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

This is one of the important books of gifted education that teachers and researchers must buy.

This book is an invaluable resource to both parents and teachers

This is not the "XXX for the Dummies" type of book. This book is a textbook for college classes. It has theories and cites primary research data. If you do not like reading demanding textbooks for college students, this book is not for you, considering its high price. It not only suggests you what to do, but also explains the reason behind it. You need to read it carefully and critically. There are an overwhelming number of books on this subject that you probably won't read them all, and frankly the vast majority of them are just not worth reading. This one is clearly worth reading and your child will benefit invaluably, if you spend serious time on this book, no matter your child is gifted or not.

I suspect this is mainly used as a textbook for teachers or counselors and the like...but I bouoght it as a parent and I highly recommend this book. I first saw a 1985 edition on our library shelves, read it and got so much useful information from it I took a chance on the newer version. I was not disappointed. I have quoted and used this book at length in trying to educate the teachers and other staff involved in my son's education. I showed or told them what she wrote and quoted her, which lent some authority to my assertions. She helped explain why my son is the way he is, in so many of his complexities. At last I understood why he reacts to things in such puzzling ways! There might be other books on gifted kids out there, but I'm not sure they could beat her patient, highly educated, helpful tone. Take notes as you go, there'll be a lot of things you'll want to find later to share with others interested in the same issues. Such as, one of the most important keys in finding an effective teacher for any student is the teacher's own self-image. Or, there IS a model of education that is shown to be effective for all levels of intelligence at once--the hands-on or whole topic curriculum (also called project-based). Or that the level of intelligence we now call gifted IS possible for all people to reach, if only they were raised in the "right" way--and that it is largely learned, not inherited. Or that teachers are a fairly poor identifier of the gifted kids; other kids are better at it! These are my recollections only--but just as a sample of the kinds of things she says. There's so much there you'll probably need to skip the parts that don't apply, or read more than once.

Last year I stumbled across an older edition of this book completely by accident while researching a paper on inclusion/mainstreaming of severely LD/BD/ED kids. My parents have hidden (or tried to hide) my giftedness from me since they found out when I was three. This book sent my head spinning, but I'm glad I found it. I devoured it in about a day, and it left me hungry for more. Growing Up Gifted is a great book for parents, teachers, counselors, and the gifted alike. I learned a lot about myself. Ms. Clark touches on pretty much every aspect of giftedness more than well enough to give an ignorant, undereducated GT girl an excellent foothold in the climb to discovering what "this gifted stuff" is all about.