TPP 126: Deb Douglas on Self-Advocacy for Gifted Learners
episode
Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children
45 min
2 speakers
8 chapters
transcribed 1 day ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Why is it important to teach gifted children about what being gifted really means?
Finally occurred to me that we can't just tell our children they are gifted. They probably already know they're different from other kids. But we need to help them understand what that giftedness means, all the pros and cons. It needs to be a long conversation. And instead the message kids were getting, oh, you're identified, you're in a gifted program. Okay, that just simply means you're smarter than everybody else and you ought to be getting A's. That's not the message we want to give.
Welcome to Tilt Parenting, a podcast featuring interviews and conversations aimed at inspiring, informing, and supporting parents raising differently wired kids. I'm your host, Debbie Rieber, and this week we're going to be talking about the G Word, specifically how to help gifted kids become their own best self advocates. To talk about this with us, my guest is Deb Douglas. She is the founder of GT Carpe Diem and the The author of The Gifted Kids Guide to Self-Advocacy, which was published by Free Spirit Publishing. Deb has been an expert in student voice for over 16 years, advocating for gifted children in the upper Midwest of the United States and beyond. She led her first GT Carpe ADM workshop in 2002, and her advocacy for gifted kids grew out of her own life experience as a student, mother, and teacher.
Deb has a powerful approach to helping kids learn how to advocate for themselves as learners, and she is going to break it all down for us. this episode. I hope you enjoy it. And by the way, even if your child isn't formally identified as gifted, this is just a plain good old episode for how kids can learn how to advocate for themselves and the benefits of self-knowledge and self-discovery. Before I get to that, if you haven't had a chance to check out my new book, Differently Wired, don't forget you can download the first chapter in the table of contents at tiltparenting.com slash book. And if you have read it already and like what you read, I'd be grateful if you would consider leaving a review on Amazon or on Goodreads.
More reviews mean more visibility for the book, and I really want to make sure that the people who would benefit from its message can easily find it. Thank you so much. And now here is my conversation with Deb Douglas. Hey Deb, welcome to the podcast. Hi, thanks for having me. Happy to be here. I am happy to have you on. I'm looking forward to this conversation when I initially reached out to you. I mentioned that we've had a conversation about how parents can be better advocates for their kids. But we haven't had this conversation about how kids themselves can advocate for themselves. So I'm looking forward to that. But before we get to the meat of our conversation, could you just take a few minutes to introduce yourself, tell us about your work in the world and your connection to this subject matter?
Oh, gladly. I began my educational career quite a long time ago as a high school English and speech teacher and then I was a stay at home mom and then because of my background in language arts was asked to come back and do some pull out programming in the gifted program in the school district we were in in Wisconsin. And I loved doing j junior grade books discussions with gifted elementary kids. It was so exciting. But I began to realize that this pull out program was was very nice, but it wasn't really addressing all kids' needs. And so I was trying to figure out what would be a better way of approaching gifted education. Went back to school to get a master's in curriculum and instruction for gifted children.
And during that time was hired as the full-time first resource teacher and then gifted education coordinator in that same school district of about five thousand, six thousand students. And then I spent about twenty years in that program coordinating that program. program and really built it into what I felt was a well organized, um, research based, continuous, systematic way of providing for the needs of the gifted kids in the district. But there still seemed to be something kind of missing and and um I realized we needed to help focus on the social emotional needs of our kids as well.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why is it important to teach gifted children about what being gifted really means?
0:00–7:12
2
How did Deb Douglas transition from teacher to gifted education advocate and consultant?
7:12–14:07
3
What are the four essential steps of self‑advocacy for gifted learners?
14:07–21:27
4
When should parents start helping gifted kids develop self‑advocacy skills?
21:27–26:48
5
How can students identify their own learner profile and strengths?
26:48–33:12
6
What resources and options are available for gifted students to pursue their interests?
33:12–39:07
7
How can kids turn their frustrations (the “gripes”) into actionable advocacy plans?
39:07–44:24
8
What practical tip can parents use today to begin supporting their gifted child's self‑advocacy?
44:24–45:55
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children
TPP 266a: A Conversation with Poet and Advocate LeDerick Horne
TPP 522: A Whole Child Approach to ADHD with Phil Boucher, M.D.
TPP 091a: A Conversation With Steve Silberman About His Book “Neurotribes”
TPP 521: A Conversation with Dr. Peter Gray About Restoring Childhood
TPP 253a: Advocate and Author Jonathan Mooney on Why Normal Sucks
TPP 520: Dr. Özgür Bolat on Why Rewards Backfire and the Real Science of Motivating Kids