Parenting Gifted Kids: Tips for Raising Happy And Successful Children by James Delisle
Delisle looks at various types of giftedness and uses practical, real life quotes and examples to help you understand and relate to your gifted child. The back of the book states that he offers 10 tips to parents of gifted kids and covers such topics as “understanding a child’s giftedness, working with the school system, dealing with perfectionism in gifted kids, and being adult role models for children.”

Lena, an Amazon.com reviewer from Toronto, talks about how she particularly liked the “attitude change” the book offered. Examples she listed:

• “list of phrases that most of us use all the time with gifted kids, but that should be avoided (“You are so smart, I expected better from you”- this is my favourite – unfortunately!)
• reference to a couple of books “Philosophy for kids” and advice on how to deal with questions of this type (again, how do YOU answer the question “Why does God allow murder?” from 6-years old?)”

Smart Parenting for Smart Kids: Nurturing Your Child’s True Potential by Eileen Kennedy Moore and Mark S. Lowenthal
This book addresses the “special challenges” that bright children face around success, effort, self-esteem, and relating to authority figures and peers. The back of the book states that it “explains the reasons behind these struggles and offers parents doable strategies to help children cope with feelings, embrace learning, and build satisfying relationships.”

A dead-on Kennedy Moore quote from an Amazon.com interview:
“Pushing [children to be successful] might work with some very compliant children, but many children will actively resist heavy-handed efforts to control them, and the resulting conflicts can get ugly. Children who perceive their parents as very critical of them are also more likely to feel depressed and anxious.

Rather than trying to push our children, it makes more sense to help them develop their own motivation to do well. Research points to three components of inner motivation:

1) Competence–Mastering a new skill feels satisfying, but children will avoid doing things where they don’t believe they can be successful. Breaking tasks down so they can have small successes along the way helps increase motivation.
2) Autonomy–Children are more likely to do something if they have some choice in how they do it or at least a rationale that makes sense to them about why they should do it.
3) Connection–Children want to do things that make them feel connected to people or groups who matter to them. Our children are most likely to embrace our values when we have a warm and caring relationship with them.”

Note – These links are affiliate links I have with Amazon.com. Commissions earned from purchases will be devoted to improving the blog.

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