I don’t watch much sports, but I’m an Olympics junkie. I love the Olympic motto: Higher—Faster—Stronger. That’s how I want to teach, helping my kids as they always reach for the next goal.

This year one detail from an interview with Nathan Chen, the American gold medal figure skater, struck me. He said that his family didn’t have money for skating lessons when he was a kid. So his mom took him to occasional lessons. While he worked with the coach, she took copious notes, and—between lessons—she was the one who coached him, using what she had learned at the last lesson.

In this column I talk a lot about gifted students, or, as Washington State says, Highly Capable (HC) students.

It’s time to talk about gifted parents.

We had neighbors with a son Rafe who dug up their back yard to install a koi pond and a Japanese tea garden. Then he decided it wasn’t right, dug it all up again, and redid the whole thing. Multiple times. In the end they had a lovely back yard, but only after years of mess and chaos.

Rafe had a gift for gardening.

I thought his parents had a gift too. They were willing to put up with years of mess and chaos in order to support their son.

By the way, by the time he was in high school, Rafe started his own landscaping company that helped pay his way through college.