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Emotional Intensity In Gifted Students: Helping Kids Cope With Explosive Feelings (2010)

by Christine Fonseca(Favorite Author)

3.87 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1593634900 (ISBN13: 9781593634902)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Prufrock Press

review 1: Very mixed feelings about this book. There were some structural things that were tough for me. The first few chapters follow three different (fictional composite) children through a variety of challenges. If your child is similar to one of these children and you want to read through all the scenarios and resolutions for that child, such as school challenges, home challenges, social challenges, etc. you have to skip entire sections in each chapter that talk about the other children, or read through a bunch of anecdotes that may have limited or no value for your situation. In these sections, the resolution to each challenge felt overly generalized and too simple to be helpful.Thankfully, the second set of chapters follow a variety of behaviors and break down typical scen... morearios -- how dialogue often plays out between a child and a parent with limited long-term results. The author offers alternate scenarios based on developing a coaching approach to parenting. I found this, because it was more specific, to be far more helpful than the previous section. It spelled out exactly how to change a parenting approach from purely authoritative (which doesn't ever work with my child and apparently many other gifted children) to collaborative / coaching. I can use some of what I learned here, particularly the author's repeated emphasis on non-emotionality when coaching. I get my buttons pushed often in the heat of the moment.The author also based this work on the Dabrowski theory of development, that emotional intensity is a necessary step toward self-actualization, thought she thankfully does not elaborate much on it or dwell in it like Living With Intensity, which I read just a couple of weeks ago.I wasn't counting on a rich appendix of resources, but the author has provided them. This will probably take several trips to libraries and bookstores and the rest of 2013 to look into them!
review 2: Fonseca covers a specific aspect of parenting gifted children: dealing with their tendency to explode out of frustration, anger, boredom, or more. If you go into this book expecting a comprehensive parenting guide, it's not here. This is specific, practical advice on handling these situations when they come up.My version was on the Nook, so there were some issues with the formatting that cut off letters whenever the author used a double dash (--), and she used them a lot, which made for a lot of guessing and interrupted the text flow. The first part of the book explains reasons why gifted children might have explosive behavior, and the second offers situations with dialogue as it might naturally occur, and then corrected to create a more positive outcome. The author is very familiar with the Positive Parenting philosophy; if you've read and implemented those systems, there is little new information here. I did appreciate that her examples included older children, since so many parenting books seem to focus on very young children.This book was under 150 pages via the Nook and was a very quick read. If you're having issues with your gifted child's explosive behavior, it may be worth reading, especially if you don't have the Positive Parenting background. The resources in the back may be the best part of the book, though; I've found many more books I'd like to explore. less

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