ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lea Stublarec
Lea Stublarec, MSW, has worked with children and families for more than fifty years. She has conducted research with Berkeley Planning Associates, the American Institutes of Research, and Stanford University. She is also a certified parent coach, with a focus on parents of gifted children. She and her husband live in Menlo Park, California, and feel very fortunate to have their gifted daughters, son-in-law, and granddaughters living close by.
MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lea Stublarec has been involved in child and family welfare for over 50 years, as a direct services provider, board member, school and community volunteer and a Court-Appointed Special Advocate.
As a PCI-Certified parent coach, she focused on collaborating with parents of gifted children. In addition, she has been involved in numerous research studies, including two projects at Stanford University, one focusing on the development of morals in children and one focused on homeless families.
As a Senior Research Associate at the American Institutes of Research, she conducted educational research. Finally, as a Senior Analyst at Berkeley Planning Associates, she completed a four year study of innovative treatment of families involved in child abuse and neglect, an evaluation of adolescent support services, and a study of effective health care for families. Her latest research was a qualitative study of mothers of successful adult gifted daughters.
The findings are presented in The Perfect Storm, which is Book One of Legacy: Mothers of Gifted Daughters Share their Wisdom. She is the mother of two adult gifted daughters, married to a wonderful guy, and lives in the San Francisco Bay area.
From My Experience
After raising my gifted daughters, I ventured into the professional world devoted to nurturing gifted children. This involved digging into the literature, attending conferences, and connecting informally with others in the field. But after a few months, it hit me—the voices of mothers like myself, who had raised gifted children–were not present in the gifted arena.
This realization reminded me of the Indian fable about the blind men and an elephant in which the men touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each feels a different part, but only that one part. When asked to describe what an elephant looks like, the one who felt the leg said the animal is like a pillar, the one who felt the ear described the elephant as being like a fan, and the one who felt the trunk said the elephant is like a rope. It’s a bit of a stretch but, to me, it seemed that many in the gifted field base their recommendations on how best to nurture giftedness on ‘the particular part of the elephant’ that they’ve experienced in their professional life (i.e., as an educator, academic, counselor, therapist, psychologist, or researcher).
In no way minimizing the value of their insights and appreciating the fact that we are all members of the same ‘tribe’—sharing a passion to nurture the needs of gifted–I believe it’s critically important to encourage and empower those with primary responsibility for gifted children to participate in this dialogue as well….and to support each other on our parenting journeys. Unlike professionals, parents, especially mothers, ‘feel the whole elephant’ (literally, many having carried the baby in utero) and care for the whole child day in and day out. And, unlike professionals in the field, they have a deep emotional, physiological/hormonal connection to the child via a relationship that lasts a lifetime. As Stephanie Tolan noted in her blog, From the Deep End:
‘Parents are the ones 24/7 on the front lines of trying to meet the needs of their children—not just educational needs, but social, psychological, emotional, spiritual, and physical’.
And given the unique needs of many gifted children, this is no small task!
I chose to focus my work on mothers of gifted daughters for a few reasons:
First, as mother of two gifted daughters (and with a gifted sister and amazing gifted mother!), having no brothers or sons, the lives of gifted females are what I’m most familiar with. So, adhering to the old adage, ‘write what you know’, I decided to collaborate with mothers (not fathers) of daughters (not sons).
Secondly, I felt intuitively drawn to sharing the wisdom I gained from my journey parenting daughters with mothers currently on a similar path—to support them in determining the most helpful approach to nurturing each of their unique offspring.
Finally, entering adulthood during the early 70’s, I was part of the second-wave of feminism, and, as a result, issues facing women trying to support self-actualized daughters in a culture which devalues both females and intelligence, has always been my passion.
To this end, I recently documented the key findings of my study of 43 mothers of successful adult gifted daughters. The first book, The Perfect Storm, of the trilogy, Legacy/Mothers of Gifted Daughters Share Their Wisdom, describes the challenges both the mothers and daughters faced (and overcame) on their paths to self-actualization. The two remaining books will present the various strategies and approaches these mothers discovered that proved helpful and the words of wisdom they shared with younger mothers currently raising gifted girls.