Resiliency: On Bouncing Back from Criticism

Student: Do I have what it takes to be a professional?
Teacher: No.
Observer: Why crush the student’s spirits now?
Teacher: If the student believes me and gives up, then she doesn’t have what it takes. To be a pro in this business, you have to take a comment like that as a spur to work harder.

Being able to bounce after a failure, set-back, or critique is an important life skill. Set-backs, failures, and partial successes are the building blocks of experience. Without the ability to turn failure in to learning, people give up on dreams.

For example, I write stories. As a child, I wrote tall tales and fantasies: wild, wacky, and wonderful – but derivative and full of clichés. As a tween, I turned to more realistic work and starting exploring the effects I could achieve through more subtle use of language. These efforts were of mixed quality – often showing promise, but sometimes failing utterly. One piece that failed got a scathing critique from my English teacher and I stopped writing fiction except when explicitly required for class. I just stopped. I took the critique as a statement of failure and gave up. I was not resilient.

In my case, the need to tell stories and work with language continued. As a teen, I wrote poetry and starting directing plays. I failed to develop the courage to pursue theatre professionally, though I had enough skill to justify the attempt. But, I was not resilient enough. I took a few rejections too personally and gave up.

And then, in my mid-30s, I watched as my brother ran his first marathon and decided it was time to accomplish some of my big goals. And that meant developing grit and resiliency.

It is not an easy task, overcoming decades of training in giving up, but it is a necessary one. For the past few years, I have been consistently pushing myself, learning, and developing. And, I have submitted my work and been rejected. Each rejection hurts and each rejection gives me an opportunity to strengthen my ability to recover and keep going.

I find myself asking how I developed the habit of surrender. Somewhere along the line, I learned to value myself only when I was succeeding. At the same time, I had no practice in working through a challenge to achievement. I grew lazy and apathetic. Perfectionism and an awareness of how far my attempts at writing fell short of the ideals I set for myself combined to make me think it was impossible that I would ever be good. And I had no external guide or mentor to nurture, support, and push me.

Now, I know I need external goads, so I have put some external pressures in place, pressures so strong they scare me. I have asked people who are either better writers or more demanding readers than I am to read and critique my work. These are not only people I want to learn from, but people I want to respect me, people I want to impress. I don’t expect to impress them with my work now, but I hope I can at least demonstrate an admirable work ethic and growth curve. I expect to be kicked to the curb often as I strive to learn what they have to teach me.

In my youth, I would never have felt safe seeking out a challenge where I expect to fail at first. Now, I recognize that without the willingness to be a beginner and to risk failure and embarrassment, I will never develop the skills I desire.

I wish I had learned to be resilient earlier in my life, but I trust it is not too late for me.

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Kate writes about creativity and story-telling as tools for making sense of the world at www.katearmsroberts.com.

Dancing With Life’s Big Questions

At dinner last night, one of my 5-year old sons asked why the world is like it is. He does not travel lightly on the earth as some of his age-mates do. Everything he sees or touches matters deeply to him. Everything he understands yields more questions. Always into a deeper excavation of the underlying why?

The never-ending Why? without hope of answer, the why that digs deep, into the most extreme understandings of the nature of the universe through scientific study; the most ancient and profound studies of the human predicament through  meditation and religious questioning; and the rigorous analysis of philosophy. This is the world the gifted soul touches.

In a rational, multi-cultural, secular world where the answers, “because my parents did it that way” and “because God made it so” are not accepted as definitive, we mortals are left to our own devices.

If we are not to sink into existential depression, we must choose to create meaning and purpose to sustain us despite the unanswerable questions that our human nature compels us to ask.

Why? is a hugely valuable question in the practical world. By examining how things came to be and why things are as they are, we can more effectively predict what other things will occur or how things will behave. But, the ability to look beyond the surface can take us too close to the abyss.

To create a sense of meaning and purpose is to choose in the moment that this moment will have meaning. Sources of meaning are personal but often involve beauty, justice, joy, human connections, or service to others or to a principle.

Because we can choose the sources of meaning in our lives, we may also find ourselves doubting our choices, wondering if there was sufficient reason for that choice over the myriad of other options that we had.

Back and forth, we dance, connecting to sources of meaning that fulfill and satisfy us and then falling back into the questions.

I assume that I am not alone in sometimes wishing I could accept an easy answer, but it is not in my nature to do so. The inner Why? that haunts me is too powerful, too consistent.

But, as long as I can hold the question lightly and show up to hug my family and connect to the activities that hold meaning for me: making art and helping others find their own truest stories, I can dance.

And that is enough.

It has to be.

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Kate writes about creativity and story-telling as tools for making sense of the world at www.katearmsroberts.com.

Never Throw Away a Cardboard Box

This is a Wii for those “no-screen-time” times when you just have to play.

I read somewhere that the only enrichment that gifted kids truly need is paper and implements to write or draw with. I don’t really believe that, but it is a great beginning.

At my house, we have lots of toys, too many toys: computers, video game systems, Legos, blocks, dolls, costumes, and more.

If given the choice, they will almost always pick some form of screen time. But, when told that screen time is not an option, they discover creative resources within themselves.

Books and CDs are sometimes popular, but most of the time, the kids are pulling out cardboard, paper, scissors, tape, string, glue, markers, etc. and making things.

Often, they make books. Comic books are particularly popular with the younger boys, my daughter likes to make activity books, and my eldest has started writing a chapter book. But cardboard is what they really love.

Not long ago, they turned three cardboard boxes into space ships. Of course, space ships are flown by astronauts who need space suits, so one child set out to make space suits out of plain white paper. The most interesting space ships fly to the moon or planets, so another child drew planets and moons and taped them up all over the house. The other children decorated the ships, cut them to fit their pilots, and made sure they were comfortable for passengers (small, stuffed animals).

After a day or three of flying their space ships to the celestial bodies, they tired of that game and the boxes were available for other uses. Before the boxes were ready for recycling, they became robots, helmets, masks, guns, wii controllers, laptops, tablets, phones, spy gear, and pieces of an invented board game before being cut apart to the point that the kids could no longer see possibilities in the remaining pieces.

Jonathan H. Liu wrote a column for GeekDad a couple of years ago called The 5 Best Toys of all Time featuring the classic toys: Stick, Box, String, Cardboard Tube, Dirt. At my house, Box is in a class by its own.

My husband and I know that we are simply not allowed to throw away a cardboard box until the kids have exhausted all its possibilities.
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Kate writes about creativity and story-telling as tools for making sense of the world at www.katearmsroberts.com.

Tender Hearts: The Gift of Emotional Sensitivity

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this:
A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive.
To him… a touch is a blow,
a sound is a noise,
a misfortune is a tragedy,
a joy is an ecstasy,
a friend is a lover,
a lover is a god,
and failure is death.
Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create – - – so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.
Pearl S. Buck

This quote from Pearl S. Buck is one of my favourite descriptions of the emotional sensitivity I experience in my life and that I witness in my kids.

My children astound me with their emotional responses.

• One son cried in his sleep for 6 months after a fish died in his classroom aquarium.
• One son fretted for days because characters in a picture book were cruel to another character.
• Small consequences for minor rule infractions lead to massive melt-downs and shame spirals.
• A drawing that doesn’t show what the artist intended gets torn up, and before resuming the project, the artist rages through the house slamming doors and knocking down furniture.
• Hugs are so intense that they knock the recipient down.
• The vagaries of playground friendships become epic betrayals and melodramatic reunions.
• A sunset stops us all in our paths as we gaze in silence together.
• A pine cone becomes a beloved friend.
• A favourite book is read and re-read and re-read; the cover falls off and we buy a new copy.
• We weep when Dumbledore and Charlotte and Eponine die.
• We laugh so hard we miss the next three jokes.
• We cry over lyrics and are stopped short by poetry.
• Music invades our bodies and forces us to dance.
• We love hard, falling fast and deep, breaking inconsolably, and recover to do it again.
• Our hearts break and rejoice with the pain and joys of others, friends and strangers alike.

We are emotional sensitivities walking this earth in physical bodies. Finely tuned receivers, we resonate with the frequencies of the world, amplifying sorrow and joy as they pass through us.

If we defend ourselves from the pain, we shut off our capacity for happiness. We must learn to accept that the price of being capable of feeling such joy is that we must also feel the deepest sorrows.

And what tools do we have to manage these extreme emotions?

To my children, I offer a willingness to feel to the depth of my being and the depth of theirs, to let it be acceptable to feel. I offer them my experience, compassion and empathy, a large collection of art supplies, music and drama lessons, and hugs.

Lots and lots of hugs.
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Kate writes about creativity and story-telling as tools for making sense of the world at www.katearmsroberts.com, where she has made available a companion piece: Emotional Intensity and Creativity.

Begin With a Single Step

New beginnings. 2013 is full of them for me: new classes I am teaching; new writing commitments; new trainings to lead more workshops; and a new business. And all of them stem from big visions I have.

And the trouble with a big vision is that it can be hard to keep hold of the goal during the thousand and one baby steps it takes to implement it.

How many gifted people see a complex problem and a solution and get stuck between the vision and the reality? My guess is many. I certainly see it every day with my children.

Big visions are nothing new to me. What is new this year is my approach. So far, this year, I have been taking some time every day to remind myself that the only way to achieve grand things is to take steps in the right direction every day.

I invite those of you with grand goals to join me: one step at a time. And if we keep walking, we’ll get somewhere eventually.

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Kate can usually be found writing about writing at www.katearmsroberts.com.

The Joy of Completing a Challenge

Today, I accompanied my eldest child and his class of gifted 4^th graders on a field trip to the TIFF Bell Lightbox. The Lightbox is the home of the Toronto International Film Festival. As part of their year-round programming, they offer opportunities for kids to learn how to make films. The gifted classes at my son’s school go for a day each year from 4^th grade to 8^th grade and get more advanced instruction each trip.

The day promised to be challenging, but I hoped it would be rewarding. My son loves visual storytelling, but struggles with group work. I knew that if he could find a spirit of collaboration, he would love the day – but, there was always the possibility of a complete disaster.

At the beginning of the day, the students got a crash course in storytelling and script formatting. They were then divided into groups of 5-6 students and told to write a 2-3 page screenplay for a story involving four kids their age sitting around a table.

My son struggles with rapid idea generation. He has an outrageous and vivid imagination, but is slow to get his first ideas. Somebody else at the table threw out an idea quickly that most of the group loved, but not my guy. We nearly had a melt-down, but with a combination of my coaching and generous suggestions from his group, the writing got underway. Once the group got going, the adults sat back and watched.

After writing for 45 minutes, the groups got up to read their scripts to each other. This served as a pitch session because after the readings, the students would vote on which script would be produced. Knowing the intensities of gifted kids, I worried about how the kids who didn’t have theirs chosen might react.

The leader had a good voting system: secret ballot and each person was to vote for two scripts. The kids had a sense that it was fair. It was nice that they got to vote for their own script even if they thought another script was better; they could feel good both about themselves and their classmates.

As expected, the writers of the winning script were thrilled. Screams and shouts and jumping up and down ensued.

The instructor let them enjoy a little celebration. But, not for long. There was work to be done.

Casting was by lottery, entered only by those who wanted to act. The rest of the class became the directors, assistant directors, sound engineers, camera operators, and slate, working in self-selected teams.

The instructor sent the actors out of the room to memorize their lines and gave each production team a crash course in their responsibilities. He led them through a rehearsal and then they filmed the movie. They had two cameras and two mic booms. The director team took as many takes as they needed to get a good shot. The assistant directors coordinated everybody. Someone slated the takes. They used wide shots and close-ups, and a special point of view shot for an effect called for in the script. The kids worked hard, learning quickly and needing less coaching as the afternoon went on.

Until, they all got tired, seemingly at once.

They had absorbed a huge amount of information, and concentrated hard all day. They could see the finish line. But, the actors started making mistakes and one of the camera operators got a little sloppy. The first three shots each needed 3-5 takes. The fourth and final shot took 11 takes.

As the final shot was reshot and reshot, the energy in the room flagged. The group responded to the line flubs and sloppy camera work with a collective slump.

With the authority of experience, the instructor stepped in, rallied the troops, gave the actors some direction, and got the shot.

The whoops and hollers when the team of student directors called”Cut” were wild. They did another take for luck, but everybody knew they had the footage they needed for the entire film.

They had done it.

As a group, they had gone from knowing nothing about making a film to having shot a film in less than a day.

The footage will be turned over to an editor at the Lightbox who will edit the film, add a title, music, and credits. Within a couple of weeks, the class will be able to watch their two-minute movie on a DVD in their classroom. In expect the joy and celebration of that viewing will be spectacular. Perhaps for some of them, one of the best gifts they receive this year.

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Kate can usually be found writing about writing at www.katearmsroberts.com.

Grappling With Gratitude

I have always has trouble with gratitude as an abstract concept, and with gratitude journals as a practice.

My intellectual overexcitabilities often manifest as a need for tight linguistic precision. The word gratitude means a feeling of being grateful. Being grateful means an appreciation of a kindness or a benefit received. Receipt of a kindness or a benefit implies a source or giver, an agency. And the word gift indicates that something is offered without expectation of return. If the definition includes the lack of expectation, the implication is that a giver has the choice to expect a return or not. And so, the word gratitude implies receipt of a gift from a conscious, decision-making entity.

I have no trouble with the idea of gratitude with regard to a kindness a person has done me, but I am not thankful for a beautiful sunset, no matter how much I may appreciate it. A sunset is a natural phenomenon. No one created that sunset. Nobody gave it to me. It just is.

But, a beautiful sunset is a thing to appreciate and value.

For anyone who is uncomfortable with gratitude journals as a practice, I offer an alternative from InterPlay. InterPlay is a bodywisdom practice that helps people integrate all the elements of their experience into one playful, messy whole through improvisational forms derived from the performance arts. It is a tremendously useful set of tools for highly sensitive people.

One of the 8 basic principles of InterPlay is “Notice the good stuff.” I have written about this principle several times on my own blog. The basic principle is very simple. Keep your awareness open for the good stuff and acknowledge it. Like the discipline of a gratitude journal, this is a tool for focusing on the positive things in your life.

In every moment, there are good and bad things. Focusing on the good doesn’t make the bad go away, but it does make it easier to take.

A gentle practice for noticing the good stuff is as follows. Take a deep breath and let it out on a sigh. Repeat. Shake out one hand. Shake out the other. Shake out a leg. Shake out the other leg. Give your whole body a shake, gentle or vigorous as feels good to you. Soften your focus so that you become aware of your peripheral vision. Enter the next activity of your life with the intention of looking for the good. When you see a good thing, take a deep breath to acknowledge and savor it. For a more powerful experience, acknowledge it aloud to another person.

One thing I like about the practice I just described is that it brings you into awareness of the good stuff in the moment. Unlike a gratitude journal entry written before bed, it is not a reflective practice. It is a practice in present awareness. I invite you to try it and see how it feels in your body.

For more information about InterPlay, I recommend reading the following and then looking for a class or playgroup near you: The Power of Play, Sneaky-Deep: Easing Into Truth and A Few InterPlay Forms.

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Kate can usually be found writing about writing at www.katearmsroberts.com.

Working With the Up-Side of Emotional Intensity

As Christine Fonseca pointed out on Monday, emotionally intense individuals experience extreme highs and lows. The intensity of these emotional reactions can cause difficulties.

The Challenges:

• Depression is a risk for children who experience too many lows without balance or awareness of the temporary nature of emotional responses.
• People who wear their hearts on their sleeves can be vulnerable to manipulation by others.
• Children who cry in school can become the targets of bullies.
• Emotional variability can make relationships challenging.

In addition, the extreme variation between high and low can lead to misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder.

The Up-Side:

I want to take a moment to reflect on the positive side of emotional intensity.  Seeing the challenges posed by my intense emotional reactions is not difficult. It is sometimes harder to see the benefits of emotional intensity.

The biggest advantage to being emotionally sensitive is that positive emotions are stronger. The good times simply are better than for less sensitive people.

The Tool Set:

Awareness of the balance between highs and lows is a valuable tool in learning to manage the variation. Emotionally sensitive individuals react strongly to both positive and negative triggers.

Every person takes pleasure in different things. Knowing our own positive triggers and the positive triggers of the people around us  gives us power. We can make choices that increase our own positive experiences.

For example, imagine a teenage girl who consistently responds positively to Celtic rock music. After a bad day at school, she might do better to listen to a Dropkick Murphys album rather than curling up with a novel or watching the tv show all the kids are talking about at school. But her best friend might be better off watching the tv show if she responds strongly to the interaction of the group. A boy who responds to the beauty of nature might benefit from a run in a well-kept park or conservation area and not a game of basketball, but the thrill of a competitive game might be just what another person needs.

Everybody benefits from knowing what makes them feel good and choosing to add more of those activities or experiences to their lives, the emotionally sensitive especially.

In addition to being able to use positive triggers to counter a challenging emotion in the moment, building up a store of memories of extreme joys can establish a base from which to remember that all emotion is transient. During the good moments of our lives, we don’t like to be reminded that the experience is temporary, but we need to remember exactly that in the rough patches. The more intensely we experience the bad times, the harder it is to remember the good times when we are sad or upset. Paying attention to the roller coaster of emotion helps us see the patterns, not just the experience of the moment.

Emotionally intense people can be overwhelmed by emotion. Positive emotion can be exhausting, but it is a very welcome antidote to the intensity of negative emotions. By acknowledging one’s own intensity and cultivating positive emotional experiences, individuals can lower the destructive power of intense negative emotions.

But, cultivating the positive triggers isn’t just a balm for pain. The emotionally sensitive experience happiness with a depth that is of value in and of itself.

If you are emotionally intense, I invite you to join me in seeking out your happiness triggers. The world will be a more wonderful place for it.

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Kate can usually be found writing about writing at www.katearmsroberts.com.

Getting Off to A Good Start

September’s theme here at An Intense Life is Surviving School 101.

My kids went back to school yesterday, so we’ve only had to survive one day so far. I am pleased to report that it went well. Part of what made it go well is the foundation that I started laying 4 months ago. As  a recap, our preparation consisted of a lot of assessments, meetings and telephone calls with teachers and administrators at the schools, and work at home over the summer addressing  my children’s specific challenges.

This week, we are setting routines and habits that I hope will see us through the school year with ease. For kids that learn fast and don’t like transitions, including at least two of mine, it is easier to make one big set of changes to our routines than many incremental changes.

The elements of the school routine that started yesterday are:

• Picking out clothes the night before.
• Lunches made the night before.
• Bath every night – no exceptions. It’s not about cleanliness, it is about routine.
• Alarms set for early enough in the morning to allow for small emergencies.
• Full-family, sit-down breakfast . My husband isn’t home for dinner most nights, so this is our daily family meal.
• Backpack check before leaving the house.
• After school, mass emptying of backpacks in the kitchen: the kids are responsible for emptying lunch bags and putting communications from teachers in a file box that I go through every evening.
• Snack when backpacks are empty.
• 15 minutes of handwriting practice every day. My three boys have handwriting delays, so we just build in practice as part of homework.
• 15 minutes of reading to me for each of the triplets. This is especially for the most dyslexic child and is in anticipation of reading homework. I want the routine established now so that we don’t have to change things much once the homework starts coming.

We need these habits.

Surviving school for the year will require intellectual enrichment beyond what the school can provide, management of emotional and physical overexcitabilities, coping with the frustrations of 2e kids, and time to let off steam. Without these basic habits, we will be stressed just getting through the easiest days. The hardest days would be impossible.

Personally, I would rather have more flexibility in our schedule, but I would not survive the school year.

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Kate can usually be found writing about writing at www.katearmsroberts.com.

The Summer of Back-to-School

I have been preparing to sending the kids back to school since May.

All four of my kids are going to new schools in the fall. Two are leaving a private Montessori school that has served them moderately well over the last two years. The other two were homeschooled last year.

In the fall, the triplets will start Senior Kindergarten at the local public school and my eldest will start at the congregated gifted program, which he is finally old enough for.

I am under no illusion that this will be an easy transition.

We are in a new catchment area, having moved since my eldest started homeschooling, so I am entering into the relationship with the local elementary school without all the baggage that we left at the old school.

However, we continue to live in an area where the School Board believes that the Provincial standards forbid acceleration of any kind, even within the gifted program. My two kids who have been homeschooling are both at least 3 years ahead in both mathematics and reading while also being unbelievably stubborn and unwilling or unable to work on things that do not challenge them intellectually. And, both of them act out frustrations in extremely dramatic ways.

Getting ready for school involves a lot of work with the kids on emotional control and following instructions. In addition, I have already been in conversation with new Special Education Resource Teachers and the School Board about how to work with these children. I will spend much of August writing letters to their new classroom teachers to help them get things off to a good start. Because, for both of these kids, if the first week doesn’t go well, the whole year will be hard to redeem.

The two kids who have been at the Montessori school have not demonstrated challenging behaviour in the classroom, and I am hopeful that they will adapt well to the new style. Because of the change in curriculum, our summer is including academic work in the new style to help them demonstrate what they know in a way that fits into the teacher’s expectations. 1/2 of the team is enthusiastic and 1/2 of the team is resisting doing any work. I am hoping that this resistance is not an indicator of how this kid will act with a non-Mom teacher. However, working with them in this new way, I have a hunch that this change in schools is going to reveal some of these kids’ asynchronies in ways that frustrate them.

Honestly, I am so worried about the academic fit for these kids that I haven’t given any thought to new schedules and routines. I expect I’ll start panicking about those elements in about two weeks.

In past years, it has taken me until Halloween to get into a groove with the rhythms of school. I have no reason to believe this year will be any different.