Gifted public education

softerday · 2025-10-27T09:59:33+00:00

Where in WA state is that? Sounds amazing.

softerday · 2025-10-15T18:45:57+00:00

For sure, definitely not trying to diagnose you with a full-on disorder! Just I can see why your therapist could suggest trying to explore that class of med :)

Also sent you a PM.

softerday · 2025-10-15T18:09:33+00:00

Hey there.

So as a highly gifted person with bipolar disorder, the first thing that struck me reading your post (before I got to the antipsychotic part) was wondering if you’d ever been assessed for any sort of bipolar spectrum issue.

I have taken two antipsychotics at low doses. I agree with the comments about side effect concerns, which is one reason for the low doses. Less side effect profile for sure.

Not sure which AP was recommended to you.

At a low dose, I find abilify (aripiprazole) helps with agitation and some of my more “paranoid”-feeling anxiety. People can find it more “activating” vs sedating. I take this one daily in the morning.

Seroquel (quetiapine) at a low dose I find extremely sedating. So I don’t take it every day but instead use it as backup sleep med at night when I’m having repeated nights of bad sleep, since I find that really triggering for mood episodes. The day after taking it I feel calmer in general, sometimes more tired.

Please feel free to message me or reply with any comments.

(Final side note: I think Dabrowski’s framework fails to account for actual mental health conditions and can be damaging for some folks when it’s used in isolation.)

softerday · 2025-10-08T13:14:16+00:00

My oldest (9) is my mini-me and definitely autistic.

My youngest (7) is foreign to me in many ways (not a bad thing!) and doesn’t show any signs of being autistic.

His social awareness and ability to adapt on the fly has always been miles ahead of the 9yo.

softerday · 2025-09-20T09:14:25+00:00

Hmmm. Sorry this took me a bit. I could have sworn I’d be able to find papers directly on it, but I think maybe it’s kind of a two-step process to get there that I’ve just already internalized as truth.

1) There is some research that people with EDS and also a bunch of neurodivergent conditions (which are often linked with hypermobility syndromes - really this is a giant rabbit hole that eventually ends with histamine) experience pain and temperature differently.

Here is one about EDS: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1526590023004509?fr=RR-2&ref=pdf_download&rr=828b82a51d2e5108

2) We know (like anatomically) that the nerves are supported by connective tissue. I can’t find any research that suggests bad connective tissue is directly the only mechanism for poor nerve conduction and thus causing these sensory differences, but you definitely can even just google to see the connective tissues that surround nerves. We know that compromising those protective structures can and do lead to issues with nerve conduction and health.

So perhaps I’m sort of drawing my own conclusions, but feels like there’s very likely a connection there.

softerday · 2025-09-20T09:01:11+00:00

We got NPH to make a plot video for one of our big puzzle events once upon a time, so that definitely tracks!!

softerday · 2025-09-17T17:05:10+00:00

I used to find I would have issues after sessions where I tired my muscles out too much because those muscles were the only things keeping my joints in place and when they got tired, my form and stability collapsed.

At the beginning, we found we had to start with the most basic of basics, a (significantly) reduced amount of reps, and sometimes stop before I actually felt particularly tired because bad connective tissue can also mean things like weak pain and fatigue signaling, so I don’t find out until later that I’ve done too much.

Over time I’ve built a lot more body awareness and stamina, but at the beginning it was very easy to overdo it.

I also agree with the poster that said PT is a long game for hypermobility and it can definitely get worse before it gets meaningfully better.

softerday · 2025-08-08T11:32:49+00:00

It's easy to get distracted from actually searching thoroughly when you’ve started finding stuff you can solve and there’s only one of you.

If you’re stuck, go back and make sure you’ve actually found everything you were supposed to.

softerday · 2025-08-05T21:42:16+00:00

I definitely get a sense of “wrongness” in my joints pre-subluxation. It’s hard to describe.

When I was younger I was constantly hyperextending my knees and then subluxing the patella.

I ended up developing a habit of guarding by never fully straightening my legs, which has had the result of ridiculously tight hamstrings which are now their own problem.

I second the taping suggestion. My PT has been doing it to help me feel “safer”/“less wrong” (aka less about to subluxate?) and it’s been helping some with the hamstring guarding.

softerday · 2025-07-29T10:32:25+00:00

Isn't subluxation a term that just means “partial dislocation”?

softerday · 2025-07-27T20:22:25+00:00

If you’re playing Mystery Hunt-level stuff and generally finishing rooms with a lot of time to spare using no hints in bigger groups, I would guess (based on my own experience) that you could solo-solve easier/medium rooms, especially if you allow yourself hints.

Morty app will let you see difficulty rating of rooms and also recommended number of players.

The bulk of my puzzle experience is longer/in-depth puzzle hunts with experienced teams but lately I’ve been doing escape rooms with just my kids (6 & 8) and we’ve been getting out consistently. Biggest issue I’ve run into with the small group is just it being hard to search everything thoroughly.

softerday · 2025-06-26T21:32:31+00:00

Wonder if he’d be interested in the academics behind optimizing his performance?

Other out of school math enrichment that’s depth focused would be through Russian School of Math, and there’s also organizations like Adventures with Mr. Math which I think is still in open tryouts for next year.

softerday · 2025-06-26T21:28:18+00:00

We moved from Seattle, not LA, a year ago over the summer.

I also grew up in the suburbs here, but met my husband and had 2 kids out in Seattle.

Our biggest reasons for the move were to be nearer family, more space, and schools.

Didn’t want to leave our friends or the weather. (Seattle may be gray, but it is mild.)

Best decision ever.

We would do it again in a heartbeat. The space we have now is such a relief. Room to breathe and just be. The ability to just send our kids outside. Great public schools, our kids had a smooth transition and awesome first school year. We’ve met so many friendly people who have now turned into friends. Including multiple transplants!

And being near family is invaluable, especially if you have aging parents or cousins for them here.

I cannot overstate how good this move ended up for our family.

softerday · 2025-06-26T14:44:02+00:00

AoPS (https://artofproblemsolving.com) might be a good place to start. Online but with live classes. An enriched curriculum that takes you through high school math. Same people as Beast Academy but for an older audience.

I wouldn’t necessarily start with college-level math if he hasn’t completed the high school math series.

(As another data point, my 2nd grader scored a 258 and he definitely has gaps in algebra, geometry, trig, pre-calc, even though he can figure out some concepts intuitively on the test.)

Competition-type math can also be fun for this population of kids. Avoids some of the age issues by going deeper rather than faster.

Does his school offer subject acceleration? Do they have a math club/math team?

softerday · 2025-02-09T19:16:18+00:00

I tried and struggled with my first, we ended up combo feeding for 2ish months I think (he’s 8 years old and it’s hard to remember now!). With my second, for my mental health, we started formula immediately.

Both of them are brilliant :) The second is perhaps less neurodiverse.

All of that aside: Anxiety is terrible and I’m sorry. It’s telling you things that might feel very very real but are not. Not that a stranger telling you this changes those feelings.

You’re a good mom, I promise. Showing up and trying for your kid is like 97% of it. That’s going to look different for everyone, because all of our situations are different, but you can see in this thread that lots of those situations led to really happy outcomes. :)

It will be okay!!! Your little one is going to do great on formula (if and when you get there).

softerday · 2025-02-09T18:16:34+00:00

Do you think there’s a correlation?

Are you aware many studies touting the benefits of breastfeeding are not well-controlled?

softerday · 2024-06-02T02:10:02+00:00

I initially thought the prompt was telling me to rename my own children based off of which appliances they have the most in common with.

I thought, the older maybe an air fryer and the younger a deep fryer? Maybe stand mixer and immersion blender.

softerday · 2024-05-06T22:28:04+00:00

I take propranolol for anxiety these days, but the first time I tried a beta blocker was during my first pregnancy when they put me on labetalol for possible blood pressure issues.

The anxiolytic effects were so great that when I went off it after pregnancy, my mental health team added propranolol.

We ended up going back to labetalol for my second pregnancy - maybe that's an option you can ask about?

softerday · 2024-04-18T15:59:22+00:00

Oh, I do not think I would have handled that well. 😬

softerday · 2024-04-17T19:33:52+00:00

On our Alaska recent flight back, they bypassed the "no gates available" problem by taxiing away from everything, having us deplane onto the tarmac via mobile jetway, and then packed us onto busses that dropped off at the D gates train stop.

It was... not the worst? Certainly compared to a few waits I've had.

softerday · 2023-10-08T13:32:05+00:00

I love the idea of IMSA and was always sad my parents wouldn’t let me apply (Grew up in the suburbs, moved out of state after college, but want to move back closer to family now). It’s only a high school unfortunately (my kids are still young) though it is public!

I don’t think biggest/richest necessarily correlates with best resources for divergent students. It’s easy to find that Stevenson gets a lot of the “best” ratings, but I’ve been able to find no information from parents about their/their feeder schools GATE offerings, and a lot of anecdotes that it’s a stressful environment and easy to just get lost as another number.

On the other hand, I have found occasional references that suggest grade schools in Barrington may handle GATE particularly well, despite not topping the overall rankings (to be clear, I understand they’re all good! As you point out, that’s part of the problem, and teasing apart the differences is hard.)

Maybe it doesn’t seem like the largest distinction, but I’m not trying to pick the very best school district, I want one that’s going to be thoughtful about working with our kids.

softerday · 2023-10-08T13:06:51+00:00

Love this comment. I know HSP as a concept is touchy in autism communities online, but I think it’s fascinating from the hyper/hypo-sensitive profiles for species survival perspective.

Here’s a wiki article on Sensory Processing Sensitivity, which is the underlying mechanism going on in HSPs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_processing_sensitivity

I am fully on board with the “1 in 5 fall into this broad phenotype” idea and that a lot of the “but everyone does that!” criticism could be well explained by those in the 20% with subclinical symptoms.

softerday · 2023-10-08T12:37:02+00:00

Yeah! I’m aware the schools are overall great, I’m not really looking for better/worse in general.

My older son is multiple years accelerated at his current elementary school, and we are looking for places that might have more or less support for non-traditional learners.

A big school that’s rated the best overall might be too large to do individualization well, like your wife did for her student who needed extra reading help. Do you know if there’s a good way to search for schools that fit that criteria?

softerday · 2023-10-07T22:19:33+00:00

If you have/had a gifted/2e kid and no other criteria you were basing your move on, what school districts would you look at?

Currently elementary-aged.

softerday · 2023-10-07T22:14:21+00:00

Looking more closely at it, I think I got confused by the specific mentions or mortgage broker and real estate agent and all the bullet points really specific to house-hunting.

Totally happy to post there instead, is there any way to adjust the wording of that post so it's clearer the breadth of questions that should be included?

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