Building Resilience in Times of Crisis Through Journaling

Emotions are heightened with everything happening in the world right now. For our gifted children, the impact of intense emotions worldwide may be triggering their intensities even more. Although this can mean increased behavioral challenges and poor emotional regulation, now can be a great time to build stronger coping skills and develop resilience. One of …

Understanding Intensity

I frequently get questions about emotional intensity and what I mean by the phrase. No explanation can be complete without starting with one of my favorite quotes on the matter: 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 …

5 Tips to Set – and Achieve – Goals

Goal-setting, or planning, was a habit instilled in me from a very young age. My grandmother believed that you must "plan ahead or go behind." It is that phrase that guided me throughout my schooling and enabled me to achieve many things. Goal setting doesn't just work with adults, however. Gifted children from elementary school …

Teaching Empathy and Embracing Intensity

It's been an amazing week! On July 1, 2019, my book The Caring Child officially released. I am so excited to get this book out to readers. It is all about nurturing empathy and emotional intelligence in children. Although not exclusively about gifted children, the recommendations and strategies would work well with our intense kids. …

Living a Life Without Meaning: 5 tips to help your children work through existential depression and discover their passions and purpose

Today is the last part of my series on turning emotional intensity into a superpower. Together we've looked at the extreme emotions associated with emotional intensity, intense empathy, and the mind-body connection. To finish up the series, I want to talk about existential depression and self-actualization. Existential Depression Self-actualization is one of the more sparsely …

Beaten Up By Your Emotions: 5 tips to help children manage the somatic aspects of emotional intensity

Time for the next installment in my four-part series, Emotional Intensity is My Superpower. The previous two articles looked at extreme emotions and extreme empathy and offered tips to help your gifted children reframe these attributes of emotional intensity into a strength. This week I want to tackle the somatic aspects of emotional intensity – …

Turn Emotional Intensity Into Your Superpower, Part 2: 5 Tips to Teach Your Children How To Harness the Power of Their Empathy

Last week I started a conversation about emotional intensity being a superpower. I started with a look at extreme emotions. Today, I want to continue the conversation by looking at another aspect of emotional intensity – extreme empathy. Extreme empathy is a typical characteristic of the social-emotional development of gifted youth (Hébert, 2011). Gifted youth …

Turn Emotional Intensity Into Your Superpower: 5 Tips To Teach Your Children How To Harness the Power of Their Strong Emotions

Emotional intensity is a superpower? Yes! One of the best. But you need to learn how to harness the strengths that lie in emotional intensity first. Over the next four weeks, I am exploring the power of emotions and offering tips you can use to help your gifted children activate their natural superpower. But what …

Monday Motivation: Resilience

Happy Monday Everyone! Today's Monday Motivation is about resilience. Defined as the ability to bounce back after a set back, resilience is an ever-increasingly important quality as life becomes more and more complex. Today's quote from Carl Jung speaks to your ability to choose your thoughts and actions, even if you can't choose what life …

Monday Motivation: Redefine Stress