Steven Pfeiffer's recently released book, "Parenting from the Heart - Raising Resilient and Successful Smart Kids", is a concise yet powerful guide for parenting. Dr Pfeiffer offers essential reading for parents and carers who wish to support their gifted child's social-emotional development towards becoming well-adjusted, resilient, and optimistic, essential ingredients for happiness and success in life.
The heart of this book centres on exploring three interconnected traits, Emotional Intelligence, social skills, and character strengths, which Pfeiffer calls 'heart strengths'. Pfeiffer unpacks these heart strengths grounded in theory, providing examples from his professional practice working with gifted kids and the families, in an easy to read style.
A strength of Pfeiffer's book is the gentle guidance it provides for parents who may also need development in one or more of these 'heart strength' areas. Of course, we can't provide our children that which we don't possess ourselves so Pfeiffer has focussed on presenting "basic, uncomplicated, and yet important techniques, skills, and guidelines that help parents become more calm, self-assured, comfortable, and confident adults and parents" (p23). Each chapter includes a 'Suggested Resources' section for those readers who want to take a deeper dive into topics of interest.
This fairly short read is important for any adult who wishes to guide the gifted kids in their care into well-balanced people with head strengths and heart strengths. I highly recommend it to all parents of gifted children who are striving to be more reflective, thoughtful, and calmer in their parenting.
If you do read it, please share a comment below. I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Helen
NB There is no gain or benefit to me for writing this review.