Gifted! The Story of a "Teenage Genius"

Cameron Thompson has been hailed by many as being a "Maths Prodigy" from a young age. After flying through GCSE and A-Level he began studying for his Honours Degree at the age of 11. What makes his story unusual is that Cameron still attends a regular high school in Wrexham, Wales with children his own age and enjoys many of the same hobbies and interests as his peers. All his studies are done with the Open University via distance learning.

In November 2011, Cameron and his family were the subject of the highly applauded BBC Documentary "Growing Pains of a Teenage Genius" and have featured in many media articles in the past few years at both local and national level.

This wonderfully entertaining story, presented by his parents (and in places by Cameron himself and his sister), looks at the challenges of having a child with unusual intellectual demands; it explores the issues associated with balancing social, emotional and intellectual development and why early entry to University is, in the opinion of the authors, never a suitable option. The book further considers the stories of former "child prodigies" and looks at the lessons that can be learnt from them with the benefit of hindsight and ultimately presents a new approach to dealing with gifted children that many will not have considered. Sensitive issues are tackled head on, openly and honestly, looking at the positives and negatives of many of the modern options and explores a wide variety of areas such as pushy parenting, hothousing, giftedness and Aspergers Syndrome (which Cameron has been diagnosed with), giftedness and Dyslexia and many many more in a non-threatening way.

This book offers the answers to many common questions in an enjoyable, in places funny, and easy to understand format. What does "gifted" mean? Are "gifted", "bright", "prodigy", "intelligent" all the same thing? How do I know if my child is gifted? Should I do something about it or not? How do I get my child tested? What should I expect from my childs school?

Foreword presented by Denise Yates, the Chief Executive of the National Association for Gifted Children. 50% of the proceeds for this book will be donated to support their work with gifted and talented children in the UK. In the words of Denise:

"By definition, this is a very personal story of one family’s journey to understand and support their child. In spite of this, I believe that it will strike a chord with many families whose own journey has been similar or who are in the midst of trying to understand their child and how they can how support him or her.
Certainly, for some families who have never even thought that their child might be behaving as they do because they are gifted, I hope that this book will help the penny to drop."

The book is a an absolutely fascinating read and is of interest not just to parents but also to educators and anyone with an interest in the subject.