The Influence of Bibliotherapy on Gender-Role Attitudes of Gifted Female Adolescents Enrolled in a Magnet Program for the Gifted
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By age eight, she was the state champion in gymnastics in her age group. In school she was ahead of her classmates (both girls and boys) and was at the top of her class in ballet and piano. She blossomed into a beautiful, talented, popular, and bouncy cheerleader by the seventh grade. She dreamed of going to a highly selective college and then off to New York as a psychiatrist or dance therapist.
Two long years later, she was passing her classes with low C's, if pushed, and talked of perhaps going to the community college. She graduated from high school, dropped out of community college, moved to her own apartment and waited tables at an Italian restaurant. What happened to the dreams of the energetic, gifted girl of junior high? Adolescence has been blamed for squeezing emerging butterflies back into their cocoons for a few more years before they finally take flight, and it seems that gifted adolescents, especially girls, tend to feel this squeeze of adolescence more intensely than their nongifted peers. In recent years, the question has plagued many researchers: Are there any interventions that can tame the influences of these social stressors on adolescent females (Alfeld -Liro et al., 1997; Anderson & Tollefson, 1991; Bowman & Nickerson, 1976; Burnett et al., 1995; Colangelo, K. et al., 1997; Colangelo, N., 1997; Fehrenbach, 1993; Ford, 1997; Hanson, 1995; Hebert, 1991; Hollinger, 1983; Kerr, 1995; Madill et al., 1997; Matteson, 1991; Strip et al., 1991; Newton, 1995; Pardeck, 1991; Schlichter & Burke, 1994' ; Silverman, 1991; VanTassel-Baska, 1997).