Biography
My name is Lillian Skinner. I am a Researcher, Writer, Advocate, Coach and Consultant for Gifted Neurodivergents.
I am also the Principal of a company known as Gifted ND. (WWW.GiftedND.com).
I went through the school system as a very quiet, middle of the road, student. I was frustrated how differently my brain worked from the way the curriculum was taught. I was frustrated by the lack of depth the teachers went to. In my first career I went into technology and it was there I learned how to thrive.
I realized I liked fields that were new and emerging. Fields where I could grow, create, and learn self directed. In the first three years after college graduation I had already accumulated 12 major certifications. Certifications like the MCSE, which required 7 tests to obtain. Soon I was teaching others how to pass those certifications. At the same time I was being hired to start whole new IT divisions for companies, repeatedly. I realized I worked best in fields that had no rules or bounds. I worked best when a million hats had to be worn. I found that I am natural born creator who could see what was coming next. Meanwhile my children were going through the school systems much like I did. They were frustrated, bored and exhausted. My oldest and youngest had strengths like mine but my middle child was strongest in MATH. It is because of this minor detail our whole lives pivoted.
When each of my children was in elementary school we took them to be tested for learning disabilities and giftedness. My oldest and youngest showed up as bright and ADHD. But my middle child showed up as ADHD, ASD and at 18th grade (graduate school level) comprehension in Math at 9 years old. Her school said she would have to do what her classmates did. In fact every school I went to for her did. I did the only thing I could think to do for her, I pulled her out of the system.
She unschooled for a year, learning on her own at whatever she felt like learning, while I tried to figure out what to do between working and parenting. In that one year of unschooling she went up four grades in her studies. It was then I realized that our learning disability wasn't that we couldn't learn it was actually that we were wired to learn on our own, without out even being taught. This is what special interests are, our natural learning style. Watching her unfettered learning I realized our schooling method restricted our fast, highly absorbing and easily connecting brains. I took my other two kids to be tested again, by a different set of tests, and it turned out the previous test was unable to test their giftedness, it was so high. I would find out later how flawed those tests really are. But that story is for another time. For now let me just say sensitivity equals giftedness.
I pulled all my kids out of school and put them into their strengths and suddenly, just like I had in my career, they were thriving. They were speeding through grades. I dove into researching neurodivergence, giftedness and learning and I found myself seeing connections that only those just like us could see. We are not disabled because of our neurodivergence, we are actually highly gifted. Our sensitivity is directly related to our giftedness. Our school systems destroy our desire to learn by making us work against our sensitivities. I realized our systems are set up to make some winners and some losers and because we are the minority we are the educational losers of our system. But once you take us outside of the system we are the winners. I realized that we needed to find a way to both grow within the system and grow without it, if we wanted to reach our full potential. I realized that we need to understand there is a way for our children to learn that utilizes the resources in place while at the same time works with their natural gifts. After two years I put my children back into the school system. Now they are in advance programs in their strengths, outside of the system, and they were with their peers in everything else. It is finally Win/Win for them. They are so happy. Gone is the depression and anger of being misunderstood. In its place is an amazing developing sense of self. Also gone is my own inability to understand why I was never a standout within the system. While this was happening with my children I was pivoting to building my own companies instead of those of others.
For the last 13 years I have worked for myself creating and building my own companies, I had to because I needed the flexibility to meet my family's additional needs while funding them too. Now I have pivoted again to work with people just like me find their own way to their success. I know there are so many more like me because I have met you. I have seen you with your very shy, very outgoing, very high energy, very focused and gifted children all around me. It's time we stopped trying to make ourselves and our children be average and allowed them to be who they are, Gifted Neurodivergents. From childhood to adulthood and then onto entrepreneurial endeavors I have a team of people that will help you lay your path. Most people in the world are path takers. We are not, Gifted Neurodivergents are the Path Makers. Let's get started making your path today.