By Niña Abanol, IEA Program Manager
Every October, people national wide celebrate National Book Month. Studies have shown that reading not only improves your vocabulary and spelling, but it’s also good for your mental health. This October, take some time to pick up a new book you’ve been meaning to read or reread some of your favorites.
Below are some featured readings for parents and educators focused on best practices and strategies for raising and educating a gifted child. These books are listed on IEA’s Gifted Resource Center (GRC), which serves as a free online tool created and curated by IEA for our community. The resources listed in the GRC are appropriate for gifted learners from preschool through high school.
Comment below with your favorite reads and don’t forget to hashtag #NationalBookMonth on your social media to keep the reading train going!
The latest research in child development shows that many kids who have the brain and heart to succeed lack or lag behind in crucial “executive skills”–the fundamental habits of mind required for getting organized, staying focused, and controlling impulses and emotions. Learn easy-to-follow steps to identify your child’s strengths and weaknesses, use activities and techniques proven to boost specific skills, and problem-solve daily routines. Small changes can add up to big improvements–this empowering book shows how.
Differently Wired: Raising an Exceptional Child in a Conventional World
Differently Wired is a revolutionary book—weaving together personal stories and a tool kit of expert advice from author Deborah Reber, it’s a how-to, a manifesto, and a reassuring companion for parents who can so often feel that they have no place to turn.
In A Mind at a Time, Dr. Levine shows parents and others who care for children how to identify these individual learning patterns. He explains how parents and teachers can encourage a child’s strengths and bypass the child’s weaknesses. This type of teaching produces satisfaction and achievement instead of frustration and failure.
The Gifted Teen Survival Guide: Smart, Sharp, and Ready for (Almost) Anything
Based on new surveys of nearly 1,500 gifted teens, this book is the ultimate guide to thriving in a world that doesn’t always support or understand high ability. Full of surprising facts, survey results, step-by-step strategies, inspiring teen quotes, and insightful expert essays, the guide gives readers the tools they need to appreciate their giftedness as an asset and use it to make the most of who they are.
Different Minds: Gifted Children with AD/HD, Asperger Syndrome, and Other Learning Deficits
Recognizing the different levels and kinds of giftedness, this book provides an insight into the challenges and benefits specific to gifted children with attention difficulties. Explaining why certain children are gifted and how giftedness is manifested, each chapter on a specific topic addresses the relevance for children with AD/HD, autism and Asperger Syndrome. Lovecky guides parents and professionals through methods of diagnosis and advise on how best to nurture individual needs, positive behavior and relationships at home and at school.
If This is a Gift, Can I Send it Back?: Surviving in the Land of the Gifted and Twice Exceptional
When is life like a prizefight, a garden, and a quiz show, all hurtling down the road on an office chair, wrapped in song? When you’re living in the land of the gifted and twice-exceptional. Join the author on her journey through discovery, understanding, and acceptance, as she copes with the challenges that only the gifted and twice-exceptional can create.
Emotional Intensity in Gifted Students: Helping Kids Cope with Explosive Feelings
Designed to provide support for the difficult job of parenting and teaching gifted children, this book provides the resource parents and teachers need to not only understand why gifted children are so extreme in their behavior but also learn specific strategies to teach gifted children how to live with their intensity.
Genius Denied: How to Stop Wasting Our Brightest Young Minds
In Genius Denied, the Davidsons — founders of a nonprofit institute that provides assistance to gifted children — offer hope and practical advice to parents and students alike. They show parents how to find an appropriate education for their children, when to go outside the school system, and how to create a support network with school authorities and other parents.
Gifted children and adults are often misunderstood. Their excitement is viewed as excessive, their high energy as hyperactivity, their persistence as nagging, their imagination as not paying attention, their passion as being disruptive, their strong emotions and sensitivity as immaturity, their creativity and self-directedness as oppositional. This resource describes these overexcitabilities and strategies for dealing with children and adults who are experiencing them and provides essential information about Dabrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration.
If you’re making your book purchase on Amazon, please consider using IEA’s Amazon Smile as a portion of your purchase will be donated directly to us so we can continue providing high-quality programs and services to gifted and advanced youth nationwide.