The Social and Emotional Lives of Gifted Kids

For short I'll use the tilde sign (~) to denote the phrase "The social and Emotional Lives of Gifted Kids". There are many books about gifted children out there. Advice books, research books, general books, and they're all intended for the layman. I've read many of them, and I can testify that it wasn't always easy to find a good book. However, this one, on this somewhat neglected subject of social and emotional development (opposed to academic development), is definitely one of the best out there. This relatively short book is a collection of the author's articles published in "Gifted Education Today". It has 22 chapters divided into 4 sections. The first section is called "About Gifted Children: Who they are and Why". Its aim is to refute many common myths about gifted children and prepare the background for the other sections. In my opinion, the two chapters titled "Competing with myths about ~", and "How gifted students cope with mixed massages", are exceptionally good and everybody should read them. Instead of the disproved myths, the author would introduce a set of "axioms", based on years of research, on which he'll draw later in the book. In "Gifted children and Erickson's theory of psychological development", the author introduce us to Erickson's theory, on which he'll rely in the other sections of the books. The other two main sections are "Guiding Gifted Children" and "Gifted Children Today". Three articles especially, are some of the best I have ever read on the subject. They are "The many faces of bullies" - with a surprising definition of "bully", "~ in the 21st centaury" - talking about the generation gap and modern technology, and "Gifted students and the adults who provide for them: lessons learned from terrorism" - maybe one of the most insightful articles in the book, about extreme stress and the Social & Emotional implications of it upon the gifted. In the end of the book you'll find a detailed bibliography and an extensive list of resources - more than 40 pages covering journals, centers and associations in the US and Canada. I consider the short time it took me to read the book (and the long hours I ponder on it) definitely well-spent. Find it and read it. Enjoy! G.G.