Ann Hulbert examines the lives of children whose rare accomplishments have raised hopes about untapped human potential and questions about how best to nurture it. She probes the changing role of parents and teachers, as well as of psychologists and a curious press. Above all, she delves into the feelings of the prodigies themselves, who push back against adults more as the decades proceed.
This book reveals the dramatic stories of twenty outstandingly gifted people as they grew from early promise to maturity in Britain. Recorded over the last thirty-five years by award-winning psychologist, Joan Freeman, these fascinating accounts reveal the frustrations and triumphs of her participants, and investigates why some fell by the wayside whilst others reached fame and fortune.
Many studies of gifted individuals emphasize the unique attributes that characterize giftedness and the intensity that gifted individuals bring to their interactions with people and the events in their lives. Gifted individuals' self-perceptions of these characteristics and intensities influence how they address their innate drive to achieve. Few studies have focused on gifted adults' self-perceptions.
Exceptionally Gifted Children is unique. The first edition of this book, published in 1993, introduced 15 remarkable children, some of the most gifted young people ever studied, and traced their path. This new edition reviews these early years but also follows the young people over the subsequent ten years into adulthood.
