Many common behaviors of gifted kids (and adults) can look like symptoms of ADHD, Depression, Aspergers, and other psychiatric or medical conditions... and too many kids are being misdiagnosed, labeled, and sometimes medicated by well-meaning but perhaps uninformed professionals. This is a much needed book - the only one that I know of - that looks at the similarities and differences between the "symptoms" of giftedness and such disorders so that parents and professionals can be better positioned to avoid misdiagnosis... or better understand the overlap between characteristics of giftedness and other conditions. This is truly an important contribution to giftedness literature.

If it weren't for this book, and for James Webb, I might have believed the teachers and psychologists who told me that something was really wrong with my daughter. After reading this book, I realized that several things were really right with her, but that we weren't handling her in the ways most likely to help her adapt and succeed.

With the help of this book, some enlightened professionals, and my own observations of my girl, we have succeeded in helping her find her way within the school, with her peer group, and with adults.

If you have a child being labeled as having Aspergers, ADHD, etc. and one who is very bright, get this book. It may be that the disabilities are there, but it may not. Too many of our teachers, social workers, and psychologists are too eager to slap on a label and let themselves off the hook. Don't give up on your kid, and don't let them do it either.

This book will help you find ways to evaluate what you are seeing, and what you are being told, and it will help you find ways to respond constructively.

I have so many problems with this book that there is no way one review can include them all. I'm going to list some of the major ones here.

First of all, I really agree with the previous reviewer who said this book needs a serious reading by a fair-minded clinician.

The first problem, laid out by the authors themselves, is that the definition of gifted is "controversial." Right there, a serious question is raised about whether this book is worthwhile. Are gifted children those with high IQs? Are they those who do well in school? Or are those who do well only "moderately gifted" and you need to look for the disaffected ones, who are "profoundly gifted" and have tuned out? Or are they children with a talent in one area, such as music, art, or writing, who may not have an overall high IQ?

This is not my attempt to give the authors a hard time. This is a critical definition problem. Some children labeled "gifted" function well and are people-pleasers and teacher-pleasers. Some are not. Does it make any sense to lump these groups of children together, call them all "gifted," and make generalizations about their behavior, when in fact they are very different?

Since even giftedness itself is controverial, the effects giftedness has on personality are also controversial. You have to know what giftedness *is* to know how it affects personality. (And I believe in the concept of giftedness.)

It may not be necessary to have one widely accepted concept of giftedness to get these children help in school. Gifted children learn fast and they need accommodations. But it seems obvious to me that if many people disagree on what makes "gifted," with some gifted children displaying many problems and others not, then conclusions about the impact of "gifted" on psycholgical functioning may not be more than subjective opinions. The authors' description of gifted behaviors on pages 4 and 5 is vague, subjective, and vulnerable to misuse by people who engage in self-congratulation.

Next most important objection. I'm putting this in caps: WHERE IS THE OUTCOME DÅTA? It is nonexistent. We get anecdotes of children who improve greatly when their giftedness is recognized. But there are no data on outcomes! There is not even a chapter summarizing the authors' conclusions about outcomes. I looked for this chapter, because I could not believe it was absent - and yet, it is not there. How could they write a book attempting to make the case for special treatment of the gifted, when they do not even discuss outcomes?

This brings me to my next objection: the (in my opinion) questionable scientific validity of this book. My observations here are heavily based on some objections that a South African psychiatrist by the name of Michael Simpson raised about an entirely different psychological literature. As I read this book, his objections ran through my mind. Here are a few of them:

Proof by assertion: it is true because I said so, or because X or Y said so. That is the entire basis of this book. Remove it and there is almost nothing left. The authors might say that their anecdotes of children who improve provide sufficient outcome data; I disagree. We are asked to believe the authors' conclusions based on anecdotes, and we are asked to take on faith that these anecdotes represent accurate reporting and are not slanted based on the authors' personal beliefs about giftedness.

Charges of misdiagnosis: It is a serious matter to charge other professionals with misdiagnosis, and according to Simpson, such charges would not be allowed in the peer-reviewed literature without strong evidence. Evidence which is completely lacking here.

Being special: the belief that some children are more special than others and their behaviors are "better" than those of patients with psychopathogy: that belief runs through this book and has been rightly criticized.

OK, back to my objections. Other than in anecdotes, there is *no* discussion about the impact of childhood or adult trauma. Nor do the authors state how trauma should be considered in differential diagnosis. Some of these anecdotes reveal that the children started misbehaving or having problems after upheavals in their lives, such as divorce. Rather than state that children in an unstable environment often display problems, we get rhetoric about how giftedness causes the problems. So in one story, a boy is quite upset about his parents' divorce. But his problems are not *primarily* due to the divorce - they are due to his gifted reaction to it, including his vivid imagination! Come on.

In reality, childhood physical and sexual abuse and neglect often cause problems - they are not mentioned here though - as do poverty, rape, death of a loved one such as a parent (also oddly not mentioned), physical disability, serious illness, and other problems such as divorce. If we're going to talk about when to diagnose problems based on giftedness, don't we need to understand the impact of trauma and loss on both children and adults? Not according to these authors - an attitude that makes no sense to me.

Finally, in some cases, I find the authors' conclusions quite odd. They state that many gifted children have food allergies to such things as wheat and milk. In reality, I believe food allergies are rare among children and many people believe that parents have a tendency to wildly overdiagnose them. If there is no family history of allergies, and the child does not display other allergies, a conclusion of vague yet broad-based food allergies is suspect. Another possibility is that those parents who worry and fuss over their children to the point of believing they have nonexistent food allergies are also likely to consider their children gifted.

The whole discussion of allergies is suspect to me because the authors state the children they see usually have food and chemical allergies. They seem to have missed all of the children with allergies to ragweed, dust, and pollen, as well as animals. It's odd that they don't report this, since most people with allergies have those problems rather than vague "chocolate" or "wheat" allergies, or allergies to chemicals.

Then there's the concept of "existential" depression. This concept is not accepted in the mainstream psychological literature. To me it accomplishes nothing except to make some people feel sophisticated for being depressed.

The authors make a point of stating their credentials; in my opinion they do this because they lack the data to back up their arguments.

If anyone reads this review and takes only one thing from it, I would want it to be this: why should any client, whether gifted adult or parent, adopt this approach when the outcome data is nonexistent, and so much of this book is based on 'believe because we said so'?

After having read this book, I can't help but wonder how many lives have been damaged by the ignorance of those involved in the Mental Health occupations. I hope when parents (or even non-parents) read this book, they learn how important it is to be self-informed (at least to some degree) before they go trusting "professional" help, especially when professionals these days are so sure of themselves and have so much power over others' lives. It's a fine line between playing God and being an appropriate therapist when it comes to understanding human behavior.

As both a parent of a "challenging" child and a school counselor, I found this book to be a wonderful reframe of our often punitive and pathological way of looking at the behavior of children. The book does a wonderful job of separating out the symptoms that meet the DSM IV criteria for diagnosis and what to look for that might challenge that diagnosis. As a parent it gave me tools to advocate for my child. I gained a better understading of the questions that I might want to pose to those who are a part of my child's education. As an advocate for children, it gave me wonderful information to pass on to parents, teachers and school administrators. Most importantly it challenged my view of the school system in general. When are we going to learn that the STARS tests do not reflect the real world, and that children need social skills training way beyond Kindergarten? When will we be able to see our children for their unique gifts and not simply their ability to conform to the classroom setting? I got so much out of this book and I am still processing it. I highly recommend this book for parents, teachers, administrators, counselors, psychologists and psychiatrists and anyone who works with, or loves children.