesting line of thought. It’s difficult for me to go back to those days. Not because I don’t want to, but because my memories have dimmed, probably as a coping strategy to family dysfunction. My mother divorced when I was two, remarried when I was five, so you can imagine it wasn’t a very care-free time for me. I think I have blocked out most of my earliest memories except for a few snippets here and there.

I did recently write this on my blog when I had insomnia and I was wondering if other people had as much trouble sleeping as I did and what they thought about.
That night I was thinking about how my childhood led me to a career path:

* When I was a child of about 10-11, I used to pore over encyclopedias and dictionaries and National Geographics.
* As a teenager, it was by reading a stack of books from the library every week .
* As a young adult, it was by taking challenging math and science classes at my university.

* As a 20-30ish year old, it was by learning all I could at my jobs (microbiology lab tech, forensic DNA scientist, and then medical genetics senior tech/lab supervisor), not only doing the lab-work, but taking on quality assurance roles and becoming an expert on the instruments I used, and giving laboratory tours so that I could share what I knew and loved about what our labs did.
* As a 39 year old stay at home mother of girls, it is by searching the internet for what interests me – which is usually about learning styles and learning difficulties like dyscalculia, or gifted issues in children or adults, and human development across the lifespan, and math or science related topics and finding out how to challenge the girls with math and science activities at home. I maintain 3 blogs about these issues – one for general education, one for science experiments with kids, and one for my own journal about my life and raising a child with selective mutism.
* As a mother of a recovering selectively mute child with sensory issues, it was immersing myself in everything I could find out about selective mutism and sensory processing therapies I could do at home, and emotion coaching to help her. I even came up with a Kid’s Problem Solving Binder to help her with her emotional self-regulation and cognitive flexibility.

Needless to say, there’s LOTS of directions I could move into for my next career path, many I’d like to pursue but probably won’t.

I was supposed to take the last 5.5 years to really decide where I want to go next, when my children are old enough to not need me so much. But nothing really jumped out at me, though science still is something I’m passionate about. Interestingly enough, I have had mixed feelings about returning to the workforce, even as I am in going to be interviewed for a scientific position in the near future. I do want the challenge, but I am still uncertain about it for many personal reasons.

I undersold myself at the pre-interview, edited out much of the details of my skills for my resume in an effort to keep it to one page (it was a 2 pager before), didn’t send a thank you letter for the pre-interview, and have been dragging my heels on finding childcare. I am doing everything I can to sabotage myself and I don’t know why. It’s a perfect on ramp back into the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) field, and I’m doing everything possible to undermine myself. I was almost certain I wouldn’t get a call back, and I got the call yesterday to formally interview next week.

My question is WHY am I ambivalent? I’m perfectly capable, it’s a great location (in the suburbs, not the city which was one difficult factor for me to remain in my old position), and it does have potential if things go the way I want them to. But still…I am not convinced I really know what I want for my future, or at the very least, keep telling myself next year would be better on us as a family when the littlest two are in school all day and would just need an hour or two of after school care. At the same time, it might be a stupid move not to take it if they offer me a position. It’s not easy to get back into the STEM field after an absence and this potential employer is willing take a chance on me.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m afraid to want it, knowing I am a workaholic, which is part of the reasons why I quit my job when my second child was 9 months old. I couldn’t throw myself into both “jobs” with the intensity they both required. I don’t consider a job well done unless I do it myself, and that has included the job of mothering.

I’m just in conflict right now. I know I’ve been able to do whatever I wanted to, but now I have others to think about as well. It’s not just about what I want. But as it’s been very difficult to find ways of challenging myself as a stay at home mom, I do need to make some decisions.

By: Mary

Mary — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 06:17:40 +0000

Come to think of it I do remember playing my jack-in-the-box with it upside down. That way the the clown wouldn’t jump out unexpectedly and scare me! And I remember being very excited to pick a new crayon from the big box every so often. I loved Burnt Siena and wondered why it was called that. And I remember reading those “see Spot run” books, and not liking “Green Eggs And Ham” because it was so repetetive. I also loved watching ants go in and out of anthills, and dropping crumbs of food for them so they wouldn’t go hungry.
I guess I do remember some stuff and it is helpful! Thank you!
I still love Burnt Siena, and I assume the name has to do with the color of the earth around Siena, italy. Must Google it…..

By: Suzanne

Suzanne — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:06:58 +0000

I don’t remember being three, but I didn’t play with dolls. At four, I enjoyed having other people tell me about their lives, and I was only thinking a couple of days ago about my unfulfilled interest in being a biographer.

Hmmm … food for thought!!

By: Donna

Donna — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 13:21:28 +0000

I hope more people leave comments, these are all really interesting. Scott, how did you get a picture into your little square?

By: Tony

Tony — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:22:14 +0000

My story is somewhat similar to Chris’s ‘building blocks’ example. The earliest toy I can remember, apart from teddy, was my wooden blocks, with their tray on wheels. Certainly by the age of three I was stacking the blocks to see how high they could go, rather than just stacking them to knock them down. And I can remember (I think, so many memories can be invented) being enrapt by how they began to wobble. I was probably older when I sussed out that a slight displacement of the top block would counter the wobble. This led to my being fascinated with mechanisms, and throughout my life I’ve been good with my hands, with tools, and in repairing mechanical objects. Stimulated perhaps by the post-war ethos of make do and mend. I wasn’t and aren’t a creative artist, but I’m skilled in creative solutions to problems.

Briefly my logical and predictable progression has been has been:

Wooden blocks (1943)– Shaped coloured building blocks (well before Lego) – Meccano (the core training for all engineers, now sadly ignored) – A proper chemistry set (ie some dangerous stuff, not the mild safe experiments of today) – A home-based Electrical Engineering course, making proper artefacts, like a crystal radio, a variable DC power supply – Science at grammar school – Engineering College, with our own factory, everything from pattern making, sand casting, machining, fabrication to electrical and gas welding (I was particularly good at the later) – Computer Programmer and Analyst at IBM (still ‘cogs’, just electronic ones) – My being the first even IT Manager at Liberty’s Department Store in London in the 70’s and 80’s – Computer tutor in Adult Education – And finally, since 1994 Gestalt Psychotherapist.

Why do I see being a psychotherapist (actually a simple counsellor) as part of the process, and not an odd-ball outcome? Because delving into my clients psyche, and into my own in personal therapy, was and is much the same as “What does this obscure feature in my word processor do?” r more earlier “If I turn this cog, move this lever, what happens?” Working at Liberty’s was an important part of the journey, I was into the Arts & Crafts Movement and working with artistic creative designers, merchandisers and others has always been a joy. Plus, along the way, esoteric philosophy, courses in Freud, Jung, Gestalt, etc. All ways of finding out what made me, this complex mechanism, tick.

All from a tray of wooden blocks, that I could pull along on a string!

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:27:43 +0000

When I was little, I believed grown ups went into the basement after they made us go to bed. They lived a second life underground while we had to go to sleep.

By: Jassy

Jassy — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:51:54 +0000

At three years old, I liked to spend time with my grandfather and ask him why I couldn’t have a warm ice lolly and wait for him to give me a good answer. I danced endlessly and for hours, spinning, twirling and leaping as high as my legs would go. Tea parties with dolls and teddies were an endless joy, with my mother’s plaid blanket spread on the grass and toys arranged in groups with miniature china tea cups and plates. I would look on at them “chatting” with delight. I liked to run through long grass with my hair flying, feeling my legs pumping, overawed by the speed of my body. I loved story books, fairy tales, words of all kinds, and would practice “writing” – reams of scribble that were real stories to me. I liked to run along the country lane, ahead of my mother, picking blackberries off the hedgerows. I made endless daisy chains sitting on the grass and gave them as presents to my brother and mother, decorated my dolls with them and felt sad when my fingers were too clumsy to make a hole to thread another: the broken daisies were put in egg cups and were placed all over the house.

By: Donna

Donna — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:19:45 +0000

I discovered the fun of pattern. I liked to draw and decorate the drawings with detail. I walked around by myself and met old people–we tried to communicate. I liked to be by myself. I liked to explore. I liked to play circus. I had conversations with the tiny people who lived in the pipes. I liked to think. I liked to sing. I pretended to be a teacher. I liked the wind. I liked to roll down the hill in the grass where tiny green bugs flew in little clouds.

By: Nick

Nick — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:59:27 +0000

Superb article, Chris. The iceberg analogy is especially poignant in illustrating the unconscious and its powerful driving forces. I think many readers will benefit from understanding its influence.

I look forward to your future articles:)