The Gifted Kids Survival Guide: A Teen Handbook

by Judy Galbraith, Jim Delisle

Written with help from hundreds of gifted teenagers, this handbook is the ultimate guide to surviving and thriving in a world that doesn’t always value, support, or understand high ability. Full of surprising facts, step-by-step strategies, practical how-tos, and inspiring quotations, featuring insightful essays contributed by gifted teens and adults, the book gives readers the tools they need to understand giftedness, accept it as an asset, and use it to make the most of who they are. Teens learn the facts about giftedness, The Gifted Kids’ Survival A Teen Handbook is a must for gifted teens, their parents, teachers, counselors, and anyone who cares about smart, creative, curious kids.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, Reference, Self Help

304 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1996

About the author

As a former classroom teacher and specialist in gifted education, Judy Galbraith , MA recognized a clear need for books to help children and teens navigate life’s challenges. Judy founded Free Spirit Publishing in 1983 becoming the first publisher to focus on self-help materials to help young people lead better lives. Her first books, and the first titles for Free Spirit Publishing, grew out of her master’s thesis paper and they're still in print today...The Gifted Kids’ Survival Guides (for ages 10 & under and for teens).

Not having a business or publishing background, Judy learned about growing Free Spirit the hard way. “I always tell people that I’ve done just about everything wrong...once. I’m a strong believer in the importance of persistence in the face of challenges. With every mistake or bad thing that might happen in our lives, there’s always, always an opportunity to learn, improve, and grow. By modeling this mindset for children and teens through our deeds and through resources such as the ones we create at Free Spirit, we can help young people do and be their best in all areas of their lives. I grew up around books, and I firmly believe they have the power to inspire, inform, and transform.”

Judy is proud of the accolades Free Spirit’s books consistently garner from professionals, but she says, “How do we know our books really work? The letters from our readers. Almost every day we receive fan mail about how our books have helped someone. Those letters make it easy for us to stay true to our mission which is to provide children and teens - and the adults who care about them—with the tools they need to succeed in life and to make a difference in the world.”

In addition to The Gifted Kids’ Survival Guides, Judy is the coauthor of What Teens Need to Succeed: Proven, Practical Ways to Shape Your Own Future; What Kids Need to Succeed: Proven, Practical Ways to Raise Good Kids; and When Gifted Kids Don’t Have All the Answers: How to Meet Their Social and Emotional Needs.

Judy served ten years on the Board of Directors of Search Institute, a nonprofit research organization dedicated to advancing the well-being of children and adolescents. From 2007–2010, she was a member of Minnesota 4-H Foundation Board of Trustees. In 1996, Galbraith received the E. Paul Torrance Creativity Award; in 2004, she was named the Midwest Publisher of the Year; and in 2011, she was awarded with the California Association for the Gifted (CAG) Ruth A. Martinson Award. She has appeared on Oprah and been featured in Family Circle and Family Life, as well as numerous other magazines, newspapers, and broadcast and electronic media. She is a member of the Association of Booksellers for Children, the Association of Educational Publishers, the Midwest Independent Publishers Association, and the National Association for Gifted Children.

Judy grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, received a degree in education from the University of Wisconsin at Steven’s Point, and holds a master’s degree in guidance and counseling of the gifted from Norwich University, Vermont. She is a sailor and enjoys adventure travel, reading (of course!), community activism, and taking long walks with her rescue dogs, Sally and Twiggy. Judy lives with her partner, Gary, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Reviews

[Carmen · Rating 2 out of 5]

It always rubs me wrong when adults try to sound hip when talking to teens. (See how corny "hip" sounded in that sentence? Yeah, like that.) I appreciated the mention that some gifted teens (GT) are precocious academically and some artistically. I wish more emphasis were placed on the fact that not everything is easy when one is gifted--that HARD WORK and APPLICATION are necessary components to achievement. Gifted underachievement is rampant (see Sylvia Rimm's books for better applications and better science) and Galbraith's touchy-feely book, in an effort to soothe that portion of GTs who are unduly pressured by unrealistic parental and social expectations, ignores the larger portion who have bought the elementary school-induced myth that finishing first and quickly means one is smart.

I teach the highly gifted, the top 1% of the gifted, and it is beautiful for them to be together with other kids who grasp concepts almost immediately and make multiple connections almost intuitively. The label of "smart" isn't what we find damaging--it is the anti-intellectual bias in our nation that says that being smart and cool are mutually exclusive. You can see this myth through American stereotypes: dumb jocks and cheerleaders, of nerdy bony science boys wearing glasses and acne, of people being shocked when a beautiful woman is also smart (ie, Legally Blonde).

Though the book misses an opportunity to help kids shatter these mistaken but powerful cultural stereotypes, it does a great job of helping them redefine being smart as being acceptable, and that's why I gave it two stars instead of one. I'll have a few of my ultragifted GTs read it next year and if they like it, I may change this review, but in the meantime, check out Sylvia Rimm's stuff.

[Swankivy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure how my family ended up with these books but I'm pretty sure they were given to us by an aunt or uncle who'd observed that my sister and I were in the gifted program. There were two versions of the book--I think one for ten and under, one for eleven and up--so because I was in the upper category and my sister was in the lower, we received both of them. (I didn't see much of a difference--of course I had to compare them--except that it seemed the one for older kids used slightly higher-level vocabulary sometimes.) I didn't really "get" the book very well, to be honest. Sometimes it seemed like it was a book about us, not for us, and though it was interesting to see what other gifted kids said about their experiences and helpful to know that it was okay to be more mature intellectually and socially than physically, I didn't really learn any survival skills from the book. It seemed to me that there was a mysterious floating group of gifted kids somewhere out in the ether that I couldn't talk to or touch, and someone had talked to them to get this information, but I didn't know what it had to do with me. I did, however, relate to the bits on how gifted kids tend to be hard on themselves and be perfectionists and have high expectations of others--I was forever the idealistic one with a really highly developed sense of justice that made "unfair" things seem world-shaking--and I liked that it made it so clear that there are multiple kinds of intelligence.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Gifted/talented teacher at school gave me this. My older kids have read it and I am going to recommend it to my 11 yr old. I was taking notes and dog-earing pages all through it.
I liked how they approached goal setting. It was a different approach than I usually see and one I will try to implement in my own family. Rather than a psych yourself up approach, that doesn't allow for failure, this one is adjusted to kids who will push themselves and expect miracles, or who are afraid to fail. When you put recreation time and an expectation of less than perfect results into the goal setting paradigm it becomes much more friendly to anxiety-prone, stressed out teens.
The easy, step-by-step chart on dealing with difficult teachers will also be very useful.

[Julie Decker · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book introduces kids on the gifted spectrum to the concept of multiple intelligences and suggests some similar experiences they might all have. It seems to contain more information about gifted kids--sometimes taken from interviews--than it does about how to survive as one, but still, knowing about other kids' experiences was at least a little enlightening to me as a child who received this book as a gift.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book for gifted adolescent students. It's humorous, down to earth, and has realistic questions and answers facing gifted adolescents of today's world. As a middle school gifted teacher, I recommended it to students in my classes each year.

[Alicia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Both my 15 year old daughter and myself read this and we both thought it had a lot of insight and good ideas of how to survive the rough times and how to deal with pressure and stress of being a smart kid at school.

[Kristian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book on the social and affective needs for gifted people (arguably at any age, not just as a teen, though there are a few teen-specific chapters such as how to choose a college best for you). It is written assuming the audience are teens, not parents or teachers.

[Christy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up because I remember reading the Guide for younger kids when I was younger. Even as a grown-up gifted kid, I found lots of quotable and useful passages in this book.

[Shannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too much preaching, not enough survival tips.

[Rony Fhebrian Yusuf · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're a gifted kids or you think so, this is the best book for you. It may seem old, but it's worth, totally worth it.

[Kathy]

Ten copies