A Parent's Guide to Gifted Children

Excellent resource

The authors go beyond just defining intellectual giftedness to include a wide variety of talents (e.g. artistic, athletic,etc). They provide practical advice on dealing with siblings, schools, discipline,etc. Superb book for parents, teachers and grandparent.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Excellent Book

I purchased this book from a recommendation at a Parents of the Challenge Center group. My son is almost 10 and has been at a gifted school since 2nd grade. This book has really helped me understand the pressures and concerns that he has and ways to help him get through things. This book helped me to see things from his point of view. I would recommend all parents to read it whether their child is gifted or just really smart.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Comprehensive coverage of gifted issues

As the March 2007 update to "Guiding the Gifted Child", this book gives comprehensive coverage to the complexities and challenges facing gifted individuals, their families, and acquaintances. It is used extensively as the textbook for SENG-Model Parent Discussion groups (see www.sengifted.org). If you are looking for one gifted resource for you bookshelf, I wholeheartedly recommend this book.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

A reviewer

This is by far the most comprehensive book about gifted children that I have seen. It covers a broad range of topics, yet still manages to be quite detailed and ¿meaty¿. An entire 19 page chapter is devoted to the characteristics of gifted children. In addition to the usual checklist, the chapter also looks at Dabrowski's overexcitabilities, the gifted child's sense of humor, imagination, etc. The authors embrace an open and flexible definition of giftedness, and offer alternatives to the ¿one test¿ model of selection. A Parent's Guide to Gifted Children is a guidebook brimming full of practical suggestions on how to raise a gifted child. If you buy just one book on gifted children, this should be it. I recommend it to both veteran ¿gifted parents¿ and those with young children who are just starting to explore the world of giftedness. Whether your child is moderately, highly, or profoundly gifted, this book will have meaningful information and helpful suggestions for you. Chapter five deals with establishing discipline and teaching self management, while chapter eight is all about acquaintances, friends, and peers. Chapter 11, complexities of successful parenting, features a list of six responsibilities for parents: 1.accept and appreciate the child's uniqueness 2.help the child like herself and relate well to others 3.help the child develop a relationship and sense of belonging within the family 4.nurture the development of values 5.teach the child self-motivation, self-management, and self discipline 6.help the child discover his passions, and commit to letting him explore This chapter also contains sensible advice on how to avoid parental pitfalls such as enmeshment, adultizing the gifted child, or over empowering the gifted child. Parents are encouraged to care for themselves and be sure that they are modeling healthy attitudes and behaviors. If the inquisitive reader wants to explore further, the back of the book is filled with an impressive number of endnotes and references to published studies and other works pertaining to child development and giftedness. The authors, Webb, Gore, Amend, and DeVries, are all well respected members of the gifted education community. They have many years of combined experience as teachers, counselors, and parents of gifted children. Their collective wisdom shared here is a real treasure.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

A positive review from the Davidson Institute for Talent Develpment

A Parent¿s Guide to Gifted Children is an extraordinary enhancement of the well-known book, Guiding the Gifted Child. By pooling their expertise on gifted children, this powerful group of authors bring back to life this old classic by expounding on the practical suggestions and information many parents, and even educators, have found useful for so many years. Dr. James Webb is a clinical psychologist and co-founder of Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted 'SENG' Janet Gore, over the past 30 years, has gained experience working with gifted students as a teacher, guidance counselor, school administrator, policy maker, and parent Dr. Edward Amend is a clinical psychologist who focuses on the social, emotional, educational needs, and twice exceptional issues of gifted children and their families and Arlene DeVries is an experience counselor with a special interest in the social and emotional needs of gifted students and has facilitated more than 70 SENG Gifted Parent Groups over the past 20 years. Parenting any child is a challenging profession, much less parenting a child who is gifted. While it can be filled with joy, laughter, and excitement, it can also be frustrating, draining, and filled with uncertainty. To help put parents at ease, the authors of A Parent¿s Guide to Gifted Children offer insightful ideas and techniques that can be incorporated into the household¿s day-to-day living. For example, some of the ideas they discuss include catching the child doing something right, focusing on effort versus outcome, reflective listening, special time, assessing emotional temperature, avoiding power struggles, natural consequences, freedom within limits, praising the behavior not the child, the importance of being a good listener for your child, avoiding over scheduling, bibliotherapy, and describing siblings rather than comparing them. In fifteen chapters, Webb, Gore, Amend, and DeVries share their knowledge gained from several decades of personal and professional experience working in the gifted field, while also including pertinent research on gifted children and suggestions parents of gifted children have found useful. They thoroughly cover the following topics that any parent would find of interest at some point along the parenting journey: 1. Defining Giftedness 2. Characteristics of Gifted Children 3. Communication: The Key to Relationships 4. Motivation, Enthusiasm, and Underachievement 5. Establishing Discipline and Teaching Self-Management 6. Intensity, Perfectionism, and Stress 7. Idealism, Unhappiness, and Depression 8. Acquaintances, Friends, and Peers 9. Family Relationships: Siblings and Only Children 10. Values, Traditions, and Uniqueness 11. Complexities of Successful Parenting 12. Children Who Are Twice-Exceptional 13. How Schools Identify Gifted Children 14. Finding a Good Educational Fit 15. Finding Professional Help Three chapters are newly introduced in A Parent¿s Guide to Gifted Children that were not previously included in Guiding the Gifted Child: Children Who Are Twice Exceptional, Finding a Good Educational Fit, and Finding Professional Help. In raising a gifted child, sometimes parents are faced with tough questions, such as: Does my gifted child have a learning disability? What should we look for in a school? What school options are available for my child? When and how should a professional¿s help be sought out? When should medication be considered vs. counseling, or both? These additional chapters walk parents through making these decisions and offer the much sought-after opinions of professionals familiar with this population and their needs. For those wanting to continue their learning, the authors include an extensive list of resources and recommended readings that would add quality to any library. A Parent¿s Guide to Gifted Children is an essential resource for all families of gifted children. As stated in the book¿s Introduction on page xxi, ¿the emotional h

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

A Mom's Choice Award Recipient! This book is a recipient of the

A Mom's Choice Award Recipient!
This book is a recipient of the prestigious Mom's Choice Award. The Mom’s Choice Awards honors excellence in family-friendly media, products and services. An esteemed panel of judges includes education, media and other experts as well as parents, children, librarians, performing artists, producers, medical and business professionals, authors, scientists and others. A sampling of the panel members includes: Dr. Twila C. Liggett, ten-time Emmy-winner, professor and founder of PBS’s Reading Rainbow; Julie Aigner-Clark, Creator of Baby Einstein and The Safe Side Project; Jodee Blanco, New York Times best-selling Author and; LeAnn Thieman, motivational speaker and coauthor of seven Chicken Soup For The Soul books. Parents and educators look for the Mom’s Choice Awards seal in selecting quality materials and products for children and families.

Very Usable Info

This book has so much current and usable content. I am really enjoying it.

I prefer Sugar's "The Silent Crisis Destroying America's Brightest Minds"

Sugar's 'The Silent Crisis Destroying America's Brightest Minds" is a book that is all about educational reality, the facts on the ground, not vacuous educational theories.

Sugar pioneered the SMARTGRADES school notebooks that contain the new learning technology, ACANDY Processing Tools, that empower students for academic success. She transformed my kids into Grade A students, so I speak from experience, not hypothetical theory. It is not all about teaching, it is all about learning.

0 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

Very Helpful Informative Book

I found this book very interesting and helpful. It was easy to read and understand. It is written so that anyone can understand and follow the information in the book and there is alot of great insight and advice about raising gifted and not so gifted children. I especially like how supportive and understanding the authors are about having a gifted child and what that means for the parents as well as the child. The authors seem very knowledgable and sympathetic.

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