Raising Gifted Kids: Everything You Need to Know to Help Your Exceptional Child Thrive [Paperback]

Dr. Barbara Klein (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 12, 2006

"While it can be rewarding to raise an extremely bright child -- quick, curious, sensitive, and introspective -- it's also a daunting challenge. Parents need insight into their own motivations (as well as those of their children), and the courage and ability to make tough decisions about their child's development. Raising Gifted Kids will help parents understand and cope with the obstacles they face in raising a gifted child, and help them make the best choices for their son's or daughter's growth and happiness. This upbeat and practical book reveals how parents can: * help develop their child's potential and self-esteem without pressuring them * plan their child's education * work optimally with schools and teachers * recognize and prevent problems * solve family conflicts over parenting issues * avoid the dangers of living vicariously through their child's accomplishments * and much more Filled with proven solutions to the unique challenges of raising gifted kids, this book is the powerful yet accessible resource parents have long wished for."

Editorial Reviews

Review

"""Parenting gifted youngsters is a challenging task, and this book is a wonderful, practical resource for parents seeking knowledge to do this task right. Dr. Klein offers support that will be most welcome to parents.""

-- Judith J. Roseberry, President, California Association for the Gifted

""Raising Gifted Kids provides a wealth of thoughtful, practical and implementable strategies for effective parenting of the gifted. Dr. Klein's insightful counsel and down-to-earth recommendations will be invaluable to parents of gifted youngsters, and much of what she has to say is simply excellent advice for any parent.""

-- Roger H. Weaver, Headmaster, Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences, Santa Monica, CA"

Book Description

"While it can be rewarding to raise an extremely bright child -- quick, curious, sensitive, and introspective -- it’s also a daunting challenge. Parents need insight into their own motivations (as well as those of their children), and the courage and ability to make tough decisions about their child’s development. Raising Gifted Kids will help parents understand and cope with the obstacles they face in raising a gifted child, and help them make the best choices for their son’s or daughter’s growth and happiness. This upbeat and practical book reveals how parents can:

* help develop their child’s potential and self-esteem without pressuring them

* plan their child’s education

* work optimally with schools and teachers

* recognize and prevent problems

* solve family conflicts over parenting issues

* avoid the dangers of living vicariously through their child’s accomplishments

* and much more

Filled with proven solutions to the unique challenges of raising gifted kids, this book is the powerful yet accessible resource parents have long wished for."

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 17 and up
  
• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: AMACOM; 1 edition (October 12, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814473423
• ISBN-13: 978-0814473429
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #240,905 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Parents CAN do it right. Why not support us?, November 29, 2007

By 

Mark D. (suburban USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Raising Gifted Kids: Everything You Need to Know to Help Your Exceptional Child Thrive (Paperback)

Raising Gifted Kids starts off well, describing the support it will offer us later. Sounds good. But the book goes off track quickly.

Klein talks about test scores, describing scores, standard deviations, and descriptions from various tests and test versions, apparently as old as 1970's versions, interchangeably. But they're not interchangeable, and mixing them up this way will confuse parents who don't have another source of testing information, and don't understand the differences between old and modern test versions, and between one modern test and another.

Klein then offers a number of vignettes, which vary from predictable to extreme. These are not supportive because no matter what, the parents are the bad guys. After the introduction talking about all the help and support Raising Gifted Kids will offer us, this chapter tells us how awful we are, and all our good intentions are wrong. Pick a specific gifted school for your child? Wrong. Send your gifted child to public school? Wrong. Live in an isolated rural area and homeschool your gifted child? Very wrong. And lots more. Throughout the vignettes, the psychologist knows the single right answer for each child after only an assessment.

The rest of the book seems more positive, but has it's confusing moments. All gifted kids are not alike educationally or emotionally, and the sweeping generalizations are too grand. More mistaken impressions left behind, especially among parents who are reading for support.

Parents are, for the most part, doing a good job raising their gifted children. Those who aren't, aren't going to read a book about what we need to know - they already know they're doing a perfect job. Good parents need understanding and support. That's why we're buying a book called Raising Gifted Kids: Everything You Need to Know to Know to Help Your Exceptional Child Thrive.

Like our kids, we parents of the gifted don't need someone to tell us how bad we are, how all our choices are wrong. We need someone to point out what we're doing right, and what we can do better. That's the kind of support we need. That's what Raising Gifted Kids should have given us.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Pick a different book, March 13, 2008

By 

Mamma Who Thinks "Mamma" (Colorado) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Raising Gifted Kids: Everything You Need to Know to Help Your Exceptional Child Thrive (Paperback)

Although I was able to find some good information in this book, overall I found it frustrating.

The author makes sweeping generalizations like, "All gifted kids are ____" or "All private schools are _____." I was left with the feeling that she thinks she, personally, is the only person qualified to make decisions about gifted kids. There was just no faith that parents know what is best for their kids or that schools genuinely want to help.

Her chapters on school selection did not reflect my experience at all. (My kids both attend a terrrific public "Gifted Center" school, and we have found the people there responsive, warm, and very very good at what they do.)

Some of the advice is painfully obvious. Don't, for example, say to your child, "Your weird questions are going to send me to an early grave." (I bet you already knew not to do that.) There were also some problems with the writing and some typos or oversights that gave the book an amateurish feel.

Having said all that, I must admit that there were times when a paragraph seemed to be talking about my child or my experience, and a few things were astute enough that I read them aloud to my husband. Thus the second star.

But overall, the author, while clearly very bright, came across as bossy and inflexible with very clear prejudices. Why, for example, did she feel the need to point out what high-powered careers and high-status backgrounds all the parents came from? Does she believe gifted kids are only born into wealthy families? It almost felt like name-dropping.

Bottom line? I'm very glad I didn't have to buy the copy I read. I've definitely read other, better books on this topic.

Pick a different book.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good But Elitist Tone Off-Putting, April 26, 2008

By 

CrimsonGirl "homeschooling mom" (S.F. Bay Area, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Raising Gifted Kids: Everything You Need to Know to Help Your Exceptional Child Thrive (Paperback)

There is much to like about "Raising Gifted Kids". The author offers some very helpful advice for those of us facing the challenge of raising an intellectually gifted child. I particularly appreciate her focus on being a "good enough" parent rather than trying to be a "perfect" one.

The biggest issue I had with Dr. Klein is her elitist tone. She is an educational consultant who obviously has a well-heeled clientèle. The impression she gives in her book is that all gifted kids come from affluent families, which is not the case. She describes each of the parents profiled in the book as "So-and-so, a successful/prominent/stellar/up-and-coming/etc. investment banker/attorney/surgeon/executive/etc." The parents' occupations are not relevant to the point she's trying to make, so why even mention them? She also has a tendency to mention luxury items in passing as if they're a normal part of everyday life. Perhaps everyone in Dr. Klein's social circle has a housekeeper and a gardener and takes travel "adventures" and enrolls their kids in multiple enrichment classes. But I personally found her elitist tone very off-putting.