Raising Your Child To Be Gifted: Successful Parents Speak! by James Reed Campbell. Cambridge: Brookline Books, 1995. 195 pages. $21.
Most of us have an abundance of unspoken dreams and expectations for our children. But how many of us bother to evaluate what constitutes success? How many of us think concretely and systematically about how we, as parents, will figure in this process of helping our children to be successful in the world? Raising Your Child To Be Gifted forces us to confront our values about success. It is a useful starting point for considering how we might contribute positively to our children’s long term success.
James Reed Campbell, currently a professor at St. John’s University in New York, has had thirty years experience as an educator. His research has focused on gifted and talented children in countries around the world. In Raising Your Child to Be Gifted Campbell has moved beyond the realm of the academic community to share his findings with parents. He claims that the results of cross-cultural interviews with parents of more than 10,000 gifted children from the United States, Greece, Japan and the Republic of China have implications for all parents.
Campbell’s basic premise is that parents can have a profound impact on how their children’s potential is realized, regardless of children’s innate talents or abilities. He believes that the environment parents create is the real source of children’s superior achievement. A child’s natural ability is just one of four basic ingredients that affect achievement. The remaining three ingredients — confidence, discipline and good work habits — can be developed and supported under the supervision of interested parents. Even though he defines success very narrowly, Campbell makes a convincing case for how to foster academic achievement at school.
The book consists of 76 “recipes” for nurturing giftedness, culled from the common threads of the interviews with parents of children identified as the best academic performers with the highest productivity in these four countries. Campbell suggests ways in which we can begin to lay important ground work even from a very young age. Building confidence in all areas of a child’s life is key in motivating a child to want to work hard and in maintaining their interest. Setting appropriate expectations for achievement together with easing children into responsibilities at home are seen as important building blocks.
The most successful approach to influencing children is to spend large chunks of time with them — listening, being highly supportive, and not expecting independence too early. Since pressure is an unavoidable part of life, Campbell claims we do better to be honest about its presence and gradually initiate our children into how to deal with it rather than overprotecting them. Establishing consistent routines and monitoring TV viewing can also set the stage for later development of discipline and work habits. Offering assistance only when children ask for help and having many resources at home so that kids have them at their fingertips empowers them to take charge of their own learning. It is a way of being supportive yet validating their ability to cope. Parental modeling is also critical, and forging partnerships with teachers completes the circle.
Much of what Campbell suggests is common sense. However, the level of time commitment for which he calls seems unrealistic because he doesn’t take into account the complexity of parents’ lives. To do everything he suggests seems overwhelming. Furthermore he presupposes that everyone wants a goal- oriented child and his definition of success revolves solely around academic achievement. I was disturbed by his failure to discuss the importance of other aspects of children’s development — social, emotional and physical. Emphasizing intellectual development alone gives a lopsided, incomplete view of children’s overall development and weakens the book’s credibility. However, being presented with a comprehensive plan for fostering intellectual development stimulated my thinking about what success in life means to me and how to prepare my children to negotiate school.