Non-Fiction

Creative Homeschooling: A Guide for Smart Families (2nd edition, ebook) • A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Teens • The Smart Teens’ Guide to Living with Intensity • Creative Home Schooling • The Homeschooling Option

Creative Homeschooling: A Guide for Smart Families (2nd edition, ebook)

(Great Potential Press, 2014)

A new and updated comprehensive guide to homeschooling education for bright and talented children that gives parents essential information, including: tips for getting started; advice on social and emotional needs; homeschooling approaches and learning styles; pros, cons, and expectations of homeschooling; curriculum resources; research on and traits of gifted and creative learners; considerations for budgeting, planning, and record keeping; and practical strategies from real homeschoolers to help your homeschooling process go smoothly! Ebook only available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Teens: Living with Intense and Creative Adolescents

(Great Potential Press, 2010)

A 2010 Mom’s Choice Awards® Gold Recipient and 2010 National Indie Excellence Award finalist.

Gifted teenagers require special understanding in order to thrive. Learn how to understand your adolescent’s intensity and excitability, how to nurture creativity and self-directed learning, how to offer support without taking control, and how to care for yourself as the parent of an intense and creative teen. This book helps parents to view the challenging years of middle school and high school not merely as college prep, but as a preparation for life.

Reviews for A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Teens:

“A creative calling is something that may strike as a teenager. ‘A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Teens: Living with Intense and Creative Adolescents‘ is a guide to the driven teenager, who parents who can commonly be overwhelmed in trying to understand and how to work with them to give them the creative freedom they need while still pushing them to become respectable adults….an invaluable resource for the parent who wants to help their child in their creative endeavors.” ~ Midwest Book Review

“Lisa Rivero draws from a wide background and experiential base in writing this insightful, informative, tender and, at times, humorous, book on one of the most pivotal times in a young person’s development. Adolescents are stretching and reaching in search of their identities and making choices that will shape their path into young adulthood. Add to this the asynchronous development, intensity, and creativity often experienced by gifted teens and the horizon ahead presents even greater complexity. A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Teens is a must read to better understand our gifted youth during this time of accelerated growth and change, and I recommend it wholeheartedly for teachers, counselors, and other helping professionals as well. I only wish this resource was available to me when I was raising my very gifted, intense, and creative son!” ~ Susan Daniels, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Educational Psychology and Counseling at California State University, Co-Editor of Living with Intensity

“Lisa’s words will ease parents’ anxieties about the many stages of raising a gifted teen. I wish every parent of a gifted teen could read this book.” ~ Pauline Bowie, NAGC, Chair-Parent & Community Network of the National Association for Gifted Children and Board Member, Northwest Gifted Child Association

“This is an extraordinary discussion of the ‘fine lines’ that parents of gifted kids walk. Nuanced perspectives related to boundary-setting, parental self-reflection, giftedness as differentness, identity development, and ‘drive’ are particularly powerful and include realistic examples and suggestions.” ~ Jean Sunde Peterson, Ph.D., Professor, Purdue University, Author of Gifted at Risk: Poetic Portraits

The Smart Teen’s Guide to Living with Intensity: How to Get More Out of Life and Learning

(Great Potential Press, 2010)

A 2010 National Indie Excellence Award finalist & 2011 Glyph Award Winner for both Best Juvenile/Young Adult—Nonfiction Book and Best Psychology/Self-Help Book (Arizona Book Publishing Association).

A book for all pre-teens and teens who love to learn, even if they don’t necessarily love school. Discover yourself as an intense and excitable learner, a creative learner, and a self-directed learner. Read about how to manage perfectionism and self-talk, how to understand your parents better, and how to take charge of your education, whether you go to public school, private school, or homeschool.

Reviews for The Smart Teens’ Guide to Living with Intensity:

“It’s very important for you to live your life intensely, fully, and creatively. This excellent book will help you understand better how to do that.” ~ Alisa Valdes, New York Times bestselling author of six novels for teens

“The book I wish I’d had as a teen! With practical, insightful, and heartfelt advice, Rivero speaks directly to today’s brightest teens about managing their intensities and becoming self-directed learners. I’m buying this book for my gifted students because its message of developing self-understanding, practicing joyful learning, and taking ownership of one’s education is precisely the message our brightest learners can thrive on. It is their education, after all, not ours. Teens will appreciate Rivero’s comfortable style and mind-to-mind approach that first helps them understand their intensities and then empowers them to discover, explore, advocate for, and cultivate their own learning journeys through various school settings. It is every message I try to impart to my students, all in one book!” ~ Tamara Fisher, M.A., K-12 Gifted Education Specialist, President of Montana AGATE, co-author of Intelligent Life in the Classroom: Smart Kids and their Teachers, and gifted education blogger for Teacher Magazine

“Currently in my 40s, I could identify strongly with the author and feel that I benefited not only as a parent from reading this book, but personally. My journey has been different, being identified with only a learning disability in school, but provided profound insights into how I now identify myself. I highly recommend this book.” ~ Teresa Rowlison (read full review)

Creative Home Schooling: A Resource Guide for Smart Families

(Great Potential Press, 2002)

Named 2003 Glyph Best Education Book (Arizona Book Publishing Association).

Creative Home Schooling: A Resource Guide for Smart Families (first published under the title Creative Home Schooling for Gifted Children: A Resource Guide) shows you how to give your child a gifted education at home. Children who are exceptionally bright, creative, curious and intense in their learning require a different understanding and approach to home education from many other children. Recognizing these differences does not mean you are being elitist. You are instead meeting your child’s needs. Read customer reviews for Creative Home Schooling.

The Homeschooling Option: How To Decide When It’s Right for Your Family

(Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)

Should you homeschool? Do you want to?

Answering these questions requires self-reflection, family input and sometimes trial and error. The good news is that homeschooling is by nature a learn-as-you-go enterprise, and you aren’t expected to have all the answers before you start, or even to know how long you will homeschool. By allowing yourself to adapt to your child’s needs along the way, you can more easily decide if full-time homeschooling or part-time homeschooling is a good choice for your family. And who knows? You might find, as we did, that learning at home is the best possible intellectual, social and emotional education for your child. Also available for the Kindle.