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Developmental: Adolescence

Parenting Gifted Adolescents

This article provides parents numerous guidelines on their adoloescents' peer relationships, life skills, social behavior and more. ...

Developmental: Twice Exceptional

Managing life with a challenging child: What to do when your gifted but difficult child is driving you crazy

Written by Barbara Probst, this article explains the challenges involved with raising "difficult" children. She provides a number of options on how to nourish your child's strengths and discusses the importance of looking at the whole child. ...

When your child’s second exceptionality is emotional: Looking beyond psychiatric diagnosis

Written by Barbara Probst, this article covers the second exceptionality typically not thought of when discussing twice-exceptionality - one that is emotional, social or behavioral related. ...

Educational Options: Acceleration

The effects of acceleration on the social and emotional development of gifted students

This article is a book chapter by Lynn Pollins. It discusses studies on acceleration as it relates to the student's social and emotional development. There has never been a study that showed a negative result of acceleration. By contrast, there may even be positive effects to the social and emotional development of accelerants. ...

Educational Options: Tips for Teachers

Effects of Task Difficulty and Teacher Attention on the Off-Task Behavior of High-Ability Students with Behavior Issues

This study used traditional behavioral assessment procedures to determine whether a functional relationship existed between (a) levels of task difficulty and teacher attention and (b) off-task behavior in 3 students identified as highly able in mathematics who also showed consistent behavior issues. Results indicated that higher rates of off-task behaviors were associated with low attention conditions. Task difficulty did not appear to have a consistent relationship with student behavior. ...

Parenting: Parenting Strategies

How to help keep your kid from being bullied

Although kids of all ages can be bullied or be bullies themselves, it tends to escalate in the middle-school years. Children often pick on one another verbally or shove and push a weak classmate. Overweight kids are easy targets, as are children who dress, speak, or act differently than others. It's a shame that our culture allows and perhaps even encourages these types of behaviors, but it's still a reality in many of our school grounds, classrooms, and neighborhoods. In another excerpt from her book Laying Down the Law, Dr. Ruth Peters ...

Parenting: Tips for Parents

Tips for Parents: Attaining Health and Well-being Through Balance

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Patricia Gatto-Walden, in which she discusses how you can strive to establish the foundations of health and well-being in your family. ...

Tips for Parents: Cartesian Splits and Chinese Splits

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Stephen Balzac, in which he discusses how many gifted children and adults experience a Cartesian Split: skilled and comfortable in intellectual pursuits, they find themselves awkward and frustrated when attempting physical activities such as sports or martial arts. ...

Tips for Parents: Cool, Calm and Collected: Managing Behavior in the Classroom

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Kara McGoey, who reveals effective strategies in helping gifted students manage their behavior, especially in the classroom. ...

Tips for Parents: Coping with Peer Pressure in a World of Growing Up Too Fast

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Sylvia Rimm, who provides a number of strategies to help gifted students deal with peer pressure. ...

Tips for Parents: Depression and Emotional Intensities

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Tracy Cross, in which he describes a number of characteristics associated with gifted students who have emotional intensities. ...

Tips for Parents: Developing a Feeling Vocabulary

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Sharon Lind, who provides a list of tips and words to use in developing a vocabulary of feeling words. Advice is targeted at parents of emotionally intense children. The goal is to offer them tools for understanding and expressing their emotional state. ...

Tips for Parents: Emotionally Intense Children

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Sharon Lind, who provides specific strategies for helping gifted people to "recognize, cope with, cherish and take advantage of their emotional intensity." ...

Tips for Parents: Gifted Kids and Groupwork

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Stephen Balzac, who takes a look at the process of groupwork and how it applies to gifted students. ...

Tips for Parents: GROWING UP GIFTED - Issues, Concerns, and the Importance of Self-Esteem

This Tips for Parents article is from two 2010 seminars hosted by Judy Galbraith titled “GROWING UP GIFTED - Issues, Concerns, and the Importance of Self-Esteem." ...

Tips for Parents: Helping GT Kids Understand Their Emotions through Effective Emotional Coaching

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Christine Fonseca, who provides advice on helping gifted students identify and deal with their emotions. ...

Tips for Parents: Helping your Child Develop Communication Competence

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Gwen Hullman, who touches on key points of communication competence - including family communication style and personality factors. ...

Tips for Parents: How Gifted Children Impact the Family

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Sylvia Rimm. She discusses that every child influences other children in the family, but because gifted children often attract so much attention and require extra resources, they can cause some special pressures for siblings, parents and even other relatives. ...

Tips for Parents: How Level of Giftedness, Gender, and Personality Affect School Behavior and Learning

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Deborah Ruf, who provides a step-by-step guide for parents to assess their children’s level and profile of giftedness, how they learn and view the process of learning, and how their children’s gender impacts the effect of planning for their children’s best educational placement. ...

Tips For Parents: How Students See Their Giftedness and Why It Matters: A Different View of “Mindset.”

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Thomas Greenspon, who provides parents a view of how students view their own giftedness. ...

Tips for Parents: How to Build a Geek Media Shelter

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Marybeth Hicks. The seminar consisted of a discussion centered on sheltering children from the influence of media and pop culture. ...

Tips for Parents: Hygiene, Hormones and Happiness

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Nadia Webb, who sums up a number of key points about teens and hygiene, hormones and happiness. ...

Tips for Parents: Improving Social Skills in Children with ADHD

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Melanie Crawford, who provides advice on improving the social skills of children with ADHD. ...

Tips For Parents: Intensity, Anxiety & Depression - The Dark Side of Giftedness

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Tracy Cross, who provides advice for parents of students exhibiting traits of anxiety and depression. ...

Tips for Parents: Leadership Skills for Gifted Kids

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Stephen R. Balzac of 7 Steps Ahead. He highlights a number of helpful tips on leadership and decision-making. ...

Tips for Parents: Mendel, Escher Bach - Giftedness and Family Dynamics

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Dr. Aimee Yermish, who facilitated an online seminar on how giftedness and family dynamics can intertwine. This is an area where there are no easy answers; she advocates a thoughtful approach to building awareness of how one’s own family and its stories have developed over multiple generations. ...

Tips for Parents: Multiple Potentiality and Making Difficult Choices

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Dr. Dale Stuart, who helps parents understand multi-potentiality in their gifted children and the process of making difficult choices when their child is interested in, or shows potential in, many different areas. ...

Tips for Parents: Parenting the Gifted Child

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Dr. Edward Amend, who provides a number of ideas on how to foster relationships, improve discipline and increase motivation for your gifted child. ...

Tips for Parents: Positive Discipline for Gifted Children

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Jane Nelson, who provides advice related to the positive discipline of gifted students. ...

Tips for Parents: Questions and Answers about Food Selectivity

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Monica Andis, the Program Manager of the Nutrition and Dietary Services at the West Virginia University Center for Excellence in Disabilities. Questions are addressed for parents seeking information about their highly gifted children's eating issues and food sensitivities. ...

Tips for Parents: Raising Children Who Are as Good as They Are Smart

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Marybeth Hicks. She provides insight on how to raise a principled child and tips for moral development. ...

Tips for Parents: Real Life Habits for Success: The Way to Set & Achieve Your Goals

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Juli Scala, who provides advice on setting and achieving goals. ...

Tips for Parents: Self-concept and Self-esteem Regarding Gifted Learners

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Barbara Clark, who offers strategies to use with gifted children to help them accept themselves as they are, to provide a place where they feel they can be themselves, and to try to help their educators to understand them as well. ...

Tips for Parents: Self-Esteem of the Gifted

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Dr. Michelle Muratori about self-esteem and gifted students. ...

Tips for Parents: Social and Emotional Development in Gifted Children

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Dr. Nadia Webb. She discussed the social/emotional issues that parents of gifted children deal with regularly. ...

Tips for Parents: Social Experiences of Gifted Adolescents

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Dr. Mary Ann Swiatek. She addresses issues raised by parents on several topics, including acceleration, personality characteristics and developmental tasks. ...

Tips for Parents: Socialization and the Profoundly Gifted Child

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Jim Delisle, who covers several strategies for dealing with socialization issues of highly gifted young children. Delisle draws upon his own experience as well as those of parents. ...

Tips for Parents: That Should Only Take Ten Minutes

This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Stephen R. Balzac of 7 Steps Ahead. He highlights a number of helpful tips on scheduling and time management. ...

Social/Emotional: Gender Specific

Teaching Boys Pragmatic Communication

Over the years, author Adam J. Cox Ph.D., developed group techniques that are effective with boys because they build on the three primary social learning platforms of boys – the desire for action, mastery and play. Cox covers topics such as The Benefits of a Boys-Only Social Skills Group, Why Pragmatic Communication Skills Are So Important, and how Actions Speak Louder ThanWords. ...

Social/Emotional: General

A Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Approach to the Emotional Problems of Exceptionally and Profoundly Gifted Adolescents and Adults: A Psychiatrist’s Experience

Jerald Grobman described a group of exceptionally gifted adolescents and young adults who had become underachievers because of their inability to resolve certain conflicts that accompanied each stage of their development. ...

Being Me and Fitting In: The Dilemma of Differentness

In this article, Thomas Greenspon discusses the impact giftedness can have on children's social behavior. ...

Colors

This article is an op-ed piece by Dr. Nicholas Colangelo addressing the "Indigo children" movement. Colangelo defines the movement and urges colleagues not to get involved. He warns about the detrimental effect on children of giving them an aura of being "beyond the rules." ...

Dabrowski’s Theory and Existential Depression in Gifted Children and Adults

When people undergo a great trauma or other unsettling event—they have lost a job or a loved one dies, for example—their understanding of themselves or of their place in the world often disintegrates, and they temporarily "fall apart," experiencing a type of depression referred to as existential depression. ...

Emotional intensity in gifted children

This article by Lesley Sword explores and explains emotional intensity in gifted individuals. A number of traits of emotionally intensity are described. Strategies for parents are suggested to help their emotionally intense gifted children to accept themselves as they are. ...

Factors in the social adjustment and social acceptability of extremely gifted children

This article by Miraca Gross discusses the lack of differentiation between the levels or degrees of gifted individuals by professionals in gifted education. ...

Feelings and attitudes of gifted students

This article discusses gifted high school students and their self-perceptions. Overall, the study finds that, contrary to most research in this area, these students felt very well adjusted. Teachers agreed with the students in all areas except that the students rated themselves as happier than their teachers rated them. Authored by Tiffany Field, Jeff Harding, Regina Yando, Ketty Gonzalez, David Lasko, Debra Bendell and Carol Marks. ...

Gifted children: Emotionally immature or emotionally intense?

This article by Leslie Sword examines the emotional intensity of gifted children in terms of the overexcitabilities that are a component of Dabrowski’s theory of emotional development. Descriptions of emotional intensity are given together with examples of behaviour associated with emotional intensity that are often mistakenly perceived as emotional immaturity. It concludes that emotional intensity in the gifted is essential to the learning process and that gifted children need understanding and support to accept their rich inner experiences an ...

Identity development in gifted children: Moral sensitivity

"The asynchrony of gifted children, especially in the area of moral sensitivity, brings special issues to consider. These issues need to be resolved in order to develop good internal boundaries as well as appropriate interpersonal interactions." This article by Deirdre Lovecky explores the topic of gifted children who are very empathic and it gives examples of how this trait emerges in children. It also discusses ways to help gifted children handle this empathy so that it does not overwhelm them. ...

Overexcitability and the highly gifted child

This article by Sharon Lind explains how the concept of overexcitability, from the work of Kazimierz Dabrowski, relates to some highly gifted individuals. The author identifies several types of overexcitability. Also offered are strategies for dealing with each type of overexcitability. ...

Self-Mutilation and Gifted Children

There are many similarities in the development of current students and those from previous generations. However, there are significant differences in the experiences of every generation of students. ...

The pursuit of excellence or the search for intimacy? The forced-choice dilemma of gifted youth

This article by Miraca Gross discusses the feeling that many gifted children have that they must choose between social acceptance and intellectual ability. This article proposes that programs that group students based on ability rather than age will not force such a socio-psychological issue upon the gifted young person. She also cites research supporting this point of view. ...

Vulnerabilities of highly gifted children

This article by Wendy Roedell points out that although good social adjustment, emotional maturity, and healthy self-concepts are realized by many intellectually gifted children, this same group of children is uniquely vulnerable to a variety of adjustment difficulties. Problems of uneven development, perfectionism, adult expectations, intense sensitivity, self-definition, alienation, inappropriate environments and role conflict are explored. Roedell concludes that the degree of success at these adjustments depends to a great extent on environme ...

When it comes to bullying, there are no boundaries

American policymakers have been urgently seeking solutions to school bullying and violence in recent years, but the issue had been receiving attention in many other countries long before it hit the U.S. spotlight. This article by Marianne D. Hurst discusses how "nations try various strategies to eradicate such behavior in schools." ...

Social/Emotional: Peer Relations

Social/Emotional Needs: The Rage of Gifted Students

Written by Tracy Cross, this article examines the unique social and emotional perspectives of gifted students. ...

Support Materials: Book Reviews

Raise Your Child's Social IQ: Stepping Stones to People Skills for Kids

BOOK REVIEW (Davidson Institute) - A Davidson Institute Family Consultant gives a quick overview of this book by Cathi Cohen. Quizzes at the beginning of each chapter help guide the reader to answers that apply to their particular situation. This book is a valuable tool for any parent wanting to avoid raising a child with a "social learning disability." ...

The Gifted Kids' Survival Guide: For Ages 10 and Under

BOOK REVIEW (Davidson Institute) - The Gifted Kids’ Survival Guide: For Ages 10 and Under by Judy Galbraith is a book that can easily be read from cover to cover in one sitting. It is also a resource parents can lead their children to time and again to help them learn to handle difficult situations ...

The Social and Emotional Lives of Gifted Kids: Understanding and Guiding Their Development

BOOK REVIEW (Davidson Institute) - This review explains why The Social and Emotional Lives of Gifted Kids: Understanding and Guiding Their Development by Dr. Tracy Cross is a helpful tool for educators, counselors and anyone looking to recognize and respect the relationships between students' emotional, social and academic needs. ...

The Social and Emotional Needs of Gifted Individuals (Chapt. 7 in Once Upon a Mind: The Stories and Scholars of Gifted Education)

BOOK REVIEW (Davidson Institute) - This is a review of Chapter 7 of Jim Delisle's book Once Upon a Mind: The Stories and Scholars of Gifted Education. This chapter focuses on the social and emotional needs of gifted young people. The author wraps up the chapter with suggestions for meeting the emotional needs of the profoundly gifted population. ...

When Gifted Kids Don’t Have All The Answers: How to Meet Their Social and Emotional Needs

BOOK REVIEW (Davidson Institute) - When Gifted Kids Don't Have All The Answers by Jim Delisle and Judy Galbraith explains what giftedness means, how gifted kids are identified, and how we might improve the identification process. Then they take a close-up look at gifted kids from the inside out-their social and emotional needs. Topics include self-image and self-esteem, perfectionism, multipotential, depression, feelings of "differentness," and stress. ...