Celi Trépanier on the Benefits of Homeschooling Gifted Children

Celi Trepanier  00:00

We know that children need to learn to fail, they need to learn to overcome failure. But when our gifted children are sitting in the regular classroom day in and day out and it’s mind numbing for them, and so they check out they just disengage and their grades slip and the right solutions are not being applied. They feel failure every day.

Debbie Reber  00:26

Welcome to the Tilt Parenting Podcast, a podcast featuring interviews and conversations aimed at inspiring, informing and supporting parents raising differently wired kids. I’m your host Debbie Reber and today’s guest is educator, author and blogger Celi Trepanier, a teacher who has taught in both public and private schools. Celi became a passionate advocate for gifted children after tiring of her battles with schools and their misunderstandings of how to support gifted children. She’s the author of the book Educating Your Gifted Child: How One Public School Teacher Embraced Homeschooling, a parent group facilitator for the organization SENG: Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Gifted and keeps a blog at Crushing Tall Poppies. In our conversation. We talk about why many schools, even sometimes those designed specifically to cater to gifted children, aren’t able to fully support these unique learners. And Celi shares why she believes homeschooling gifted children is such a great option if it’s something that’s possible to do for your family, as well as gives us her advice for how to get started. And before we get into our conversation, I wanted to take a moment to give a shout out to Simone Davis, one of our sponsors for the Tilt Parenting podcast through our patreon campaign. Thank you so much for your support of what we’re doing. If you’d like to join Simone in supporting this podcast through Patreon, you can make a small monthly contribution that will go towards funding our production costs, please check out our Patreon page at patreon.com/tiltparenting. Thank you for considering and for being a part of our community. And now let’s get on with the show. Hi, Celi, thanks so much for being a guest on the show today.

Celi Trepanier  02:08

Hi, Debbie. I’m very excited to be here.

Debbie Reber  02:12

Well, I’ve been wanting to have this discussion for a while. Believe it or not, you’re actually the first guest I’ve had on the Tilt Podcast to talk about giftedness. And a lot of our community have children who are either gifted or twice exceptional. And I have so so many questions for you. Okay, I’m going to try to keep this to a reasonable length. But I am just excited, I know this conversation is going to be especially resonant for our community. So before we get into the nitty gritty, I would love it if you could tell us a bit about your background, you know, kind of who you are as a mother, I know that you are very personally connected to what we’re going to talk about today. And so if you could tell us a bit of your story, or what I like to call your personal why that would be great.

Celi Trepanier  02:58

Well, I’m the mom of three boys. The oldest two are about 11 and 13 years older than my youngest. And I am a former public school teacher. And as far as my personal why it honestly wasn’t until our third child that we fell into this gifted journey. Although my oldest two are gifted, they were just you know, they were different. All children are different. So when we started with our our youngest, we called him the most child because he compared to the other two, he you know, he talked the most he ran the most tea, you know, and it was the struggles we had with traditional school that got us on this you know, the family on the journey and me writing and me advocating for gifted kids.

Debbie Reber  03:53

Mm hmm. And so you are now homeschooling or you homeschooling all your children or…

Celi Trepanier  04:00

I did at various times for you know all three but more so my youngest.

Debbie Reber  04:07

Okay. And I would love also before we really get into it if you have a definition of giftedness just for the purposes of this episode. giftedness is one of those hot button issues, um, thing we talk a lot about on the Tilt Facebook page. And a lot of people have reached out to me and just said thank you for including giftedness in this differently wired community because so many people don’t recognize it as such, or you know, and then I’m sure you’re very familiar with all the kind of negative things that can go along with that label. So could you talk about that?

Celi Trepanier  04:44

Actually, there is no consensus among educational professionals and psychologists on what giftedness is, basically, you know, the first criteria we all think of is an IQ score. The cut off is 130, which, you know, begs the thought, what if they made 129, you know, and then there’s checklist it because it’s it’s a behavioral, we have to disengage our thinking of giftedness being a part of school or being, you know, a function of education, which is not it’s a, it’s a life condition. It’s just, you know, a different way of thinking. And so there’s behavior checklists, some of these behaviors you noticed, when your child is an infant, you know, the child speaks sooner, speaks in complete sentences. By age two, they learn to walk sooner. I had one child that learned to ride a two wheel bike at age three, which was part of his, you know, his giftedness. So there’s checklists, and I really wish people would disassociate academic achievement and success from what constitutes giftedness.

Debbie Reber  06:02

Yeah, I agree with you. And I’m, as you were talking about all that, I remember when Asher was really young, he’s 12. Now my son is 12. And he’s twice exceptional. But when he was really, really little, like he showed all of those kind of hallmarks, you know, speaking in complicated paragraphs when he was really little, and you know, that little Professor kind of thing that we hear about and absolutely, and I remember, one of my best friends is an educational psychologist, and she was the first one who said, Well, he is gifted, and I was like, I don’t like that word. And I, you know, and of course, now, I fully understand it. But you know, there is such a, I think it just kind of exists in society this like stigma or that it’s, even though I knew that something was different going on with my child, I didn’t want to use that, because I thought it was off putting to other people or, you know, it’s just kind of a very weighted heavy term.

Celi Trepanier  06:59

I agree. That’s exactly why my oldest two were never identified in school, or that I didn’t notice it. Because they didn’t have as many issues or struggles that many gifted children have. They had some but nothing that, you know, to the degree that my youngest did. So it wasn’t until they were adults. Oh, now I see. And that was simply because I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to even go there with you know that giftedness identification? Because it was because it’s rooted in school, and it’s rooted in competition.

Debbie Reber  07:39

Yeah, yeah. It brings up a lot of uncomfortable feelings for everybody. It can and that’s really I think what you’re saying is because of misunderstanding, people don’t really know what it is. Right? We worked with a parent coach, when Asher was very little, we’ve worked with many coaches over the years to survive our journey. But yes, the first person we worked with was this woman. Her name is Julie Ross. She’s out of New York. And she has a company called parenting horizons. She was amazing. She got us through some of those first few years. And I remember her saying that she’s never met a parent who called her excitedly to say, guess what my kids gifted. She’s like, if they do that, I know that their kids are not really gifted because no one is excited to find this news out. And that was such a reframe for me. And when she described that giftedness is actually a special need. And that really was eye opening and kind of helped me start looking at the situation differently.

Celi Trepanier  08:40

Yes, yes. I have that same example as if a parent is happy about their child being gifted, maybe they’re not.

Debbie Reber  08:51

Yeah, this is not something that you’re going to be celebrating about. Yeah. I mean, that’s not to say that it’s not fascinating and amazing. And there’s not really incredible things that come along with it, but it can be tricky. Okay, so let’s get into education. So I would love to know, and this is a lot about what your book is about. But in your opinion, why do you feel that so many schools are failing, gifted children know what’s going on?

Celi Trepanier  09:22

The main reason is misunderstanding. When I went through college to become a teacher, I remember sitting in, it was a discipline class. It was a class on discipline, and we spent one hour on what giftedness was, and I walked out of that class with my opinion of a gifted child sitting at their desk, hands folded, you know, hand just slapping up in the air answering all the questions, well behaved high achieving, and that’s the way most teachers are taught. I think it’s misunderstanding what giftedness is. It’s looking for the high achieving students, and not the one that’s staring out the window doodling. And with an F and spelling or, you know, a D in math.

Debbie Reber  10:11

Right. So, I’d like to know, when was that for you? And I mean, have you seen any change in the public education system in terms of teachers being better equipped to recognize the signs of giftedness?

Celi Trepanier  10:25

I want to believe that it’s getting better. But having lived in very many areas, different states, it goes School District, by school district can state by state, whether teachers or trained properly in addressing the needs of gifted children. So oh, I can’t say that. I’ve seen it get better, no.

Debbie Reber  10:49

That’s sad to hear. And we live in the Netherlands now. But we spent all of our time as Asher’s parents in the US in Seattle. We were in three schools in three years, which I know is not unusual for gifted kids. It’s not unusual for differently wired kids, two of them are private, and the public school was a full time, you know, accelerated learning gifted program, right? You know, I’m still involved, in the Facebook group, or, and I was just reading a conversation that they are considering kind of losing that all together. I’m just like, Oh, you’re going the wrong way. This is not what we write, you know, it was such a great program, in my opinion that they offered that and it was available, but budget cuts. And you know, there’s, again, misunderstanding at the highest level, I think.

Celi Trepanier  11:40

At the highest level, absolutely. It’s that misunderstanding that gifted kids are smart, they’ll figure it out on their own, they’re, you know, you can leave them alone, and they’ll Excel, let’s we don’t need to worry about them. So they don’t need a special program. They’re just fine on their own. And that’s so far from the truth. So gifted programs usually are the first things that are cut when budgets are tight.

Debbie Reber  12:02

Now I have a question for you: when one of Asher’s private schools was a school that was specifically for highly gifted children, you know, this may be similar to your story with your son and that you had one year went great. And then all of a sudden, the next year, things crashed and burned pretty quickly, that was our experience at this particular school. And Asher, also to be clear, is, you know, he also has ADHD and Asperger’s. So he has a lot of things going on, especially in this early elementary school years, we’re kind of figuring out how to best support him. But with this particular school, and the teacher that he was with, there was not a lot of even understanding of the concept of asynchronous development, which, of course, I became an expert on gifted kids, because I read everything there was to know. And that to me seemed like kind of the hallmark of what’s really going on. And I found myself having to explain this concept. I’m just curious, in your experience, is that unusual, even for programs that are supposed to be serving gifted children that they may not fully get what they’re dealing with?

Celi Trepanier  13:14

Yes, it is. Unfortunately, it is common. We had an experience just a couple of years ago, where we were living at the time, there was a gifted high school serving all the gifted kids in the area. And when we applied, they were of course, using standardized test scores as criterion. And my son being visual spatial, had about average writing ability. And she said, Well, he won’t be able to do well here because he wouldn’t be able to keep up. And I said, I thought you were a school for gifted kids. And she said, we serve gifted children, but we’re not a gifted school.

Debbie Reber  13:53

What does that mean? 

Celi Trepanier  13:55

That was my question. It means what, you know, we know it’s for high achieving most gifted programs are for high achieving, because we know they need those standardized test scores. Mm hmm. That’s the way our public school system is set up now. Because of, you know, the federal initiatives, they need those high standardized test scores for funding for recognition. 

Debbie Reber  14:22

Well, it seems to me too, that, you know, there’s different approaches to gifted education, there is accelerated learning, which, you know, is what our public school in Seattle was, which was basically working one to two grades ahead. Or there is a different approach to learning, a more creative approach or, you know, that encourages different types of learners to go deep in the ways that they’re wired to do so. What do you see is the most common approach to gifted education?

Celi Trepanier  14:55

Oh, by far it’s just acceleration. It’s a grade level or two. ahead. And sometimes it’s acceleration across the board. I’ve seen gifted programs where the child is pulled out, however many hours they take, it’s usually math and language arts, that they accelerate them one grade level ahead.

Debbie Reber  15:16

And that qualifies as a gifted education in that school district. Right, right. Right. Okay. So it sounds like a lot of people are getting this wrong. Yes. What is the cost of that? So, you know, for our kids who are gifted, who are, who have these really interesting ways of thinking and being and learning and making connections? What is the long term effect on kids whose giftedness isn’t being properly or appropriately addressed in school?

Celi Trepanier  15:48

What I’ve seen within my own family, with my own children, and with other families that I’m close to and have spoken with, it’s the child’s loss of self esteem and self confidence. We know that children need to learn to fail, they need to learn to overcome failure. But when our gifted children are sitting in the regular classroom day in and day out, and it’s mind numbing for them, and so they check out they just disengage and their grades slipping and the right solutions are not being applied. They feel failure every day. And then they lose self esteem without self esteem, or self confidence. How can they succeed at anything in life? And that’s, that’s long term, that’s, I’ve seen it I have my two oldest are 31 and 27. And I’ve seen what that lack of self esteem that was rooted in their failure in school does now in their adult life, wow.

Debbie Reber  16:54

In your book, and I don’t want to mess up the statistics. But I remember reading something about the school to prison pipeline, which we’re actually going to be talking about in another podcast episode, what I talk about with my other guest is that differently wired kids are disproportionately vulnerable to that school to prison pipeline, but I was surprised to read it specifically the gifted population is as well, right?

Celi Trepanier  17:20

I believe, and I don’t want to mess up the percentage either, but it’s 20%, I want to say of the prison population who would test at the gifted level, as opposed to two to 5% in the general population.

Debbie Reber  17:36

That is shocking to me. And so sad. 

Celi Trepanier  17:40

It is. I agree it is sad, especially when the general public would assume that a gifted child is on that clear and easy road to success in life.

Debbie Reber  17:53

And especially when gifted children, gifted humans have so much potential to share with the world, you know, the potential to be the real problem solvers and have creative solutions for everything that’s happening in our life and in the environment and the world.

Celi Trepanier  18:10

Absolutely, it’s a human loss.

Debbie Reber  18:15

I would love to talk about homeschooling. I was a reluctant homeschooler. And, you know, I was one of those parents who, it had been suggested to me more than once by friends who are educators. And I was like, Ah, I am not homeschooling this child. I like my life. I need my peace and quiet. I need things and we need to find a fit. And of course, you know, we never did and, and now I’m so grateful I get to homeschool. But can you start off this conversation by just telling us why in your opinion, homeschooling can be such a great fit for gifted kids.

Celi Trepanier  18:51

Homeschooling is completely customizable for your child. Depending on the homeschooling laws in your state, you have a great deal of freedom to address the learning needs of your child to change his learning environment. You know, even the scheduling and timing of when he learns in where he learns, you know, the freedom and opportunities are almost endless. And I you know, say again, depending on the homeschooling laws in your state, or where you live. So for gifted kids, this is perfect, you are meeting the needs of your child.

Debbie Reber  19:29

And just thinking of our experience with Asher. We started homeschooling when we moved here, he was not happy about the move, although he was okay about homeschooling. And of course now he loves it. And I’ve seen an incredible change in him because his anxiety disappeared over time. His confidence has skyrocketed perhaps too much for those of you who listen to the podcast, he’s a very confident human being good for him. And he you know, he’s just emotionally regulated. He’s thriving, what has been your experience and what have you seen in the in the community of parents who’ve made this shift in terms of the way that a child can kind of, I don’t know if recover is the right word, but, you know, undo some of the damage that can happen in a school setting when they’re not being supported.

Celi Trepanier  20:20

For the most part, generally, the gifted child who was struggling in an educational environment that was not appropriate for them, once they’re homeschooled, many of the issues, you know, almost overnight, the anxiety, the disengagement from learning. And then some are more, you know, takes a little bit longer to overcome. But by and large, homeschooling does change for the better, that struggles gifted children, you know, having the traditional schools.

Debbie Reber  20:54

What about for parents who are listening right now and who are in that space that I was in, you know, I think I knew in my gut that it was the right thing to do. But I was like, I can’t do this. I’m not I don’t know where to start. It’s overwhelming. You know, there’s a lot of roadblocks, some real, some more imagined. What advice do you have for parents who are trying to determine if this is actually a doable option for them.

Celi Trepanier  21:23

There’s several things I would say. One is, you know, don’t panic. Homeschooling is easier and more enjoyable than you might think. So you know, don’t panic, there’s not an immediate time constraint. You don’t need to mimic the classroom at home, and take the time to find your way, find what works for your child, what works for you. I guess, basically, don’t panic, you will learn to love homeschooling, and you will be thankful that you are. It’s like a lot of people say it’s a life choice. And it is a good one, a good life choice.

Debbie Reber  22:05

Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, I’m still surprised to hear myself say how much I love this. And you know that I think it’s a gift and an honor that I get to do this and spend this time with, with Asher. One of the things when I first started homeschooling that I really struggled with, and I was working with a curriculum advisor in the US who was an educator, knew Asher very well in his learning style, and she was kind of my faculty support, so to speak, but, you know, talk about not panicking, I was definitely like, a couple weeks in well, we’re not doing as much as I think we should be doing. And he’s not following me, you know, I was getting really caught up. And this isn’t looking the way I think it should, and should be like, tapi, relax, you have a lot of time, she’s like, there’s a lot of stuff that happens in a traditional school that we’re learning is not happening, you can do so much schooling in such a short period of time, and it’s not going to look the same as it does and that’s okay. And you know, so kind of having that voice of reason was really helped me and those first couple months, but there’s kind of like a re training that has to happen or reframing in a parent’s brain to kind of let go of these ideas that we have about what school is supposed to look like.

Celi Trepanier  23:28

Absolutely. Our educational system, the traditional educational system, the format, and the model is so ingrained in us. I know the first year I homeschooled it was my middle son, and I had set up his desk at the kitchen table and I had the dry erase board. I even had a pointer and he sat at the table. And I sat there with my pointer and you know, and it’s

Debbie Reber  23:52

I love that. Yeah. Awesome.

Celi Trepanier  23:55

How stupid was I? It quickly changed. It quickly changed.

Debbie Reber  24:02

That’s so funny. Well, I’ll just say that today. Perhaps a third of our schooling happened with Asher laying in my bed while I was sitting up but you know, you know and while listening to Hans Zimmer music, which is it, which is like companying Our life at the moment because he’s obsessed with Hans Zimmer. But we had a great day, you know, and I’m like, how cool is this? We’re super comfy cozy. And we’re talking about philosophy and listening to a symphony. Like that’s not a bad day.

Celi Trepanier  24:31

That’s exactly it. It’s about learning. But it is hard to get the books and the test and the checklist, you know, out of our mind, did we cover this chapter? We can’t go on to the next chapter until we’ve completed this chapter. So it’s hard. And then, you know, we feel like I teach him everything he needed to know. So yeah, there’s a learning curve for parents when they first homeschool. So having somebody that’s gone down that road it’s so helpful.

Debbie Reber  25:01

Yeah. Do you have thoughts about, you know what parents can do if they’re in that space? Like, I know, for me, personally, sometimes still, we’re in our fourth year, but someone can ask a question. And I, you know, a question about, well, what are you gonna do about this? Or what about that? And like, Oh, crap, am I making a mistake here? Yeah. Does he, you know, does he need this? This? You know, so, I guess it is, as you said, it’s so ingrained in us and it is just this constant like, reminding Nope, doesn’t have to look that way. But do you have any advice on how to be that kind of person in a way that doesn’t have to create new panic in your world?

Celi Trepanier  25:44

Um, I wouldn’t know what to answer that person. But I do know what I always fell back on when I would panic was that I knew of unschoolers you know, the truest sense of an unschool? Er, where there were no books, there were no, there was no schedule, there were no tests, got into college and did well. And that was like, Okay, I know this is possible. So if my child didn’t finish chapter five, by the second month of school, we’re not going to fail.

Debbie Reber  26:16

Yeah, those success stories kind of keep them in the back of your mind. Right. Let me ask you that, then that was one of my questions. If you could tell us a little bit about the big picture view. What does it look like for parents who are homeschooling and you know, us, everyone else is starting to think about universities or like here in the Netherlands year, it’s very much of a tracked educational system. So by middle school, you kind of know what path you’re on. So what does it look like for a parent who’s homeschooling a gifted kids? Do you feel that they need to go back and spend time in school before going on to university? Do you think that they can seamlessly transition from homeschooling to university? Like, what are your thoughts on that?

Celi Trepanier  27:01

Based on having three different children, two that have graduated from college, I’ve learned to accept that traditional schooling path K through 12, you know, then four years of high school immediately followed by four years of college. It’s just one way of many, we’ve audited college classes, I’ve had one start college at 15. One took a gap year, show, it’s different for each child. And do they need to go and spend time in a classroom after homeschooling to be prepared to go to college? I don’t think so if they’re going to college prepared and ready and excited, I think the desire to learn, we’ll overcome any issues that we feel that you know, they need to learn to sit in a classroom and relearn classroom behavior, I think the desire to learn will will, you know, overcome that. But if that’s still an issue, maybe with the parent who’s worried look into auditing college classes.

Debbie Reber  28:02

Yep, that’s great. And I like what you said about motivation. I mean, it’s amazing how that self motivation, it just really starts to develop. And if they are feeling confident and secure about who they are, and what kind of learners they are, then they’re not going to be starting university with that kind of baggage, which is going to make them clear on how to get what they want, and how to kind of be successful. So how do you figure I’m just curious, how, how did you figure all of this out? That for me, was one of my biggest challenges? Or I don’t know if it actually was the biggest challenge, but it was the thing I was most stressed about, you know, how do I figure out what to do? How do I figure out what they need? You know, where do you start? So do you have any, I don’t know, maybe one or two best tips for where parents can kind of feel supported and not be overwhelmed by not knowing what to do?

Celi Trepanier  28:59

The first thing I would do as a parent is to join online, our in-person homeschooling and gifted support groups, and talk to other parents to get firsthand advice and support. That would be the first thing that’s what helped me when I was, you know, when I thought we were the only ones in the world that were going through this. And I found an online gifted parenting support group. So that’s probably the main thing I would do. And then second, would be then to go ahead and just read widely on giftedness on homeschooling. If you’re choosing to go down that path, but to read because the stories and information you find on giftedness differs depending on the person writing it in their perspective and you know where their experience lies. So I would read widely.

Debbie Reber  29:56

Well, speaking of reading, I read your book over the weekend, Educating Your Gifted Child: How One Public School Teacher Embraced Homeschooling, which I absolutely loved. I flew through it. And I was like, yes, yes, yes, yes, I just totally was into it. So can you tell us a little bit about your book.

Celi Trepanier  30:17

My book was written from the perspective that I went down our journey with my three gifted sons, overcoming these struggles, learning the hard way, learning from mistakes, learning from success. And I wrote the book with this is what I would have wanted to have before I started the journey. So it’s a blueprint. Do you have a gifted child? What do you do now? Mainly with their education? So it’s, it’s definitely a, I’ve been there, done that. This is what I learned. So you don’t have to go through those mistakes.

Debbie Reber  30:52

Yeah, I mean, I think it’s an ideal resource, especially for families who are early on in the journey and just kind of grappling with these issues. But again, I’m much further down the road, and I still got a lot of benefit from it. And even that sense of, you know, just can’t really ever hear too many times like that what you’re experiencing isn’t an aberration. So just that sense of camaraderie and connection. Yes, someone else’s walked down. This path is so comforting. Right. Right. So do you have any, you mentioned, online communities? Could you share any of your favorite resources for parents homeschooling gifted kids?

Celi Trepanier  31:32

Yes, Gifted Homeschoolers Forum has an online community. They have a website with resources for parents. They have a Facebook page, and you know, a series of books that’s my book was published through GHF Press. Gifted Homeschoolers Forum has resources, Hoagies Gifted Education Page has a ton of resources. I would also go to SENG: Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Gifted. Their website has a lot of information. And the last one is Davidson gifted issues discussion forum. Davidson has the private school I believe in New Mexico or Arizona for Yeah, Reno, Nevada. Yeah, for profoundly gifted children, but their online forum for parents is a very good thing. Any issues or questions you have can be answered on there.

Debbie Reber  32:28

For listeners, I’ll include links to all of these in the show notes. These are all resources I also highly recommend. The Gifted homeschoolers forum actually is how I got connected with Celi and Asher does online learning through them. And I just think it’s a fantastic resource. So all of the ones that you mentioned are great. So I will include all of those. And before we say goodbye, how can parents find you online and learn more about what you do and how to get in touch with you?

Celi Trepanier  32:56

My website is crushingtallpoppies.com. So all my writing is on there. I also have a Facebook page Crushing Tall Poppies, when they can connect there.

Debbie Reber  33:09

Perfect. Well, Celi, I want to thank you so much for sharing all of this. We got through a lot. I’m pretty impressed in a not too long period of time. So thank you for letting me pick your brain and sharing this great insight. I know this episode is going to be of service to so many families in our community. So thanks again.

Celi Trepanier  33:29

Well, thank you for inviting me. I enjoyed it.

Debbie Reber  33:34

You’ve been listening to the Tilt Parenting podcast. For the show notes for this episode, including links to Celi’s website, her book, and the rest of the resources we discussed. Visit the show notes page at tiltparenting.com/session50. If you like what you heard on today’s episode, and you haven’t already done so please consider subscribing to our podcasts on iTunes or leaving a rating or review or both. All of these things help our podcasts get more visibility. And lastly, if you’re not already signed up for our newsletter, I’d love for you to join our Tilt Parenting online community. I send out short weekly updates with links to new content on the website, articles and resources just for you. Thanks again for listening. For more information on to parenting visit www.tiltparenting.com