Byrdseed: A Great Resource for Smart Kids

A couple of months ago while at the SENG Conference in San Jose, I ran across a cool guy with a pretty amazing website. SENG stands for Supported the Emotional Needs of the Gifted and if you haven’t heard of it, I would recommend checking it out. Smart kids are twice as likely to have social and emotional problems and the folks at SENG are doing all they can to make sure smart kids get all of their needs met, not just the academic ones.

Ian Byrd is the founder of Byrdseed and is a former gifted teacher and software engineer. That combo makes for a pretty amazing gift of sharing information about smart kids in an easy-to-read format. He offers lesson plans for teachers, enrichment activities for parents and ideas about how to raise emotional intelligence.

One of my favorite posts is entitled, “Understanding High Energy Gifted Kids.” It is based on the following premise…

The article talks about the 5 OVEREXCITABILITIES that are found in smart kids. Those are:

intellectual – a deep passion to learn about specific topics
imaginational – possessing a rich imaginational world
sensory – having one or more heightened senses
emotional – an unusually large range of emotions
psychomotor – an excess of physical energy

The best part is the approach the article takes, which is to help kids burn off energy rather than requiring them to contain it. You can’t stop energy after all, you have to channel it. By using energy-releasing techniques at home (such as jumping on a mini trampoline before school) and at school (such as placing Therabands on chair legs) overexcited kids can get enough energy out to be successful in almost any situation.

Overall, I find Byrdseed to be a win/win for smart kids and those in their lives.

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