I know it's a cliché to find people declaring "every parent should read this!" However, this is one of those books
Light Up Your Child's Mind: Finding a Unique Pathway to Happiness and Success
I think every parents should read during their child's early years. This book has practical, accessible advice for every parent to bring out the best in every child.
Personally I think it is dangerous to label children as remedial , gifted, average or whatever for many reasons. But I couldn't agree more with the approach they have taken here. What is exiting about this book is that it is something that parents can use to connect with their children to enhance the child's interests or gifts immediately. Best of all it's based on the child so it didn't seem forced or manipulated.
Joseph Renzulli and Sally Reis have nearly 60 years combined experience in gifted education at the University of Connecticut, but I really think a person can miss the point if "GIFTED" is what you're focusing on. In their work they've really developed a broader way of thinking about gifts or abilities that will bring out more of the best from each child. Some of this is accomplished in noticeable ways like thinking of a "work product" or the "contribution" a child can make further developing the idea by identifying the audience for the product, how it's delivered and how it is received by that audience. It becomes tangible and the child learns contribute their work product for others to learn from, benefit from or simply enjoy. Real world application of art and arithmetic, what a concept? Some of the broader thinking is brought up in more subtle ways, like the chapter on twice exceptional children, dealing with exceptional learning and learning disabilities within the same child.
You may wonder how you would identify your child's "gifts." They've laid out an entire questionnaire to analyze and help enhance your child's gifts and help you and the child understanding what to do next. They have "Interest-a-Lyzers" for grade school, adolescent and teenage children. Sometimes; most times, gifts don't show up in academics, in classic ways or a gift may come and go like a phase. They demonstrate that most gifts ebb and flow and show up in atypical areas. Light Up Your Child's Mind is great resource for understanding and moving forward no matter what "phase" the child is in.
A good deal of what I took away from Renzulli and Reis's work is how I would like to see EDUCATION REFORM moving. With more individual learning plans, incorporating subject matter into the child's interests and real world application and audiences. Children are naturally curious learning machines and if we learn to harness their interests into worthwhile purists it solves many, many problems. I fear we will never see education reform in my young children's school years, but as parents we can easily diminish the effects of "teaching to tests" and "fashionable underachievement".
I highly recommend this book to any parent looking to really enhance the overall success and happiness of their child.
*****
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