Raising Happy Kids Over 100 Tips For Parents And Teachers

Raising Happy Kids Over 100 Tips For Parents And Teachers

“A must-have guide…for parents who truly want to raise happy, healthy and fulfilled children.” — Curled Up with a Good Book March 2004

“Great advice…The book shows parents simple ways to make their children feel secure.” — Boise Family Magazine February 2004

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars Kids are Important
Raising Happy Kids is a book that espouses conventional wisdom about democratic parenting. It measures whether or not something is effective with kids by whether it will increase self-esteem, self-confidence and self-reliance. It speaks in favor of parents retaining their parental role and providing boundaries for their children. It also is in favor of helping kids get their needs met.

Where this book departs from Empowerment Parenting is that it basically says that parents’ needs are more important than the child’s and that parents sometimes must exert their will over their child’s simply because they are in charge and they are the parents. Many parents operate under this assumption.

What Empowerment Parenting says is that every person, parents and children alike, must get their needs met in some way. If parents decide that their needs are more important than their child’s in a certain situation and impose their will, then that child’s need goes unmet. This sets up opportunity for all kinds of problematic behavior to occur simply because the child is attempting to get their needs met in that situation.

Occasionally, parents will need to impose their will particularly when a child’s safety is at risk. Sometimes parents will choose to make their needs more important when they are pressed for time. This will most likely be all right as long as it doesn’t become a regular routine. However, parents must be prepared to manage the fall out.

Raising children is one of the hardest jobs you will ever undertake and there is no instruction manual. We just do the best we can. Working together with your children so you can both get what you need in a responsible way is the primary message of Empowerment Parenting. It will take more time and require more patience, but the reward of cooperative children far outweighs the effort.

1 Star 167 Pages of Fluff & Nothing
My wife, an elementary school teacher heard about this book and bought it. We’re not big advocates of the “child rearing instruction manuals” to begin with but this doesn’t have a shred of useable advice. The author takes a management consultant approach and cops out of offering any specific, actionable advice in her introduction. She doesn’t draw on any research and illustrations of her own experience are rather vague. Then there’s the writing style. Prosaic and circular meanderings like this one, “Trust is a key element of self confidence. The Oxford English Dictionary defines confidence as: . . . ” then goes on with the revelation that “People cannot develop self-confidence if they neither trust themselves . . . . ” Yikes! That goes on for three paragraphs. I guess because her editor told her there was no way they were going to be able to market a 14 page pamphlet of trite bullet points for $13.95 US. It did help me fall asleep while I was traveling. But so will Ambien.

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Parenting Gifted Kids Tips for Raising Happy And Successful Children

Parenting Gifted Kids Tips for Raising Happy And Successful Children

Parenting Gifted Kids: Tips for Raising Happy and Successful Children by James R. Delisle (Professor of Gifted Education at Kent State University) is an informative and “parent friendly” reference for enabling a truly gifted child to expressively and productively achieve their life goals, develop sound character, and generally enjoy his or her life. Examining overly excitable children, the type of gift granted to each child, working with the school system, dealing with perfectionist children, being a positive role model, building a child’s character, and helping kids achieve their set goals and dreams, Parenting Gifted Kids is very highly recommended reading, especially to all new parents of a gifted child. –
—James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief, Midwest Book Review

Parenting Gifted Kids: Tips for Raising Happy and Successful Children provides a humorous, engaging, and encouraging look at raising gifted children in our world today. Jim Delisle, well-known for his experience in the area of social and emotional needs of gifted children, once again comes to the rescue of parents by offering practical, down-to-earth advice that is very likely to challenge parents to reexamine the ways they perceive and relate to their children. –
Gifted Child Today, Vol. 29, No. 4, Fall 2006

Parenting Gifted Kids: Tips for Raising Happy and Successful Children by teacher, counselor, college professor, and parent James R. Delisle is an expert collection of tactful and educated approaches to children. Deftly examining and exploring the findings of child-psychology and his experiences of more than 30 years of working with children, Professor Delisle offers his readers a cogent understanding of giftedness in children, how to work with the school system, dealing with perfectionism in gifted children, being an adult role model for children, building a child’s character, and helping kids achieve their goals and dreams. For its clear, concise, and incalcuable practical information, Parenting Gifted Kids is very highly recommended for all parents, counselors, and teachers of a gifted child. –
—James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief, Midwest Book Review

Parenting Gifted Kids: Tips for Raising Happy and Successful Children by James R. Delisle (Professor of Gifted Education at Kent State University) is an informative and “parent friendly” reference for enabling a truly gifted child to expressively and productively achieve their life goals, develop sound character, and generally enjoy their life. Examining overly excitable children, the type of gift granted to each child, working with the school system, dealing with perfectionist children, being a positive role model, building a child’s character, and helping kids achieve their set goals and dreams, Parenting Gifted Kids is very highly recommended reading, especially to all new parents of a gifted child. –
—James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief, Midwest Book Review

Parenting Gifted Kids: Tips for Raising Happy and Successful Children by teacher, counselor, college professor, and parent James R. Delisle is an expert collection of tactful and educated approaches to children. Deftly examining and exploring the findings of child-psychology and his experiences of over thirty years of working with children, Professor Delisle offers his readers a cogent understanding of giftedness in children, how to work with the school system, dealing with perfectionism in gifted children, being an adult role model for children, building a child’s character, and helping kids achieve their goals and dreams. For its clear, concise, and incalcuable practical information, Parenting Gifted Kids is very highly recommended for all parents, counselors, and teachers of a gifted child. –
—James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief, Midwest Book Review

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Mercifully, omits testing info
A book for parents who know their child is gifted and who want to learn about their child’s inner landscape. Not for parents who are wondering HOW to get their child into their school’s gifted program. I checked out many books from the public library, looking for one like this. The others devote multiple early chapters to testing, which was a moot point for me.

Have been recommending it to other TAG parents as the “if you’re only going to read one book on giftedness, this is it” book.

5 Stars Excellent Resource!
This is an excellent resource for parents seeking to raise a child who is intellectually, socially, emotionally and spiritually balanced, as well as productive. — It offers real world advice concerning advocacy for and understanding of the gifted and talented, while reminding parents that gifted and talented children are just that — children.

I recommend this book over any other I’ve read thus far. It is enjoyable, exceptionally readable, and chok-full of insight and information.

4 Stars Help your child be happy: read this and “THE DRAMA OF THE GIFTED CHILD”
As a gifted child, I wish my parents had not understood me as gifted, but understood why I loved being the best at everything, i.e. why it was so important for me, and why I was losing my childhood to it. Not that it is bad to be the best, but it doesn’t make our children happy. I wish my parents had helped me break the deep feeling (and illusion) that I was loved when others acknowledged my being gifted…which inevitably came with the deep feeling of doubt about whether I was loved when I was not great. I wish they had helped me relax, made me feel loved unconditionally, helped me find out what “I” liked and focus on that, and most importantly, stop the emotionally empty pursuit of continuing to be “the gifted child”, stop looking for the excitement of compliments as an illusion of love. Feeling unconditionally loved by your parents is feeling that you can be ordinary at something, or that if you don’t like that game you don’t have to play it and if you play it, you can be ordinary at it (invest less time and focus on having fun rather than being “great”), and still know for sure, deeply, without having to test it, that your parents will always love you anyway. If your child is almost always great, by definition he/she does not feel/know for sure that you love him/her unconditionally.

As parents, it is our responsibility to help our child be happy, rather than extraordinary. When your child is gifted and extraordinary, the best you can offer is not encourage him/her to be great (he/she’s already doing that) but rather 1) for you to gain the insight of why he/she feels it is so important to be the best at everything, why he or she invests so much emotional energy in getting your and other people’s compliments, and 2) help him/her feel loved unconditionally, that it is perfectly fine to be ordinary at some things, by expressing your love “especially” when he or she is ordinary–that is when you should express the most love to your child–to tame his/her deep-rooted emotional illusion that compliments = love, because of what it also means in his/her heart: that no compliments = no love. Read this book and especially “the Drama of the Gifted Child”, so you truly help your child, so he/she doesn’t have to read the book in 10 to 20 years and has to mourn the loss of his/her childhood to being “gifted”.

4 Stars original approach
How happy I was to get a new perspective on the gifted parenting issue. Instead of a book merely listing the characteristics of gifted kids and the problems they face, this offered some new points. The included “Gifted Children Speak Out” section at the end of every chapter was very insightful and put everything I was reading in perspective; all the advice in the world can’t substitute for honest feelings given directly from the children themselves. I also really enjoyed the chapter on giftedness in adults. It was helpful both as a way for the reader to reflect on and remember his or her own gifted childhood, and as a reminder that our children are going to grow up, with characteristics that continue to affect them in adult life. Finally, the resource section at the back was full of schools, journals, web sites and other places to find additional information and support. Overall, a very thourough and insightful book.

5 Stars Fantastic!
This completely explained my child. Thank you for helping me to understand her and how her mind works. This is the beginning to parenting my child the way she needs.

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