This digest offers guidelines to parents of gifted children which emphasize respecting the child's individuality while providing necessary support. A new definition of giftedness is cited which stresses the asynchronous development of such children's cognitive skills and the resultant qualitatively different inner experience. Early signs of…

This digest uses a question-and-answer format to address some issues in the possible choice of a residential school for children who are deaf or hard of hearing. The importance of the residential school experience in the context of Deaf culture is addressed, as are other issues such as characteristics of students attending residential schools and…

This digest discusses hearing loss in children. Topics covered include: (1) the causes of hearing loss and the three major types of hearing losses, conductive loss, sensorineural loss, and central auditory processing disorder; (2) the federal definitions of "deaf" (hearing loss which adversely affects educational performance and which is…

This digest uses a question-and-answer format to summarize basic issues about the inclusion of children who are deaf or hard of hearing in classrooms with normal hearing students. It briefly reviews the history of the inclusion movement and identifies two general positions in the debate: (1) that all students have the right to go to school with…

Each year, many teachers face the problem of where to place children who do not fit into the rest of the class. Retention is an option that is frequently considered for these children. Children considered for retention often have poor academic skills, are small in stature or the youngest in the grade, have moved or been absent frequently, do…