SENGinar: Now What...Now Where? When your 2e Child Needs Help Away from Home

How do you determine if your struggling gifted child needs more support than you can provide at home? And even if you were to think about someone else -- somewhere else -- supporting your child, who would you turn to for help? For many parents, this process can be overwhelming, and they find it difficult to know where to begin. Even traditional mental health providers you turn to for advice or 2e experts may not fully understand or be trained on how to evaluate boarding schools and residential therapeutic programs, particularly in the context of your child’s giftedness.

In this presentation, Heidi Molbak, a longtime SENG professional and national expert in advising families on school and therapeutic placements for gifted young people calmly and thoughtfully teaches you how to identify and evaluate key criteria when considering an out-of-home setting for your child, demystifies the process and the programs, reviews resources to help make an appropriate decision, and most of all walks with you from feeling scared to reassured. 

About the Presenter

For over twenty-five years Heidi has passionately studied schools, therapeutic programs and created educational opportunities for gifted and twice-exceptional (2e) students. Since 2006 through her educational consulting practice, Seed Starter, she has advised hundreds of families in the US and globally on finding appropriate educational options for their gifted and 2e students including boarding, day, and residential therapeutic schools and programs. In 2016 Heidi co-founded FlexSchool, a model of small schools for gifted and 2e students. She serves on the Advisory Board of Belin-Blank Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development at the University of Iowa and is a past Director for SENG (Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted). She serves as a Board Commissioner of the American Institute of Certified Educational Planners (AICEP) and is a frequent presenter at national conferences. Heidi is a Certified Educational Planner (CEP) and a National Certified Counselor (NCC). She is the recipient of the Regina Matthews Oehmig Award for Excellence in Counseling. She holds an M.S. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Loyola New Orleans and an A.B. in English from Stanford University.