Lisa is the mother of 3 gifted children and lives outside of San Francisco.

There is a song on my son’s iPod that has over 500 plays. 500 plays in 3 months, no other song comes close. He listened to this song while he was at boarding school in New Hampshire. He was depressed.

Made a wrong turn once or twice
Dug my way out, blood and fire
Bad decisions, that’s alright
Welcome to my silly life
. . .
You’re so mean when you talk
About yourself. You were wrong.
Change the voices in your head
Make them like you instead.
–P!nk “Perfect”

When my son came home from boarding school, he told me very little about his depression. He did, however, tell me how many times he played P!nk’s song. From that moment on, I followed his musical tastes closely.

We brought him home from boarding school, and his depression continued. He enrolled at a school in San Francisco halfway through the year. I picked him up from school and drove him home every day. Most days we sat in silence. When he refused to share his day with me, I would ask him to play me a song from his iPod.

‘Cause you can’t jump the track, we’re like cars on a cable
And life’s like an hourglass, glued to the table
No one can find the rewind button, girl.
So cradle your head in your hands
And breathe… just breathe
–Anna Nalick “Breathe (2am)”

He was working through his problems, and he shared this process with me every day at 3:00pm.

Hey, don’t write yourself off yet
It’s only in your head you feel left out or looked down on
Just do your best, do everything you can
And don’t you worry what the bitter hearts are gonna say

It just takes some time, little girl you’re in the middle of the ride.
Everything (everything) will be just fine, everything (everything) will be alright (alright).
–Jimmy Eat World “The Middle”

Sometimes it felt like he was hitting me over the head.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger
Stand a little taller
Doesn’t mean I’m lonely when I’m alone.
–Kelly Clarkson “Stronger”

This must all sound so contrived. I don’t think I would believe it if I didn’t live it. The funny thing is that I was never good at finding patterns. That was my son’s strength. I take most things at face value. It wasn’t until I became aware of my son’s pain and his accompanying silence that I began to pay attention to what was happening in the car.

It all makes perfect sense now. He has been doing this type of thing for years.

My son collects inspirational quotes and posts his favorites on his Facebook “About” section. “Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.” Or “I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.”

He searches for writings that move him, like “Acknowledgement: A Meditation” by Kenneth Sawyer and Anis Mojgani’s “Here Am It.” He made me watch countless TEDTalks. His favorite: Jan McGonigal’s “The game that can give you 10 extra years of life.”

In a week, I can stop looking for clues; my son is ready to talk. He is going to participate in a student production in which he and 10 other high school sophomores perform a series of scenes and monologues they have written about their lives. He will be writing about the last year. I’m more than a little nervous. Somehow, the expression of pain is easier to stomach when accompanied by a guitar.

I no longer pick up my son at school. He likes the independence of riding BART and the bus. Instead, I ask him to make me CD’s with his favorite songs. When I do find myself alone with him in the car, I ask him to play his iPod. I take great comfort in listening to his latest favorite.

Isn’t it time you got over
How fragile you are
We’re all waiting
Waiting on your supernova
Cause that’s who you are
And you’ve only begun to shine
–Anna Nalick “Shine”

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I love . Whenever I need a break from my day-to-day routine, I watch a TEDTalk and lose myself in the brilliance of people and their ideas.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with TEDTalks, let me give you a brief overview of TED. TED is a private, nonprofit organization that was founded in 1984, with the objective of hosting an annual conference on Technology, Entertainment, and Design—hence the acronym, TED.

Since then, TED has grown; it now hosts global conferences and events throughout the year and has expanded its scope to include leaders from various fields and disciplines, such as medicine, education, economics, anthropology, and music. At these conferences, notable speakers like Jane Goodall, Bill Gates, and Nobel Prize winners confront audiences with issues, ideas, and phenomena that seek to inspire passion and curiosity.

TED’s goal is simple: To spread ideas. According to its mission statement, “We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives, and ultimately, the world. So we’re building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other.” Thus, TED decided to release and post its “talks” online, making them free and accessible to our global community of learners. Since launching its website in 2007, TED has posted 1,356 videos online, which have been viewed almost 1 billion times worldwide.

With so many talks readily available, my efforts of selecting only five videos proved to be more difficult than I had anticipated. But for your viewing pleasure, here are my top five most powerful, informative, and stimulating TEDTalks for parents of gifted children. Enjoy!

5.
In her discussion, writer Susan Cain speaks about introversion and questions why it is undervalued in our society. She calls for a celebration of introverted-ness and offers three suggestions for changing the ways we view introversion.

Favorite quote: “There’s zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.”

4.
Professor of education Sugata Mitra describes his global “Hole in the Wall” experiments, where children are given access to computers and the Internet. Through these experiments, Mitra illustrates how, when given the resources, groups of children learn from each other and become “self-organizing systems.”

Favorite quote: “Children will learn to do what they want to learn to do.”

3.
In this inspirational video, then twelve-year-old child prodigy Adora Svitak asks her adult audience to reexamine the ways they view children as “irrational” and “irresponsible” beings. Rather, children should be acknowledged and valued for their abilities to imagine the possibilities of tomorrow.

Favorite quote: “Learning between grown-ups and kids should be reciprocal. The reality, unfortunately, is a little different, and it has a lot to do with trust, or a lack of it.”

2.
In this 20-minute talk, Temple Grandin demonstrates how autistic minds process information and urges us to nurture these varied ways of thinking as resources in our twice-exceptional youth.

Favorite quote: “Now the thing is, the world is going to need all of the different kinds of minds to work together. We’ve got to work on developing all these different kinds of minds.”

1.

In this comical but informative discussion, Ken Robinson examines our education system in relation to creativity. Like Adora Svitak, he stresses that children have amazing capabilities and “capacities for innovation.” However, Robinson argues that creativity is being squandered in our classrooms, where academic abilities are placed at a higher premium than other types of intelligences.

Favorite quote: “My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.”

Do you have a favorite TEDTalk? Share your favorite in the comment section below!

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