Session1: Parents as Partners - Supporting the Emotional Needs of Your Gifted "Super-Feeler"

Gifted children have intense and unique ways of experiencing, processing, and reacting to emotions. Their clever, intuitive, and reflective minds can experience great joy and connection, but also great challenge, emotional pain and isolation. There is intensity in all aspects of how gifted children engage in the world and their profound capacity for emotions can often lead to worries, difficulties with transitions, and increased risk of struggle and mental health challenges. 

This workshop will allow for a greater understanding of the emotional overexcitabilities of the gifted “super-feeler” and provide practical skills and emotion-focused techniques that will empower parents to address the unique emotional needs of their gifted child. Parents will also be supported in their journey of parenting a gifted child and given the opportunity to share and learn from each other.

Alison Bell is a Registered Clinical Counsellor and the Clinical Director at Alison Bell and Associates Counselling Group in Surrey, BC. She has been providing counselling services for most of the last 2 decades and has had the pleasure of working with many children, adolescents, families, couples and groups. Supporting gifted children and their families has always been a much loved and important focus of her clinical work. Alison regularly provides consultation and workshops for parents, community agencies and school boards. She is a trainer in the Emotion-Focused Family Therapy and a board member of the International Institute for Emotion-Focused Family Therapy. Alison is currently involved in research and academic activities that support school staff and parents to be in the best position to navigate the emotions and coping need of gifted children.