The Truth About High IQ Motherhood

[@JanelleMLara]

Hey there! A few thoughts :) The first one is- while many of my videos are more academic in nature (with lots of sources)- this one, ironically, is not. This is based on my personal experience observing myself and other high IQ moms over the years. I designed these systems to support me specifically, and other intelligent women I know seem to have implemented something similar. So, these are not 'clinically verifiable' indications of a High IQ. In case that if what you are looking for- here's a couple of sources you can start with: Rindermann, H. (2018). Cognitive Capitalism: Human Capital and the Wellbeing of Nations. Cambridge University Press. Deary, I. J., Penke, L., & Johnson, W. (2010). The neuroscience of human intelligence differences. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(3), 201-211. Secondly, here are the links to the videos I mentioned, in case you are interested :) Christianity & Astrology From the Perspective of the Three Kings: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eZiTpGWtoNGDlcUsi=ZEMrpwhJ7gQA06nd The Christian Case FOR Astrology: kzbin.info/www/bejne/aZ_CdqCLe5WKaK8si=So8fVGqVzXiUDLVe

[@user-hg9os4lw4g]

Thank you so much for making this video!! In the nearly 11 years that I’ve been a mom, many of those years spent in isolation, this is the very first time I’ve experienced another mom and wife share things that have so closely related to my experiences and ways of thinking and viewing the world and myself! Watching you speak, it feels like hope has been restored and I can finally allow myself to not only accept myself for who I am, but maybe love her deeply, too. ♥️♥️♥️🙏🏼🕊️✨

[@JanelleMLara]

Oh my goodness! This warmed my heart to read. Thank you so much for commenting and sharing your experience with me. I am so very glad that you feel like you can deeply love the mother that you are! ♥️♥️

[@user-hg9os4lw4g]

getting there 🥰

[@stankamatic6167]

Thank you for this amazing video! I definitely belong to this fortunate group of mothers. Although i became a mother after my PhD and I had the luck to learn lots, till this day I am still digesting motherhood due to hard time accepting that i have very little time for learning and my various interests. Greetings from Freiburg, Germany!

[@JanelleMLara]

Thank you so much for commenting! Yes, it is hard to sacrifice our passions- and I love your use of the term “digesting”. I am so glad this video spoke to you ♥️

[@BenDavidin5785]

I don’t typically say anything about it but since you asked 😅 Another thing I find isolating is that I’m Orthodox Jewish and most women aren’t super into learning Torah, and most people in general aren’t like spiritually “sensitive” to the extent I am. I’m about to be a stepmother (first, Gd willing) and I worry this will be a struggle for me vis a vis his 4 young kids. Thank you for this video though- I have a lot of projects percolating and on the go, and I’ve been worried about how to make these things work with a family. Really grateful that Gd had this come up in my recommendations! If you’d like to chat sometime, leave a reply and I’ll comment my email, leave it up a few minutes, and delete it.

[@JanelleMLara]

Haha I understand 😅 I felt very uncomfortable talking about it but mentioned the idea to a friend who was like “YES PLEASE RECORD THIS” 🤣 Wow, a step mother to four young kids! What a blessing and responsibility. 🙏♥️ I understand that feeling of isolation as well… I am one of only three women in my doctoral class, and just wish I had more women to discuss these topics with. I am sure you will manage to balance motherhood and your projects ♥️ it will certainly be a matter of good communication and support with your husband and village. I will be praying for you as you embark on this adventure! Thank you for watching this video!

[@BenDavidin5785]

@ amen, thank you so much! Gd willing you should have success with your family and degree (and with whatever you plan to do with the degree) as well and continue to build a faithful and loving home full of light 🫶🏻

[@JanelleMLara]

Thank you 🙏

[@ourportuguesehomestead]

Thanks for sharing, you definitely talked about some things I can relate to. The mundane parts of life is hard on me, and I'm much happier when I make time to pursue the things I'm interested in. I personally don't like the term IQ, because of its racist and classist history, but haven't settled on a better term either. I often struggle sharing my interests with new friends, because I just assume that people aren't interested. So that's something I'm trying to work on.

[@JanelleMLara]

Thank you for watching and for sharing your thoughts

[@ourportuguesehomestead]

@ Yes the internet certainly helps with finding people you can connect with 😊. One of my main interests right now is content creation (I have two channels), so feel free to reach out if you have questions. I’d definitely suggest trying to film on your phone, most phones are much better than a laptop. Especially for talking videos like this, good audio can make or break it. Your presentation is great btw!

[@JanelleMLara]

@@ourportuguesehomestead I so appreciate this! I will absolutely check out your channels. I got a couple of comments like this on the video, lol! So my last two videos have been recorded on my phone. I truly hope that makes for a better viewing experience. Thank you so much for taking the time to leave feedback

[@tinytank808]

You are brilliant. Thank you for sharing this!

[@JanelleMLara]

That truly means so much ♥️thank you for watching and for your kind words!

[@TheYoungCatholics]

I thought this video was super interesting. I don't believe that I am a high IQ individual but I do deeply struggle with small talk and I find it very difficult to make friends because of this. I want to talk about things that matter, things that stimulate my mind. I am around children literally 24 hours a day -- I need more. I am 25 with 4 children and I adore being a mum but I do wish that I could engage in more in depth conversation. I do have a sister who is very, very intelligent. I have always told her that it must be difficult to have a mind that could've allowed you to do anything but instead to have humbled yourself enough to simply be a homemaker. If I find it difficult, she must struggle much more. Anyways, I certainly related to the second part of the video, but I cannot say that I relate too much to the first.

[@JanelleMLara]

What a beautiful family ♥️ but being with children 24/7 is draining. Of course you need more. I do hope you manage to get that time to yourself, even if it’s just once a week to take yourself to a solo coffee date. That is kind of you to sympathize with your sister - im sure she feels very recognized by you. Many blessings as you continue your motherhood journey! Thank you for watching and commenting 🙏

[@Wolf-r9d]

All the “symptoms” you listed I relate to, so I don’t think those are real signs of a high IQ. Never took an IQ test. I wasn’t a good student (bombed the SAT), but I liked biology so now I’m in college majoring in biology. I can be good at stuff when I put my mind to it, but I feel mentally checked out most of the time due to trauma. I’m not a parent, but I stumbled on this video and was just genuinely interested in what high IQ mothers have to go through. I wasn’t expecting to relate to any of it lol

[@JanelleMLara]

Thanks for your comment and for watching :) I’m sorry you feel mentally checked out most of the time ♥️ that must be really difficult to experience. Do you think trauma played into your school experience as well?

[@Wolf-r9d]

@ Somewhat. I had some misfortunes happen to me when I was in high school. I went to a small Christian school where the teachers all knew us by name, so I had some teachers pick on me (one of them purposely gave me a lower grade cause she didn’t like me). In high school, I felt that nobody there wanted me to succeed, so I sorta just slowly stopped attending. I ended up finishing high school at a community college and then got my associates. I had a cancer diagnosis in community college, so I ended up taking a gap year. I’m 21 now and a junior in college at a small private university. I’m doing pretty well, though I think years of abuse and then a cancer diagnosis caused me to care less about academics.

[@JanelleMLara]

Thank you for sharing your story. I am so in awe of you pushing past everything you experienced to still get a degree. Are you cancer free now? 🙏 I’m obviously not an expert, but you sound very smart to me. I wonder if there is a correlation between trauma and school performance, and/or trauma and IQ.

[@Wolf-r9d]

@ thank you! For now, I am in remission. I don’t think I’m dumb, but some things I do, I genuinely question my intelligence. Like, some very basic things I struggle to do (mental math for example). However, it’s not that I don’t understand it (I took calculus and thought it was easy). It’s more like I get nervous when talking to people, so I can’t fully focus on what goes on in my head. I think anxiety definitely holds me back a little. Im excelling in biology, and I’ve asked such great questions that I stumped my professor (who went to Ivy League college lol). So maybe I might actually be okay. Thank you! I subscribed! :)

[@JanelleMLara]

@@Wolf-r9d Oh, I am so glad to hear you are in remission. Praise God. And yay! Thank you so much for subscribing! Being humble about your intelligence is actually a sign of intelligence ;) I am excited to see you around as I embark on this journey!

[@charris2417]

Janelle! As always, calling me out. You hit nearly every thing right on the head for me. Thoroughly enjoyed hearing your insights. Now I can add “High IQ Mom” as one more thing to my list of superpowers 🦸🏾‍♀️

[@JanelleMLara]

Thank you so much for watching

[@wiktoria41141]

Janelle, why is such a good video edited so poorly? I thought it was from 15 years ago. Another question: is your husband as passion-driven as you? Thank you for sharing this, love your insights!

[@JanelleMLara]

lol! I appreciate your honesty. I have taken a “learn on the job” approach to KZbin. I do not have a background in video editing … and don’t particularly enjoy it. (Which I suppose shows). However, I am attempting to improve with each go. My plan is to hire an editor as soon as I monetize. Moving forward though, I will record with the back of my phone camera rather than my computer. I hope that makes for a better viewing experience. Regarding my husband, I would not say he is *as* driven as I, but he is very driven. His passions are different from mine, but we have taken a “you, me and we” approach to our marriage (a concept adapted from the Gottman method of marriage counseling) so that we each have room to pursue our passions and also ensure we build a life together. I hope that helps! Thanks for your question, the honest feedback, and I’m glad you liked the insights!

[@user-hg9os4lw4g]

@@JanelleMLara I am very curious to know more about this “you, me and we” approach you’ve taken with your husband. I’ve done some searches for some info myself but would love to hear more about it from you! Do you have a preferred resource? Ps. I love that you enjoy your commenters honesty and answer their questions without judgement ♥️

[@JanelleMLara]

I am happy to share! I am certainly not an expert here so definitely also look into the Gottman Approach further. We got the concept from a marriage therapist we worked with years ago. From what we understand, it’s looking at the marriage as having three ‘priorities’. Obviously, there is the ‘we’. That’s the ‘us’ of a marriage, ‘our’ goals, ‘our’ dreams- what we want to build together, and what we believe God is calling us to as a couple. But often, we forget about ourselves as individuals (especially mothers). What are ‘my’ goals and dreams? What would I like to accomplish? After all, we are whole people, with our own God-given gifts, talents, and passions that deserve exploring and developing (obviously with differing levels of commitment based on our season of life). And the same ought to be true for my husband. So it’s important in a relationship for each of us to commit to fostering and supporting those passions in one another, as well. An example of How this plays out practically for us is my husband supporting me in going back to school. On Tuesdays I have an online class so he puts the kids to bed so I can attend. He loves soccer, so when he has a game I’ll do dinner and bath time on my own with the kids so he can play. That sort of thing. Then of course we have our goals and dreams as a couple which we both work towards, and includes the kind of parents we want to be, ensuring we nurture our relationship, etc. We are certainly not perfect. I have definitely vetoed some of his soccer game requests and it’s not like I’ve never heard a side comment or two when it’s his turn to do bedtime alone 😅 we just do our best and *overall* attempt to support one another while also being fair to our kids and marriage. I hope that helps! ♥️

[@user-hg9os4lw4g]

@ super helpful, thanks so much for taking the time to reply! From what you’ve shared, it sounds like we’re already walking that path, I just didn’t realize there was a name for it I guess lol! We are also doing our best and it’s certainly not perfect (hard for my perfectionist part to accept ha) but so far it’s much better than how we experienced the traditional roles of family. At first it felt almost wrong to look at relationships differently, like we were betraying our families for not following the status quo or something.. did you experience feelings of shame or guilt around shifting your views? We didn’t work with a therapist but I can only assume that would help greatly! Motherhood and navigating that with my husband did not play out the way I had dreamed it would and it has not been easy by any means, but it’s been the most healing journey.. worth every second of pain to gain true inner peace, real deep connection with my self and others and to break the chains of codependency! 🕊️

[@JanelleMLara]

@@user-hg9os4lw4g Oh I love this so much. Yes, I have experienced lots of feelings of guilt and shame... probably not because I wasn't doing what my parents did (growing up I knew my mother wasn't happy), but because I was taught there was basically one way to be a perfect parent. I feel very differently now, and my girls are also showing me differently, but it sure did affect me for a very long time. I am so glad that it sounds like you have found a true partner in life and parenting!

[@Sparte_]

How do you know you that you have a high iq? Did you pass a test for it?

[@JanelleMLara]

Hey there, yep- I was administered a test in high school.

[@wiktoria41141]

You can easily notice it yourself by listening to her speak

[@Sparte_]

​ @wiktoria41141 That is where you're wrong, I have good diction (in french), my school teachers and loads of people i've met told me so, and yet I consider myself stupid and I'm doing academically terrible The link between intelligence and speech is not as obvious as you might think

[@wiktoria41141]

⁠@@Sparte_I understand… I didn’t mean the diction but how she’s putting her thoughts and sentences together. How old are you? Don’t forget to focus on your strengths and if it’s a diction for you that’s great!

[@JanelleMLara]

@@Sparte_ So speech and communication is linked to something called verbal IQ. This measures verbal reasoning and linguistic ability. While 'EQ' (Emotional Intelligence) is also required for good interpersonal communication, this is not something measured by IQ tests. However, there do seem to be positive correlations between the ability to effectively communicate ideas (which is what I'm doing here and, what wiktoria has complimented) and verbal IQ, which is often found in high IQ individuals. Here's a source: Mackintosh, N. J. (2011). IQ and Human Intelligence. Oxford University Press. With all of that being said, it is highly probable that you are not stupid. Stupid people don't watch videos on IQ in their spare time