Double Award-Winner! When her seven-year-old son showed his understanding of the concept of infinity while talking about how zebras all have their own unique patterns of stripes, Wendy Skinner knew that he was going to need something more stimulating than the regular school program—her son’s gifted intellect and advanced talents were going to be a challenge. In this book, Skinner shares her family’s story of struggle and eventual success in working with the school system, trying out various educational options to meet her children’s needs. Enlightening anecdotes of the author’s experiences and discussions of a variety of educational approaches help parents reading this book discover effective strategies for minimizing parent-school conflict. Learn how to build trusting relationships with teachers and administrators, as well as how your voice can influence school decisions that will allow your gifted child to learn and thrive.

Completely revised and updated, On the Social and Emotional Lives of Gifted Children tackles important and timely issues dealing with the social and emotional needs of today's gifted children. This academic edition of the book includes features for the academic setting, including an advance organizer for each chapter and classroom dis

Educating and raising gifted children presents highly specific challenges. This book explains how parents can learn to optimize their child's potential and work with schools, spouses, friends, and specialists to create a nurturing and stable life. Having a gifted child is a joy, but it is also one of the greatest challenges of parenthood to help that child find the right fit for education. In this remarkably insightful text, noted psychologist Barbara Klein, PhD, EdD, explains the emotional and social issues of giftedness, identifies parental actions and reactions that can exacerbate or soothe the challenges, and describes how these key factors tie in to identifying the best school and educational program to enable a gifted child to achieve his or her goals and maximize success. The text includes many vignettes from children and families who have sought guidance across 30 years from the author, an accomplished psychotherapist recognized as a national authority on raising gifted children. This single-volume work presents an understandable theoretical overview of the psychological problems parents face raising their gifted child and clearly explains why the parent-child interaction can be so intense and stressful—a reality that is rarely acknowledged in the existing literature on giftedness. Parents of gifted children will learn how to make decisions about their children's social emotional development and educational future and understand how their actions can be helpful or harmful to their gifted child and his/her education. Educators will fully grasp why and how gifted kids are different and why they need different educational environments, while mental heath professionals will gain insight into their gifted patients' emotional struggles. And gifted individuals will realize that others experience similar struggles.

This book reveals the dramatic stories of twenty outstandingly gifted people as they grew from early promise to maturity in Britain. Recorded over the last thirty-five years by award-winning psychologist, Joan Freeman, these fascinating accounts reveal the frustrations and triumphs of her participants, and investigates why some fell by the wayside whilst others reached fame and fortune. These exceptional people possess a range of intellectual, social and emotional gifts in fields such as mathematics, the arts, music and spirituality. Through their particular abilities, they were often confronted with extra emotional challenges, such as over-anxious and pushy parents, teacher put-downs, social trip-wires, boredom and bullying in school and conflicting life choices. Their stories illustrate how seemingly innocuous events could have devastating life-long consequences, and confront the reader with intriguing questions such as: Does having a brilliant mind help when you are ethnically different or suffering serious depression? How does a world-class pianist cope when repetitive strain injury strikes, or a young financier when he hits his first million? What is the emotional impact of grade-skipping? Joan Freeman’s insights into the twists and turns of these lives are fascinating and deeply moving. She shows us that while fate has a part to play, so does a personal outlook which can see and grab a fleeting chance, overcome great odds, and put in the necessary hard work to lift childhood prodigy to greatness. Readers will identify with many of the intriguing aspects of these people’s lives, and perhaps learn something about themselves too.

Guiding the Gifted Child has been called the "The Dr. Spock book for parents of gifted children" and is a classic in the field. Translated into several languages, this book won the National Media Award of the American Psychological Association, and has sold over 100,000 copies. The intensity, sensitivity, and other unique social and emotional characteristics of gifted children can put them at risk for problems. Guiding the Gifted Child provides extensive practical information for parents and teachers about gifted children. Topics include: communication of feelings, motivation, discipline, peer relations, sibling relations, tradition breaking, stress management, depression, and parenting strategies.

This book is a guide to help teachers, parents, guidance counselors and other stakeholders understand the importance of intervention for gifted children and to become an advocate for those individuals who are developmentally advanced. The reader becomes engaged in the analogy of a three part airplane journey to the world of gifted education: ‘Embarking on a Journey;’ ‘Preparing for Departure’ and ‘Planning for Arrival.’ The author offers insightful case studies followed by strategies for both teachers and parents gained from personal experiences and research to identify and work with different types of children who present unique challenges due to their special needs of high potential. By presenting a historical overview in gifted education from a global perspective, Your Passport to Gifted Education provides current internationally-researched information to clarify what is meant by ‘giftedness’ according to various cultures. The book encourages the development of a growth mindset in the reader to seek to identify various characteristics of high ability in all children. Four international high ability identification models are introduced, including one relatively new to North America, the High Performance Learning Framework (HPL), currently used throughout China, Europe, the Middle East and South East Asia. Dispelling the myth that gifted children do not need our help, the reader gains insight into the uniquely different types of gifted individuals. The book concludes by awarding the reader with a ‘Landing Card’ to serve as a bookmarker that underpins the best teaching practices in gifted education. A directory list of websites for international gifted organizations is also included to offer additional resources for those who want to continue their journey as advocates and learn how other countries support gifted children around the world.

There is a gap between the enormous need for counseling services and research about the counseling needs of gifted individuals, on the one hand, and the limited availability of such services and knowledge on the other. This book is designed to give counselors, classroom teachers, gifted education specialists, and parents an understanding of the academic and social-personal needs of gifted and talented students, awareness of ways that they themselves may help these children, and an introduction to the available guidance strategies and materials. This book highlights the role of regular classroom teachers and teachers of the gifted in counseling; provides teachers, counselors, and parents with information about the wide variety of approaches to enrichment and/or acceleration; emphasizes the major role of parents in the development of their gifted children; stresses career education and guidance. Four chapters are devoted to important topics that have received very little attention to date-gifted girls, preschool gifted, disadvantaged gifted, and learning-disabled gifted. Finally, a unique feature of the book is a chapter in which fictional portraits of gifted and creative children are presented and analyzed.

First Published in 2000. The education of gifted and talented children is attracting increased interest and attention in schools, LEAs and within government. A widely accepted critical aspect of talent development has until now remained under-represented: namely that the principal factors underpinning all learning are social and emotional ones. This book addresses the complex relationship between intellectual, social and emotional development that is necessary for high achievement and personal fulfilment. The contributors aim to provide relevant practical guidelines for secure and confident learning for pupils that will support teachers, parents and others wishing to help translate potential into performance.

The second edition of Understanding the Social and Emotional Lives of Gifted Students presents a comprehensive treatment of social and emotional development in high-ability learners. This text: Discusses theories that guide the examination of the lived experiences of gifted students. Features new topics, such as cyberbullying and microaggressions. Covers social and emotional characteristics and behaviors evidenced in gifted learners. Includes considerations for gifted underachievers, gifted culturally diverse students, twice-exceptional students, LGBTQ gifted students, and young people from low-income backgrounds. Describes gifted students' friendships and family relationships that support them, contextual influences that shape their social and emotional lives, and identity development. The author provides a wealth of field-tested strategies for addressing social and emotional development. In addition, the book offers a plan for designing a gifted-friendly classroom environment to support the social and emotional well-being of gifted students and a comprehensive collection of resources to support professionals in gifted education research and practice.