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For Parents: Books

• Guidebooks: Davidson Institute Guidebooks

  Considering the Options: A Guidebook for Investigating Early College Entrance (Parent Version)

  The Davidson Institute Team and Nancy Robinson, Ph.D., teamed up to write this guidebook designed to help you assess certain aspects of your child’s readiness for early college entrance. Sources and tips are listed for financial aid, distance learning and correspondence options, college guides, alternative schooling and more.

• Printed Materials: Books

  200 Ways to Raise a Boy's Emotional Intelligence: An Indispensible Guide for Parents, Teachers & Other Concerned Caregivers

  This guide by Will Glennon and Jeanne Elium, suggests tools for raising emotionally healthy boys in a culture that preaches stoicism for men. Some of the suggestions revolve around attitudes adults should cultivate in dealing with boys. The book also describes practical things adults can do to enhance boys' mental and emotional health.

  A Case of Brilliance

  A parent-to-parent book, this is the author's personal story of how she and her husband discovered their children are profoundly gifted.

  A Fine Young Man: What Parents, Mentors, and Educators Can Do to Shape Adolescent Boys into Exceptional Men

  Michael Gurian the author of "The Wonder of Boys" addresses the challenges of male adolescence. Gurian explores the biological and emotional landscape of male adolescence from cross disciplinary perspectives--culling research from medical science, psychology, anthropology and his own personal observation.

  A Love for Learning: Motivation and the Gifted Child

  Dr. Carol Strip Whitney presents concepts and techniques to counteract many de-motivating factors gifted children are susceptible to. These factors can lead to depression and academic underachievement. Whitney, along with help from Gretchen Hirsch, offers helpful advice to help spark the motivation in your gifted child or student.

  A Mind at a Time

  Recognizing each child's intellectual, emotional, and physical strengths--and teaching directly to these strengths--is key to sculpting "a mind at a time," according to Dr. Mel Levine. A professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina Medical School, Levine substantiates his claim that developmental growth deserves the same monitoring as a child's physical growth. Click here to read a review of this book.

  A Parent's Guide to Gifted Children

  Four experts (Webb, Gore, Amend, DeVries) in the field of gifted and talented provide practical guidance in the areas of: Characteristics of gifted children; Peer relations; Sibling issues; Motivation & underachievement; Discipline issues; Intensity & stress; Depression & unhappiness; Educational planning; Parenting concerns; Finding professional help; and much, much more! Click here to read a review of this book.

  A Parent's Guide to Gifted Teens: Living with Intense and Creative Adolescents

  A Parent's Guide to Gifted Teens will help parents understand their gifted adolescent's intensity and excitability and provide tips for nurturing self-discipline, being supportive without being controlling, and for caring for yourself while guiding an intense, creative teen. Click here to read a review of this book.

  A Very Practical Guide to Discipline with Young Children

  What is the right way to handle discipline with young children? With humor and insight Dr. Grace Mitchell uses actual situations to demonstrate her gentle and tested method for disciplining young children.

  A Volcano in My Tummy

  A Volcano in My Tummy gives an approach to helping children and adults alike understand and deal constructively with children's anger. The book includes activities which help to overcome the fear of children's anger which many adult care-givers experience, and distinguishes between anger the feeling, and violence the behavior. Primarily created for ages 6 to thirteen, it is accessible for use in class or at home.

  Academic Advocacy for Gifted Children: A Parent's Complete Guide

  In this revised edition to 1997's Empowering Gifted Minds: Educational Advocacy That Works, award-winning author Barbara Gilman walks parents and teachers through the process of documenting a child's abilities to providing reasonable educational options year by year. Learn about the problems and solutions for gifted students: Underachievement, Curriculum and Instruction, The Experience of Giftedness, and more.

  Activities That Teach

  This book written by Tom Jackson, contains a variety of activities that are great supplements to units for social issues. Additionally, this author offers specific guidelines and ideas to help kids learn practical ways to make decisions, solve problems and think about life issues. The author is the founder of the Active Learning Foundation.

  Aiming for Excellence: Annotations to the NAGC PreK-Grade 12 Gifted Program Standards

  This book offers a comprehensive review of the gifted education program standards developed by the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC). The standards, which represent professional consensus on essential practice in gifted education, provide a blueprint to encourage and guide schools in developing and evaluating high-quality programming.
  

  Answers to Distraction

  In this sequel to "Driven to Distraction," Edward Hallowell and John Ratay provide practical solutions to the struggles of people with ADD. Each chapter is devoted to one aspect of the disorder: ADD in women, ADD and aggression, ADD and addiction and more.

  Anxiety-Free Kids: An Interactive Guide for Parents and Children

  Written by Bonnie Zucker, Psy.D., this book offers parents strategies that help children become happy and worry free, methods that relieve a child’s excessive anxieties and phobias, and tools for fostering interaction and family-oriented solutions. Using a unique companion approach that offers two books in one—a practical, reader-friendly book for parents and a fun workbook for kids—this solutions-oriented guide utilizes the cognitive-behavioral approach to therapy by integrating the parent in the child’s self-help process. The new edition offers two new chapters—one on sleep and one on how to best parent kids with anxiety. Click here to read a review of the 2008 edition of this book.

  Arts Education for Gifted Learners (The Practical Strategies Series in Gifted Education)

  Written by Jesse Rachel Cukierkorn, Ph.D., this book provides information for teachers and parents interested in supporting an artistically talented child. It reveals the characteristics of artistically talented students, describes program options, and shares an approach for supporting the affective needs of these students.

  Authentic Happiness: Using the New Postive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment

  In this practical book, Martin E.P. Seligman, Ph.D. introduces the revolutionary idea of "Positive Psychology." Happiness can be cultivated by identifying and nurturing traits that we already possess - including kindness, originality, humor, optimism and generosity.

  Awaken the Genius in Your Child: A Practical Guide for Parents

  Every child is a genius to his or her parents, but not every parent has the knowledge or confidence to develop their child's creative, intellectual potential to its fullest extent. This book by Shakuntala Devi helps create a constructive, fun and supportive learning environment for children, from babyhood through school. It offers practical, manageable advice and accessible, step-by-step methods designed to bring out natural abilities.

  Barefoot Irreverence: A Guide to Critical Issues in Gifted Child Education

  This book is a collection of the most popular writings from the past two decades of esteemed gifted education researcher Dr. James R. Delisle and includes more than 50 articles and essays from such publications as Education Week, Parenting for High Potential, Understanding Our Gifted and more.
  

  Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

  This book by Amy Chua, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, chronicles the author's iron-willed decision to raise her daughters, Sophia and Lulu, her way-the Chinese way-and the remarkable results her choice inspires.

  Being Smart About Gifted Children: A Guidebook For Parents And Educators

  Writers Dona J. Matthews and Joanne F. Foster advises the reader on how to answer the tricky questions, support gifted kids in today's "common" world, and what to tell the kids along the way. This book also examines different ways of supporting optimal development in those who have been labeled "gifted," and those who have not.

  Being the Parent You Want to Be: 12 Communication Skills for Effective Parenting

  Positive, effective communication with your children. What parent or caregiver wouldn't want that? Unfortunately, positive communication skills aren't something everyone is born with! Gary Page teaches everyone who works with and cares for children 12 time-tested skills that transform adult-child relationships.

  Beyond Gifted Education: Designing and Implementing Advanced Academic Programs

  Seeking a more comprehensive vision for gifted education, this book offers a modern vision of programs and services for gifted and talented students. This book provides the first comprehensive look at designing and implementing K–12 advanced academic student programs.

  Beyond Ritalin: Facts About Medication and Other Strategies for Helping Children, Adolescents, and Adults with Attention Deficit Disorders

  An expert on ADD, Stephen Garber provides a guide for coping with this disorder by helping to answer the questions: Do I have a correct diagnosis of ADHD? What kind of medication might be helpful? What else can and should I do to help myself or my child deal with this problem? In addition, this book includes a complete checklist of ADHD symptoms, charts, work sheets and a comprehensive list of valuable resources and support groups.

  Big Tools for Young Thinkers

  In this book by Susan Keller-Mathers and Kristin Puccio, children in the primary grades can learn and apply a wide variety of powerful thinking tools for generating options for focusing their thinking. Creative problem-solving tools include brainstorming, braindrawing, forced relationships, and the evaluation matrix.

  Bright Kids Who Can't Keep Up: Help Your Child Overcome Slow Processing Speed and Succeed in a Fast-Paced World

  Drs. Ellen Braaten and Brian Willoughby have worked with thousands of kids and teens who struggle with an area of cognitive functioning called "processing speed," and who are often mislabeled as lazy or unmotivated. Filled with vivid stories and examples, this crucial resource demystifies processing speed and shows how to help kids (ages 5 to 18) catch up in this key area of development. Learn how to obtain needed support at school, what to expect from a professional evaluation, and how you can make daily routines more efficient—while promoting the social and emotional well-being of children. Read a review of this book.

  Bright Minds, Poor Grades: Understanding and Motivating your Underachieving Child

  Clinical psychologist Michael D. Whitley presents a proven ten-step program to motivate underachieving children. For any parent who has ever been told, "your child isn't performing up to his or her potential," this book has the answer.

  Bright, Talented, & Black: Guide for Families of African American Gifted Learners

  This book provides helpful information about the parenting and education of black gifted children. The author, Dr. Joy Davis, offers practical information based on her personal experience as a parent, as well as a gifted education professional. This book will help African American parents, as well as educators who work with these bright, talented, gifted children.

  Bringing Out the Best: A Guide for Parents of Young Gifted Children

  This is a comprehensive resource guide from Jacquelyn Saunders for parents of young gifted children. It contains information on identification, early enrichment activities, school placement issues, and parenting strategies.

  Bullying Is a Pain in the Brain (Revised & Updated Edition)

  No one wants to be picked on, pushed around, threatened, or teased. With practical suggestions and humor, kids will learn to stop bullying in its tracks. Refreshed to reflect the latest research, this updated classic reassures kids that it’s not their fault if they are bullied and describes realistic ways to become “Bully-Proof.” It shows how bystanders can stand up for others and how to get help in dangerous situations. Even kids who bully will find ideas they can use to get along with others and feel good about themselves—without making other people miserable. An older version of the book is available here.

  Challenging Highly Gifted Learners (The Practical Strategies Series in Gifted Education)

  Written by Barbara Gilman, this book focuses on many of the issues involved in assessing and challenging highly gifted learners. A thorough discussion of the ceiling problems encountered on common assessments is included, as well as strategies for teachers and parents in planning appropriate education.

  Cheating, Dishonesty, and Manipulation: Why Bright Kids Do It

  In this book, Maupin discusses solutions and strategies to build honesty and confidence and to provide appropriate challenges and healthy outlets for creativity so that children can become self-sufficient, life-long learners who no longer feel a need to resort to cheating, dishonesty, or manipulation.

  Children and Bullying: How Parents and Educators Can Reduce Bullying at School

  Many books have recently been written about bullying in schools, but few, if any, have attempted to combine what has been learned from research with what it would be useful for parents to know about peer victimization in schools. This book by Dr. Ken Rigby attempts to show how parents and educators, principally teachers and school counsellors, can work together to reduce bullying and the associated distress which many children experience from bullying at school.

  Children: The Challenge : The Classic Work on Improving Parent-Child Relations--Intelligent, Humane & Eminently Practical

  Dr. Rudolf Dreikurs, one of America's foremost child psychiatrists, presents an easy to follow program that teaches parents how to cope with the common childhood problems that occur from toddler through preteen years. This book gives the key to parents who seek to build trust and love in their families, and raise happier, healthier, and better behaved children.

  Coloring Outside the Lines

  Roger Schank offers a philosophy of learning with an emphasis on harnessing the child's natural inquisitiveness and generating in a child a passion for learning and creating. Dr. Schank also offers clear, practical advice on how parents can help their children to learn in hundreds of different ways, and how parents can help their children to get the most out of their school experiences.

  Core Knowledge Grader Series (Book Series)

  In a single convenient volume per grade -- beginning with What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know through What Your Sixth Grader Needs to Know -- the seven-volume Core Knowledge Series provides parents, teachers, and children with an engaging, illustrated introduction to the important knowledge outlined in the Core Knowledge Sequence.

  Counseling Gifted and Talented Children: A Guide for Teachers, Counselors, and Parents

  This book from Roberta Milgram 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.

  Counseling the Gifted & Talented

  This book by Linda Kreger Silverman is an aid for any person related to or working with a gifted child. Ms. Silverman provides specific strategies for individual and group counseling in meeting the unique social and emotional needs of these individuals.

  Creative Home Schooling: A Resource Guide for Smart Families

  This book is a comprehensive guide to homeschooling. It includes features on reasons to homeschool, record keeping, curriculum resources, how to get started, college preparation, social and emotional issues, and much more. It also includes a chapter on homeschooling your twice exceptional child. Click here to read a review of this book.

  Creativity and Innovation: Theory, Research, and Practice

  Creativity and innovation are frequently mentioned as key 21st-century skills for career and life success. Indeed, recent research provides evidence that the jobs of the future will increasingly require the ability to bring creative solutions to complex problems. This book brings together some of the world’s best thinkers and researchers on creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship to provide a comprehensive but highly readable overview of these exciting, important topics.

  Critical Issues and Practices in Gifted Education: What the Research Says (2nd ed.)

  This book is the definitive reference book for those searching for a summary and evaluation of the literature on giftedness, gifted education and talent development. The book presents more than 50 summaries of important topics in the field, providing relevant research and a guide to how the research applies to gifted education and the lives of gifted children. This second edition updates every topic with new research and introduces several critically important topics such as cluster grouping, Response to Intervention, programming standards, the Common Core State Standards, educational leadership, and legal issues. This book provides an objective assessment of the available knowledge on each topic, offers guidance in the application of the research, and suggests areas of needed research.

  Crossover Children: A Sourcebook for Helping Children Who Are Gifted and Learning Disabled

  This book serves as a great primer for a mostly unheard of, frequently misunderstood learning condition. Many consider these bright, academically underachieving kids a conundrum. Many are labeled unmotivated, lazy, or troublemakers. The children are bored, confused, or unable to organize themselves enough to succeed in today's classrooms.

  Cues & Clues To Children's Behaviors: A Guide To Raising A Happy, Well-Adjusted Child
  

  This comprehensive and informative book, written by Salma Bhalla, Ph.D. is a guide to recognizing the ways children express their emotional and social problems through their behaviors. The book, written in a reader friendly style with examples, first makes the parents aware of causes of these behaviors. Then, it provides effective ways to help their child cope with anger, anxiety, stress, low self-esteem, and divorce. Available in paperback and as an ebook.

  Developing Mathematically Promising Students

  Comprises 34 contributions that, collectively, explore the possibilities for the recognition and nurturing of mathematically gifted students in grades K-12. Specific topics include the use of awards programs, the cultural challenge facing gifted girls, what teachers can learn from students' reasoning, international perspectives, the definition of talent, curricular strategies, and connecting parents to the schools.

  Developing Talents: Careers for Individuals with Asperger Syndrome and High-Functioning Autism

  Presented in an easy to read format, this book by Temple Grandin and Kate Duffy focuses on using one's strengths, natural talents, and special interests to gain employment and lead successful lives.

  Developing Your Child for Success

  Author Kenneth Lane outlines 103 activities that are designed to help give a child the necessary perceptual motor-skills needed to succeed in school. Categories covered are motor, visual motor, ocular motor, vision, laterality, directionality, sequential processing and simultaneous processing.

  Doing Poorly on Purpose: Strategies to Reverse Underachievement and Respect Student Dignity

  There is no such thing as a “classic underachiever.” Students (and their reasons for underachieving) are influenced by a wide range of factors, including self-image, self-concept, social-emotional relationships, and the amount of dignity teachers afford their students. Smart, underachieving students need the reassurance that they are capable, valuable, and worth listening to despite their low academic performance. Helping “smart” students achieve when they don’t want to is not an easy task, but teachers can reengage and inspire students using veteran educator Jim Delisle’s insights and practical advice on these topics: autonomy, access, advocacy, alternatives, aspirations and approachable educators.

  Dreamers, Discoverers & Dynamos: How to Help the Child Who Is Bright, Bored and Having Problems in School (Formerly Titled 'The Edison Trait')

  Written by psychologist Lucy Jo Palladino, this book offers advice for parents struggling to raise children who are clearly bright, but also maddeningly unfocused. The author calls such children "Edison-trait" who exhibit divergent thinking, focusing on many ideas simultaneously.

  Driven To Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood

  As two successful medical professionals with ADD, authors Edward M. Hallowell and John J. Ratey help dispel a vairety of myths about the disorder - i.e. "ADD is an issue only for children." The book goes on to cite stories and case studies of many who have dealt successfully with their diagnosis.

  Dumbing Down America: The War on Our Nation’s Brightest Young Minds (and What We Can Do To Fight Back)

  With more than 35 years of experience in gifted education, Dr. James Delisle writes with immense passion in the book, Dumbing Down America. Delisle calls on America for change; he urges our nation to support America’s gifted children and provide them with the same opportunities as the rest of the student population which equates to an appropriately challenging education. Click here to read a review of this book.

  Early Childhood Gifted Education (The Practical Strategies Series in Gifted Education)

  Written by Nancy B. Hertzog, Ph.D., this book presents an array of strategies that facilitate the growth and development of young gifted children. From creating a literacy-rich environment to affording opportunities for inquiry, the implementation of the strategies presented is sure to empower young children to pursue and develop their gifts and talents.

  Education of the Gifted and Talented (6th Edition)

  Written by Gary A. Davis and Sylvia B. Rimm, this book is a standard introductory text in gifted education. The sixth edition has been thoroughly revised, most notably with the latest research on acceleration, curriculum models, underachievement, culturally and economically disadvantaged students, gender issues, and dual exceptionalities. The content is further supported and enhanced by the inclusion of numerous practical strategies that can be implemented in the classroom, case studies that help teachers identify student needs, summaries of research on effective programs, emphasis on pedagogy and on social-emotional needs, heightened awareness of less visible sub-groups within gifted populations, and an amusing, witty writing style that adds to the appeal of this best-selling book.

  Educational Care: A System for Understanding and Helping Children With Learning Problems at Home and in School

  Find strategies for handling various learning difficulties and get a more complete understanding of why your child acts the way he/she does. This book presents a way of thinking about many of the common forms of learning disorders, their recognition, their implications, and their treatment. Specifically, chapters 2-7 describe the areas in which neurodevelopmental dysfunction may hinder learning and performance in school. There are also sections on "demystification," which provides a process that adults can use when talking to their children about the nature of their learning disorders as well as their strengths.

  Einstein Never Used Flash Cards

  The authors join together to prove that training preschoolers with flash cards and attempting to hurry intellectual development doesn't pay off. In fact, the authors claim, kids who are pressured early on to join the academic rat race don't fair any better than children who are allowed to take their time. Alarmed by the current trend toward creating baby Einsteins, the authors urge parents to step back and practice the "Three R's: Reflect, Resist, and Recenter." Instead of pushing preschoolers into academically oriented programs that focus on early achievement, they suggest that children learn best through simple playtime, which enhances problem solving skills, attention span, social development and creativity.

  Emotional Intensity in Gifted Students: Helping Kids Cope with Explosive Feelings

  This book by Christine Fonseca provides readers with helpful, specific information about this population, as well as helpful interventions to attempt that are easy to implement and supported by research. Click here to read a review of this book.

  Empowering Underachievers: New Strategies to Guide Kids (8-18) to Personal Excellence

  Peter A. Spevak and Maryann Karinch provide techniques on constructively engaging and empowering your child by giving him/her choices instead of ultimatums. The theory behind the techniques: understanding the underachiever’s behavior on an emotional level.

  Encouraging Your Child's Math Talent: The Involved Parents' Guide (The Involved Parents' Guides)

  Michael J. Bosse and Jennifer V. Rotigela authored this comprehensive, helpful guide to supporting a child's mathematical talent. The authors guide parents in recognizing advanced math ability in their children, working with the school system and tips for connecting a child's math ability to his or her everyday interests.
  

  Encouraging Your Child's Science Talent: The Involved Parents' Guide

  Michael Matthews provides parents with advice for recognizing early science ability in children and enriching a child's science ability outside of school. However, this advice can be used to help science ability flourish at home and in the classroom. Matthews also includes a special section devoted to science fairs that takes parents through the process of helping their children create award-winning science projects. Click here to read a review of this book.

  Encouraging Your Child's Writing Talent: The Involved Parents' Guide

  This book by Nancy Peterson brings a new perspective to teaching kids writing—one that helps parents encourage and cultivate a child's creative insights and love of words through the writing process. The author introduces parents to the characteristics of the gifted writer, provides them with tips to include writing in day-to-day activities, and leads them through the process of setting up writing workshops within the home. Along the way, stories and insights from published writers and examples of children's written musings show how the budding writer can be encouraged in his or her self-expression. Click here to read a review of this book.

  Ending the Homework Hassle: Understanding, Preventing, and Solving School Performance Problems

  This book gives advice and parenting strategies for helping students handle homework in a productive and positive manner.

  Enhancing and Practicing Executive Function Skills with Children from Infancy to Adolescence

  Each chapter of Enhancing and Practicing Executive Function Skills contains activities suitable for a different age groups. This book may be read in its entirety (which includes the introduction and references) or in discrete sections geared to specific age groups.

  Enjoy Your Gifted Child

  Written in laymen's terms, this book by Carol Addison Takacs offers sound advice on how to let your child discover his/her talents and learning capacity without forcing them at an unnatural pace. Giving them creative outlets ("fun-time") while they learn can lead to more balanced brain development.

  Essentials of Gifted Assessment (Essentials of Psychological Assessment) 1st Edition

  This book introduces readers to the theory and practice underlying gifted assessment. Steven Pfeiffer, a leading expert in the field of gifted assessment, discusses what it means to be gifted, why we should identify gifted students, and the purposes of gifted assessment.

  Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting

  Jon and Myla Kabat-Zinn approach parenting from the Zen Buddhist position of moment-to-moment awareness and provides a new way of facing the challenges of parenthood. One discussion shows how a lack of awareness fosters patterns that damage both parent and child, and how mindfulness can bring healing and transformation to this essential relationship.

  Excellence in Educating the Gifted

  This book was conceived to delineate the many facets of gifted individuals and their learning patterns, so that they may be enabled to reach their greatest potential. The authors intend this book to serve as a basic resource for those who view gifted education as a set of rigorous intellectual experiences for youth who exhibit aptitude and interest in matters of the mind.

  Expert Approaches to Support Gifted Learners:
  Professional Perspectives, Best Practices, and Positive Solutions

  Educators and parents need practical information they can use now to help them best understand and support the gifted learners in their lives. Because of the unique social and emotional needs faced by gifted learners—not to mention the unique academic needs—teaching and parenting them can be as demanding as it is rewarding. These 36 articles provide much-needed help. They are a “best of” from the last seven years of the Gifted Education Communicator, the national publication of the California Association for the Gifted.

  Finding Your Way through the Maze of College Prep Tests: A Guide to APs and SAT Subject Tests with Tips for Homeschoolers and Accelerated Learners

  Written by the parent of a gifted student, this book is filled with information that parents and students may find helpful when making decisions about pre-college planning and testing. The following questions are addressed. Are you a high school student trying to decide on college prep courses? Are you a parent wondering about APs and how they affect your student's high school and college plans? Are you homeschooling through high school and need resources for tackling college prep work and the details about how to register for testing? This reference will guide you through the ins and outs of AP exams and SAT Subject Tests, including answers to: Are there special rules for homeschoolers or pre-high school students?

  Freedom Challenge: African American Homeschoolers

  Written by Grace Llewellyn, this book features descriptions of daily life in the homeschools of a number of African American and biracial families. Several of the vignettes include homeschools with extremely gifted children. The volume provides an excellent perspective on what it's really like to homeschool, day in and day out, with bright, curious children.

  Friends Forever: How Parents Can Help Their Kids Make and Keep Good Friends

  Written by Fred Frankel, this book is the update to Mr. Frankel's older tome titled Good Friends Are Hard to Find: Help Your Child Find, Make, and Keep Friends. This new edition outlines a systematic plan for parents to help their kids acquire and sustain friendships. Most parents don't know what to do that will encourage their child to be a friend and attract friends. The author offers clear-cut friendship-making guidelines for parents and their children. Some of the book's recommendations include: don't over-schedule a child's time; guide children to participate in "friend-attracting" activities; seek out friends in the neighborhood.

  From School to Homeschool: Should You Homeschool Your Gifted Child?

  This book by author Suki Wessling guides parents through the process of considering homeschooling options and educational alternatives. The book is filled with practical information and loaded with resources that will get parents off to a good start as
  they begin their home-schooling journey with their children.

  Genius Denied: How to Stop Wasting Our Brightest Young Minds

  This book tells the stories of gifted children who have suffered the tedium of classes years behind their ability level, and others who have excelled while learning in an enriching academic environment. Authors Jan and Bob Davidson, with Laura Vanderkam, explore the impact of gifted education policy and advocacy efforts in various locations around the United States. Click here to read a review of this book.

  Genius in Residence

  Written by Audrey Grost, this book is a mother's story of the early development of her profoundly gifted, extremely mathematically precocious son, Michael, and her struggles to obtain an appropriate assessment and educational provisions for him. Audrey Grost discusses family issues and educational problems as well as how the family dealt with extensive media coverage when Michael became the youngest college student ever.

  Get Into College in 3 Months or Less

  Get Into College in 3 Months or Less offers the perfect last-minute rescue to ensuring college entrance. Filled with insider tips and tricks, this book is ideal for parents and their kids who are too busy to spend hours combing through university brochures or filling in applications and need to complete the college admission process fast.
  

  Get Off My Brain: A Survival Guide for Lazy Students (Bored, Frustrated and Otherwise Sick of School)

  A humorous and irreverent guide to how "lazy" (i.e. "bored, frustrated, and otherwise sick of school") students can survive the tedium of school, and maybe even have fun doing it. A guide for teens who are bored and frustrated at school, and need motivational skills.

  Get Out of My Life, but First Could You Drive Me & Cheryl to the Mall: A Parent's Guide to the New Teenager

  Despite the best efforts of parents, today's adolescents frequently drink, experiment with drugs and are sexually active. According to the Anthony E. Wolf, however, it is still important to have rules even though a teenager may break them. He clearly has a feel for both the angst of young people who must deal with an evermore complex world and the difficulties parents face when a cooperative loving child morphs into a teenager who lies, talks back and avoids parental company.

  Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving In

  This book offers a concise, step-by-step, proven strategy for coming to mutually acceptable agreements in every sort of conflict. It tells you how to separate the people from the problem; focus on interests, not positions; work together to create options that will satisfy both parties; and negotiate successfully with people who are more powerful, refuse to play by the rules, or resort to 'dirty tricks.'

  Gifted Adolescents (The Practical Strategies Series in Gifted Education)

  Written by Paula Olszewski-Kubilius, Ph.D., this book covers topics dealing with gifted adolescents, such as: talent development during adolescence; critical issues for gifted adolescents; and, implications for educational practice and parenting.

  Gifted and Talented Children: A Planning Guide

  This book is for teachers and parents who have children of special ability/gifted. This resource takes an accessible, practical and inclusive approach to ways of working with highly gifted children.

  Gifted Children, Gifted Education: A Handbook for Teachers And Parents

  This book by Gary A. Davis Ph. D. is a no-nonsense guide to the concept of giftedness in children, and how parents can provide opportunities to cultivate their children's gifts. Chapters address how to identify gifted children, the pros and cons of educational acceleration and common problems or counseling needs among gifted children.

  Gifted Children: A Guide for Parents and Professionals

  Author Kate Distin aims to help children and their families learn more about what is typical or normal for gifted and talented children and to shatter some of the myths about these children and their parents.

  Gifted Education Comes Home: A Case for Self Directed Home Schooling

  This book describes a homeschooling method for highly gifted students which stresses a self-actualizing home education approach based on the child's interests and motivation. The book is grounded in theory and research from education and psychology.

  Gifted Parent Groups: The SENG Model

  This book by Arlene Devries and Dr. James T. Webb, provides provides the essential information for persons wishing to conduct SENG (Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted) Model parent support groups for parents of gifted children. The groups are designed to help parents gain a better understanding of their children and to help their children develop positive self-esteem and interpersonal skills.

  Gifted, Bullied Resilient: A Brief Guide for Smart Families

  Gifted kids, with their often asynchronous development, eclectic interests, and intense emotions, can be prime targets for bullying. What can compassionate parents, friends, and educators do to help these kids rise above the bullying and become emotionally stronger and more self-assured?
  In her second book, Gifted, Bullied, Resilient: A Brief Guide for Smart Families, author Pamela Price draws upon her experience as a journalist and gifted parenting advocate to provide concerned adults with a plan of action. She introduces readers to contemporary research, an array of social learning, real-life anecdotes from veteran parents, and select resources relevant to the families of bullied gifted kids and adolescents. The slender, informative, and insightful text is geared both toward parents of public and private school students, as well as homeschoolers in cooperative learning environments.

  Girls Will Be Girls: Raising Confident and Courageous Daughters

  Read about original concepts that form a framework to help parents better understand their daughters. This book gives girls perspectives as they struggle with body image, self esteem, intellectual growth, peer pressure, and media messages.

  Good Friends Are Hard to Find: Help Your Child Find, Make and Keep Friends

  This book leads parents step-by-step to help them learn how to help their 5- to 12-year-olds make friends and solve problems with other kids. This guide also offers concrete help for teasing, bullying and meanness, both for the child who is picked on and the tormentor. Based on the prestigious UCLA Children's Social Skills Program, this book teaches clinically tested techniques that really work. Click here to read a review of this book. As of 2010, this book is out of print, but the author has published an updated and revised edition with Jossey-Bass that has been re-titled, Friends Forever: How Parents Can Help Their Kids Make and Keep Good Friends, which is available on Kindle.

  Grandparents' Guide to Gifted Children

  This comprehensive guide from authors James T. Webb, Janet L. Gore, Frances A. Karnes and A. Stephen McDaniel, enables the reader to identify the signs of advanced development and the special needs of bright children as well as developing education plans, and what to do when a grandparent becomes the parent.

  Grouping and Acceleration Practices in Gifted Education

  The most influential works on acceleration and grouping practices for the gifted are gathered in this volume, which covers concerns about the effectiveness of such techniques, presents research on the optimal conditions and methods for the utilization of grouping and/or acceleration, and describes effective programmatic initiatives.

  Growing Up Again: Parenting Ourselves, Parenting Our Children (2nd Edition)

  Growing Up Again provides information about ages and stages of development, ways to nurture children and yourself, and tools for personal and family growth. This new edition also addresses the special demands of parenting adopted children and the problem of overindulgence; a recognition and exploration of prenatal life and your final days as unique life stages; new examples of nurturing, structuring, and discounting, as well as concise ways to identify them; help for handling parenting conflicts in blended families, and guidelines on supporting children's spiritual growth.

  Growing Up Gifted: Developing the Potential of Children at Home and at School

  Barbara Clark's Growing Up Gifted is a textbook for gifted education studies. While it doesn't focus on the highly gifted, it does offer a good overview of the research in various areas of gifted education and development. Click here to read a review of this book.

  Guiding the Gifted Child: A Practical Source for Parents and Teachers

  This award-winning practical source for parents and teachers discusses the unique social and emotional needs and concerns of gifted students. Includes chapters on motivation, discipline, peer relationships, sibling relationships, stress management, depression, and many other issues that parents and teachers encounter daily. See also A Parent's Guide to Gifted Children for an updated version of this book.

  Helping Gifted Children Soar: A Practical Guide for Parents and Teachers (2nd Edition)

  This updated, user-friendly guidebook educates parents and teachers about important issues facing gifted children and the adults who guide them, such as selecting appropriate schools, expanding and differentiating the curriculum for gifted learners, and supporting children who experience stress, depression, perfectionism, friendship issues, and more. The information and useful advice contained in this book make it an ideal resource for those just starting to learn about gifted children, as well as seasoned veterans. The second edition includes the concepts of misdiagnosis and a discussion of Dabrowski’s Theory of Disintegration.

  Helping the Child Who Doesn't Fit In

  Written by Stephen Norwicki, Jr. Ph.D. and Marshall P. Duke, Ph.D., this book aims to help children who are "square pegs" in social circles. The authors, both of whom are clinical psychologists, offer parents strategies for helping their child improve his/her social relationships through improved non-verbal communication skills. Chapter titles include: Use of space and touch, gestures and postures, facial expressions, and the like.

  Helping Young Children Flourish

  Aletha Solter presents a new approach to parenting which respects the child's needs and feelings. Without using punishment nor rewards, children are allowed to reach their highest potential.

  High IQ Kids: Collected Insights, Information, and Personal Stories from the Experts

  Profoundly gifted kids often get the least help in school. It’s assumed they’re smart enough to succeed on their own, plus teachers (and parents) feel out of their depth with these unique kids. A blend of personal stories and practical strategies, scholarly articles and entertaining essays from a community of voices—parents, educators, authors, researchers, and other experts—this book addresses the joys and challenges of raising and teaching, living with and understanding exceptionally gifted kids of all ages.

  Homeschool Your Child for Free: More Than 1,200 Smart, Effective, and Practical Resources for Home Education on the Internet and Beyond

  This book is a compilation of free curriculum guides, worksheets, educational materials, lesson plans, reference materials, teaching tips, legal issues, and more. Parents can use it to design a homeschool program without spending any money. It contains reading readiness activities for preschoolers to science projects for teens, and categorizes, reviews, and rates more than 1,200 educational resources on the Internet and beyond.
  

  Hothouse Kids: The Dilemma of the Gifted Child

  Alissa Quart shows how a gifted childhood that is "relentlessly tested, totally overscheduled and joylessly competitive" is being created by some parents and concludes that "enrichment" not only doesn't necessarily work, it may be harmful.

  How Children Fail

  First published in the 1960s, this book has been updated numerous times to reflect the latest insight on the factors that can cause children to fail. Author John Holt concludes that students learn strategies for appearing to know content, rather than the content itself. Parents of gifted children may find this book helpful as underachievement is a common issue in the gifted community.

  How to Handle a Hard-To-Handle Kid: A Parent's Guide to Understanding and Changing Problem Behaviors

  C. Drew Edwards offers alternative parenting strategies by showing your child "Support Through Listening." By applying this technique, the child tends to be less resistant to authority and less prone to temper tantrums.

  How to Keep Your Teenager Out of Trouble and What to Do If You Can't

  Thoughtful, clear-eyed, comprehensive, and refreshingly free of jargon, this book helps parents identify whether their teens are exhibiting typical behavior, such as locking themselves in their room for hours, or are exhibiting real danger signs, such as being secretive, despondent, or constantly angry.
  A clinical psychologist who's spent more than two decades bringing families back from the brink, author Dr. Neil I. Bernstein knows how to help parents and teens successfully navigate these difficult and trying years. The focus, above all else, is effective communication.

  How to Parent So Children Will Learn

  In this book, author Dr. Sylvia Rimm gives practical, compassionate, no-nonsense advice for raising happy, secure, and productive children, from preschool to college. Easy-to-follow parent pointers, sample dialogues, and boxed step-by-step examples show parents how to guide their children. Click here to read a review of this book.

  How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success

  This book provides advice on how to refrain from "overparenting." Author Julie Lythcott-Haims, Dean of Freshmen and Undergraduate Advising for more than a decade at Stanford University, presents a convincing vision of overprotected, overparented, overscheduled kids. After presenting the problem in detail (through interviews with college admissions officers, educators, parents, and others), she offers a number of viable solutions. This book provides parents the backup needed to make essential changes. The goal of parenting should be to raise autonomous adults who are self-reliant.

  How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk

  Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish offer suggestions for giving praise, acknowledging feelings and gaining true cooperation. The authors explain that it is all about effective communication and its strategies are healthy and effective for every relationship.

  Improse: Activites That Promote Creativity, "Gooder Grammar" and Better Punctuation

  Make grammar fun by using this book from Brad Newton. Thirty creative, improvisational activities are included to help kids learn grammar, punctuation, critical thinking and problem solving. Children in grades 2-10 will enjoy Newton's approach for developing foundational language skills.

  In Search of Perspective

  Cartoonist Jean Watts searches for some perspective on the full-time job of parenting and teaching gifted children. Her original cartoons present amusing viewpoints and thought-provoking insights into life with a precocious child.

  Intelligent Life in the Classroom: Smart Kids & Their Teachers

  Karen Isaacson and Tamara Fisher share comical stories of children and teenagers in order for the reader to understand and appreciate the intellectual and emotional lives of gifted students. They cover key concepts such as: Curiosity is a powerful motivator for learning; Excellent teachers noth follow and lead their students; Learning happens when learners are inspired, not when they are admonished; and, Good teachers help students develop disciplined minds without overcoming students with discipline.

  Investigating Creativity in Youth

  This book provides an accessible source of ideas on major issues pertaining to development of creative individuals and training for creativity. It presents recently developing perspectives to investigate many facets of creativity.

  Is Your Child Hyperactive? Inattentive? Impulsive? Distractable?: Helping the ADD/Hyperactive Child

  This book outlines a proven step-by-step program to help change your child's behavior at home. Stephen Garber discusses the characteristics of inattentiveness, hyperactivity and impulsivity.

  Jane and Johnny Love Math: Recognizing and Encouraging Mathematical Talent in Elementary Students

  For parents and educators, this book delineates methods of addressing the needs of mathematically talented students younger than 12. The approaches described are based on the authors’ experiences with hundreds of talented students. They discuss educational options allowing students to move systematically through the elementary math curriculum while matching the curriculum to the students' abilities and achievements. The book includes problem sets from the Mathematical Olympiads for Elementary Schools as well as practical ideas for classroom teachers, mathematics mentors, and parents.

  Keys to Parenting the Gifted Child

  Dr. Sylvia Rimm offers parents guidelines on how to determine if their children are unusually gifted, and how to prepare them for school. These guidelines help to ensure that gifted children are sufficiently challenged in the classroom. There is also a section, called Parenting Keys, that helps parents raise healthy, happy, productive, and well-adjusted children in the demanding contemporary environment.

  Kids, Parents and Power Struggles: Winning for a Lifetime

  Noted family educator Mary Sheedy Kurcinka struck a national chord with her bestselling Raising Your Spirited Child. With this book, she hits upon another crucial parenting topic: coping with the everyday challenges of disciplining your child, while understanding the issues behind his/her behavior. She offers unique approaches to solving the daily, and often draining, power struggles between you and your child. With her successful strategies, you'll be able to identify the trigger situations that set off these struggles and get to the root of the emotions and needs of you and your child.

  Late, Lost, and Unprepared: A Parent's Guide to Helping Children with Executive Functioning

  Executive functions are the cognitive skills that help us manage our lives and be successful. Children with weak executive skills, despite their best intentions, often do their homework but forget to turn it in, wait until the last minute to start a project, lose things, or have a room that looks like a dump! The good news is that parents can do a lot to support and train their children to manage these frustrating and stressful weaknesses. Written by clinical psychologists Joyce Cooper-Kahn and Laurie Dietzel, this book emphasizes the need for a two-pronged approach to intervention: 1) helping the child to manage demands in the short run, and 2) building independent skills for long-term self-management.

  Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life

  Martin Seligman, a renowned psychologist and clinical researcher, has been studying optimists and pessimists for 25 years. "Pessimism is escapable," asserts Seligman in this book, by learning a new set of cognitive skills that will enable you to take charge, resist depression, and make yourself feel better and accomplish more. "Pessimism is escapable," asserts author Martin Seligman, by learning a new set of cognitive skills that will enable you to take charge, resist depression, and make yourself feel better and accomplish more.

  Leaving to Learn

  Leaving to Learn is designed to help you deeply understand the real reasons kids drop out and the essential conditions for productive learning that today's adolescents require. The authors then make a argument: in order to retain students through to graduation, schools must offer experiences where students do some of their learning outside of school.

  Letting Go of Perfect: Overcoming Perfectionism in Kids

  Written by Jill L. Adelson, Ph.D. and Hope E. Wilson, Ph.D., this book pinpoints a crippling state of mentality among many kids today—the need to be absolutely perfect—and gives parents and teachers the guidance and support they need to help children break free of the anxieties and behaviors related to perfectionism.
  

  Letting Go: A Parents' Guide to Understanding the College Years

  Based on real-life experience and recommended by colleges and universities around the country, Letting Go offers compassionate, practical, and up-to-the-minute information to help parents with the emotional and social changes of the college years. Click here to read a review of this book.

  Life of Fred book series

  This is a series of math and language arts books in which each text is written in the style of a novel with a humorous story line. Each section tells part of the life of Fred Gauss and how, in the course of his life, he encounters the need for math and language arts. Written by Dr. Stanley Schmidt with the intent to make the subjects come alive, the series covers grade levels beginning in Kindergarten and expanding all the way to college-level material.

  Living With the Active Alert Child: Groundbreaking Strategies for Parents

  Author and psychologist Linda Budd offers hope for parents by spelling out the characteristics of "active alerts" and teaches how to help these children thrive in school and family.

  Losing Our Minds: Gifted Children Left Behind

  Deborah L. Ruf divides the content of this book in to three parts dealing with: Identifying characteristics of giftedness, levels of giftedness and educational options and school issues. This reference can help someone who is not professionally trained in giftedness issues, bridge the gap between the real child and the child's IQ. Click here to read a review of this book.

  Magic Trees of the Mind : How to Nurture Your Child's Intelligence, Creativity, and Healthy Emotions from Birth Through Adolescence

  This book by Marian Diamond and Janet Hopson, is primarily aimed at parents and educators, but it is an extremely valuable resource for anyone (gifted children included) who are interested in brain development and the influence of appropriate enrichment.

  Meeting the Challenge: Using Love and Logic to Help Children Develop Attention and Behavior Skills

  This book shows us how, with an understandable ten step program for home and an equally straightforward program for school, children with attention or behavior problems can succeed with the help of firm, loving parents and teachers. Jim Fay, Foster Cline and Robert Sornson have been sharing the skills of parenting through Love and Logic for over 20 years.

  More Than Moody: Recognizing and Treating Adolescent Depression

  In this book, Dr. Koplewicz uses his experience as a clinician and researcher to help parents distinguish between normal teenage angst and actual depression, a serious psychiatric illness. He combines prescriptive advice and compelling stories to show parents the warning signs, risk factors, and key symptoms that distinguish this behavior from depression, an under-treated problem that can have serious long-term consequences, and that can even be life-threatening.

  Normal Children Have Problems, Too: How Parents Can Understand And Help

  This award-winning book by the author of The Difficult Child shows parents how to deal with their child's, or adolescent's, emotional problems, from aggression to inattention to lack of friends. Topics covered include: lack of friends; poor self-image; sibling rivalry; hyperactivity; sadness and fearfulness; eating problems; nervous habits; aggressive behavior; defiance; sleep problems; lying; and learning disabilities.

  Not Now Maybe Later: Helping Children Overcome Procrastination

  This book is written for parents and teachers as a guide to understanding procrastination, primarily in children, and to provide tips for helping children develop skills to improve their productivity. Procrastination relates to many important aspects of life, including success and failure, school-related and other activities, an individual’s thoughts and feelings, and motivation.

  Nurture by Nature - Understanding Your Child's Personality Type - and Become a Better Parent

  Whether your child is a tantrum-prone toddler, a shy third-grader, a rebellious teen, or somewhere in between, this book from Paul Tieger, Barbara Barron-Tieger and E. Michael Ellovichwill give you the power to understand why children are the way they are - and to become the best parent you can be.

  Nurturing Brilliance: Discovering and Developing Your Child's Gifts

  This book offers advice to parents about what they can do to nurture the talents of children who demonstrate evidence of various types of giftedness. It includes concrete recommendations for getting appropriate educational adjustments from a child’s school, as well as how to help a child develop communication and motor skills, deal with friendship and parent-child relationship issues, learn the best way to become financially responsible, and choose the right college.
  

  Out of Our Minds: Turning the Tide of Anti-Intellectualism in American Schools

  This second edition of the often-cited book on anti-intellectualism, Out of Our Minds, focuses on U.S. schools’ failure to care for the intellects and talents of all children, gifted children in particular. The authors provocatively examine issues of poverty, racism, and sexism and look at new information on the roles of higher education, media and technology, privatization, families, and the global economy as they pertain to the education of students in American schools.

  Overcoming Dyslexia

  This book is about the roots of dyslexia and offers parents and educators hope that children with reading problems can be helped. For the one in every five children who has dyslexia and the millions of others who struggle to read at their own grade levels—and for their parents, teachers, and tutors—this book can make a difference.

  Parenting Gifted Children 101: An Introduction to Gifted Kids and Their Needs

  This practical, easy-to-read book explores the basics of parenting gifted children, truly giving parents the "introductory course" they need to better understand and help their gifted child. Topics include myths about gifted children, characteristics of the gifted, the hows and whys of advocacy, social and emotional issues and needs, strategies for partnering with your child’s school, and more. Read a review of the book.

  Parenting Gifted Children: The Authoritative Guide From the National Association for Gifted Children

  This comprehensive guide covers topics such as working with high achievers and young gifted children, acceleration, advocating for talented students, serving as role models and mentors for gifted kids, homeschooling, underachievement, twice-exceptional students and postsecondary opportunities.
  

  Parenting Successful Children

  The fast pace of technology, family breakups and other changes in today's evolving world make parenting more difficult. Learn more than two dozen strategies to set successful limits, avoid power struggles, minimize sibling rivalry and promote self-esteem in this video from James Webb, Ph.D.

  Parenting Teens With Love & Logic: Preparing Adolescents for Responsible Adulthood

  When kids hit their teen years, parenting takes on a whole new dimension. As they struggle toward independence and autonomy, some dicey issues emerge. The real world you want them to be ready for can make you shudder - kids today face life-and-death decisions long before they're on their own. So what do you do? Hover over them so they won't get hurt? Drill them so they'll do the right thing? According to Jim Fay and Foster Cline, hovering and drilling won't prepare teens for the real world. Because they learn responsibility like they learn everything else: through practice.

  Parents' Guide to IQ Testing and Gifted Education: All You Need to Know to Make the Right Decisions for Your Child

  This book is written specifically for parents who wonder if their child is gifted. Author David Palmer helps parents who have little or no experience with gifted testing and programming and explains these topics in-depth. The text is written in a succinct, easy-to-understand format and answers the questions that parents most commonly ask.

  Parents' Guide to Raising a Gifted Child

  James Alvino details a practical, informative primer for raising and educating our gifted children from preschool to adolescence. Strategies are provided for determining whether a child is gifted as well as ways to nurture a child's gifts and talents, and explains how gifted children can become bored, socially aggressive, and even underachieving if not appropriately challenged.

  Parent's Guide to Raising a Gifted Toddler: Recognizing and Developing the Potential of Your Child from Birth to Five Years

  While this digest includes articles, research reports and advice from Gifted Children Monthly, it also contains original work by author James Alvino on emotional needs, perfectionism and the superbaby scourge and gender-specific issues.

  Parent's Guide to Standardized Tests for Grades 3-5
  

  Parent's Guide to Standardized Tests for Grades 3-5 is a complete guide to understanding tests and preparing your child for a successful test-taking experience. The book provides an overview of standardized tests, practical home activities to reinforce math and verbal skills, effective test-taking strategies, and a list of state test websites.

  Peaceful Parents, Peaceful Kids: Practical Ways To Create a Calm and Happy Home

  In this book, Naomi Drew presents the same action plan for parents that she developed for the classroom. Hands-on examples and testimonials give the reader such techniques as: Active listening - five simple principles that foster understanding and self-esteem; Resolving conflicts - six steps for turning tears and frustration into win/win outcomes; and, An "on-the-spot" tool to reclaim calmness instantly.

  Peak Performance for Smart Kids

  This book provides success strategies, activities, tools, real-life examples, and checklists for parents to employ to help their kids to achieve their highest potential. Maureen Neihart, a psychologist and leading authority on talent development in children, examines seven mental habits of successful kids, providing practical approaches for developing them in talented children of all ages in this easy-to-read guide for parents and teachers.

  Perfectionism and Gifted Children

  During her 35 year career, Rosemary Callard-Szulgit found perfectionism to be the number one social-emotional trait of gifted children. She has helped hundreds of students recover from its harmful effects. This book provides insight into perfectionism, discussing why so many gifted children are perfectionists, while providing common sense solutions.

  Perfectionism: What's Bad about Being too Good?

  This thought-provoking book by Miriam Adderholdt, Ph.D., and Jan Goldberg explains the differences between healthy ambition and unhealthy perfectionism and gives strategies for recognizing the symptoms. Learn how to: Identify what perfectionism can do to your mind and body, Recognize what perfectionism can do to your relationships, Set reasonable standards for yourself, Take positive risks and more. This book can also provide adults insight into how their behavior and expectations can contribute to perfectionism in the teens they parent and teach.

  Playing Smart: The Family Guide to Enriching, Offbeat Learning Activities for Ages 4 to 14

  Do you ever wonder what you can do with your child while you are running errands, waiting in line or have the whole day to spend together? How do you make every moment together fun and interesting? Susan K. Perry has some ideas, and she includes over five hundred of them in this book. Her suggested activities range from brain teasers to outdoor adventures; and are all for children ages 4-14. This book gives parents, educators, mentors or anyone who spends time with a child, ways to turn ordinary daily experiences into engaging and memorable experiences that involve fun and learning.

  Prisoners of Childhood: The Drama of the Gifted Child and the Search for the True Self

  Today's responsible parents strive to raise children with healthy egos. But for a lot of adults, the word "ego" carries the negative connotation of "narcissism." Traditionally, the "good" child learned self-control, self-denial and placed parental needs and wishes first. If those needs were abusive to the child, there was no choice but to block the hurtful behavior in order to hold onto adults who were loved and needed. Miller recognized the link between certain emotional problems in adulthood and repressed childhood anguish.

  Program Evaluation in Gifted Education

  This book is an experts guide to gifted education, and is part of the essential readings in gifted education series. The topics of this book include gifted education and the major issues, trends, and various teaching methods influencing the field.

  Queen Bees & Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence

  This book will help you understand how your daughter's relationship with friends and cliques sets the stage for other intimate relationships as she grows and guides her when she has tougher choices to make about intimacy, drinking and drugs, and other hazards. With its revealing look into the secret world of teenage girls and cliques, enlivened with the voices of dozens of girls and a much-needed sense of humor, this book will equip you with all the tools you need to build the right foundation to help your daughter make smarter choices and empower her during this baffling, tumultuous time of life.

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

  Written by Cathi Cohen for parents, this book offers step-by-step exercises that parents can do with their children to increase social skills and awareness. Based on the highly successful social skills training groups that have been directed by Cohen for many years, Raise Your Child's Social I.Q. provides parents with the structure to work on skills at home--how to join a group, how to choose friends, how to notice what people around you are feeling, how to handle angry feelings and much, much more. Click here to read a review of this book.

  Raisin' Brains: Surviving My Smart Family

  The stories in this book will not only help you appreciate your own family, but also give you an informal introduction to the world of giftedness. It offers a hilarious look at life in a gifted family, with five kids, each as different yet challanging as the one before. Click here to read a review of this book.

  Raising a Gifted Child: A Parenting Success Handbook

  Author of a popular blog on parenting gifted children, Carol Fertig compiled this how-to manual for parents. This book offers a large menu of strategies, resources, organizations, tips, and suggestions for parents to find optimal learning opportunities for their kids, covering the gamut of talent areas, including academics, the arts, technology, creativity, music, and thinking skills. The focus of this definitive resource is on empowering parents by giving them the tools needed to ensure that their gifted kids are happy and successful both in and out of school. Click here to read a review of this book.

  Raising an Optimistic Child: A Proven Plan for Depression-Proofing Young Children - for Life

  This book from Bob Murray and Alicia Fortinberry, offers a safe, drug-free approach to protect your child from depression. Parents can learn how to spot the early signs for depression and even prevent your own depression from influencing your child.

  Raising Boys: Why Boys Are Different - And How to Help Them Become Happy and Well-Balanced Men

  In this book, author and therapist Steve Biddulph explains to parents how to embrace the differences between boys and girls and work with them. Citing such gender specific risks facing boys as a higher percentage of learning disabilities to greater threats of violence and suicide, Biddulph maps out parenting strategies for three distinct stages of growth.

  Raising Champions: A Parent Handbook for Nurturing Gifted Children

  This handbook by Michael Sayler is designed to help you understand and appreciate your child even more, and it will provide you with practical suggestions for working with your child's school. Raising Champions will help you understand the meanings and implications of having a gifted or talented child in your family.

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

  Barbara Klein holds doctoral degrees in both clinical psychology and early childhood education. In this book, Dr. Klein helps parents understand and cope with the obstacles they face in raising a gifted child by helping them make the best choices for their son’s or daughter’s growth and happiness.

  Raising Musical Kids: A Guide for Parents

  Author Robert A. Cutietta, offers a complete, practical guide to this common parenting issue. The premise of the book is that practicing is hard work and the pay-off is very long term. The book suggests using rewards related to music (concert tickets, better instruments, etc.) to get kids to practice. The basic point is that even people who become professional musicians relied on parent involvement to get them to practice when they were young.

  Raising Resilient Children: Fostering Strength, Hope, and Optimism in Your Child

  Authors Robert Brooks and Sam Goldstein present a set of 10 essential parenting behaviors ("guideposts") - a prescription of sorts, for nurturing resilience in kids. Each chapter describes a different guidepost and illustrates what can be done to foster psychological strength, hope and optimism.

  Raising Topsy-Turvy Kids: Successfully Parenting Your Visual-Spatial Child

  Alexandra Golon explains how the reader can assess and identify a visual-spatial child then offers tips to parent and educate them. This book also serves to enlighten the rest of the family as well.

  Raising Your Spirited Child Workbook

  In this companion workbook, Mary Kurcinka brings readers into her world-famous workshops, where she offers parents and educators insights, emotional support, and proven strategies for dealing with spirited children. Through examples and easy-to-read text, this workbook provides parents with a pathway to understanding their child's temperament and to a place where parents can balance the needs of their child's unique temperament with their own needs and those of their family.

  Raising Your Spirited Child: A Guide for Parents Whose Child is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, Persisitant, and Energetic

  When you understand your temperamental matches--and your mismatches--you can better understand, work, live, socialize, and enjoy spirit in your child. By reframing challenging temperamental qualities in a positive way, and by giving readers specific tools to work with these qualities, author Mary Sheedy Kurcinka has provided a book that will help all parents, especially the parents of spirited children, understand and better parent their children.

  Redirecting Children's Behavior

  This book by Kathryn J. Kvols and Bill Riedler discusses a new approach to discipline. Parents know there should be more to family life than arguments, neglected chores, disrespectful kids, infringed limits, and punishments that don't create self-motivated individuals. This book based on firmness and kindness helps promote peace in families by offering skills to understand why kids misbehave; improve communication and encourage children; set and enforce limits positively; and teach children self-control.
  

  Re-forming ( Reforming ) Gifted Education: How Parents and Teachers Can Match the Program to the Child

  Written by Karen Rogers, this is a research-based book that discusses acceleration of students, grouping within the school setting, and program provisions both in and outside of school. Rogers spells out and categorizes ways for schools, teachers, and parents to meet the needs of gifted children, including which students will benefit from particular instructional delivery methods and how each student need can best be addressed. Click here to read a review of this book.

  Restoring the Teenage Soul: Nurturing Sound Hearts and Minds in a Confused Culture

  This book examines some of the pressures that are placed on today's teens. It give parents information on how to keep communication open between themselves and their teen.

  Right-Brained Children in a Left-Brained World: Unlocking the Potential of Your ADD Child

  In their book, Jeffrey Freed and Laurie Parsons include a convenient checklist for determining if your child is right brained or left and offer wonderful ideas on how to teach those students who just don't "get" the methods teachers commonly use.

  School Success for Kids with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

  This book written by Michelle R. Davis, Vincent P. Culotta, Eric A. Levine and Elisabeth Hess Rice gives parents and teachers of students with emotional and behavioral disorders the strategies they need to help these kids overcome their struggles and Find success in school.

  Sensory Integration and the Child

  A. Jean Ayres, Ph.D., was an occupational therapist who first researched and described the theories and frame of reference which we now call sensory integration. In this book, Dr. Ayres makes several analogies that describe sensory integration and its dysfunction. Like many therapies in the early stages, this book claims a lot; however parents reading it can search out the parts that fit their child and experiences. It is very descriptive of the underlying theory and the practical application of sensory integration treatment. If you want to learn about sensory integration from the founder of the movement - this is the book to get.

  Setting Limits With Your Strong-Willed Child: Eliminating Conflict by Establishing CLEAR, Firm, and Respectful Boundaries

  Robert MacKenzie, Ed.D., founder of the Setting Limits Program, gives parents useful strategies for teaching respectful limit setting. Learn how to understand and empathize with your child without giving in, hold your ground, and remove daily power struggles between you and your child. Setting Limits teaches everybody in the family new skills and encourages a more peaceful life in any social setting.

  Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too

  With a title like this, it's no surprise that authors Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish had a monster bestseller on their hands when the book first appeared in 1988. From the subsequent deluge of readers' stories, questions, and issues, they have created nearly 50 pages of new material for this, the 10th anniversary edition. The central message remains the same, and sounds almost too simple: avoid comparisons. But parents know that's easier said than done. The value of Faber and Mazlish's discussions is precisely that they talk you through umpteen different situations and outcomes to help you teach your brawling offspring a new set of responses.

  Six Thinking Hats

  This book uses the metaphor of six different hats to talk about different styles of thinking. A great resource for parents and teachers who are interested in helping bright young people to differentiate their thinking abilities.

  Smart Boys: Talent, Manhood and the Search for Meaning

  Written by Barbara Kerr and Sanford Cohn, this book explores the relationship between being highly gifted and being male. The book cites research and case studies showing that many gifted boys don't live up to their potential and suffer social isolation, having to choose between excellence and "normality." Click here to read a review of this book.

  Smart but Scattered: The Revolutionary "Executive Skills" Approach to Helping Kids Reach Their Potential

  There’s nothing more frustrating than watching your bright, talented son or daughter struggle with everyday tasks like finishing homework, putting away toys, or following instructions at school. Your “smart but scattered” child might also have trouble coping with disappointment or managing anger. Drs. Peg Dawson and Richard Guare have great news: there’s a lot you can do to help. Small changes can add up to big improvements--this empowering book shows how.
  

  Smart Girls: A New Psychology of Girls, Women, and Giftedness

  From preschool to college dating, bright young girls and women endure countless challenges and opportunities. Written by Barbara Kerr and Sanford Cohn, this book explores many of these obstacles and offers practical advice for parents and teachers on how to help gifted girls grow and succeed. Click here to read a review of this book.

  Smart Kids With Learning Difficulties: Overcoming Obstacles and Realizing Potential (2nd ed.)

  This book is a great educational resource for parents, educators or counselors of intelligent children who face learning difficulties. The authors, Weinfield, Barnes-Robinson, Jeweler and Shevitz, provide useful, practical advice for helping smart kids with learning challenges succeed in school Click here to read a review of this book. The second edition includes a look at current definitions of twice-exceptional students, updated research findings and identification methods, a detailed description of the laws and policies impacting this population, what works and what doesn't work, model schools, Response to Intervention, Understanding by Design, comprehensive assessments, social-emotional principles, and new assistive technology.

  Smart Kids With School Problems: Things to Know & Ways to Help

  Parents and teachers of gifted students with learning disabilities should be grateful for this definitive work on "conundrum kids" - the superb writer who can't add, the talented speech maker who can't write legibly. Chapters on young children provide practical suggestions and ideas for parents trying to decide when the child should start school and teachers trying to cope. The work also covers students up through college and deals with the topics of visual learning, motor functioning, auditory learning, language and learning, and psychological problems. Strategies for dealing with standardized tests and conquering the world of college are also included. Click here to read a review of this book.

  Smart Parenting for Smart Kids: Nurturing Your Child's True Potential

  This book explains the reasons behind a number of struggles related to perfectionism, effort, and more, and offers parents do-able strategies to help children cope with feelings, embrace learning, and build satisfying relationships. Drawing from research as well as the authors’ clinical experience, it focuses on the essential skills children need to make the most of their abilities and become capable, confident, and caring people.

  Some of My Best Friends Are Books: Guiding Gifted Readers from Pre-School to High School

  This book by Judith Wynn Halsted, M.S. offers a list of recommended books for gifted students from preschool through high school. The author describes how to use books as bibliotherapy to provide support, guidance, and insight. This is an in valuable resource for parents looking for books to recommend to gifted readers not only to enjoy, but also to gain perspective on themselves and others. Click here to read a review of this book.

  Special Education and the Law: A Guide for Practitioners

  This guide is aimed at saving time by thoroughly translating legal regulations so educators can fully focus on the services their students need. Allan Osborne and Charles Russo touch on the relevant topics of court decisions surrounding student placement, legal definitions of parental rights and legal requirements of special education students and disciplinary actions.

  Special Education in Contemporary Society: An Introduction to Exceptionality

  A comprehensive coverage of human exceptionalities. This author, with a Ph.D. in the areas of human learning, child development, and behavioral disabilities, presents an emphasis on inclusion in this book. There are chapters on transition, multicultural consideration, and use of technology. See pages 315-361 for People who are gifted and talented by Julia Link Roberts.

  Special Needs Advocacy Resource Book: What You Can Do Now to Advocate for Your Exceptional Child's Education

  Written by Rich Weinfeld and Michelle Davis, this book is a unique handbook that teaches parents how to work with schools to achieve optimal learning situations and accommodations for their child’s needs. From IEPs and 504 Plans, to IDEA and NCLB, navigating today’s school system can be difficult for even the most up-to-date, education savvy parent. Special needs advocates Rich Weinfeld and Michelle Davis provide parents and professional advocates with concise, easy-to-understand definitions and descriptions of legal terms and school regulations, along with checklists, tips, questionnaires, and other tools.

  Special Siblings: Growing Up With Someone With a Disability

  Mary McHugh writes about her experience growing up with a sibling with a disability, and interviews many other people in the same situation. This is a book for those with disabled siblings. However, it also looks at the attention and time parents spend on a child who is "different", as gifted children can be considered, and how siblings of that child can come to terms with that and build a healthy, special relationship with the sibling.
  

  Stand Up for Your Gifted Child: How to Make the Most of Kids' Strengths at School and at Home

  If you think your gifted child isn't getting the education he or she needs, this book is for you. It helps you recognize your child's gifts, understand his or her problems at school, find out your district's policy on gifted education, explore various options (pull-out programs, acceleration, grade skipping, clustering, etc.), communicate effectively with the school and district, and provide enrichment at home. Click here to read a review of this book.

  Sticks and Stones: Seven Ways Your Child Can Deal with Teasing, Conflict, and Other Hard Times - Tools for Navigating Parenthood

  Scott Cooper helps parents teach kids how to speak up for themselves more assertively, gently, and effectively. Each chapter, based on the characteristics of a particular bird, uses a wealth of examples and imaginative exercises to give kids the confidence to speak truth to power.

  Stressed Out!: Solutions to Help Your Child Manage and Overcome Stress

  This is an easy-to-read guide for parents to help their children understand stress, its effects on kids’ day-to-day lives, and how to handle it. The book suggests stress management solutions that can be implemented by even the busiest parents and kids, focusing on a variety of common stressful situations that are grouped according to three categories—school, family, or environmental.

  Strong-Willed Child Or Dreamer?

  In this book from Ron Braund and Dana Spears, learn a new parenting approach for your special needs child to be principle-oriented rather than rule-oriented, highly creative, overly sensitive and frustrated. Understand the crucial differences between a strong-willed child and a creative-sensitive child.

  Supporting the Child of Exceptional Ability: At Home and School

  This book aims to help those who live and work with exceptionally able children of all ages, by raising awareness of what it is like to grow up "different". It considers the children's social and emotional development and offers suggestions on how to provide suitable learning environments. The book should be of interest to parents and teachers, and professionals who support the work of schools. The first edition of this book was published as "Helping the Child of Exceptional Ability".

  Teach Your Children Well

  This book aims to dispel the myth that good grades, high test scores, and college acceptances should define the parenting endgame. This book discusses the value of internal satisfaction and growth, and takes a long-term approach to parenting strategies and success.
  

  Teaching Your Children Sensitivity

  Helping a child become aware of the needs and feelings of others is one of the most difficult aspects of parenting. This nine-month program, designed for families with children aged three years and older, combines solid advice and telling anecdotes with quizzes, games, and other activities to guide parents every step of the way.
  

  Teen Proofing: Fostering Responsible Decision Making in Your Teenager

  Teen-Proofing tackles the challenges of raising a teenager. Rosemond lays out a perfectly sound and logical case for recognizing the realities of the teen-parent relationship, forming the foundation, and parenting with the "Long Rope Principle."

  That Crumpled Paper Was Due Last Week: Helping Disorganized and Distracted Boys Succeed in School and Life

  This book is designed to help parents identify their son's dis-organizational style, help him set academic and personal goals he cares about, design and establish the right "tools of the trade", complete assignments without pulling all-nighters and more!

  The Big Book of Parenting Solutions: 101 Answers to Your Everyday Challenges and Wildest Worries

  A parenting book for those who have kids ages 3 to 13, this is a guide offering advice for dealing with children's difficult behavior and hot button issues including biting, tantrums, cheating, bad friends, inappropriate clothing, bullying, sex, drugs, peer pressure and much more. Each of the 101 challenging parenting issues includes specific step-by-step solutions and advice that is age appropriate. Chapter 7, titled "Special Needs", features information on ADD, Autism, Gifted, Learning Disabilities and more.

  The Blessing of a B Minus

  In the book titled, The Blessing of a B Minus, author Dr. Wendy Mogel helps parents navigate the teenage years, when a child’s sense of entitlement and independence grows, the pressure to compete skyrockets, and communication becomes fraught with obstacles. She emphasizes empathy and guidance over micromanaging teens’ lives and overreacting to missteps. Mogel reveals that emotional outbursts, rudeness, rule-breaking, staying up late, and other worrisome teen behaviors are in fact normal and necessary steps in psychological growth and character development to be met with thoughtful care, not anxiety.
  

  The Boredom Solution: Understanding and Dealing with Boredom

  In this book, Linda Deal explores the subject of boredom and supplies parents and teachers with important information that will allow them to understand why children complain about being bored and develop strategies to counter it. Learn about the "hows" and "whys" of boredom and make your classroom a more dynamic learning environment for all children.

  The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness: Five Steps to Help Create and Sustain Lifelong Joy

  This book provides a refreshing look at what children really need to grow into happy adults. Author Edward M. Hallowell, M.D. argues that kids do not need straight A's, a crammed schedule or even a traditional family to become contented adults. What children need are unconditional love and the opportunity to revel in the magic and play of childhood. For the best chance of future happiness, Hallowell says, they need five basic tenets: to feel connected, to play, to practice, attain mastery and receive recognition.

  The Complete IEP Guide: How to Advocate for Your Special Ed Child

  Lawrence Siegel provides an overview of special ed and the IEP process; sample IEP forms and letters; organization and planning tips; a listing of support groups, advocacy organizations and federal and state departments of education. The entire IEP process is spelled out in easy to follow steps that guides one through the process.

  The Difficult Child

  The authors show how to help--and cope with--the difficult child. Temperamentally difficult children can confuse and upset even experienced parents and teachers. They often act defiant, stubborn, loud, aggressive, or hyperactive. They can also be clingy, shy, whiny, picky, and impossible at bedtime, mealtimes, and in public places. The latest version is expanded and revised with new sections on ADHD and the latest medications for childhood disorders. Click here to read a review of this book.

  The Drama of the Gifted Child - The Search for the True Self

  Why are many of the most successful people plagued by feelings of emptiness and alienation? This wise and profound book has provided thousands of readers with an answer - and has helped them to apply it to their own lives.

  The Edison Trait: Saving the Spirit of Your Nonconforming Child

  Author Lucy Jo Palladino defines the Edison Trait (named after Thomas Edison) as divergent vs. convergent thinking. Edison Trait kids - one in five children - have the qualities that make innovative leaders, inventors, explorers, yet they often have a hard time in school where their personality traits may be seen as weak or negative. Palladino recasts these children in a positive light and gives specifics on understanding and becoming an ally for your Edison Trait child.

  The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children and Limits Learning

  Written by Etta Kralovec and John Buell, this book discusses the adverse effects of homework, and raises questions on whether it contributes to a child's intellectual development, its impact on family life, and whether valuable experiences are being lost to homework. Useful to parents whose profoundly gifted children are in the public school system.

  The Everything Parent's Guide to Special Education: A Complete Step-by-Step Guide to Advocating for Your Child with Special Needs

  Children with special needs who succeed in school have one thing in common--their parents are passionate and effective advocates. It's not an easy job, but with this book, parents will learn how to evaluate, prepare, organize, and get quality services, no matter what your child's disability. This valuable handbook provides the tools needed to navigate the complex world of special education and services, with information on: assessment and evaluation; educational needs for different disabilities, including multiple disabilities; current law, including the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA); working within the school system to create an IEP; the importance of keeping detailed records; and dealing with parent-school conflict.

  The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children

  This book by Ross Green deals with identification of the frustrated-explosive child and ways to deal with explosive behavior. This text examines the underlying reasons for explosive behavior. The author helps parents to identify the early stages of meltdown and also gives strategies for dealing with these types of children.

  The Gifted School

  This novel is about a previously happy group of friends and parents that is nearly destroyed by their own competitiveness when an exclusive school for gifted children opens in the community. Set in the fictional town of Crystal, Colorado, The Gifted School is a keenly entertaining novel that observes the drama within a community of friends and parents as good intentions and high ambitions collide in a pile-up with long-held secrets and lies.

  The Highly Sensitive Child: Helping Our Children Thrive When the World Overwhelms Them

  Highly sensitive children (HSC) are often mislabeled as overly inhibited, fearful, “fussy,” or classified as “problem children.” In this book by Elaine Aron, parents will find helpful self-tests and case studies to help them understand their HSC, along with advice on: challenges of raising an HSC, four keys to successfully parenting an HSC, how to soothe highly sensitive infants, helping sensitive children survive in a not-so-sensitive world and making school and friendships enjoyable.

  The Homework Solution: Getting Kids to Do Their Homework

  This text, by Linda Agler Sonna, Ph.D., gives parents and educators great ideas on how to make sure students complete their homework. She covers several topics, including how to recognize homework problems, making a commitment, giving praise and avoiding conflict.
  

  The Hurried Child: Growing Up Too Fast Too Soon

  With the first two editions of this landmark work, Dr. David Elkind called our attention to the dangers of exposing children to overwhelming pressures - pressures that can lead to a wide range of childhood and teenage crises. Taking a detailed, up-to-the-minute look at the world of today's children and teens in terms of the Internet, classroom culture, school violence, movies, television, and a growing societal incivility, Dr. Elkind shows a whole new generation of parents where hurrying occurs, and why and what we can do about it.

  The Impulsive, Disorganized Child: Solutions for Parenting Kids with Executive Functioning Difficulties

  Impulsive, scattered, lost, unfocused, unprepared, disorganized: These are just a few of the words used to describe kids with executive functioning deficits, which commonly affect many children already diagnosed with ADHD, learning disabilities, and autism. In this book, authors James W Forgan, Ph.D. and Mary Anne Richey help parents pinpoint weak executive functions in their children, then learn how to help their kids overcome these deficits with practical, easy solutions. Children who can't select, plan, initiate, or sustain action toward their goals are children who simply struggle to succeed in school and other aspects of life. Parents need the helpful, proven advice, and interactive surveys and action plans, in this book to empower them to take positive action to teach their disorganized, impulsive child to achieve independence, success and a level of self-support.

  The Many Faces of Giftedness: Lifting the Mask

  Professor Alexinia Baldwin explores the many ways in which giftedness (intellectual potential) has been overlooked because of an individual's cultural group, handicap, or challenging condition. Baldwin presents the reader with practical suggestions to help provide a more appropriate education to develop the intellectual strengths of these children.
  

  The Mentor Kit

  Encourage students to excel in their areas of interest and talent by building a mentor program. In this comprehensive "starter kit," you will find methods for helping students identify their areas of interest, strategies for recruiting effective mentors, ideas for helping nurture a mentor relationship, and systems for growing your mentor program. The kit includes all the material you will need to develop your own school-wide mentoring program. This is a complete "nuts and bolts" program that has been used for more than 10 years in schools across the country by teachers, counselors, and administrators wishing to offer their students a strong mentor program.
  

  The Mislabeled Child: How Understanding Your Child's Unique Learning Style Can Open the Door to Success

  This book from husband and wife team Brock Eide, M.D. and Fernette Eide, M.D., ofers this informative, clinical aid to labeling and dealing with various "brain-based learning challenges." Each of the 11 chapters focuses on a single type of learning system and the challenges that affect it.

  The Myth of Laziness

  The Myth of Laziness, by Dr. Mel Levine, discusses neurodevelopmental dysfunctions that can cause "output failure" (commonly referred to as laziness) and shows parents how to nurture their children's strengths and improve their classroom productivity. It focuses on how correcting these problems in childhood will help children live a fulfilling and productive adult life. Parents who are told their gifted child is lazy or not living up to his/her potential can learn more about what laziness actually is, what causes it, and how to overcome it to avoid future problems, including in adulthood.

  The Neighbor's Kid A cross-Country Journey in Search of What Education Means to Americans

  The Neighbor's Kid tells the story of what 24-year-old Philip Brand discovered regarding American education when he drove his car cross-country during the 2008-09 school year visiting two schools in each of forty-nine states. The schools were public and private, religious and secular, urban and rural, typical and unusual. The Davidson Academy is mentioned on pages 147-149.

  The New Public School Parent: How to Get the Best Education for Your Child

  Bob Chase, a veteran teacher and leading advocate for public education, provides parents with a roadmap for navigating today's increasingly complex public school system. Click here to read a review of this book.

  The Optimistic Child: A Proven Program to Safeguard Children Against Depression and Build Lifelong Resilience

  Written by Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman, this book offers parents and teachers the tools to teach children of all ages life skills that transform helplessness into mastery and bolster self-esteem. Learning optimism not only reduces the risk of depression but also boosts performance in school, improved health, and provides children with the self-reliance they need as they approach adolescence and adulthood.

  The Organized Student: Teaching Children the Skills for Success in School and Beyond

  The overstuffed backpack, the missing homework, the unused planner, the test he didn't know about. Sound familiar? When the disorganized child meets the departmentalized structure of middle school, everything can fall apart. This book contains hands-on strategies for teaching your disorganized child how to organize for success in middle school and high school, with special tips for kids with ADD/ADHD and learning disorders.

  The Out of Sync Child (book and author's website)

  Children with normal "far senses" (sight and hearing) may have, because of a poorly integrated nervous system, serious problems with their "near senses," including touch, balance, and internal muscle sensation. It's called Sensory Integration Dysfunction, or SI. This book explains SI dysfunction in all its stages. It's a comprehensive, easily-understood guide explaining a drug-free treatment approach for children with these challenges. Additionally, you'll find a resource section for parents and caregivers.

  The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids

  In this book, journalist Alexandra Robbins delivers a poignant, funny, riveting narrative that explores how our high-stakes educational culture has spiraled out of control. High school isn’t what it used to be. With record numbers of students competing fiercely to get into college, schools are no longer primarily places of learning. They’re dog-eat-dog battlegrounds in which kids must set aside interests and passions in order to strategize over how to game the system. In this increasingly stressful environment, kids aren’t defined by their character or hunger for knowledge, but by often arbitrary scores and statistics.

  The Parent's Guide to Protecting Your Children in Cyberspace

  A no-nonsense guide for keeping kids protected and informed on the Internet is an essential book for any family with a home computer. The Parent's Guide to Protecting Your Children in Cyberspace comes highly recommended, with kudos from countless corporations, governmental agencies, and nonprofit organizations. Equally useful for long-time users and newcomers to the Internet, parents will find a wealth of useful tips presented in a friendly and entertaining manner.

  The Resilience Factor: 7 Essential Skills for Overcoming Life’s Inevitable Obstacles

  In the capable hands of psychologists Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatté, resilience is not a Band-Aid or a buzzword. It is a habit of mind. The Resilience Factor is a practical roadmap for navigating unexpected challenges, surprises, and setbacks at work and home. Their premise--that your thinking style determines your resilience--underlies the books promise: you can boost resilience by changing the way you think about adversity. Click here to read a review of this book.

  The Roller-Coaster Years: Raising Your Child Through the Maddening Yet Magical Middle-School Years

  In this book, Charlene Giannetti covers many different aspects of pre-adolescence and adolescence by presenting different scenarios which are typical of this age group. Some of the statistics provided are alarming but can be helpful for parents in understanding the scope of adolescent problems. Strategies are provided on how to steer your middle school child in the right direction.

  The School In The Home: Talks With Parents And Teachers On Intensive Child Training (1912)

  Berle's two books are the first real "homeschooling manuals" for the general public in this century. In the first book, he outlines a Christian philosophy of home education. The second book reviews curriculum materials. Berle raised four extremely gifted children, considered prodigies in their day, who entered college early. One son became deputy Secretary of State under FDR.

  The Sensory Child Gets Organized: Proven Systems for Rigid, Anxious, or Distracted Kids

  In this book by Carolyn Dalgliesh, the author helps parents with understanding what makes sensory children tick; how to create harmonious spaces through sensory organizing; how to use structure and routines to connect with children; preparing a child for social and school experiences; and, make travel a successful and fun-filled journey.

  The Six Stages of Parenthood

  Instead of being like most other books that talk about child development, this book focuses on how parents develop. Ellen Galinsky describes six distinct stages in the life of a parent: image-making, nurturing, authority, the interpretive stage, the interdependent stage, and the departure years.

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

  Tracy Cross, Ph.D. is considered the nation's leading authority on the psychology of gifted children. In this book, he helps provide a framework for understanding the wide range of needs gifted students have and the potential role that differing groups of adults undertake to help these students. Cross' Continuum of Psychological Services, makes it evident that parents, teachers and counselors need to work together to cover most of the services gifted students will need and that no one person can assume all of the necessary roles. Click here to read a review of this book.

  The Survival Guide for Parents of Gifted Kids: How to Understand, Live With, and Stick Up for Your Gifted Child

  This book by authors Sally Yahnke Walker and Susan Perry offers up-to-date, authoritative information about giftedness, gifted educucation, problems, personality traits, and more. You'll learn what 'giftedness' means, how kids are identified as gifted, and what's good—and bad—about the label. You'll find out how to keep from raising a 'nerd,' how to prevent perfectionism, and how to advocate for your child at school.

  The Three R's at Home

  Howard and Susan Richman wrote this book about homeschooling their four children in the early elementary years. The Pennsylvania homeschooler's site says, "Here's a great help for parents for teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic at home. Helps beginning homeschoolers see how home education can be different from schools. Inspiration and ideas for the experienced homeschooler as well."

  The Twice-Exceptional Dilemma

  The National Education Association (NEA) published this book to assist educators, school districts and parents who are working to meet the needs of children who are both gifted and have special needs or learning disabilities. Developed by a workgroup of experts in gifted education and special education, this compilation illustrates the importance of awareness, knowledge and proper identification guidelines.

  The Ultimate Guide to Homeschooling

  This book describes the joys of homeschooling and essential tools for success from a personal experience vantage point. This book includes a CD-rom containing the complete text of the book plus web-site links and a browser.

  The Young Gifted Child: Potential and Promise - An Anthology

  This anthology provides a practical, informative, and wide-ranging discussion of how to meet the needs of the gifted in the early years. Click here to read a review of this book.

  They Say My Kid's Gifted: Now What?

  This book was developed by the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) for parents of gifted children. This handbook, by F. Richard Olenchak, provides easy-to-use information on everything from understanding gifted identification procedures to making sure your child succeeds in a gifted program.

  Thinking Child

  This website lists a variety of books written by Dr. Myrna B. Shure, Ph.D. such as: Thinking Parent, Thinking Child; Raising a Thinking Child; Raising a Thinking Preteen; and, Raising a Thinking Child Workbook.

  To Be Gifted and Learning Disabled: Strategies for Helping Bright Students with LD, ADHD, and More

  This book is one of the most popular resources available on identifying and meeting the needs of twice-exceptional students. This updated third edition provides a comprehensive look at the complex world of students with remarkable gifts, talents, and interests, who simultaneously face learning, attention, or social challenges from LD, ADHD, and other disorders. Through case studies and years of research, the authors present a rationale for using a strength-based, talent-focused approach to meeting the needs of this special population. From a thorough description of twice-exceptionality and the unique learning patterns of these students, to strategies for identification, comprehensive programming, talent development, and instructional strategies, this book is for anyone who works or lives with a child who has both startling talents and disabling weaknesses.

  Transforming The Difficult Child - The Nurtured Heart Approach

  Howard Glasser and Jennifer Easley unveil an amazing set of strategies developed specifically for children with ADHD and other challenging behaviors to facilitate parenting and classroom success. These methods have helped thousands of families to transform their child from using their intensity in primarily negative ways to using their intensity in beautifully creative and constructive ways. This approach has also helped teachers and other school personnel to have a dramatically positive effect on all children.

  Twice-Exceptional and Special Populations of Gifted Students

  This book by editors Susan Baum and Sally M. Reis, is from the Essential Readings in Gifted Education Series and addresses how special learning needs, cultural expectations and issues of poverty greatly complicate the identification of gifts and talents among at-risk students. Key topics include strategies for identifying giftedness masked by gender, cultural, economic, and/or behavioral issues

  Understanding Creativity

  This book by J. Piirto offers advice on how to plan adventures, value work without "evaluation", set a creative tone, and incorporate creativity values into one's own family or classroom culture. Readers will learn how to spot talent through a child's behaviors and how to encourage practice. Real-life examples of artists, musicians, dancers, entrepreneurs, architects, and authors are included. Click here to read a review of this book.

  Understanding Those Who Create

  Jane Piirto brings to her readers a unique perspective on the study of creativity from her dual life as a long-time educator and as a professional writer. She has masterfully synthesized and translated the major research on creativity and giftedness into a comprehensive and readable book.

  Unmasking Sexual Con Games Leaders Guide

  Unmasking Sexual Con Games includes ten lesson plans for a teen relationship curriculum that discusses emotional grooming, sexual harassment, dating violence, and the role of the media, drugs and alcohol as well as how to develop healthy physical, emotional, and sexual boundaries.
  

  Up from Underachievement: How Teachers, Students, and Parents Can Work Together to Promote Student Success

  This book by author Diane Heacox provides a step-by-step program proven successful in schools to remedy underachievement, including what to do to break the failure chain. This program works for students of all ages, with all kinds of school problems - from the good student whose grades start slipping, to the seemingly incorrigible underachiever with a history of poor school performance. Click here to read a review of this book.

  Upside-Down Brilliance: The Visual Spatial Learner

  Dr. Linda Kreger Silverman delivers a blueprint for parenting, teaching and living with these delightfully different beings. It is also a manual for discovering and honoring your own hidden gifts.

  Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home

  This guide to classical education features complete descriptions of each of the classical education stages (grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric); suggests pedagogical approaches at each stage; and suggests textbooks and resources. The second half of the book focuses on specific homeschooling issues, including socialization, athletics, schedules, record keeping, and testing. It offers a secular, rather than religious, approach.

  What Kids Need to Succeed: Proven, Practical Ways to Raise Good Kids

  This guide book offers parents over 700 common-sense suggestions for helping children succeed in life. Authors Peter L. Benson, Ph. D., Judy Galbraith, M.A., and Pamela Espeland, offer ideas backed by research and findings from a recent nationwide survey. This book focuses on ways parents can become asset-builders, because the authors believe there are 40 assets that all children need in order to lead a healthy, productive and positive life.

  What to do to Improve Your Child's Manners: Real Solutions From Experts, Parents, and Kids.

  This book contains practical advice and solutions to show parents how to teach children manners, including more than 50 color photos & illustrations.

  What to Do When Good Enough Isn't Good Enough: The Real Deal on Perfectionism

  Perfectionism is an issue many gifted children and adults face. In this book, author Thomas S. Greenspon explains the characteristics of and ideas on how to overcome perfectionism. This guide is tailored especially for preteens and teenagers.

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

  In this book, authors Jim Delisle and Judy Galbraith explain 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. The authors suggest ways to help gifted underachievers and those who are bored in school, and ways to encourage healthy relationships with friends, family and other adults. Click here to read a review of this book (previous 2002 edition).

  When Gifted Students Underachieve: What You Can Do About It (The Practical Strategies Series in Gifted Education)

  Sylvia Rimm, Ph.D., one of the leading experts in the underachievement of gifted students, looks at the various causes of underachievement, discusses the characteristics of gifted underachievers, and provides educators with solid advice on combating underachievement in this population. This guide offers guidance for understanding the pressures students face in school and at home, motivating students for success, adjusting curriculum to engage these students, improving the self-concept of students, and working with parents to reverse the patterns of underperformance.
  

  When Nothing Matters Anymore: A Survival Guide for Depressed Teens
  

  Handling the topic of teen depression, this author tells about treatment options, presents the facts about therapy, explains the differences between various types of helping professionals (psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, physicians, counselors, etc.), discusses medications and more.

  Why Bright Kids Get Poor Grades: And What You Can Do About It

  Dr. Sylvia Rimm offers help for parents of underachieving children. Drawing on both clinical research and years of experience counseling families, she has developed a “Trifocal Model” to help parents and teachers work together to get students back on track. Previously published in an earlier edition as Underachievement Syndrome: Causes and Cures.

  Why Smart Kids Worry: And What Parents Can Do to Help

  In this book, author Allison Edwards guides readers through the mental and emotional process of where children's fears come from and why they are so hard to move past. With years of experience as a therapist, Edwards provides answers to questions readers might have, and focuses on how to parent a child who is both smart and anxious.

  Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind

  Is it possible to make sense of something as elusive as creativity? This book offers a glimpse inside the messy minds of highly creative people. Revealing the latest findings in neuroscience and psychology, along with engaging examples of artists and innovators throughout history, the book shines a light on the practices and habits of mind that promote creative thinking.

  Wrightslaw: All About IEPs

  In this comprehensive book, readers will find clear, concise answers to frequently asked questions about IEPs. Learn what the law says about: IEP teams and meetings; parental rights and consent; steps in developing the IEP; placement, transition, assistive technology; and, strategies to resolve disagreements. Click here to read a review of this book.

  Wrightslaw: From Emotions to Advocacy, 2nd Edition

  This book is a great reference for parents of children in need of special education services. The book is packed with tips, techniques and a wealth of resources, from web sites to worksheets, forms and sample letters. The chapters about tests and evaluations were expanded to include information about academic and achievement tests used to evaluate children. The chapter about SMART IEPs was completely revised in light of changes in IDEA 2004 and includes sample measurable academic and functional IEP goals.

  Writing Your Own Script: A Parent’s Role in the Gifted Child’s Social Development

  In their latest book, Corin Barsily Goodwin and Mika Gustavson, explore a parent's role in their child's social development and how to know when you are doing too much or too little to create age- and intellectually appropriate social opportunities for your child. The book aims to show parents how to help their child to discover the joy of true friendships based on common interests, shared values, and mutual understanding—and help you understand your role in guiding them!

  Yardsticks: Children in the Classroom Ages 4-14

  Written by Chip Wood, this is a guide for anyone working or living with children ages 4-14. Written for teachers and parents, it offers clear and concise descriptions of children's development. A comprehensive, "user-friendly" reference that helps translate knowledge of child development into schooling that helps all children succeed. Yardsticks includes charts summarizing physical, social, language, and cognitive growth patterns, suggestions for curricular areas, thematic units, and favorite books for different ages.

  You Know Your Child Is Gifted When . . . A Beginner's Guide to Life on the Bright Side

  This entry level book is written by Judy Galbraith for parents of children ages 2-8. It includes characteristics of gifted, descriptions of terms used in gifted education, perfectionism, parenting the gifted child, working with the schools and the rights of parents.

  Your Child: Emotional, Behavioral, and Cognitive Development from Birth through Preadolescence: What's Normal, What's Not, and When to Seek Help

  This book is the result of a group effort of more than 6,500 members of The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP). Many of the most common physical, emotional, behavioral, cognitive, social and moral issues and the challenges of parenting that you will confront in raising a child are discussed.

  Your Gifted Child: How to Recognize and Develop the Special Talents in Your Child from Birth to Age Seven

  An estimated 500,000 potentially gifted children are born each year. Since most schools don't begin to test for giftedness until about age 8, it is left to parents to recognize and nurture their children's special talents and abilities in the early critical years. Written by Joan Franklin Smutny, Kathleen Veenker and Stephen Veenker, this intelligent, insightful, and useful book is a complete guide to identifying gifted children and helping them develop to the fullest.

  Your Passport to Gifted Education

  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.

• Printed Materials: Online Documents

  Considering Homeschooling: A Guidebook for Investigating an Alternative Path to Education

  Written by Davidson Institute team members, this guidebook is a valuable tool for parents who are considering homeschooling. Readers will find information on homeschool curriculum, applying to college, cost considerations, networking with other families, homeschool laws and more.
  

• Websites & Other Media: For Educators

  National Center for Youth Issues (NCYI)

  National Center for Youth Issues provides educational resources, books, training and support programs to foster the healthy psychosocial, emotional, and physical development of children and youth. NCYI hosts local, regional, and statewide “Healthy Choices for Youth” educator training events, and provides conference management services to help school districts, nonprofits, and government agencies as they work to improve life outcomes for children and youth. This organization also provides free training resources and sells books on various youth issues.