Eibbed
There are many books out there about raising a gifted child but I'm not sure where to start. Can you please recommend one that you found particularly useful for a beginner?
I found a variety of perspectives much more useful than any single book/article. The reality is that different writers are going to resonate with different people. My own journey here was illuminated by
Ellen Winner's book
"Gifted Children:Myths and Realities"as well as
Genius Denied, by Jan Davidson.
and by bits of many other works. I literally went to my public library's stacks and pulled out four or five books at a time on education and parenting-- anything that seemed remotely related.
Key authors I found helpful include Miraca Gross, Lisa Rivero and James Webb. I found that many authors (Susan Winebrenner, James DeLisle) focused on what I'd consider "bright" children or lower levels of moderately gifted ones (MG), and those were sometimes very discouraging and unhelpful to me as the parent of a PG child. They made me question what we were doing instinctively for our daughter, and made me feel lonely (which was, incidentally, quickly reinforced by community contacts that didn't like a PG child because other parents of MG children found us "threatening" to their self-identity). I don't consider those "bad" resources, by the way. Just that they didn't help me much because my child wasn't in the target demographic, and in fact were a little scary for us as parents because they made it clear just HOW far from the median our daughter is. So maybe that is some helpful information, too. If your child is doing a LOT of the things on Deborah Ruf's highest LOG (which I don't put
tons of stock in as a diagnostic tool, to be clear), then it's helpful to be aware that a lot of typical literature about gifted children is NOT aimed at parenting
your gifted child. It becomes more true the more profoundly gifted the child, and particularly with 2e children, whose profiles may be truly unique.
For web-based resources, I recommend exploring the library of materials from Davidson, from SENG, and exploring at Hoagie's. I also found the materials at Duke's TIP (mostly archived newsletters) VERY helpful.
